Gap Year - 88. Chapter 88

April 9, 2004

Aboard the Tonto

The Mediterranean Sea

Will

“This would be better if it were summer,” Travis said, as we got out of the water. The Tonto had paused her progress to allow us to ride the jet skis around, but the waves had started to pick up, and we had places to go, so after an hour, we’d hauled them back aboard.

“Pussy,” I accused. “This is way warmer than the Pacific.”

“Whatever,” he grumbled, then smiled. “Time to hot tub.”

I was trying to decide what to do about my wetsuit, and I opted to just take it off and get into the hot tub naked. Travis followed my lead, even as we looked around nervously, worried that we’d somehow offend Elise. I gestured toward the sun deck where she was sunbathing nude. “I guess we’re okay without clothes on.”

“Yeah, I think she set the precedent,” he said.

“She’s smoking hot,” I said, admiring her body.

“If you say so,” he said. I looked at him strangely. “Dude, I told you I’m totally gay.”

I laughed at that. “I’m really glad that you are.”

“I figured you’d be pissed at me,” he said.

“You mean because you went and planned this whole thing out, your escape, your scheme to take over Buck Industries, all of that, and you didn’t say anything to me?” I asked him acidly. “You mean because it shows that you don’t really trust me? You think I might be pissed about that?”

“A little bit,” he said nervously. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Try me,” I said. I was mad now, because I’d buried my resentment about his keeping me in the dark, but he’d torn that scab off and now the wound hurt.

“When we get out of here and go back to our cabin, there’s something I want you to read,” he said. His voice was calm, but more than that, he’d piqued my curiosity.

“What?” I asked.

“I kept a journal for most of the time I was gone,” he said. “It’s just me, jotting down my thoughts. I did it to have something to do. I wasn’t planning to show it to anyone, and I’ll probably just delete it, but I want you to read it.”

“You want me to read your diary?” I asked.

“It’s a journal, not a diary,” he corrected. “But yeah, I do.”

“Alright, I’ll stop being pissed at you and I’ll wait to rant at you until I’ve read it,” I said, smiling at him, and getting a huge grin in return. I wasn’t sure what he’d written, but regardless, he was offering to share his most intimate thoughts. He was trying to make this up to me. It would probably work, I thought, and chuckled.

“Thanks,” he said, and reached out to hold my hand in an affectionate way.

“Your mom came to see me after she got your email,” I said, broaching the subject that I knew I had to tackle.

“She flew up to Palo Alto?” he asked.

“She did, and barged right into Escorial without an invitation,” I said, acting like that was the height of rudeness. “That’s probably going to get her dropped off the Bastille Day party guest list.” He laughed at my humor.

“So what did she want?” he asked.

“She wanted to know where you were, and she was convinced that I knew,” I said.

“That’s why I didn’t tell you, so you wouldn’t have to lie,” he said, only that objection brought my anger back.

“I would rather have had that choice, and even if I knew, I wouldn’t have told her,” I snapped, then mellowed again. “She did toss out one interesting fact.”

“What?” he asked fatalistically.

“She confirmed that Curtis Buck isn’t your biological father,” I said.

“What?” he asked again, only this time with outrage. “Why did she tell you that?”

“Because I asked her. She wanted us to explain the financial issues that Buck Industries was having, and I wouldn’t do that until she answered the question,” I said.

“She told you, but she won’t tell me,” he said, shaking his head.

“She said that she was planning to lay this all out for you when you turn eighteen,” I explained. “I got the feeling that’s been her plan, and probably Curtis’s plan, for a long time.”

He sighed. “So who is my biological father?”

“She wouldn’t tell me,” I said. “She did suggest that it was someone we would know, so it’s not like a total stranger.”

“Great,” he said. “Now I have to spend the time until my birthday trying to figure out who boned my mom and knocked her up.”

“I’ve already been working on that,” I said.

“Alright, who are the candidates?” he asked.

“You remember Scott Slater, the dude we surfed with in Hawaii?” I asked. He nodded. “He’s one of them.”

“I don’t look like him at all,” he objected.

“He’s had a shitload of plastic surgery done, so you wouldn’t be able to tell,” I said.

“Guy was kind of cool, and he did look at me strangely when he met me,” Travis said. “Who else?”

“If your mom was feeling frisky around the time of Claire’s wedding, that brings in a couple of other candidates,” I said. “One is a cousin of mine, named Rich Crampton. He’s fathered a bunch of kids outside of his marriage. The other is Robbie, but that seems pretty unlikely.”

“Because he’s gay?” he asked.

“No. Besides, Darius always said that of the gay guys in my family, Robbie was the straightest,” I said in a joking way. “Darius used to tell him all about the chicks he fucked.”

“Then why don’t you think he’s my father?” Travis asked.

“My father doesn’t think that Robbie would have cheated on him at that point in their relationship, especially since Robbie had just broken free from an abusive relationship he’d had in college,” I explained. “And he thinks that if Robbie had done it, he would have told my father about it.”

“I’m guessing that there wasn’t anyone better at reading Robbie than your father, so he’s probably right about that,” Travis said.

“Pretty much,” I agreed.

“That’s almost disappointing because Robbie was a pretty cool dude,” Travis said, which was such a nice thing to say about Robbie it made me smile. “Better than the other two people you mentioned.”

“Another possibility is Greg Anders, and a bit less likely is Stefan,” I said.

“How the fuck could Stef be my father?” Travis asked, then started laughing. “Dude, he’s as gay as I am.”

“Actually, he’s not,” I said. “He’s been with women before.”

“Still…” Travis began.

“Stef admitted to me that around the time you would have been conceived, he and Greg had a threesome with your mother,” I said.

“There is no fucking way,” he objected, shaking his head to emphasize his disbelief.

“Yes, there is,” I said. “Stef said that he and Greg had a big fight when they were at a party at the Buck Mansion, and went off into the wooded area to argue so they didn’t make a scene.”

“The infamous woods of the Buck Mansion,” Travis said, chuckling.

“I told him that’s where we went to smoke weed,” I said.

“We didn’t have sex there, though,” he said, then leered at me. “Yet.” I laughed, then went on.

“They argued, then made up, and while they were having make-up sex, your mom found them and joined in,” I said.

“Christ,” Travis said. “Don’t these people use fucking condoms?”

“Stef said that he wasn’t sure if they did, because they weren’t using them with each other,” I said. “It was the 1980s, though, and with the AIDS epidemic, I would have thought they’d be careful.”

“Is that the list?” he asked.

“So far,” I answered.

“Your father didn’t fuck my mother, did he?” he asked, and was really freaked out about that.

“No, he didn’t,” I said. “Why?”

“Because that would fuck things up for us,” he said. “If he was my father too, and we were together, that would be incest.” I was surprised he was so uptight about that, but it didn’t happen, so it wasn’t a big deal.

“Then it’s a good thing we don’t have to worry about that,” I said. “Your father sent a stooge to try and get me to tell him where you were.”

“He did?” Travis asked. I told him all about my encounter in the City, and how I talked to his attorney. “That guy totally fucked me over.”

“Because he issued that press release early, and screwed up your plans to buy out Buck Industries?” I asked. He blinked at me, then grimaced.

“I should have known you’d figure that out,” he grumbled. “Doesn’t matter anyway.”

“Why?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

“Because those fuckers let that info out early, and Buck was sold yesterday,” he said. “I totally fucked that up. Big and Taylor are going to hate me.”

“Why would they hate you?” I asked. “You didn’t drive the company into bankruptcy. And even if you’d bought it out, they’d have been out of the loop anyway.”

“I guess,” he said. “It’s just a family legacy thing. They’ll see that I’m the one that caused it to tank, and then when they find out I’m only their half-brother, they’ll band together and decide that I’m evil incarnate.”

“You’re talking like you have a good relationship with them, this amazing bond that will be ruined, but you don’t have that kind of deal with them at all,” I reminded him.

“That’s not true,” he objected. I gave him a steely look to challenge his assertion, and he grimaced even before I spoke, knowing I was right.

“You have so much resentment against Taylor that you fuck all of her boyfriends, and it’s pretty obvious that Big either bullies you or treats you like you’re some afterthought,” I pointed out. “So what if they hate you?”

“You wouldn’t feel that way if your brothers hated you,” he shot back.

“My brothers aren’t like that,” I snapped, because there was no way I’d put them in the same sibling category as Taylor and Big. “Only one of my brothers is an asshole.” That made him chuckle because he knew I was referring to JJ.

“Did you put the pieces on this thing together all by yourself, or did someone else figure it out for you?” he asked.

“I’m quite capable of figuring shit out,” I said, and was really pissed at him for implying I couldn’t.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said hastily, realizing that he’d hit me in a particularly sore spot. He’d insulted my intelligence. “I was just curious.”

“I figured it out when I was meeting with Stef, Grand, and my father, and I asked them what the impact of that lawsuit would be,” I said. “The thing that bothers me the most about this is that you didn’t tell me about it.”

“I guess I wanted to plan this out and win the victory on my own,” he said. “I wanted to prove that I was smarter than all of them, and that I could succeed where they had failed miserably.”

“See, this is the problem. You were off being a lone wolf, trying to save the world all by yourself. And here’s the deal. If you’d told me what you wanted to do, together we could have made it happen,” I said.

“I wonder who ended up buying out Buck,” he mused. “They haven’t released any info on it.”

“I haven’t heard anything yet, but I’ll ask my father if he knows,” I said. I wasn’t sure yet if our bid had been the winner, so I didn’t tell him that we were in the mix of firms bidding to buy the company.

“Let’s go rinse off and get something to eat,” Travis said. We climbed out of the hot tub and wrapped ourselves in towels, then went down to our cabin to make love, take a shower, and get dressed.

“Here, I put some of my stuff that will probably fit you on this side of the closet, and in those drawers,” I said, gesturing at the appropriate places.

“We don’t wear the same size,” he objected.

“Close enough,” I said. “Your waist is an inch bigger than mine because you’re a fatass.”

“Fuck you,” he said playfully.

“I could go again,” I said, raising an eyebrow suggestively.

“Food,” he said, shaking his head at me. He picked some clothes from the stuff I’d put aside for him, then we went up to the dining cabin. Charles was the only one in there, and he was reading something that looked work-related.

“Hello,” Charles said enthusiastically. “I hope you are not offended by Elise’s sunbathing.”

“Not at all,” I said. “She’s hot.”

“She most certainly is,” he agreed, making us chuckle.

“We were about to get in the hot tub nude, but didn’t want to offend her. Then we saw her on the sun deck and now everyone is chill,” I said.

“That is the force that is Elise. She makes people chill,” he said, cracking us up. Grand came strolling into the room, so we all greeted him. “I am wondering if you would mind listening to me talk about your legal situation for a few minutes?” Charles asked, turning to Travis.

“Go ahead,” Travis said.

“There is a warrant out for your arrest in the United States,” Charles said, telling us something we knew. “That is enforceable in the European Union, which means they can apprehend you.”

“I can try to fight the charges my father levied against me, but I probably need to be in LA to do that. I don’t want to go back there until I turn eighteen, which is on April 20^th,” Travis said, and was pretty upset about it. “If I stay here, I’ll end up getting arrested. If I go back to Malibu, I’ll end up dead.”

“It is much less likely for them to try to arrest you when you are on this ship than if you go ashore,” Charles said.

“That sucks,” Travis said, then seemed worried that he’d offended us. “I mean, I love it here, but that’s a long time to be cooped up.”

“It is,” I said, to let him know I understood where he was coming from.

“I can understand your point, and being aboard may not be that much of a deterrent. If you are in the territorial waters of an EU nation, you are at risk,” Charles said. “Still, it would be very unusual for them to try to apprehend you at sea.”

“If my father has his way, they’ll do it,” Travis said. “So what you consider to be unusual is probably what will happen.”

“If you want to be completely safe, we will keep you aboard the boat and we will stay in international waters,” he said. “This ship is registered in the Bahamas, so in that case, Bahamian law would have jurisdiction.”

“I wonder if the Bahamians would track him down and arrest him?” I asked.

“I do not think that anyone will track Travis down and arrest him unless they are being urged on by someone who wants that to happen,” Charles said.

“Like my father,” Travis said fatalistically.

“Yes,” Charles agreed. “I would also think it would be a stretch for him to discover this ship is registered in the Bahamas and then prod their legal system into taking action.”

“He’ll have his lawyers on it in a heartbeat,” Travis said confidently.

“I am not sure how preoccupied he is with his business affairs,” Charles said. “I would think he would have less time to try and seize you.”

“That won’t distract him at all; it will only make him try harder to find me,” Travis said. “He will be out for revenge, so he will do whatever he can to find me and have me killed.”

“He would have you killed?” Charles asked, and was truly alarmed. “You mentioned that before, and I perhaps thought you were exaggerating. Is this something he is capable of doing?”

“Absolutely,” Travis said. “Curtis Buck is one of the most ruthless and vindictive people you will ever encounter.” Travis spent the next three quarters of an hour explaining his relationship with Curtis Buck, how his trusts were set up differently, and how his prematurely launched lawsuit had caused Buck Industries to get sold out from under Curtis Buck. Charles already knew about the accusations Curtis had launched at Travis, that he was mentally unbalanced and a grand larcenist, but after getting the rest of the story, he started to realize the dilemma Travis was in. “It is complicated because you are not of legal age.”

“I know that,” Travis said. “That’s what I’m trying to do by escaping. I’m trying to live until I’m 18, then he won’t benefit if I’m dead.”

“You will be vulnerable until then, but we will be prepared for a potential arrest, and I will do my best to protect you,” Charles said. “I am hoping that even if you are arrested, I can delay the process long enough that you will be able to go about your life until you turn 18.”

“And if you can’t?” Travis asked.

“Then you will be extradited back to the United States,” he said. “I think, though, that we can raise enough objections to at least delay that extradition long enough for you to reach majority age.”

“So I have to stay cooped up on this boat?” he asked.

“As we have discussed, I am not sure that the risks are that much greater when you are ashore, and I understand that you do not want to be inactive,” Charles said. “It is up to you, but if you are discreet, and we are able to cajole any interested authorities, we may be able to avoid any problems.”

“I guess my choices are to lower my risk by staying on the ship and feeling trapped, or going ashore to face arrest,” he said. “At this point, I think I’ll risk it.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“There is another option,” Charles said.

“Go on,” Travis prompted.

“Most countries in North Africa do not have extradition treaties,” he explained. “Of them, Morocco is often considered one of the preferable places to go to avoid such a fate.”

“So instead of doing our Grand Tour, we could do a tour of North African countries?” I asked.

“I am unsure as to how welcome we will be in those countries,” Grand said. “The political situation, namely that we are fighting idiotic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, may make us less than popular in Muslim countries.”

“That has indeed made your passport less meaningful,” Charles said, and it was possible to detect the slightest smirk in his voice, since France had been so opposed to the Iraq War. “In France, we love Americans, but we hate George Bush.”

“In America, some of us feel the same way,” I said, and smiled at him.

“In any event, I think that Morocco would be fine,” Charles said. “You could also go to Andorra, but you cannot get there with your ship.”

“And to get to Andorra, we would have to transit through either France or Spain,” Grand noted.

“Another option is the Cape Verde Islands,” Charles added. “You could spend some time in Morocco, then sail to Cape Verde. After that, you could sail back to the United States.”

“I love this ship too,” I said, “but that sounds like an awful lot of cruising.”

“Transiting the Atlantic is most definitely a lengthy voyage,” Grand observed.

“The only other option I can think of are some of the Balkan states, such as Serbia,” Charles said.

“I would suggest that we ask Skip to maintain our position and to ensure we are in international waters, and in the meantime, let us try to plan an alternate travel path that avoids places where we may lose Travis to the authorities,” Grand said.

“I was really looking forward to the Grand Tour,” Travis said. “It seems like my presence will ruin that for all of you. Why don’t you just drop me off in one of those places where I’ll be safe and go ahead without me.”

“That is not happening,” I insisted. “We are in this together.”

“We are,” Grand confirmed, which was really touching.

“I guess you’re not a candidate to be my father?” Travis asked Grand.

“I am not,” Grand said.

“Damn,” Travis said, which was incredibly sweet.

Skip came down to see us, and looked alarmed when we told him our plans. “We’re currently in French Territorial Waters, and we will be for some time. On our current course, we will leave them and enter Italian waters. I can try to reverse our path a bit and transit down the west coast of Corsica, but then there’s Sardinia after that.”

“That sucks,” I said.

“That’s the problem with the Mediterranean,” Skip said. “It’s a narrow sea, with a whole lot of coastline and a whole lot of islands. And territorial waters extend twelve miles from the shore.”

“So if you have an island 24 miles offshore, that extends the territorial waters that much farther,” I said, getting it.

“That’s how it works,” he said.

“I think we should stay on our current course,” Travis said. Skip looked to Grand, who nodded.

“In the meantime, I have some reading to do,” I said. We went down to our cabin, and Travis handed me his flash drive. I plugged it into my laptop, and he showed me which files to download.

“I’m going to go up on deck,” he said. I looked at him oddly. “It will weird me out to sit here while you read what I wrote.”

“I’ll come find you when I’m done,” I said, and then I started to read. I was stunned at how much of himself he’d put in his journal, how he’d opened up and shared his thoughts and plans. I laughed when he wrote about us, and about me, and I was struck again at how different we were. He must have had a lot of spare time, because he’d written every day, and while a lot of it read like a log of where he’d gone, so much of it was just him and who he was.

I finished reading, closed my computer, and collapsed back on the bed, processing all that he’d said. I’d thought that he’d be like me and be absolutely beside himself at being cut off from his world, but in reality, the only severed connection that seemed to bother him was our link. I was almost annoyed at how much I’d worried about him, compared to how he seemed to have been just skating along and having a decent time, until I recognized that the pain our separation had caused me was just as hard on him.

I sighed and rolled over onto my stomach, then rolled onto my back again. He’d tried to explain his introversion, and he’d done a good job, but reading his words made it that much more real. Even more than that, there was an undercurrent of isolation, but what was more surprising was how that didn’t really seem to gnaw at him. He’d tried to explain to me that he was really all alone in the world, and that his family was, if anything, a source of problems, not strength. Reading his journal made that even more clear.

That he hated his father shouldn’t surprise me, or anyone. When we were talking about who his biological father could be, he actually seemed excited, as if he might finally find someone who could be a positive force in his life. He loved his mother but viewed her with contempt, and he had little use for his siblings. It was pretty much what I’d told him. He looked at Big as a dude who was sometimes fun to hang around with, but could also be an asshole, so those two aspects of their relationship largely offset each other. With Taylor, he had a lot more animosity, but his journal entries didn’t explain why.

In the end, though, when I considered the entire journal, the thing that came through loud and clear was how much he loved me. I thought about how I’d been struggling with what kind of relationship I wanted, and I could see how my ruminations must have completely confused him. He would be completely happy for us to be together, and exclusive. Nowhere in his journal did he talk about guys he saw that he thought were attractive. There was no sexual content in his journal at all, other than when he wrote about how much he missed me. I wondered if that would change when he came out, and suddenly had all kinds of opportunities to be with other dudes. It was possible, but unlikely.

Was I like Robbie, in that I would never be happy unless I had some new dick to spice up my life? I was about to go down that road and really torture myself when I pulled myself back. I wasn’t like that. For Robbie, it had been like a craving, an addiction. For me, it was much more casual. Having sex with other guys was something I enjoyed, but not an obsession. I pondered my own situation during our period of separation. I’d had plenty of opportunities to go out and get laid, but I hadn’t acted on them. I didn’t, because I didn’t want to, because I really only wanted to be with Travis.

I got up and wiped the tears out of my eyes, tears I didn’t even know I’d been shedding. They weren’t unhappy tears, though; they came from the realization that somehow, over the past few months, I’d fallen hopelessly in love with this amazing guy, and he loved me back just as much.

I walked out onto the deck and found him lounging by the pool, drinking a tropical cocktail. “You finished?” he asked. I held out my hand and helped him stand up, then I embraced him, grabbing onto him like we were sinking and he was my life preserver.

“I love you so much,” I said, even as I gripped him tighter. I felt his body relax into mine and his arms pull me in just as tightly, and I felt his emotions surge along with mine.

“I love you too,” he said. We stood there for I don’t know how long, just being together and connecting, until we were interrupted by Skip and Charles.

“There’s a French Coast Guard vessel approaching,” Skip said. We pulled apart and stared at each other, knowing what that meant. “They have instructed us to stop and be boarded.”

“Shit,” Travis said.

“Do not lose hope,” Charles said. “It is good news, at least, that we are in French waters.”

“If you say so,” I said.

The next hour was chaotic, both physically and emotionally. The French ship sent a cutter over and the officers who boarded were prepared to take custody of Travis on the spot, but Charles guided them into the lounge and explained the situation. It was clear that the French Coast Guard had no desire to execute their orders, but they were orders, nonetheless. In the end, they extracted a promise from Travis not to try to escape, and ordered us to sail to the port of Bastia, Corsica.

We arrived there in the evening and received instructions that no one was to board or leave the ship. Charles was worried by the attitude of the authorities in port, concerned that they would remove Travis in the morning. He was concerned, while Travis and I were terrified.