The Road to Amazing

  I climbed toward him, up the too-steep trail, through the plants and exposed dirt. Then I stood next to him amid those trees and ferns. I sensed that Kevin knew I was there with him, but he didn't turn to me, and I didn't turn to him. Instead, we both stared out at the sky and water — the clouds churning in front of us, the white caps in the water below us, everything a thousand shades of grey. It was somehow incredibly loud and completely quiet at exactly the same time.

  We didn't speak, just kept standing there. Could we have spoken over the roar of the wind and the crash of the water? I wasn't sure, but I still didn't know what I wanted to say, and I guess Kevin didn't either. Even now, we didn't look at each other. I only saw him out of the corner of my eye — his handsome profile, his close-cropped hair barely blowing in the wind.

  Why did we stand like that? For one thing, it was a pretty awesome sight, with so much to look at. The world smelled of salt and pine, fresher and cleaner than anything I'd ever known. From the waves crashing against the rocks below, a mist swirled in the air before us.

  But there was something else going on. Somehow Kevin and I were a part of this incredible sight, but also apart from it, and that felt good, like it was the two of us against the storm. I'd told Min and Ruby that morning that I'd felt disconnected from Kevin all weekend long, and it was true. It had gotten worse a few minutes before, when we'd been trying to figure out what to do about the wedding. Ironically, I'd ended up agreeing with Kevin about canceling it, but now I saw that it had only pushed us further apart. That's what our friends had been reacting to with their awkward silences and lack of eye contact (and Min's intense eye contact): they knew that by not pushing harder for the wedding, it seemed like I had reservations about doing it at all. It was so obvious in retrospect.

  Finally, still without saying a word, with the world raging all around us, we turned to each other.

  I looked into Kevin's eyes, but I wasn't sure if I saw stillness or the storm — I think somehow it was both.

  Then we were kissing. He tasted like the churning ocean — full of life.

  As we kissed, my hands were on him, still solid, a bulwark against the storm. But his hands were on me too. We held each other up against the wind, as we also fumbled with zippers and buttons. Kevin's skin felt so smooth under his clothes, even as the skin on his hands felt wonderfully rough on me.

  At the last second, we pulled away from each other, then started shucking our jackets and t-shirts, kicking off our shoes and socks, and stepping out of our pants. It wasn't like Nate's striptease — deliberately provocative. It was bolder and more matter-of-fact, nothing sly about it at all, but it was somehow even sexier.

  Finally, we both slipped off our underwear and stood there facing each other on that ledge, completely naked. I expected the wind to be brisk on my skin, and it was, but it still wasn't cold. My skin had never felt so alive. It was like I was aware of every single cell. I know I said I could feel every little gust, and I still could, but now it was all over my body — even in places where I was pretty sure no wind had ever blown.

  Kevin was beautiful, and I guess he thought I was too, because we were both fully erect. The spray of salt water from the crashing surf below washed over me, prickling my senses.

  We started kissing again, pressing against each other, even as we pulled each other down. The grass was wet and soft.

  Still kissing, we wrestled, but in sync, not fighting. It was more like dancing.

  When we stopped, I was on top and Kevin was underneath me. Our bodies were interlocked, like a puzzle, difficult to pull apart. We were both slick with sweat and mist. I could feel his hard dick pressing up against my stomach.

  I started licking his neck, tasting his skin, saltier than usual. The wind had made his skin more sensitive too, and he winced and moaned.

  I worked my way down his body with my mouth. Kevin's chest was hairy but trimmed, and his nipples had always been sensitive, but were even more so now, and harder too.

  My mouth dipped down, exploring his lean torso. His body was like a funnel, drawing me downward.

  Kevin opened his legs for me, and I stared at him, fascinated. I said before that Kevin was the one solid thing in this whole windy forest of movement, and he still was, even more than before, but now I'm also talking about his dick. But it was different from the rest of his body too, because there was movement within, a seething pulse. This was a hardness that strained for release.

  For a brief moment I wondered what would happen if someone came upon us like this, one of our friends from the Amazing Inn, or that Walker guy out hiking in the woods again. What would they think, seeing us fucking in the ferns? But this was only a fleeting thought, because I wasn't over-thinking things anymore. I didn't care if someone saw us, or maybe I even sort of liked it — was turned on by the idea of doing something so illicit.

  I took Kevin in my mouth and started sucking him in open defiance of the world.

  A wash of salty precum flooded my mouth, like the gush of the water against the rocks below. I sucked it in, and Kevin writhed at the intensity of the feeling of my mouth on his dick, but I held him in place with my hands, savoring the taste of him. He gently thrust toward me, and I opened wider for him.

  My eyes flicked up toward his face, and I saw his lips move, knew he was moaning loudly with pleasure, but I didn't hear a thing over the churning storm.

  After I released Kevin, I worked my way even farther down, still probing with my tongue, licking his balls. Above me, his granite dick still seethed.

  His legs opened wider, and I didn't hesitate. I leaned forward, my mission clear, pressing my face against him. Above me, I sensed his dick still flexing, straining like the nose of jet during take-off.

  As I touched him with my tongue, his whole body stretched backward, spine arched and legs planted, but still he made no sound I could hear. I surrendered to my desires, and he accepted my tongue, and together we tangled. But this did nothing to quench my lust. On the contrary, it just made it stronger, building like the wind and the storm.

  We both desperately needed more, so I sat upright. My own dick was angled up from my body, wet and glistening, sticky like the pitch I could still smell seeping from trees all around me.

  I crawled forward over Kevin, my chest above his torso, the two of us pressing together, touching in one single spot, but not yet joined. Everything was slick and wet — the ferns around us, the salty mist of the water — it coated us, dripped down on us, mixing with our perspiration, my spit, and the moisture still seeping from both our dicks in quick pulses. But even so, it wasn't enough to ease the barrier between us.

  I bent down to kiss him, and he kissed me back with an eagerness that surprised me even now. Now were touching in two places, and for a moment, we stayed that way, solid, both of us holding in place, the tension building.

  The kiss was deep and wet, but I felt the moisture down below too — my cock still surging and dripping.

  The pressure finally broke, resistance giving way to friction, and I slid into him, all in one slow glide. His body accepted and defied me in equal measure, the perfect balance.

  The waves crashed and the wind howled, but all that power was nothing compared to the sensation in my dick and brain.

  Now Kevin I were interlocked even more deeply than any stupid puzzle. The connection was so tight I felt like it would be impossible to move. But it wasn't impossible. I pulled back from him, feeling every inch, then forward again, into him again. He was moving too, accepting me, letting me go, but then pulling me into him again.

  Now it wasn't the two of us against the storm — now there was only one, a single being, connected in a way we'd never been before. But that wasn't quite right either, because we weren't apart from the storm any more. It was raging around us, but it was a part of us too. We were all one thing, one building storm, and there was no way it was going to break, not until we had churned and howled and groaned to our heart's content, and every single drop of energy ha
d been spent, and there was nothing more either of us had left to give.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I won't say that the storm broke exactly when Kevin and I were, uh, finishing, because that would be a little too perfect. But honestly, by the time we were done having sex, it really did seem like something in the air had changed again.

  We sat in the grass amid the wet ferns, both of us still naked, staring out at the water. The water rose up in big waves, and it sloshed against the rocks below, but there were no actual whitecaps out in the channel now. The wind was calmer too, cooling the sweat on my body, but not so much that I was cold. On the contrary, the temperature was still perfect.

  I'd thought the night before was going to be the last opportunity for us to have premarital sex. I guess I'd been wrong.

  Boy, was I wrong! Maybe it was the unexpectedness of it all, or all the angst and emotion from the canceled wedding, or the greatness of the storm itself, but it was pretty much the best sex I'd ever had. More than that, I'd never felt so close to Kevin.

  I looked out across the channel. The outline of the trees against the sky on the other side of the water was crisp and clear. The sun was just beginning to break through the streaks of the clouds, like a light bulb shining through a frayed lamp shade. Puget Sound was slowly turning from black-and-white back into color (or as colorful as it ever got on a Saturday in September).

  Suddenly I sat upright.

  "What is it?" Kevin asked.

  "I know what happened," I said.

  "Happened to what?"

  "The people of Amazing!"

  "The people of what?"

  I explained what Min and I had been talking about all weekend long: how, years ago, there had been this little town called Amazing, and then one day all the people had disappeared. As I talked, I realized I'd never gotten around to reading that photo album of articles that Min had talked about. Yes, yes, I was a shitty amateur detective, but it didn't matter. I'd figured out the answer anyway.

  "They weren't abducted by aliens," I said. "And they didn't commit mass suicide."

  "So where did they go?" Kevin asked.

  I looked at him and smiled. "They just left."

  Kevin stared at me, not understanding.

  "Amazing might have been a great place to live," I said. "There was running water, and great forests, and fresh seafood, and hey, they were a stop on the route of the Mosquito Fleet! And, I mean, look at this view. But something went wrong. Maybe the groundwater ran low, or maybe there was a fish die-off. Maybe some tragedy happened here, something they couldn't ignore. But whatever the reason, the people weren't happy. They wanted something different. So they left! There were only twenty-six people in all. That's enough to fit in a couple of boats."

  "Left to go where?" Kevin asked.

  "Who knows?" I turned toward Puget Sound, the actual sun visible at last, blazing and golden. "Out there somewhere. Maybe they didn't even know where they were headed. Maybe they were just taking their chances, leaving everything behind and starting fresh. I mean, why not? They thought this place was amazing — that's why they named it Amazing, right? But they were wrong. It turned out not to be amazing, not in the end. So they went out looking for it somewhere else. Because amazing isn't a place, at least not a place you can stay in for long. Nothing stays amazing forever. Amazing is a goal. If you want to live in Amazing, you have to keep looking for it. So that's where they went."

  Kevin nodded, but I wasn't sure he understood completely. It didn't matter. He had his own stuff to think about, and that was okay. I wasn't sure how solid my solution to the mystery of Amazing was anyway — it probably wouldn't make a very satisfying resolution on an episode of Veronica Mars. But it made sense to me, at least at that moment, on that day.

  Out in the channel, a boat passed by, the first one I could remember seeing since Kevin and I had climbed up onto the promontory (I was pretty sure they couldn't see us). The pine needles had long since stopped raining down around us, but I was only realizing it now.

  "Let's get married," I said.

  "What?" Kevin said. "How?"

  "What do you mean 'how'? We go back to the Amazing Inn right now and just do it. We have everything we need: the certificate, an officiant, however many witnesses we need. Best of all, we have cake for sixty-seven people."

  "Yeah, but what about the guests? I'm sure they've all gone home by now. And what about what you said last night? You said the point of a wedding was so our friends and family could show us how important we are to them."

  "Maybe it is. But the people that matter the most? They're already here, back in the house. Haven't they proved themselves this weekend?"

  Kevin shifted in the grass. Was he finally getting cold? I wasn't.

  "What?" I said.

  "Back at the house. You didn't seem all that upset when we canceled the wedding."

  I thought about how to answer this. Down on the beach, seagulls screeched, excited by all the things that washed up during the storm. I couldn't help but think: Where did the seagulls go during the storm?

  "That was stupid," I said. "I knew how you felt about the wedding, how you wanted it to be perfect. And I didn't even fight for it. I just let it die."

  "Why? Are you having second thoughts?"

  "No. Not at all."

  He kept staring at me.

  "No!" I said. "For the first time in my life, I was determined to not be neurotic about something. And I haven't been!"

  Kevin smiled.

  "But," I said, "it's true that I've been thinking about growing older." I explained how I'd somehow gotten it into my head that getting married meant the start of another stage in life — a stage where you had kids, and had problems with ear wax, and stopped having hot sex, and spent your weekends watching reruns of House Hunters. In other words, you did all the exact same things that a zillion other people do.

  "The point is," I said, "I don't want my life to become boring. I want my life to be, well, amazing."

  "Well, we might be screwed then," Kevin said, "because I actually love House Hunters. Or at least House Hunters International."

  "I know!" I said. "Right?"

  "But the rest of it? I don't want to be like everyone else either. I don't agree with you that having kids has to mean your life is over. For a lot of people, having kids is an adventure, a really interesting one." I started to say something, but Kevin interrupted me: "But I'm completely down with the fact that it's not an adventure you want to take. That's not even the point. I don't want my life to become boring, but who says it has to?"

  "No one. It doesn't! That's what I've realized this weekend. As usual, it was incredibly obvious, but I was too much of an idiot to see it."

  Kevin looked at me.

  "Think about everything that's happened," I said. "Not just the beached orca and the rabid bat. A clothing-optional commune? That bachelor party? And don't get me started on our friends. A famous actor? Someone who's helping to build a spaceship to Mars? A guy like Gunnar who also happens to be filthy rich?" I thought for a second. "Hey, it just occurred to me that all we need is the Skipper, and we'd have the whole cast from Gilligan's Island." Kevin laughed, which I appreciated. "The point is, if this is the kind of stuff that happens on our wedding weekend, I can only imagine how exciting our marriage is going to be." I leaned in and lowered my voice. "And that sex we just had? I mean, my God."

  Kevin laughed again, even as he blushed.

  "But it's more than that," I went on. "Boring or amazing isn't something that happens to you. It's something you choose, like Vernie tried to tell me. If you surround yourself with interesting people, and if you do interesting things, your life is interesting, as simple as that. So getting married doesn't have anything to do with anything either. And if life ever does get boring, well, it's never too late to change it. Like the people of Amazing, you can pick up and leave."

  "Leave me, you mean?" Kevin asked.

  "We'll leave together," I reassured him.

/>   Kevin's face got serious. "Screw that." We were still naked, in more ways than one, and he turned and faced me, sitting upright, sort of on one knee. "Russel Middlebrook, I promise you an amazing life. But if I turn out to be a total dud of a husband — if the last ten years have been one elaborate con to get you to marry the world's most boring person — then I give you permission to dump my ass."

  At first I wasn't sure what to make of this, if I should take it seriously or if it was all a joke. But I never laughed. Instead, I turned to Kevin and said, "And I promise you an amazing life. And if you ever truly feel like you and I are in such different places that you can't be happy, I give you permission to leave." I thought for a second. "Although I'd appreciate it if you gave me some advance notice. Don't, like, leave me a note and take off in the middle of the night. And if I lose both my legs in an accident, please don't leave me to fester in some horrible, rat-infested, state-run facility."

  "Deal," Kevin said.

  We looked at each other, and it seemed like a good time to kiss, so we did.

  Then we did both laugh, but it still didn't feel that much like a joke. I knew it was weird to be discussing the terms of our breaking up on our wedding day. But somehow talking about exactly what Kevin and I expected from marriage, that made the commitment we were making seem more real, more serious.

  I sat back, looking out at the water again. Maybe it had to do with how hot we'd gotten from the sex or some weird warm ocean current, but I still wasn't feeling the cold. It actually felt good, invigorating, the breeze on my skin. I was as clean and fresh as the wind.

  "So the next question," I said. "Is this the kind of wedding you want? Going back to the Amazing Inn and reciting our vows in front of Min and the others? No other friends and family?"

  He gave it some serious thought. Then he nodded and said, "I think so, yeah."