Short Stay Page 11

  Baz told her he had to call her back. He needed to discuss this with Elijah, and he would, but first he had to take care of something himself. He called Marius, and he gave him the news.

  “Holy shit!” His best friend’s deep voice rumbled through the phone. “That’s…unexpected.” He hesitated only a second before adding, “Do I get to come?”

  “If you can get here, yes, I want you at the wedding. You and Damien both. You’re who I want for my witnesses. I know it’s last minute, but—”

  “We’ll be there. Frankly if you had said I couldn’t come, I would have anyway. I know Damien feels the same way.”

  One of the knots inside Baz uncoiled. “Okay. Thank you. Now I have a favor to ask you.”

  “Anything.”

  “I need you to make sure my mom doesn’t mess this up. Even if it means keeping her away.” His guts tangled again just thinking about it. “I don’t want to not invite her, but I can’t bring her here if she’s going to ruin our day. I know she won’t mean to, but she makes Elijah so nervous, and the whole point of this is to stop everyone else from turning this into a wedding about them, not us.” He shoved a hand in his hair. “Does it make sense, what I’m asking?”

  “It does. Consider it handled.”

  Baz sank into his chair and drew his legs up, shutting his eyes as tears of relief escaped. “Someday you’re going to have to call in to collect on all the favors I owe you.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure I will.”

  They talked for a little while longer, and then Baz hung up with Marius and called Caryle back. He gave her Elijah’s list of people he wanted to attend, and he made it clear he’d pay for any necessary airfare. He also told Caryle to coordinate her plans with Marius, to ask him if she needed any help from the Midwest. “Everything I want, he’ll know better than I do.”

  When he finished with her, he woke Elijah and explained he needed to do the same thing with Caryle, but to his surprise, Elijah shook his head. “As long as our friends are there, it’s enough for me.” He blushed as he picked at a thread in the comforter. “Well, and I want it a little bit fancy.”

  “I have a feeling this is already assumed, but call Caryle and tell her.”

  “And then what?” Elijah lifted an eyebrow. “It’s weird, thinking we’re going to get married and that’s the only thing we have to do. Make one phone call.”

  But it really was that simple. They had a lazy room service brunch, a leisurely fuck in the hot tub, and at noon a knock sounded on their door. It was Ethan’s secretary, Sarah Reynolds, with a detailed itinerary for each of them. “You have fittings, spa appointments, and a rehearsal, in addition to a few other random odds and ends. Additionally, Mr. Jansen has a surprise for you later this afternoon.” She handed them each a clipboard and a heavy vellum card. “Please contact me if you have any questions.”

  Everything happened quickly, and yet Baz didn’t feel stressed out. He’d grown up with money and privilege all his life, yet he’d never felt more treasured and pampered than he did as he and Elijah were shuttled here and there around the city, trying on suits, getting haircuts, and having their nails buffed. The massages were set for Saturday morning, according to the schedule, in addition to a run-through of the ceremony and a late lunch at Ethan and Randy’s house. There was a private meal in their hotel suite tonight, a late one. But there was also a three-hour block of time between then and now with no details whatsoever, except that they had an appointment with Randy.

  Baz was in the casino bar waiting to be collected when his mother called. The sight of her number on the caller ID made his happiness a bit heavy, and he almost didn’t answer, afraid she would burst it entirely. But he remembered Marius’s promise, and he answered, trusting in his friend. “Hey, Mom.”

  “Sebastian.” His mother sounded different. No politician at all, and she might have been crying. There was a pause before she went on, and Baz realized it was because Marius was in the background, speaking quietly. “I wanted to call to give you my congratulations. And my blessing. And—” She broke off with a sigh. “And I wanted to promise I won’t get in the way. I would very much like to come to your wedding, as would your father and uncle, but we will be happy to simply throw you a reception when you come home, if you prefer.” There was more murmuring from Marius, and she added, “It will be a simple reception at the house, and Marius says he will personally make sure it’s what you want and nothing more.”

  Baz knew a wave of relief, and some guilt too. “It’s not that I don’t want you to come. I just…”

  Her laugh was sad, but easy. “No, I understand. Better than you’ll ever know. Did I ever tell you how your father tried to get me to go to Vegas too and forget the society wedding? Sometimes I think we’d have been happier if I’d have listened.” She cleared her throat. “But it’s not about me right now. You can think about it, but please know we will accept your decision, whatever it may be. We truly only want you to be happy. Sometimes we forget our vision of happy isn’t the same as yours. And sometimes I can’t quite let go of the idea I don’t get to spoil you forever.”

  God, Baz was a fucking fountain this week. He wiped his eyes. “Well, I hope you still spoil me a little.”

  When he hung up, he relayed the story to Elijah, who got misty too. Then they got practical, discussing whether or not his family should come, and Baz was in the process of texting Marius Mom and Dad, but not my uncle when Randy came into the bar with a self-satisfied grin on his face.

  “Okay, I’m looking for a pair of nearly newlyweds ready to get an early wedding present.”

  He led them to the front of the hotel, where Ethan waited next to a pair of motorcycles, each with two helmets on the seats. This turned out to be because Randy and Ethan intended to give Elijah and Baz a ride on them, destination still undeclared. Baz climbed on behind Ethan, watching through the thick shield of his helmet as Elijah climbed on behind Randy.

  They wove through the streets of the city, to the outskirts, into the vast, endless space of the desert highway. They rode on and on, eventually turning onto a small side road before arriving at what seemed to be some sort of racing ring, except there were no bleachers or anything, just a huge, wide, paved oval of road. As they came closer, Baz saw there was a single red car parked at the nearest edge of the track. He was pretty sure it was a Tesla Model S.

  Ethan drove the motorcycle onto the track. Baz got a look at the Minnesota license plate and saw it was, in fact, his Tesla Model S.

  Baz’s legs were wobbly as he climbed off the motorcycle, and it was only a bit because of the long ride. He had to shield his eyes from the sun once he had his helmet off, though it was low enough in the sky and hidden behind the mountains, so it wasn’t much of an issue. “What’s going on? Why is my car here?”

  Ethan sifted in his pocket and pulled out Baz’s valet key, handing it over. “Because you’re going to drive it.”

  Baz almost dropped the keys in the sand. Instead, he backed into the bike, shaking his head. “No. I can’t.”

  “You can see enough to walk in a straight line. You can drive on a closed course with someone who knows what they’re doing as a copilot.” Randy touched Baz’s elbow and nudged him gently toward the Tesla. “I had it fitted with a passenger-side brake. It’ll come out with the same ease as it went in, and you’ll never know it was there. But today it means you can drive your own car without worrying you’ll catch a rogue ray of sun and crash it.”

  Baz’s hands shook, and his belly kept flipping over. He stared at his car, his beloved car. He wanted so much to believe what Randy said could be true, but it was difficult to trust in the words. It would hurt so much to find out he couldn’t do this, this thing he’d wanted for so long to do. “It’s not legal for me to drive.”

  “The pot I gave you wasn’t legal either. Neither was my goddamned marriage until last summer. Fuck the law, hon. There are no cops here. Just us. And your car.” Randy stood in front of Baz, took his hand, a
nd squeezed it. “Don’t tell me you haven’t dreamed of driving it from the second you saw it. I can’t fix the world so you can drive it every day of your life, but I can give you this today. The sun’s out of range to bother you in another five minutes. I’ve driven everything from big rigs to go-karts, and I know how to make sure you don’t run into a ditch. Except there’s no ditches here. Just sand. Come on, Sebastian. Come drive your car.”

  In a dreamlike state, Baz let Randy lead him to his car. He thrilled when the handles opened to meet him as he slipped into the driver’s seat, not because he’d never been there before but because he’d never been there knowing he was about to try to drive. He saw the passenger brake and the cable leading to it, as promised. He let himself dare to hope this might actually be about to happen.

  “Does it work with the regenerative brakes?”

  Randy nodded. “Checked it twice myself. They had to get clever, but they made it happen. But there’s no reason to think you’ll need me to use it.”

  Baz wasn’t going anywhere until he could get his body to stop shaking. He ran his hands over the wheel. “I haven’t driven in ten years. Even without my eyes it would be weird. But I do see poorly. I can’t catch things in my peripheral vision well. Not at all, moving at speed.”

  “Except nothing’s coming at you from the sides, kid. And if it does, I’m here with my driving-instructor brake.” He rubbed Baz’s shoulder. “Take your time. Set it up the way you want. Open the moonroof. Turn on the radio.”

  Baz shook his head. “Not yet. Not…not until I know I’m okay driving.”

  Randy settled into his seat. “In your own time, then.”

  It took Baz almost fifteen minutes to gather enough courage to put the Tesla into gear. He rolled forward a few feet, freaked out, and slammed the brake so hard he almost gave them whiplash. The regenerative brakes were weird. But when he tried again, still going slower than most turtles, this time he coasted to a stop with grace.

  “Excellent.” Randy gestured at the dashboard. “You feel like cranking this baby up to twenty miles an hour?”

  Baz made it to twenty. He made it to thirty. The first time he hit fifty and approached a corner, he panicked, so much so that Randy grabbed the wheel and used his brake to bring them to a full stop. But he goaded Baz into trying again, and this time not only did he make it to fifty, and a corner, he took it all the way up to sixty-five on a straight stretch.

  After going three times around the track, he stopped the car, opened the moonroof, and turned on the radio.

  He thought about playing his personal theme song, “Titanium,” but he knew it would make him too emotional, so he searched Spotify for “Radioactive” instead, another personal favorite. When he saw an a cappella version by Tufts sQ!, he chose it on a whim. As the wind whipped his hair and the music blared, he drove his car. Round and round in a circle on a closed course in the middle of the desert beside a guy with a panic brake, but he drove.

  Baz Acker drove his Tesla.

  He gripped the steering wheel, buoyed by the joy rushing through his system. He slowed the car at the place where a tear-streaked Elijah and a proud Ethan stood, rolled down the window, and grinned at them.

  “You boys want a ride?”

  He drove for an hour, until the light became so low he didn’t feel he could see well enough to be safe even with Randy as his backup. Sam and Mitch had appeared in a brown truck beside the bikes, and Baz understood one of them would be driving his Tesla to the hotel.

  His heart grew heavy as he handed the keys over to Mitch, but only a little. Randy, reading his mind, ribbed him gently. “You’ve got the bug now, I can tell. I’ll bring you out here before you leave, if you want, and anytime you visit Vegas. Which means you will visit. Because you’re going to want to keep driving.”

  Baz already longed to get behind the wheel again. “I keep hoping they’ll make cars self-driving enough I could get myself around without begging for drivers or car services. But there’s nothing quite like that, actually driving. Even if it’s just in a circle.” He caught Randy’s hand and squeezed it. “Thank you.”

  Randy winked and squeezed back. “It was my pleasure.”

  Chapter Ten

  ON FRIDAY NIGHT, Elijah couldn’t sleep.

  It wasn’t—entirely—that he was aware this was his last night before his wedding, the last time he’d go to bed a single man. It wasn’t, not very much, that he worried something would go wrong with the ceremony, that Gloria would manage to turn it into a circus. There was no specific worry or revelation keeping him awake, not about the wedding itself. It took him a long time of sitting at the window, staring out over the city, but eventually he figured it out. He was tempted to keep the discovery to himself, would have preferred it, in fact.

  But he didn’t think it was a good way to start a marriage, even if they weren’t officially married yet. So he woke Baz, led him by the hand to the sofa in the sitting room of the suite, and unburdened his soul as he held his husband-to-be’s hand.

  “I want to marry you. I’m going to marry you. I already know it’s going to be the best day of my life.” He brushed his thumb over Baz’s knuckles sadly. “But you need to know sometimes it’s not easy for me. Being with you. Being with anyone, but especially with you. It’s…hard for me to trust people truly like me.” The shame of his confession made his chest hurt, but he pressed on. “I’ve tried stopping those feelings, but I can’t make them go away. I’m getting better at not listening, but sometimes it’s exhausting. Us eating better and meditating and all helps, but it’s not always enough. I don’t know if anything can be.”

  Baz ran soothing fingers down Elijah’s arm. “It’s okay. I never expected you to be perfect, Sophie.”

  “But I wanted to be.” Elijah wiped his eyes with his free hand. “Maybe not perfect, but not this. I wanted to be okay with you, at least. And I’m better with you. Mostly. I think part of me thought being engaged to you would make everything okay. Part of me wants marrying you to make it different. Maybe it even will. But I think I’m always going to be a bit bitter. Sullen.”

  He wiped his eyes again, swallowed a sob that tried to burst out of nowhere, and turned it into a dark laugh. “I was never this way when I was little. I laughed all the time. I don’t know how I got here, sometimes.” It was a dumb thing to say when they both knew how he’d ended up here. But this didn’t mean part of him didn’t wish he were Superman and could overcome anything, that shit could happen to him and he’d still be able to be who he wanted to be, unaffected by the bad parts.

  Baz kissed his hair, his lips lingering there. “You know I understand how you’re feeling, right? You understand I think the same thing every day?”

  “Yes, but you’re not surly and panicky like I am.”

  Baz’s laugh rumbled through Elijah. “I’d love to see you say this in front of Damien and Marius.” He ran his fingers, over and over, through Elijah’s hair. “But I know what you mean. In your head, you’re someone different than the person you meet in the mirror. Than the one who reacts to a bad day or an unexpected situation. I think everyone feels this way, but yeah, we’ve got an extra layer in our shit sandwich. You get that this is part of why I love you, yes? Because you share that with me?”

  Elijah leaned into him. “I think part of me was hoping it would go away. That being with you would cancel it out. But that isn’t going to happen, is it?”

  “Probably not. But what is going to change is how every time those feelings get the better of you, if you want someone to hold you and help you wait until they’re over, I’m going to be right there. Always. Forever.”

  Elijah shut his eyes. “But what if we argue and fight? We will fight. It’s us.”

  “If we fight, we make up. The way we always do.”

  All Elijah’s sorrows and fears felt silly, or at least reductive, when he spoke them out loud to Baz. Maybe they were magic together after all. “You looked so happy today when you were driving the Tesla.”<
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  Baz shivered and drew Elijah closer. “It was amazing. I felt like I was flying. Like I wasn’t even me. Or maybe like I was the me I always wish I could be.”

  Elijah threaded his fingers through Baz’s and swung their joined hands gently side to side. He thought about the ceremony, this time with a lighter heart, his shadows chased away by Baz. “So I was right after all. You were bringing me to Vegas to elope.”

  “What can I say? I’m not a patient man.” He kissed Elijah’s cheek. “But I’m a very happy one.”

  They didn’t make love that night. They cuddled, they kissed, they held each other close, but nothing more. They woke before their alarm and lay facing each other in the bed, holding hands and grinning.

  Then the alarm went off, the knock sounded on their door, and their day began.

  They had their massages and one last fitting for their suits. They were whisked in a limo to Randy and Ethan’s house, where Randy had made a five-course meal of savory soup, vegetarian dishes, and succulent dessert. Elijah had thought maybe their friends from Minnesota would be there, but it was only Walter and Kelly, and Randy, Ethan, Mitch, Sam, Chenco, and Steve. The others were still arriving, it turned out, or involved in the ceremony preparation.

  “It’s so weird to not know anything about it.” Elijah forked another piece of chocolate pie. “I mean, do we even get to know where it’s at?”

  Ethan and Randy exchanged a glance before Ethan answered. “It’s at Herod’s. We debated using the Stratosphere, but there were advantages to staying at the casino, and so that’s where we ended up. But rest assured if you want to take another trip up the tower, tonight or anytime, you have but to ask Randy.”

  Baz glanced around the dining room. “I love your house. It’s amazing. And you all six live here?”

  “We do, more or less.” Ethan spoke wryly, but he seemed pleased. “Technically Chenco and Steve have a house not far away, and Mitch and Sam own Randy’s old house, but more often than not we’re all here. Which is perfectly fine with Randy and me. If Randy had his way, they’d either move back in or settle into the houses on either side of us.”