“No.” Angus thought about it and realized he was right. No, they weren’t going to be there the next day. “Me and Reece are going to Vegas.”
“Vegas, dude.” Cheddar laughed again. Angus liked his laugh. He seemed to find most things funny. “Me and my buddies went there once and had shrooms, like in that movie. We just walked around the strip. The lights fucked with my head, man. It was such a trip.”
“I bet.” Angus hadn’t ever known someone like Cheddar, definitely not since he’d started hanging out with Brad’s waspy friends. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. Just go out, I guess.”
“Is your man bringing his girlfriend with him?”
“No. She’s just… one of those things.”
Cheddar made a soft catcalling sound. “Festival bride. Got it. They’re probably going to be getting freaky in the tent tonight. You can sleep with us in the love machine.”
Angus snorted. “We’ve got a hotel room. I don’t think….” He doubted Reece would do that. Maybe. Who knows? Angus had to have been a giant pain in the ass to him since they’d left home. Maybe Reece wanted a night away from his whining.
They wound their way into the crowd and waited for the music to begin. Angus, just like he had back in the love machine, felt like his feet were floating a few centimeters off the ground. He kind of liked how it felt, even though it had been years since the last time he’d felt it. He was kind of thirsty, though, and it seemed like it was taking forever to get the stage set up.
“You guys thirsty?” Angus asked.
“Sure, dude. Are you going on a water run?”
“I could.”
The next thing Angus knew, he had bills pressed into his palms, and a confusing set of directions to the place with the cheapest water bottles. He tried to remember where the guys were standing. Next to the girl with a blue flower crown by the giant caterpillar. Close enough.
He was on his way to the water booth when he ran head-on into Reece. “Where the hell have you been?” Reece asked. “I’ve texted you about a million times.”
“I met these guys, and I’m just getting us water before the show starts. We were in their van, and you know….” Angus shrugged.
Reece looked closer. “Are you
high
?” he asked.
Angus giggled. It felt like bubbles in his chest. “Where’s Brenda?”
“Doing her job. You are high. Jesus.”
“I have to get water. Cheddar and Dibbs gave me money.”
“You met guys named Cheddar and Dibbs.” Reece looked supremely irritated.
“Yeah, and we hung out in their van.” Angus flopped his head from side to side because he liked the way it made the puffy white clouds bounce.
“Oh my God. Let’s go get your dealers some water.”
“Chill out, Reece’s Pieces. I’m fine.”
“Right.”
Reece loomed over him like a protective pit bull after that. He followed Angus to the water booth and helped him get six bottles for them and the four guys back at the concert. Then he followed him back. Angus wasn’t as floaty as he’d been an hour or so ago. He kind of wanted the feeling back. But he smiled and waved at the people who waved at him, and eventually he saw the girl with the blue flower crown at the base of the giant caterpillar. And the guys waved and jumped up and down.
Angus passed out waters and then pointed at Reece. “Guys, this is my friend. Reece.”
“Where’s your woman?” Cheddar asked.
“I don’t have a woman.” Reece put an arm around Angus’s shoulders. Cheddar chuckled again.
“I can see that.”
The band had just walked on, so the crowd erupted in waves of noise. Angus backed up against Reece’s chest to watch the band. “Thank you for this,” he whispered.
“You okay?” Reece asked.
“Yeah. I’m great.”
He was great. Mostly. A little less numb than the day before, which was less numb than the day before that. He supposed it was the way it was going to go from then on. Every day would feel a little more real. And maybe, eventually, he’d get over his shit.
HOURS LATER,
they stood there in the dark surrounded by lights, Reece snuggled right up against him and arms tucked tight around his shoulders, and listened to one of Angus’s favorite bands. He felt Reece’s golden skin, his breath, and the way he tightened his arms just a touch when there was a song he was particularly into. Angus hadn’t been in Reece’s arms like that in years—it was something they used to do back in the early days of college, before Brad came along, when it was just the two of them in the dorm or the apartment. Angus hadn’t realized how much he’d missed Reece’s casual touch. But he did love soaking it in. He loved how good Reece smelled, and how the light from the setting sun lit up his blond hair whenever Angus turned to look at him.
It felt good. Healing somehow. And he started to feel a lot less numb. The warmth of the evening hit his skin, the buzz from the drinks and Cheddar’s weed. He was hungry, genuinely hungry, and he wanted to eat more after the concert. He even laughed a little bit at Cheddar and his buddies’ antics.
Death Cab ended with a song he and Reece used to sing back in high school. It was from one of their oldest albums, and it carried some of the best memories he’d ever had.
“I love this song,” Angus whispered.
“Me too.”
He felt Reece humming along, his chest vibrating with the cadence of the lyrics. Angus leaned his head back onto Reece’s shoulder and sighed. He tried to let the last three months drain out of him in that moment—he was sure they’d be back when he closed his eyes, when it was silent and he didn’t have an entire music festival around to distract him, but for the moment, he was… fine, and that was going to have to be good enough for him.
When the concert ended and the festivalgoers started draining out of the venue, Angus’s belly rumbled.
Reece, who was sitting behind him in the grass, in a group with the van boys, laughed. “Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’ve been wanting to grab something for hours, but I kinda forgot.”
“You want to go find something that’s open late?”
“What you mean, fast food?” Angus gasped. He’d always given Reece shit for his disdain of drive-through cuisine.
“Even I won’t be slain by the occasional Taco Bell. Plus, I did eat In-N-Out, if you remember.”
“I do. And it was an affront to your whole, like, organic thing.”
“Hippie… health nut… you wound me.”
“It’s okay.” Angus turned and pinched his nipple. “Farmer’s market chic works on the ladies.”
“Wait, you two aren’t a couple?” Cheddar asked. Angus thought he’d been messing around with the other guys, but he must’ve heard them.
“I told you about the girl earlier,” Angus said.
“There’s no girl,” Reece growled.
“See?” Cheddar said with a laugh. “That’s what I’m talking about. I just kinda thought you were, like, open about things.”
“Oh, nah.” Angus grinned. “Just best friends of the totally platonic kind since we were in the single digits. This one is straight.”
“Seriously.” Cheddar looked skeptical. “Could’ve fooled the fuck out of me.”
Angus supposed anyone who didn’t know how they were… well, how they’d been and apparently were again, wouldn’t get it. But it wasn’t really worth explaining.
“Yup. Seriously.”
“Man.” Cheddar’s eyes went a bit wide, but he didn’t say anything else.
Eventually the group peeled themselves off the itchy and somewhat beer-sticky grass and headed for the parking area.
“You’re seriously going to take me to Taco Bell?” Angus asked.
“If we can find one.”
Cheddar made a gagging sound. “Oh, you guys don’t want that shit. There’s an awesome taco stand like ten blocks away, super authentic. It’s open twenty-four hours.”
Angus knew he had stars in his eyes. Even on the worst day, he could always be romanced by a burrito.
Cheddar gave them directions that were only slightly confusing. Then they all exchanged numbers in that polite, eager way people do even when they have no intention of ever calling or texting, and Angus and Reece climbed into the rental car.
“What a great day,” Reece said.
“Yeah. Definitely.” Angus slumped against the seat and smiled. “Thank you for doing this.”
“We’ll have to thank Brenda. She was really nice to get us the tickets.”
“I think she wanted
your
ticket,” Angus said with a snort.
Reece swatted Angus’s thigh. “Stop. We’re friends.”
“Right.” Angus snorted. “Hey, weren’t we supposed to turn left there?”
“Was that the red mailbox with the duck on it? Shit. Yes.”
Reece concentrated on finding the taco truck after that, and then they returned to their rooms with two huge, glorious burritos—one of which Angus downed hard.
“Hey, you have any clothes you want me to wash?” Reece asked. “This hotel has a laundry room.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Convenient, right?”
“I’ll come down with you. I don’t want to sit up here alone.”
Because even after a day of distractions, he still didn’t like the silence. Angus grabbed his bag and followed Reece out the door.
“I probably should’ve brought more stuff.”
“Nah, it’ll be fine,” Reece told him.
“You always say that.”
“And I’m usually right.”
After their laundry was cleaned and dried and folded back into their bags, after they were stretched out in their beds, Angus felt… restless. He needed to sleep, he needed to get some real rest, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
What’s wrong with me?
Months later, he should be over it, as embarrassing as it was.
Maybe… who knows. Maybe he never would be.
Las Vegas
THERE WAS
something about the desert. It wasn’t beautiful, exactly, at least not in Reece’s opinion, but there was a sort of enchantment about the way the rocks and sand stretched for so long it was hard to tell where it ended. The hills were far off in the distance, lumps of craggy stone. Sometimes it looked like they could run and get to them; sometimes it looked like they were so far it would take years to reach them. They drove through a valley littered with tiny cactuses and stunted palm trees, and one creepy white building that looked like it housed some sketchy government research project, then another valley that looked like a scene out of some old movie, with canyons and rock formations so close together the road barely fit between them. Reece halfway expected to see the Lone Ranger flying out from between the rocks on the back of his trusty horse.
It was hard to concentrate on driving when all he wanted to do was stare. The landscape was the opposite of everything they were used to—trees, water, green. Reece wanted to pull over and take about a million pictures.
“This is pretty wild, isn’t it?” Angus asked when they were in the middle of what a roadside sign called a box canyon. It almost seemed like places like this didn’t really exist outside of movies. The canyon rose steep and craggy, in stripes of deposited rock and dirt on the sides of the road, and boulders littered the shoulder. There wasn’t a single plant except some scrubby yellow grass, and the sky above them was so blue it nearly glowed. The only thing that served as a reminder that they were, in fact, in a real place was a scrap of dirty blue fabric lying on the side of the road.
“Definitely isn’t Portland for sure,” Reece murmured.
He missed the trees, which had thinned out somewhere around Carmel and never really returned, but as long as the landscape was temporary, he found it fascinating.
“How much farther to Vegas?” Angus asked.
“’Bout three hours. Not too bad.”
“Do you have to work tonight?” Angus asked.
“Nah, it can wait. I’ve never been here before, and I really want to check it out.” Reece had been slacking on his job a bit, but he’d managed to get an extension on one of his projects and push a different one off to another editor. It’d be a slim month paycheckwise, but he could afford it. He and Angus needed this time.
“I forgot you hadn’t been to Vegas before.”
“Yes. Because somebody went with other people and left me at home.”
Angus made a face. “I would’ve had a lot more fun with you, if that makes you feel better. Those guys suck. It was like we kept walking by all these places that looked cool, and I wanted to check them out, but we never did. Seriously. They sucked.”
Which had been Reece’s feeling about Brad’s friends for years. “Well, hopefully I won’t suck.”
Angus snickered. “Not likely.”
Reece looked over and grinned at him. He loved those moments when his best friend came back out loud and clear. “Maybe not this weekend.”
“You’ve seriously got to stop that,” Angus said. He snorted.
“Nah. Gets you every time. Why would I want to stop?” Reece told him. Oldest rule in friend rule book—if it annoys them? Do it extra.
“Why haven’t we passed like a single town? I could kill for some coffee,” Angus said.
“Hangover?” Reece asked.
Their night with Cheddar and his boys hadn’t ended early. Their group straggled out of Coachella as the place was emptying for the night. The morning had been painful at best.
“Yeah, a little. Those guys were really cool, though.”
“Hey, not to be a nag, but….”
“I don’t have a drinking problem. I know that’s what you were going to ask.”
“Babe….” Reece couldn’t help being worried.
“I know. I just…. You know I’ve never had one. Not when we were kids and not now. I just needed to be numb for a while.”
“And now?”
“I’m starting to like feeling things again, I guess.”
Reece remembered the concert last night when Angus was backed up against him. When he’d tugged on Reece’s hands until he wrapped his arms around Angus’s shoulders and spooned against him like a couple. Was that what he liked feeling? Reece figured that would be the worst possible question to ask.
“What do you want to do in Vegas?” he said instead. “You’re going to have to give me some guidance.”
“Oh, man. The fountain, you’ll love the fountain, and the inside of the Venetian and the Paris and Caesars Palace. They’re all so gorgeous. And we’ll have to get ice cream at Serendipity, even though it’s not the real one in New York, and there are a few casinos that are new since I was there last. I want to check those out too. And….” Angus trailed off to Reece’s laughter.