The Homiemoon Read online

  >Mikey: Hell yeah! Send me the link, I’ll throw in another hundred.

  >Mikey: But if you ever do get married, you’re not getting a wedding present.

  I watched Calvin’s face as the answers came in. He’d clearly been expecting something different. I wondered why. The decision seemed pretty damn obvious to me.

  “They’re all unanimous,” I said. “Still think we shouldn’t go?”

  “Not everyone’s replied yet,” he mumbled.

  “Good luck hearing from Tim in the middle of his actual honeymoon.” I snorted. “And why would he say anything different?”

  More texts from the guys were showing up as we spoke.

  >Rich: Mikey’s right. If we’re figuring you two’ll never get married, I’ll throw in some coin too.

  >Dan: I’ll match whatever they put in. Combined.

  Calvin heaved a sigh. God, he really didn’t want to go on a trip with me, did he? Considering it was his idea in the first place, he was acting like this would be some kind of torture.

  “If you really don’t want to go, we don’t have to go,” I said softly.

  I wished that dog would come over and nuzzle my hand again, because I could’ve really used a little human contact. Animal contact. Whatever.

  “I honestly would go if it weren’t for the whole speech thing,” Calvin said. “I made a giant ass of myself, and it’s all I’d be able to think about the whole time if we went.”

  “Ahh.” Now I got it. “I think it’s out there, though. Like it or not, you’re always going to be the homiemoon guy. You might as well own it.”

  “Shit.” He hung his head, and the dog licked his hand.

  All right, at this exact moment, maybe he needed Buddy more than I did.

  “I don’t think I’m really the ‘own it’ kind of person.” There was a new vulnerability in his eyes as he gazed at me. “I don’t really know how to do that.”

  “Then I’ll help you.”

  I looked at my phone again. The guys were still texting, trying to one-up each other on how much they could contribute. Trust my bros to turn our celebration of male friendship into a pissing contest.

  A new message appeared, and I chuckled. “If you were waiting for Tim’s response to come in, you just got it.”

  Calvin opened his phone, and his face twisted in dismay.

  If you had to ruin our wedding, it better not have been for nothing, Tim had written. Just made my contribution online. Have fun, boys!

  After meeting my eyes for a second, Calvin quickly dropped his gaze.

  “I guess that settles it,” he said regretfully. “We’re going to do this.”

  * * *

  Between the random Internet strangers who thought they were supporting some kind of noble cause and our friends who felt this was the world’s biggest joke, we ended the week with three thousand buckaroonies to play with.

  Europe was too far, and we’d already done Vegas and the Dominican. After some thought, we decided a cruise might be fun.

  “Not a singles cruise,” Calvin warned. “That would ruin the whole point of a homiemoon.”

  “Understood,” I said. “No picking up. This is going to be pure bro bonding time. Should I go all the way and make it a couples’ cruise?”

  I expected him to laugh, but he didn’t seem to find it funny. “No” was all he said.

  Undeterred, I flipped through websites on his laptop. Over the week, I’d been over his place a few times planning this thing, and Buddy had gotten to know me well enough that he was napping at my feet.

  “None of the ones I’m finding look right,” I said, pushing the laptop away. “Honestly, if it’s not single or gay, it’s for families or senior citizens.”

  “We found a new niche for cruise marketing,” he laughed. “Let’s jump on this and profit.”

  “Seriously, what should we do?” I asked.

  “Not go at all?”

  I rolled my eyes at him, jamming an elbow into his ribs for good measure. Immediately he leaned away. He always seemed a little uncomfortable with being touched, which I found weird because the same gesture wouldn’t have fazed Mikey in the slightest.

  I’d been touching Calvin more lately, maybe subconsciously trying to get him used to it. He’d started sharing the couch with me rather than each of us taking an armchair, but otherwise my attempts had shown no effect. I should probably give up and stop doing something that appeared to disturb him. And I would… soon.

  “Let’s try a different angle,” I said, opening a new tab. “Best… honeymoon… destinations… USA.”

  “It’s not a honeymoon.”

  “I’m aware, but this is just for inspiration.” I scanned up and down the page. “Hawaii—out of our price range. Martha’s Vineyard—boring. Jackson Hole—sounds too dirty.”

  Calvin choked on a laugh and leaned down to scratch Buddy’s head. “What else do they have on there?”

  “Palmetto Bluff… Adirondacks… Niagara-on-the-Lake…”

  “Not Canada,” he said firmly. “Rosebridge only gets so much sunshine in a year. I refuse to go somewhere colder than it is here.”

  “All right, warmth is a priority. What else do we actually want in this trip?” I closed the laptop halfway, staring at him. “We want to bond with each other, and we want to keep our fans entertained.”

  That was the other thing. In an effort to “own” the homiemoon, we’d decided to video-blog the whole thing.

  It shouldn’t be hard. We were just going to be posting quick, simple updates about where we were and what we were doing. We figured it was the least we could do to please the people who’d financed the whole thing. Yeah, they’d probably gotten a kick out of donating to such a silly cause—but they could’ve kept that money in their wallets, and they’d given it to us instead.

  Calvin groaned. He was still unsure about the whole idea. He liked putting a better face forward than the drunken one he’d shown in the initial video. But he also claimed blogging would be so stressful that it’d wreck our whole trip.

  “It’s happening,” I said, grinning at him. “You can’t get out of it now.”

  There was a weird fucking tone in my voice. It almost sounded like I was flirting with him. And how bizarre would that be?

  I wiped the smile off my face, and he gave me an odd look. “I already agreed to your whole video blogging idea,” he said. “I’m pretty sure it’ll make every donor regret ever giving us anything, but I agreed. Seriously, though, we need to get on this if we want to head out next weekend.”

  That was the other other thing. We planned to leave in a week.

  “Not that I’m not enjoying chilling with you,” he went on, “but I did put in my request for vacation time…”

  “We’ll figure it out before we leave,” I said. “Hell, if worst comes to worst, we’ll just get in the car and drive.”

  A new light came into his eyes. “That’s not the worst idea.”

  “Really? There’s nothing interesting around here. We’d have to drive pretty far.” I leaned over him so I could pet Buddy absent-mindedly. The incidental contact with his leg sent a shiver down my back, and I vaguely wondered why. “I don’t know if it’d be much fun.”

  “We’d be spending bro time together,” Calvin said. “We’ll chill, listen to some tunes, grab some greasy-ass fast food. Hell, if we pass through Boston, we could follow the coast up to the border. I bet there’s some nice beaches and little tourist towns along the way.”

  “Hmm… weren’t you just worrying about the cold?”

  “It’s the end of August. We’ll be fine. Plus, this way I won’t need to find someone to look after this little guy.” He nudged Buddy’s paw with a foot. “I’d miss him so much otherwise!”

  “You mean he could come with us?” I got down on the floor next to Buddy, scratching his head harder than ever. He closed his eyes and zoned out, enjoying it. “You want to go on a road trip, little guy?”

  Calvin extended his feet,
picking up a paw between the first and second toes of each foot. “He’d rather come than stay here.”

  “He’s dancing with excitement,” I said, still scratching his head as Calvin made his paws go up and down. “He’s that thrilled by the idea.”

  We both laughed, watching Buddy’s face as we played with him. He didn’t seem to mind at all. If anything, he was enjoying the attention.

  “He’ll appreciate the change of scenery,” Calvin said.

  Buddy opened his eyes and I hugged him close, only jumping away when he dipped his head and tried to lick my cheek.

  “So it’s decided,” I said. “The homiemoon just added another member.”

  6

  Five—Calvin

  “I call shotgun!” Adam said early Saturday morning.

  The sun wasn’t even fully up yet. It was too early for any witty comebacks. If he didn’t have the front seat, Buddy would, so why bother to call shotgun?

  “Mmph” was my only response as I slid in the driver’s side.

  “Doing all right there?” he asked with some ridiculous grin on his face. “Wishing we would’ve left last night, or something?”

  “Mm-mmm-mmph.”

  Adam’s idea had been to take off immediately after work last night. My opinion was that the less time on this road trip, the better. My attraction to him had only grown with the increased amount of time we’d spent together this week. And the shitty thing was, I was almost able to convince myself it was mutual.

  There was something about the way he occasionally looked at me—something about the way he kept trying to touch me. I didn’t have much experience with dating, but it did all add up to a certain suggestion.

  But I was dreaming. In all the long years we’d been friends, I surely would’ve figured out by now if he wasn’t as heterosexual as he appeared to be.

  “We’re ready?” I grunted.

  “I am!”

  Way too perky for this ungodly hour. Adam had to be one of those morning people I’d only ever heard about. I’d always thought they were a myth.

  Buddy was already in the back seat, the window rolled down just enough for him to stick his tongue out. I’d packed all his stuff for him, including a couple of toys and bones. Our own bags were in the trunk. It was time for us to hit the road.

  We planned to take the MA-2 toward Boston, then find some small town to stop for the night. We’d post an update for our followers at whatever hotel or motel we found. They’d been so excited when we announced we were going to be live blogging our trip, I almost felt okay about doing it. Almost.

  I turned the key in the ignition, then stopped. “Why am I driving if you’re the one who’s awake?” I was pretty impressed with myself for forming a coherent sentence.

  “If I drive now, you won’t be able to sleep later.”

  “Hmm.”

  I put the car into gear and took it onto the road. It did make some sense for me to drive. We’d chosen to take my car—I put half my salary into payments on it, so I wanted to get some use out of it. I would’ve rather slept now and driven later, but whatever. If Adam wanted to take his life into his own hands by letting me take the wheel when I was this tired, that was his own decision.

  And he followed it up with another bad decision—fiddling with the radio. He’d cranked up the volume on a country station before he realized the way I was staring at him.

  “It’s seven in the morning,” I seethed. “Seven in the goddamn morning, and you’re playing that?”

  “Whoa, dude!” He held up his hands. “I didn’t know your feelings on country were so strong.”

  “Apparently you didn’t know a lot of things about me.” I turned the radio off with a jab. No more twanging, thank fuck! “Such as that I don’t take any shit before I have my coffee.”

  “Let’s get you caffeinated up.”

  With a Big Gulp of iced cappuccino in the cupholder, I felt slightly better. Not enough to let Adam turn on the radio again, even though he tried.

  “Vote time,” I said. “Whoever wants the radio off, say woof.”

  Buddy woofed along with me, and it was settled.

  “You don’t seem much less cranky with the coffee,” Adam said.

  I pulled onto the freeway and cranked all four windows all the way down. “I’m not cranky. I just don’t fuck around with country music.”

  “These four days are going to be pretty dull with no music. Could we compromise? Top 40 or something?”

  I waved a CD at him. “I’ve got the best old-school rap from the 90s.”

  His eyes widened. “Silence it is, then.”

  A laugh bubbled out of me. “Joking.” I showed him the writing on the disc. “It’s Radiohead. Everybody loves Radiohead, right?”

  “God, I remember us listening to this on some stoned nights back in college.”

  I tsked. “We go so far back, and you didn’t know I don’t do mornings.”

  “And you didn’t know I do,” he said. “I think it makes it harder to date, honestly. It’s rare to find someone who gets up at the same hour as me. Most girls seem put off when I’m already out of bed by the time they get up.”

  So we were already talking about our love lives. Great, just what I needed.

  But that was the point of this trip, wasn’t it? Two homies bonding? I should’ve seen it coming—should’ve already thought of a strategy for all the love-and-marriage talk. I might not be able to wave it off or make vague generalizations like I usually did.

  “Must be easier to be a night person,” Adam said. “Do you usually stay up late with the girls you date?”

  A direct question, even better. “I don’t really date,” I said after a moment.

  “You really don’t, do you? I haven’t heard you talk about a girl in years.” He put his elbow on the windowsill. “Why is that?”

  “Doesn’t usually get to that point. I had my fun back in the day, but then I made the conscious choice to focus on my career.” Hmm, that was actually a pretty good line. I’d have to remember that for later.

  “Makes sense,” Adam said. “I remember you had that one girlfriend in college—the one none of us ever met.”

  My knuckles went white on the wheel. He was talking about a girlfriend I’d made up completely. The guys had always joked about her being imaginary since they’d never met her. At least, I was fairly sure they’d only been joking.

  “She was all right,” I said. “Kind of made me realize I was going to have to choose between girls and work at some point.”

  “The other guys didn’t,” Adam pointed out.

  Ahh… so much for my great line. “That’s true, but I wouldn’t have gotten to this point at the bank if I was out picking up random women.” I sipped my coffee through the straw. “If I could find a nice family-minded girl like they did, that’d be one thing. But otherwise…”

  “You’re not going to meet any girls at all with the way you’re living.” Adam rapped his fingernails against the glass. “What do you mean by family-minded, though? You’d want to have kids soon?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I did, but not the kind that came from my sperm going into a vagina. “If it happens, it happens.”

  “I don’t know how you can be so calm about it. I still feel like a kid myself, and our friends are having kids. I mean, Mikey’s actually trying now! How is he not terrified?”

  “You don’t think he is?”

  I hadn’t really thought about how he had to be feeling. He was the dad of our group anyway, and he and Kim had been together forever. Now that they’d made it official, kids seemed like the next logical step.

  “He’s scared,” Adam admitted. “But like, shit. I’d be too terrified to even start trying, but the two of them are going ahead and doing it anyway.”

  “Pretty crazy that people are planning kids now,” I said. “Remember when that guy on the team knocked up his girlfriend in senior year?”

  “He freaked out so hard.” Adam laughed. “I swear he sp
ent an hour straight running in circles around the locker room.”

  “That kid would be what now, eight?” I shook my head. “Either of us could have an eight-year-old child. Can you imagine?”

  “Technically we could have a teenager if we’d gotten started really early.”

  Ignoring the highway before me, I turned to give him an exaggerated gasp of horror. “Don’t even say that.” I returned my gaze to the road. “Seriously, though, you still feel like a kid? You’ve got a job and responsibilities and shit.”

  “A job, yeah. Sure. Kind of necessary. The rest of it, no.” He threw a hand backwards over the seat, giving Buddy his hand to lick. “I don’t even have a pet or anything.”

  “They don’t take much effort. Buddy’s pretty chill.”

  “I’m sure he is, but I never had the confidence to get a dog of my own. I still spend all my money on alcohol and clothes.”

  This was a different side of Adam than I usually saw. He usually seemed so self-assured, so put-together. “You have plants,” I said.

  “I do have plants.” He sounded unconvinced. “Am I a manchild? Are we manchildren?”

  “Being an adult isn’t about adding up a scorecard of how much you’re responsible for.”

  “I know, I just…” He wriggled in his seat. “Sometimes I feel like I’m being left behind, you know? Our friends are doing everything society expects of them, and they’re doing it at the time they’re expected to do it. Meanwhile I’m single, childless, still kind of kicking around and figuring out what I’m doing with myself.”

  God, he was seriously opening up to me. I glanced over at him again, and he actually looked dismayed. I had the sudden urge to reach over and squeeze his knee. No, not a good idea.

  “I can sympathize a bit,” I said, still guarded. “Being single does bother me. I love my work, though.”

  “Yeah, same.” He bit his lip. “Do you think we’re immature, though? I mean, are we less grown up than them?”

  “No.” I was firm on that. “There’s nothing in holding a fancy ceremony with somebody that magically makes you more of an adult.”

  “Isn’t there? I mean, not the wedding itself, but the commitment. Isn’t there something to the idea of saying you’re going to intertwine your life with someone else’s, create a family of your own, and grow old with them?”