The Luckiest (20 page)

David is singing to Alex, being adorable and silly, and she’s laughing, always laughing. Jasmine has abandoned the bottle, and now she and Joe are dancing together, Joe looking dumb­struck while Jasmine manages to look both shy and smug through her smile. Bianca has grabbed Shelby and is grind­ing against her ridiculously, crowing into her ear while Shelby laughs hysterically and holds onto her shoulders for the ride. Josh and Stephanie and Tu and Nicole are all at a table together, laughing and chatting like old friends. Josh and Nicole are locked into some kind of epic argument about sports, he thinks—Josh slaps the table a lot when he talks about sports and yep, there he goes again. Stephanie and Tu lean against each other, while Tu fiddles with his camera and half­heartedly scans the area for photo opportunities. Even the parents seem a little drunk sitting at their table and smiling indul­gently at the young people, and the grandmothers are chair-dancing next to them.

Aaron relaxes; this is exactly what Alex wanted: the best night, the most fun, just simple and joyous and
happy
. They nailed it, and it’s done.

The night is winding down—the tea lights flicker in their jars, most of the women have lost their shoes and dance in bare feet or stockings in the grass and the casual guests have left for hotel rooms or inns or home. Nik’s playlist sets the tone for this part of the night perfectly: it’s quiet, contemplative and softly romantic, and a man’s voice gently sings about finding love and giving it away.

Aaron is back by the bar, toasting an exhausted Mia with a glass of champagne, when arms surround him from behind and Nik’s chin rests on his shoulder.

“Don’t drink too much. I think you and Beyoncé just made me a promise,” Nik whispers in his ear.

Nik had built in a whole block of songs from their middle school and early high school years, and Alex and Jasmine and Stephanie had done a choreographed dance from memory while he had laughed from the side, meeting Nik’s eyes just once. “Yeah? You planning on putting a ring on it?”

“You planning on finding somebody else if I don’t?”

Aaron grins over his shoulder and says, “Not this week. Come on, come dance with me.”

Nik takes Aaron’s hand and leads him to the arbor as the song changes to George Jones, one of those classic, hard luck country songs his mother has always loved. This song is special, though, because it was another one of theirs, and Aaron smiles when he thinks about Nik making the choice to include it—this one could only be for them. Nik wraps his arms around Aaron’s shoulders and tucks his cheek against Aaron’s. Aaron smiles sadly against him, remembering the last time they danced together, just hours before it had finally fallen apart for the last time.

He thinks about what Nik just asked, whether he would find somebody else right away if it fell apart, and he asks, “Were you in love with Ollie?”

Nik goes rigid against him and then pulls back to look at him, stunned. “Oh. Oh, wow. Are we having this conversation now?”

“I think so. If… I mean, I do want to know. Can you?”

Nik is quiet, looking over Aaron’s shoulder as they turn and move together, and Aaron says, “Nik, you were with Ollie longer than you were with
me
, and you were older—it was important. It
is
important. I think…”

Nik holds him close and rests his chin against Aaron’s shoul­der; he sighs and speaks quietly in Aaron’s ear. “I was… I was not as in love with Ollie as I should have been, I think. I spent a lot of time wishing I were. But he was… God, Aaron, he was
so good
to me. He was good
for
me—he taught me so much about relationships. He would have done
anything
for me, and it’s… that feeling, it’s kind of terrifying. Knowing that you have that kind of power over somebody, I mean. By the end, well—it had become obvious I wasn’t ever going to love him like he loved me.” Nik pauses for a moment. “It’s part of why I went home with him last summer—we were in trouble, and we needed some space from everything else to see if it could actually work or if it had just burned out. And then, when we got back to school, I ended it. It was awful—I should never have let it go on so long.”

Aaron slides his hand up Nik’s back and anchors it between his shoulder blades, pressing him closer. He thinks about Nik and Ollie together, about Ollie’s bright smile, about the way he looked at Nik. He’d always hated it.

In a quiet, small voice, Nik continues. “I think he felt about me the way I still feel about you—hopelessly besotted. There’s a lesson there, I think.” They are quiet for a minute more, and then Nik says, “So, you know, you think I was with Ollie for a long time and that it’s important, and that’s true, I guess. But it’s also true that I was yours the whole time I was with him. It’s never been a competition.”

Nik’s voice washes over Aaron’s neck, and he shivers.

It’s a lot to take in. Aaron holds Nik against him and keeps moving them around the dance floor, Nik’s body and breath warm and familiar against his own. This connection, this
thing
between them—it’s been so much a part of his emo­tional landscape for so long that waking it up has been as easy as breathing and as scary as walking off a cliff. But what Nik’s talking about now,
that
kind of fear—” I don’t feel terrified. By your feelings, I mean.”

“You don’t?”

“No. It feels… it’s good. Knowing I’m not alone in it. Any­more, I mean.” Nik’s hand presses firmly against the back of his neck, and his fingers curl into Aaron’s hair, and Aaron wants to kiss him but Nik keeps dancing.

“Ollie told me, you know. After we broke up, one day we met to exchange stuff, just… I don’t know, finishing it up, I guess. He was still so pissed—he had a right to be—but he told me to come after you. It… how I felt, about you and about what we had, it wasn’t a secret. We never talked about it, not really—it might have been better if we had. But… he knew.”

Aaron imagines it, imagines sitting across from Nik in a coffee shop and knowing that he is in love with somebody else. It’s gutting, brutal. But it’s also a strange kind of gift to know that somebody as kind as Nik could
be
so cruel, that a heart as large as Nik’s is so full of Aaron that there isn’t room for one more person. They’ve wasted so much time. “I wish
I
had known.”

“So do I.”

Nik does kiss him now, sweetly and with such longing. His lips are soft and wet, his tongue gentle, and his hands tug at Aaron’s hair. Aaron thinks about how they must look, what the parents and the friends must think—and then he kisses Nik back, because he’s not seventeen anymore and this is a place he spent all week building, and if he can’t show Nik that he loves him at their best friends’ wedding, then he’s not sure where he can.

Nik pulls back before the kiss can become too intense and props his forehead against Aaron’s. “God, I want to get out of here.”

“Do you think we need to wait until they leave?”

Nik pulls back and glances toward the spot where Alex and David have spent most of their evening, and Aaron follows the glance. Alex is hugging some of her friends goodbye, and she looks tired—he’s not sure she’ll be here much longer as it is.

“Probably, but let’s go see.”

Aaron takes Nik’s hand and leads him over to Alex, who is watching her friends walk away. She turns to them, smiles at Aaron and says, “Go.”

Aaron blinks at her for a second until she says, “I saw you—David and I were watching you. It’s—you’re so
romantic,
it’s ridiculous. But it was a beautiful wedding gift, watching the two of you together again, so thank you, and now get the hell out of here.” She grins at him and then pulls him into a hug; Nik lets go of his hand to shake hands with David. “Really,
thank you,
for everything,” she whispers in his ear. “This day was perfect, and I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Aaron pulls back to grin at her. “Did you like the cake?”

“Oh my God, it was amazing. And the flowers, and Nik’s playlist, and the
song
—just, everything. It was perfect. Thank you, so much.”

Aaron squeezes her hands. “You’re leaving for Vegas on Thursday?”

“Yep, and we’ll be back in town on Tuesday for one last dinner with my grandma before she goes home, so let’s get together so you can tell me
all about it.
”

Aaron gives her his best big-eyed stare and she laughs, and then he pulls her toward him and plants a kiss on her hair and whispers, “I’m so happy for you. Congratulations.”

She squeezes him back and says, “You too, baby.”

Nik and Aaron are quiet on their way up the lawn back to the house, their hands laced together. About the time they hit the back of the house, the first trumpet call of the Aggie War Hymn sounds, the fight song of the university where Alex and David fell in love—and the rival to the school that Nik spent four years learning to love. Aaron snorts with laughter, and Nik slants a grin over toward him. “Well. You weren’t the
only
reason I wanted to leave the reception.” Alex and David and Jasmine and all of their friends from school are just coming together in a circle to whoop and yell when two girls in sleeveless dresses and bare feet dash out the door and push past them to join the party, their hair streaming behind them as they giggle and run and try to sing, all at once. Aaron smiles and lets the door slam behind him on the way in.

Nik nabs a bottle of champagne as they make their way past the bar, and when they get back to Aaron’s room he puts the bottle on the table and runs a hand over his head. “Do you mind if we shower first? I have all this stuff in my hair, and I feel a little gross.”

While Nik showers, Aaron straightens the room and locks the bedroom door. He opens the champagne and looks for glasses or mugs or
something
before he gives it up for a lost cause and takes a drink straight from the bottle. Mostly, he tries not to be nervous. It’s silly, really, how important tonight feels. He reminds himself of who he is, where he’s been, every­thing he’s done and everything they’ve done together, but still, when Nik opens the bedroom door to a billow of steam and his towel-wrapped silhouette, Aaron can’t help feeling like a teenager all over again.

Aaron slips past him, wordless, and thinks about it during his own shower. Years ago, he and Nik took that first last step together, in a room not so different from this one, one week­end while Nik’s parents were out of town. It should be easier now, now that the mechanics are clearer. When they were young, they were scared of all the wrong things. Then, it had been physical pain, and the idea of what it meant to do
that,
to cross that invisible line that signified one of the last things they thought was still childlike about them.

Aaron remembers Nik diving for his iPod that day, rolling off of him once they were finally together there, naked and excited, because a Disney ballad had come up on his “Romance Primer” playlist. Nik was flustered, saying, “God, I used to watch that movie with my babysitter, what was I
thinking
?”

As Aaron dries off and wraps the towel around his waist, he thinks about the stakes tonight. They shouldn’t seem so high—he and Nik both know what they’re getting into, after all; they both know what this entails and what’s expected. But—and maybe it was the conscious waiting, maybe that’s why this feels so important—sex tonight seems like more than sex, as though they are signing a contract, as if it’s the start of something big, life-shifting, not the same as the last time they took this step together. It feels… fuck, it still just feels adult, only completely differently than last time. Aaron makes a face to himself in the mirror as he finger-styles his damp hair; it would be great if he could start feeling like a real adult anytime now, thanks.

He walks out of the bathroom. Nik has just one of the bed­side lamps on and has already crawled into bed; the white sheets cover him up to the middle of his chest. It seems like a cliché, suddenly, as if Aaron has become a nervous virgin on his wedding night. If it were any other moment he’d laugh at the layers of irony.

It’s not any other moment, though. And then Nik says, “Come to bed, Aaron,” his voice low and gravelly, another thing that’s not helping—Nik is so serious tonight, so
solemn
. All week they’ve played in bed, laughed together, and the change in tone puts a knot in Aaron’s belly.

Aaron goes, though; he walks to the bed, drops his towel and stares down at Nik. Just for this moment, when Nik’s look changes to one of hunger and the kind of desperate want that isn’t sure it will get what it hopes for, Aaron feels powerful, back on his feet. And then Nik controls his expression and lifts the sheet for him and it’s back, the sense that this is harder than it has to be.

Nik hovers over Aaron and kisses him, long and deep, and Aaron throws himself into it, drifts into the taste of Nik’s mouth and the smooth slide of his skin. Nik moves closer, leaving kisses along Aaron’s neck and nuzzling his throat, his collarbones. “What do you like now?” he says, his breath puffing hot against Aaron’s damp skin.

Aaron closes his eyes against his view of the ceiling and curls his hands back into Nik’s hair. “God, it’s been so long since we were really
together.
”

“Since we fucked,” Nik corrects. Well. “It has. So tell me. Tell me what it’s been like for you.” Nik leaves kisses across his chest, never going lower than his nipples, not even really paying them any attention—he’s either stalled out or buying time, but either way, Aaron is suddenly sure that Nik is listen­ing very carefully for his answer.

And he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t
want
that here. He’s not ashamed of asking for something he wants, but this isn’t the time or the place for it—he’ll tell Nik later, pull it out as a spicy story one night to turn him on and make him pay attention. Instead he says, “I’ve learned a lot.”

“Aaron.” Nik has pulled back to watch him now, his brow creased, a sweet, confused smile on his face.

“I like… I like everything.”

“I can’t believe you’re being so shy!”