You see the four of them on the deck near the hotel’s main pool, already drinking. Aaron is wearing a blue and purple checked shirt, his sleeves rolled up just high enough to show the Rolex watch his dad gave him when he finished his MBA. He hasn’t shaved in a week, his brownish beard uneven and patchy, and the white fedora with the black ribbon looks ridiculous on him. But you can’t judge him because he’s the groom. In two days, the beard will be neatly trimmed, the too-loud shirt replaced with a white tux, and the hat tossed into the back of his suitcase if he doesn’t lose it first. And he will be the center of attention at a posh wedding at the most upscale resort in Half Moon Bay.
Your eyes move to Les and Paul, both wearing crinkled short-sleeved white shirts and sporting facial hair in various stages of evolution. You think they’re imitating Aaron, which they probably are, because they always have, from the first day they were suite mates at Yale. Even ten years later, they laugh at the same time and in the same way, a high-pitched, throaty giggle that sounds so bizarre, even now when you hear it as you walk toward the deck. You, too, are wearing a white shirt, so you have no reason to make fun of the others, except that yours is a repurposed dress shirt missing its second button from the top, something you noticed only after boarding the plane.
The only one not wearing white is Dirk, who right now is laughing at the same thing as Les and Paul. But his laughter is different, deep and penetrating, the kind that opens up a room and fills it, drowning out everything else. Dirk is wearing a plum-colored T-shirt, as only Dirk can, its stitched sleeves stretched over his ample biceps. His beard is almost stubble but carefully sculpted, as it’s always been. His brown skin seems golden under the mid-afternoon sun, as it always does. And you fall in love with him all over again, like you always have.
It’s been four years since you’ve seen any of them. Blame two years on the pandemic and the rest on inertia and indecision. There are no good excuses because none of you ended up in jobs that consume eighty hours of your week, even MBA-minted Aaron, who turns down promotions if there is the slightest risk of interfering with his weekend tennis matches or trips to the wine country. Plus, he’s marrying a doctor and will probably never have to worry about money again. Even if things between him and Kimberly don’t work out, he still has his Rolex-buying father as a backup plan.
Unlike you, who has no wife, no Rolex, and no father. You haven’t seriously considered marrying a woman since your high school junior prom when you spent the night ignoring your date and salivating over all the hot guys in tuxes. Buying a Rolex would mean twelve months of your Yale student loan payments would go unpaid. And you don’t want to talk about the father who left you and your mother behind when you were only five years old. Not ever.
And you don’t want to be here, but you have to be. It seems that the five of you believe you’re obligated to perpetuate the brotherly bonds you felt during your four years in New Haven. Except that back then, you really needed each other because you were all so clueless and insecure and often too drunk to walk back to your rooms alone. You were all terrified of flunking out and looking like losers after all the bragging you did to your high school friends after you were admitted. During your senior year, you awaited arbitrary decisions from grad schools/law schools/B-schools. You couldn’t imagine anything worse than having a Yale diploma but no future, that you had failed even while ostensibly succeeding. You let yourselves cry beneath the elm trees on the New Haven Green, the entrance to Yale’s Old Campus in full view, your rejection letters in hand, a mound of dog shit dangerously close to your feet, the locals thinking – correctly -- you were probably high.
Then you moved on—all of you. MBA Aaron became a regional sales director for a computer parts distributor, not a dream job and not one he wrote about in the Wharton Class Notes, but enough to justify an expensive business degree. Ph.D. Les is a tenured professor at a small liberal arts college in the Midwest, one so little known that you can’t ever remember the name. Still, he’s happy, married to a woman who looks just enough like him to be his cousin, has no kids (probably a wise thing, given the above), and still trying to get his dissertation published somewhere. You think Les has aged the most, his once moppy hair now thinning, his head resembling a partially peeled onion. And Paul is, well, just like Les, as he has always been. Also, a Ph.D. (Philosophy instead of English), also teaching at a liberal arts college (Havisham, which you remember because you’ve read Great Expectations seven times), not losing any of his sandy brown hair yet, but sporting a paunch that seems to have become more prominent since the last time you saw him.
And then there’s Dirk. At thirty-two, still looking fresh out of an ad in GQ, his black hair short and temple-faded, a diamond stud in his right ear, his chiseled face warmed by the faux-five o’clock shadow. His teeth are even and Colgate-white, his neck and chest thickened from hours spent with dumbbells and Hammer Strength machines, his wrist adorned with a deep blue Lapis lazuli beaded bracelet you once fantasized about buying yourself for Christmas. You know he doesn’t need more than a T and jeans to look like a million bucks, which is how he’s looking right now.
“Carzzzzz!” Les calls out like he’s back in a fraternity, very unprofessorial. “You made it.”
You hate the nickname Cars almost as much as your proper name, Carlson. Carlson Deats. A suitable name for someone who runs a small literary press, as you do, but not the kind of name you want to show up with at a swank wedding because it just sounds so damn uncool.
“Join us,” Aaron says, the silver band of his Rolex catching the sun and flashing a short burst of light into your eyes. You remember you forgot your Maui Jim sunglasses along with the button on your shirt. “You’ve got to catch up with us,” he adds, raising his glass.
Les lifts his beer bottle as if on cue. And Paul just smiles at you like you’re the baby brother who ran away from home years ago and finally returned. Paul always looks at you that way, his pupils frozen to yours.
You give Aaron, Les, and Paul their bro-hugs and tell them it’s been too long. Then you turn toward Dirk, all smiles as he waits his turn. You are almost afraid to touch him, embarrassed by what might happen if you hold him too close. But you press your lips together as you raise your arms and put your hands on his square back, thankful he isn’t wearing cologne because you just might breathe him in too obviously.
“So wonderful to see you,” he says in that beautiful low voice you remember so well. So wonderful.
You accept a Corona from the bucket and lie about being a day late because of a meeting you couldn’t reschedule. In fact, the red-eye fare from Chicago was $270 cheaper, and after landing, to avoid surge pricing on Uber, you catnapped at an empty gate at the airport until rush hour was over. You still don’t understand why you feel you can’t be truthful with the four closest friends you’ve ever had, and then another blast of sunlight from Aaron’s watch slaps you in the face, and you remember why.
You’ve always been The Poor Kid, the one who never had money and passed on Saturday football games because you needed the extra hours washing dishes in the University dining hall. The one who didn’t go anywhere for winter break and wore the same three-for-the-price-of-two pairs of Levi jeans for four years. The nice thing about Yale was that you could always beg off an expensive outing by saying you needed to study for an exam or had a paper due, and no one questioned it. Luckily no one was counting the number of tests and papers you supposedly had. Or if they did, they never threw it in your face.
And you made up your mind not to be The Poor Kid at Aaron’s big-ass wedding, the old college buddy everyone felt sorry for. You would hide it well like you always had. You would play the part of Equal for the next three days. But before you start your performance, you need some more sleep, badly, and wish you hadn’t stumbled into this bachelor party as soon as you arrived.
“C’mon, Cars,” Les says. “The party’s just starting.”
Then Dirk chimes in with, “We have so much catching up to do.” And you think to yourself that he hasn’t called you in a year and that there wouldn’t be so much catching up to do if he bothered to pick up his phone once in a while. But you smile at him and stare at the thin silver chain of the tag pendant dangling beneath his plum T.
“I’ll be fresh for dinner tonight,” you say. Then you put down your barely-touched beer, pat Aaron on the back, and scramble to your room before there is any further discussion that will make you even more uncomfortable.
#
You almost sleep through dinner, and by the time you make it downstairs to the private dining room at the back of the restaurant, all the tables are full. The room seems too stiff for celebration, its rows of brass chandeliers decorated with strings of white glass beads, the walls hidden by the thick magenta drapes. You see Aaron standing at the head of the front table, a glass of red wine in his left hand, Kimberly’s shoulder in his right. She is more stunning than in the pics Aaron posted on his Facebook, and you wonder what she sees in a guy like him. But you know he is charming and funny and wouldn’t embarrass her at the hospital holiday parties, so she probably likes having him around. You see Les with Grace at the next table over, and beside him, Paul without Anne, and wonder if there’s a story there. Your eyes scan the room for an empty place, deciding you will have to be The Stranger, the odd guy out, at the Family and Close Friends Only dinner. Just then, Dirk’s head pops up from the middle of the crowded room, and he waves at you.
“I saved you a spot,” he calls out.
So you make your way between the tightly squeezed tables, your eyes drawn to the royal blue shirt that hugs Dirk’s frame. The silver buckle of his stitched belt catches your attention next, and you wonder whether he bought them together and how much he paid. You’re wearing a white shirt, a different one from this afternoon’s (no missing buttons), because you didn’t know what else to put on. Only now do you realize you made a mistake because no one is wearing white, and no one is wearing shit from Gap, either. You decide to put it out of your mind and try to enjoy the evening.
Then you see her.
She has rich brown hair with just a couple of highlights. Her face is a tad thin but well-proportioned like she ordered it from a catalog, her blue eyes piercing and icy, her lips this side of pink, her neck smooth and slender. Her smile is even more radiant than Kimberly’s, which she probably enjoys, there being so few opportunities to upstage a bride. And her hands … Her fingers are long and delicate; she taps their tips together before brushing a strand of stray hair from the side of her face. Then, as you sit down, you suddenly realize that she and Dirk are together.
Dirk confirms as much by introducing her as his “plus-one, Monica,” which makes her giggle. You feel annoyed by the tinny sound coming from her mouth, so poorly matched with the rest of her, like a Miss America contestant who suddenly talks like a parrot. You shake her hand and realize her fingers are shorter than they originally appeared, and you feel bad that not fifteen seconds after meeting the woman, you are already finding fault with her.
But why? You're not even sure how he is with her. Yes, they are together, and yes, she is his plus one. But are they a couple? Friends? Or is she someone he needed to invite to a wedding so he wouldn't show up alone because Dirk never shows up alone?
Then you remember why you care. You remember the night of senior week at Yale when you were both falling-down drunk and clutching each other as you stumbled back to the dorm, him laughing with that deep laugh and you laughing the same way, imitating him and making him laugh some more. You held onto him like you had wanted to do for four years of college and never did. When you got to your room, you felt dizzy and sat on the bed. He sat next to you. He put his arm around you. Then it happened. What you had wanted to happen for four years and never did. And you pulled him close to you, not saying a word. He took off his shirt, and you felt his beautiful skin. And you surprised him by kissing him good night right on those full lips. And though he just stared at you for a moment and said nothing, you felt like he was all yours. Blacked out, but yours.
But tonight, he was all hers. You try telling yourself you’re all grown up, and those feelings don’t exist anymore, and even if they did, they don’t matter anymore. So you converse politely with Monica, and with every bit of new information, you judge her more.
Sales rep for a pharmaceutical company. Has never read a fucking book in her life.
Twelve hundred Instagram pics of herself, half of them with designer beverages from Starbucks. BOR-ing. Nothing better to do with her time.
Met Dirk in an airport lounge. Tramp.
And you answer her polite questions with as few words as possible, thinking she’s probably judging you as much as you’re judging her.
No, I’m single. Loser.
Yes, the steak seems a bit overdone. Carnivorous snob.
I run a small literary press. Small? And he went to Yale?
Then Dirk starts working the room like he always does. Though Dirk only knows Aaron through college, he seems to know everyone else connected to Aaron’s life. Or is he pretending, like he often does, to be someone he’s not? Yet you can’t begrudge him the opportunity to socialize, because you love to sit back and admire how he is comfortable with strangers in a way you can never be.
But he’s left you with her, and you’re pissed at him for it. You can’t think of a single damn thing more to say to her, and she seems to have the same problem. Okay, maybe you can think of things you’d like to ask her. Like, is Dirk fucking her? Are they serious? Or did she come with him just for the free booze? Thankfully Aaron stands up and starts to ramble, breaking the uncomfortable silence between you and Monica. You look around and don’t see Dirk, wondering why he hasn’t returned to your table and is ignoring his plus-one.
Now you want to leave. You wait for a convenient pause in Aaron’s speech, one of those moments where the laughter has started to die down from his last joke, and you tell Monica you have a headache because you avoid red wine and shouldn’t have taken any tonight. You squeeze between the tables as inconspicuously as you can, feeling embarrassed because now Aaron has started a toast, one that you will miss. Finally, you slip out the door and head for the elevator, and as you wait, you see Dirk coming out of the men’s room. He doesn’t see you, and you don’t call out to him because you have no reason to anymore.
You change out of your white Gap shirt and J. Crew charcoal gray trousers and sit in your room with the TV on. A woman named Lindsay is reciting the local news. You suddenly want more wine, because wine doesn’t really give you a headache, and you want to be numb enough not to feel bad about how poorly the evening went. But the half-bottle in the mini-bar costs $27, so you settle for the complimentary bottle of water on the desk. It is lukewarm and unrefreshing, so you grab your room key and scamper down the hall to the ice machine, forgetting you have nothing on but your shorts and a T. You hear the ding of the elevator bell and walk quickly back to your room before anyone sees you.
“Carson.”
You turn and look at Dirk. He is near the elevator bank, the sleeves of his royal blue shirt rolled up over his forearms, the silver buckle catching the overhead light like Aaron’s Rolex watch reflected the sun. He grins, obviously amused by your standing in the hallway in your underwear with a bucket of ice cubes. You might grin, too, except it isn’t funny. And you feel trapped because there’s nowhere to go but your room. And you can’t let him in your room.
So you unlock the door and slip inside, waiting for him to follow. You hide your body behind the door and keep it a foot ajar. He stands outside, still grinning, but his black eyes are far more serious than his face.
“What the fuck was that about?” he says.
“I was – just getting some ice –”
“I mean at dinner. You just got up and left without saying a word, right in the middle of Aaron’s toast.”
“I didn’t feel well,” you say, and immediately you realize he knows you’re lying.
“But –” He stops. “Look, can I come in?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Why, you with somebody?”
“No, I just –” You stop, unable to look directly at him. “I want to be alone.”
“Carson, stop being a fucking baby. Give me five minutes, and then you can be alone.”
So you open the door, and he walks inside. He glances around the room, and you know it’s probably half the size of his upgraded suite, and you feel like The Poor Kid again. Then Dirk faces you, the grin erased.
“Man, you missed a great speech. Aaron just bared his goddam soul, saying how grateful he was for his family and friends. He gave us, his college buddies, a shout-out, saying how much we meant to him. He called each of us out by name. Only Carson wasn’t there. Because Carson left.”
“Like I said, I didn’t feel well.”
“Yeah, that’s what Monica said. Something about red wine. But you were just looking for an excuse to leave, right?”
You feel bad now but can’t let it show. So you say nothing and let him finish.
“And why were you so rude to her all night?” he asks you.
“I wasn’t rude,” you insist, but Dirk shakes his head. He knows you didn’t want her there, but does he know it was because you wanted him for yourself? You are afraid to find out because you don’t know where that conversation will go. The lack of closure hovers over the room as you stand there in your underwear with your bucket of ice, staring at him.
“Why were you rude?” he repeats.
And there are a dozen reasons you could give him. That she seemed fake; that she talked past you, not to you; that her giggle was annoying; that her nose turned up slightly when you said small press. You could tell him any of those things, and he wouldn’t believe you.
“Was it something I did?” he says. His face is no longer full and inviting. His lips are pinched as if those five words left a bad taste on his tongue. You’ve waited ten years to tell him the truth because the few times you’ve seen him in person since graduation were never the right times. Never just the two of you, never long enough. But now, you have your moment. You have a choice. You can tell him nothing’s wrong, and you’re just tired and depressed, and he will leave you alone tonight, and tomorrow at breakfast, ask if you’re okay and offer you some of his scrambled eggs. Or you can tell him the truth. That you’ve loved him and wanted him for fourteen years and never forgot the night when you held him close and fell asleep in each other’s arms.
“Why did you bring her here?”
He looks at you, surprised, and cocks his head the way he did in Anthropology 201 during their junior year when Professor Lawrence called on him unexpectedly and asked him about sex role socialization among the !Kung Bushmen.
“Monica? I told you, she’s my plus-one for the wedding.”
“Is that all she is?”
His eyes widen more, and he shakes his head. “What exactly are you asking me, Carson?”
“Is that all she is? Your date for the wedding? Or is she your girlfriend, or your fiancée, or something else?”
Dirk shrugs. “I’m not getting this, Carson. She’s my date, and kind of my girlfriend, and no, I’m not planning to marry her anytime soon, but you never know –”
“Fucking stop it!” you shout, your voice cracking, and you can’t believe it’s really you saying these words. But you let yourself go on. “Stop it now!”
“What the fuck’s gotten into you?” He tries to put his hand on your shoulder. But you withdraw from him, and suddenly your face is burning, making your eyes tear up. You hate him now and wish he would leave, but it’s too late. It’s too late not to say the things you need to tell him.
“Ten years,” you say. “The last ten years have gotten into me. Ten goddam years of you pretending I don’t exist.”
Dirk looks dumbfounded, a look that does not become him. “Don’t exist? Carson, how many times have we talked on the phone, or e-mailed, or texted? Hundreds? We’re friends, for Christ’s sake.”
But he doesn’t see you, does he? Not really. Not as you want him to see you. He’s blocked that night out of his mind. You and he never discussed it, and you never forced the issue. Now, you want to talk about it. You want to remind him that the two of you were that close, if only once.
“You’ve forgotten, haven’t you?”
He looks at you as if meeting you for the first time. Trying to figure you out. Trying to understand why you and he are having this conversation, with you standing in your underwear with a bucket of ice in your hand.
“What have I forgotten about, Carson?”
“Us.”
“Us?”
“Senior week? The night we slept together.”
Dirk’s eyes widen, his lantern jaw growing slack. “Senior week,” he repeats. “Is that what this is all about?”
You hate how he’s so matter-of-fact, his imperious tone trivializing what sometimes seems like one of the few moments in your life that ever mattered. Fighting back the hot tears, you look away from him and anchor your eyes on the first thing that comes into view. It’s just a hideous lamp on the end table by the queen-sized bed. But you can’t move your eyes away from it because you don’t want to look at him. Its round base, the color of steamed milk, looks like an albino bowling ball, and you wonder if it’s heavy enough to smash Dirk’s skull and kill him instantly.
“Dude, nothing happened.”
The most enduring memory of your adult life is summarized in two words. Nothing happened.
You can’t speak, but he can. And as he continues, you stare at the bowling ball, and your right hand aches as if you’ve already smashed the lamp over his head. Then you realize it’s the ice bucket. You’re squeezing it so hard that the plastic liner has split apart and is pressing into your fingers.
“We were just a couple of wasted college students,” he finishes. “Just getting a little too guy-chummy. That’s all.”
“That’s all,” you repeat, still unable to raise your eyes.
“I can’t believe –” He pauses and turns away just as you summon the courage to look at him. “You’ve carried this around with you all this time. That’s why you were so rude to Monica tonight. You’re jealous of her, aren’t you?”
You don’t want to answer the question. He’s made you feel ashamed of yourself, and you hate him for it. So you say nothing and let your silence do the work.
Finally, Dirk looks at you and shakes his head. “I just don’t get you,” he says, and he walks toward the door. Part of you wants to run to him and make him hear you out. But most of you has already conceded defeat.
You watch him go and just stand there. The door didn’t shut completely, and you hear the elevator bell. You imagine him stepping inside, punching the button hard to blow off steam. Imagine him walking back to his room, still shaking his head. Imagine him with her.
#
You stand outside the front of the hotel, your rollaway bag beside you, glancing at your phone every minute to see how far away your Uber is. It feels warm for nine in the morning, and you almost regret deciding to leave today. You didn’t sleep more than a few hours last night, so you feel like shit, but you hope there’s an empty seat next to you on the plane so you can catch some shuteye.
“Cars!” someone calls out. You look up and see Paul. He’s wearing his running shorts and an orange tank top, his white skin drenched in sweat.
“You’re leaving?”
You nod and don’t feel like you owe him an explanation, though it’s evident from the confused look that he wants one.
“I need to go home,” you say, sounding like a two-year-old.
“Home? You just got here!” Paul says. “The wedding isn’t until tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry. I need to – go.”
Paul shakes his head. “Man, Aaron will be disappointed.”
“I know.”
“I am, too,” Paul continues. “I mean, I really looked forward to seeing you, Cars. We haven’t had a chance to catch up at all.”
“Sorry. We will. I can call you.”
“The only one of us you’ve hung out with is Dirk,” Paul says.
Hanging out wasn’t how you would describe it, but you let the comment pass.
“Fucking Dirk,” Paul continues, and looks at you. For a minute, you are afraid that Dirk told him what happened last night, your humiliation served for breakfast along with the bagels and fresh fruit. “Well, I guess I’ll be the only single one left at the wedding.”
“I noticed Anne wasn’t with you,” you say.
“We’re finished, Anne and me. I haven’t made a big deal of it.”
“I’m sorry,” you say. And you are. You liked Anne, at least from the few times you met her.
“She’s in love with someone else,” Paul says. “And it’s okay. I am, too.”
You feel like this should be part of a more extended conversation, not a short chat while one of you is waiting for an Uber.
“I hope you’re happy, then.”
Paul nods. Then he looks at you that way, the way he always has. “Not as happy as I’d be if you stayed.”
Now you’re confused, thinking Paul is just being Paul being nice. The Nice Kid propping up The Poor Kid. But there’s something else there—something about the way he said happy.
“I wish I could,” you say.
Paul shakes his head. “I’ve always noticed how you look at Dirk, and I wonder sometimes. Why him?”
Now you know that what has been your best-kept secret hasn’t been a secret at all. They’ve known all along. They’ve probably even talked about it among themselves for the last ten years and never said anything to you. There you were, believing that you’d been so clever about covering it up, that it was something to be resolved between you and Dirk, and that it would be resolved one day, maybe this week. You think about how foolish you feel now.
“Why him?” Paul says again. “Why not me?”
Then you can’t speak. You can’t move. You can’t do anything but stare at Paul and hate him. Because suddenly he looks so much like you, his body slumping, his green puppy dog eyes just like you’ve pictured your own, pining away for something that never happened. You can’t look at him anymore without seeing … yourself.
“I planned to have this awkward conversation this week, but –" Paul stops.
Then the Uber pulls into the circle, and a squatty fellow in a Hawaiian shirt steps out and pops the trunk.
“I’m sorry,” you say to Paul.
He nods. “I am, too.”
You check your phone five minutes before the Uber arrives at the terminal, but there are no messages. Not from Dirk. Not from Paul. Not from Aaron, who by now has found out that you’ve ditched his wedding and will probably never speak to you again. It should make you feel sad, but strangely, it doesn’t.
It just makes you feel poor.
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