Gap Year - 47. Chapter 47

February 27, 2004

Hotel Bel Air

Bel Air, CA

Will

I flushed the toilet, glad to be rid of its nasty contents, and collapsed on the cold marble floor. I knew I should get up and go talk to Zach, but I was worried that I’d throw up again. I wasn’t sure how long I laid there, but I must have passed out because I felt a hand slowly stroking my back. “Where’s your t-shirt?” Zach asked.

“I lost it when I was dancing,” I lied, hoping he wouldn’t be able to read me well enough to know that’s not what happened to it. Evidently, I was so fucked up he didn’t pick up on that. “I’m really sorry,” I said to him earnestly. He gave me a wry smile.

“Think you can make it back to the bedroom?” he asked. I ignored him and looked down at my shirt, which was covered with puke splatters. I pulled it off and the nasty smell from my pits wafted up to assault my nose.

“I need to take a shower,” I said. I looked at it longingly, wondering how I was going to accomplish that.

“Just a minute,” he said, and vanished. I sat on the floor, wondering if my stomach was done with its convulsions, and decided that this wave, at least, had passed. I put down the toilet seat and dragged myself up so I was sitting on it, then took off all my clothes and left them in a pile on the bathroom floor. I was about to try and haul myself into the shower when Zach reappeared, stark naked. I stared at his body with unconcealed lust. Dan had been sexy in a huge hulky kind of way, but Zach had the ultimate physique. He smirked at me for staring, then started warming up the shower. When it was ready he held out his hand, I took it, and he pulled me up and gently helped me in.

He stood behind me, letting me lean against him, while he washed my body. I giggled when he grabbed my dick, which turned into a moan as he stroked me until I was hard. I felt his soapy hands on my ass, probing me to lube me, then his cock was pressing at my ring. With a slight pop, he was in me. I gasped, and then he took me on a really nice ride, one where my residual nausea was offset by my high and fully eclipsed by our sexual bonding. When we were done, he washed my hair, then turned me around to rinse me off. He kissed me as he did, making me feel loved and guilty. He helped me dry off then led me back to the bed and climbed in with me. “Thanks,” I said to him lovingly. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“You want me to be pissed?” he asked playfully.

“No,” I said. “Help me out with this. I’m a little less wasted than I was, but this is all really confusing.”

“I was really mad at you for all but making out with Taylor in front of me,” he said, and his tone was bitter enough to let me know he hadn’t quite worked through that yet. “But you reminded me, in your own way, that I love you, and that I didn’t want to hurt you.”

I started crying, not sobbing, just crying. “I love you so much. This sucks so bad. To find my soul mate and not be able to be with him.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and held me tight, letting me vent my drunken emotions. “I guess that’s the other part of this. I put you through so much because I’m in the closet, it’s hard to be upset when you snap every once in a while.”

“You think I made out with Taylor to piss you off?” I asked, letting him see my annoyance. “That is so not what happened.”

“Oh,” he said. “Who kissed who first?”

“She had her hands around my neck and used them to pull my head to her,” I said. “I mean, it’s not like I fought her, and I have to tell you it was a lot of fun. When we were done I kind of understood why you’re with her.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I said. “She’s very sensuous and seems to have this reserved passion that fired even me up.”

He chuckled at that. “That’s a good way to put it. I’ll have to share that with her.”

“The whole thing was kind of trippy,” I said. “When we started dancing slowly, I almost started to get the spinnies.” I told him about my analogy with the tilt-a-whirl, which seemed to intrigue him.

“It sounds like it just happened, at least on your part,” he said.

“You think Taylor planned that?” I asked.

“Your mind seems to be clearing up,” he joked, then got serious. “I’m pretty sure that she did.”

“Why would she do that?” I didn’t get why she’d want to make him mad.

“Curtis Buck has been trolling around and heard the rumors about us,” he said. “I think she was trying to figure out how tight we are.”

“By making out with me?” I asked, still not getting it.

“If you and I were as tight as she worried we were, you wouldn’t have made out with her,” he said. “And even if you did, you wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much as you did.”

“Whatever,” I said, irritated at being played.

“And if I was as into you as she worried I was, I would have been more pissed off at her than at you,” he said.

“Did you figure this out, and that’s why you were so pissed off at me?” I asked. I wondered if he was getting so into these Machiavellian games so much he was losing his soul.

“Not until later,” he said. “My reaction was more instinctive. I mean, I was pretty fucked up too.”

“Instinctive?” I didn’t get that.

“Yeah,” he said. “If some dude makes out with your girlfriend, you’re supposed to be all pissed off.” I could see that. In the testosterone-laced world that he lived in, something like we did was probably the equivalent of challenging him to a dual. I managed to penetrate through the haziness of my mind to understand that he had internalized that world, and his reactions would be the same as any uber-straight football player.

“So how do you feel about this?” I asked, since I sure as fuck didn’t know how I felt about it.

“As long as we’re cool, I think it was a good thing,” he said.

“Dude, you’re the one who has the right to be pissed at me,” I said. “It’s up to you if we’re good or not.”

He leaned in and gave me one of his magical kisses. “Then we’re good.”

I smiled, then focused on what he’d said. “Why was this a good thing?”

“Because it takes away the stigma, at least in her mind, of us hanging out,” he said. “I talked to her and we worked through this, then I told her I needed to spend some time alone. I told her I’d see her at the party tomorrow, uh, I mean tonight.”

“You fucked her,” I accused.

“Dude, I washed lube off your ass, so you can’t talk,” he said. I was freaked out at first then it seemed funny, so I laughed my ass off and so did he.

“Where’s your phone, the one they can track?” I asked.

“In Taylor’s purse,” he said, making me laugh even harder. They’d track him and see that he was with her.

“So this means you’re with me until the party?” I asked hopefully.

“I have to go back to my room to change, but other than that, that’s what this means,” he said.

“I agree with you,” I said. “This was a good thing.”

February 28, 2004

The Pacific Coast Highway

Pacific Palisades, CA

Will

I sat in the limo with Darius and Zach, glad that I was almost over my hangover from last night. The only thing that made this day not completely shitty was that I got to spend it with Zach. He’d all but appointed himself as my nurse, doing everything in his power to make me feel not like complete shit. I smiled when I thought that a lot of my cure was the sexual healing he’d provided. We’d all dressed pretty casual last night, but tonight we were much more fashionable. This was the Malibu set, so all of our clothes were ridiculously expensive. It was funny because as hot as Zach was, Darius and I wore high fashion much better than he did.

“Dude, why is it that whenever you show up, there’s a ton of drama?” Darius asked me in a slightly playful way.

“I’m exciting,” I said to him deadpan, getting a snicker from Zach. “You don’t think so?” I asked him.

“I think you’re the most exciting person in the world,” he said to me, while Darius just rolled his eyes.

“Dude, he made out with your girlfriend. I’ll bet she thinks he’s exciting too,” Darius said, cracking us both up.

“Yeah, that was a little raw, but it’s all good,” Zach said. It was the same laid-back way he’d tell anyone who asked him about it.

“Where’s Saturn?” I asked.

“I sent her off in her own orbit,” Darius said, cracking us up. “It would be weird for her to be at this party.

“Why?” Zach asked.

“Because she wouldn’t know anybody, and I’ll probably know everyone,” he said. That made sense, since he’d end up hanging out with a bunch of people he went to high school with. For me, these would be people I’d known when I was thirteen. It would be interesting to see what they were like four years later.

My phone rang and when I saw the caller id, I motioned for Zach and Darius to be quiet then answered. “Hey Tay!” I said.

“Dude, how do you not have a hangover?” she asked, then laughed.

“I’m done with that one, and ready to start on a new one,” I said.

“Did you talk to Zach?” she asked.

“Yeah, we’re cool now,” I said, and blew him a kiss.

“I’m glad,” she said.

I sensed she was going to ramble on and on about all of that, so I pretended I was busy. “Tay, can you hold on for a bit?” I covered the speaker and waited for a few seconds, then started talking. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem,” she said in her perkiest tone, then got to the point, just like I was hoping. “I was trying to track Zach down but the dumb ass left his phone in my purse.”

“What a moron,” I said. “I can’t believe he left his phone in your purse.” I said that last sentence just so Zach would know what we were talking about and to irritate him. Darius was trying not to laugh. “I haven’t seen him since last night.” I said. Zach mouthed the word ‘liar’ at me, while Darius gave me a smug look.

“Oh, okay,” she said, and seemed more annoyed than anything.

“You should call Darius,” I said. “He and Zach were supposed to ride up to the party together.” Darius gave me a horrible look, which made me that much happier.

“I’ll do that,” she said. “You got his number?”

“I’ll text it to you,” I said.

“I’ll see you soon,” she said, and ended the call. I started entering Darius’s number into my phone.

“How are you going to cover your bullshit story when the three of us get out of the limo together,” Darius asked.

“I already figured that out,” I told him, being a bratty little brother. “It would look bad if I got out of the car with Zach anyway.”

“Thanks,” Zach said, so happy that I had his back. He gave me a loving look, which I returned.

“So what’s the plan?” Darius asked, interrupting our sappy moment.

“I’m going to text Tay your number and you’re going to tell her you’re in the car with Zach and on the way. You’re going to end up giving your phone to Zach, who will get a lecture on what an incredible dumb fuck he is. That should last until we get there.”

“Sounds about right,” Zach grumbled.

“When we get there, you two are going to hop out of the limo and make sure no one gets to look inside. I’ll have the driver take me to our house, so I can finish my ensemble and look even hotter. Then I’ll see you when I get there, probably about an hour after I drop you off,” I said. I hit send on the text message. “The die is cast.”

We all stared at Darius’ phone, waiting for it to ring. It didn’t take her more than a minute to call Darius. The conversation went just as I outlined, and while he then Zach were listening to her, I talked to the driver and told him our revised plan. I was lucky that the dude seemed totally cool. “We’ll be there in ten minutes,” Zach said into the phone. “Can you just bitch at me when I get there?” He listened to the beginning of her tirade. “I have to go. Darius needs his phone,” he said and ended the call.

“You’re popular,” Darius said dubiously, shaking his head.

“You’re popular in this car,” I said, smiling at him. Our conversation was truncated when the car pulled through the gates of the Buck Mansion. I lowered the privacy screen so we could talk to the driver, but he didn’t need our help. Their house was near the Getty Villa and was a smaller scale version of that marvel. It was in the hills on about 7 acres of land and reminded me a lot of Escorial, except their place was done in Georgian Style. It looked massive, traditional, and very impressive. “Okay, remember to hop out fast and shut the door behind you.”

The car pulled up to the portico, I opened the door and scrunched in the corner while Darius and Zach jumped out. Darius shut the door right behind him. “That worked,” the driver said.

“I think so,” I said. “Can you take me our house in Malibu so I can get a few things?”

“On our way,” he said, and got us back to PCH to trek further north. I had a feeling that this party was full of pitfalls, since Curtis Buck was sure to be there, and he’d probably be monitoring everything. I’d thought about what I could do to protect myself if I needed to, and I decided that being able to record what people said would be my best defense. My father had this trick tape recorder that was super small, so my mission was to track that down. The car pulled up in front of our house and stopped. “You want me to wait for you?”

“I just have to track something down,” I said. “I should be out within fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll turn around and wait for you,” he said. I entered the code and walked into the house, then headed straight to my father’s office and started rifling through his drawers, looking for the tape recorder. I was kind of panicking, so I wasn’t being thorough, so I calmed my ass down and did a more deliberate search. I finally found it in the back of the second drawer on the right. There were two blank tapes, so I put one in the recorder and the other one in my pocket. After I did that I decided to play around with it so I knew how it worked. It was a good thing I did, since the batteries were dead. It used those special watch-type batteries, so I had to dig around some more until I found those. I finally got it working, so I took my sleuth media device and went out front to find the car waiting just as promised.

“Thanks,” I said as I let myself in the car.

“No problem,” he said. “You guys are sure making my job easier, opening the doors for yourselves.”

“When we get back to the Buck Mansion, I’ll let you get some exercise so I can make an entrance,” I teased.

“Gee thanks,” he said sarcastically, cracking me up. I spent the drive down there playing with the tape recorder until I pretty much had the controls down cold.

When I’d been hanging out with Travis, his grandfather was still alive, and he was a pretty cool guy. He’d died a couple of years ago, and that’s when Curtis moved in. Travis and I had hung out here a number of times, so I knew the layout of this place. The main house had a spectacular entryway, with a massive split symmetrical staircase that curved up to the second floor like a horseshoe. We’d always joked that it looked like the labia of a vagina, and that to get to the rest of the main house you had to go straight ahead and penetrate the stairs. Beyond that were the formal rooms, all done in antiques to make it look like it hadn’t changed in a hundred years. There was a large room that opened up to the outside, which was dominated by an amazing pool. The pool looked like a copy of the outdoor pool at Hearst Castle, and made the one I’d seen at the Bel Air party look like a cheap knockoff. The pool was lined first with columns, of course, and then by shrubs which had grown to be about ten feet tall. They blocked out the rest of the yard. The left shrubs shielded the view to the tennis courts and the garage, the shrubs on the right blocked out a kind of garden area with paths that was pretty secluded. Travis and I had snuck off back there to smoke pot when we were kids, but it actually looked like the kind of woods where you’d see gay dudes cruising for dick. I’d have to see if that was true or not, I thought, chuckling. Straight ahead, the view was of the ocean. It wasn’t on the water like our house, but it was up in the hills which provided a nice view of the coastline.

The house had been enlarged about twenty years ago when Travis’s grandfather had put an addition on. It blended in so seamlessly that it was impossible to tell that it hadn’t been there all along. The second floor of the main house contained the main bedroom and guest rooms. From the main hall, if you walked off to the right you’d come to a landing with two steps, and once you went up those the first room you’d come to was the office or library. Beyond that was another foyer that gave way to a hall. The hall had a half bath, a closet, and a separate set of stairs that went directly up to the kid’s bedrooms. I’d always thought it was really strange that the second floor of main house didn’t connect to the second floor of the addition.

I walked into the main hall and it was just as I remembered, with the floors in Carrera marble, the walls in wood, and the ceiling sporting a fresco purportedly showing the founding of California, with only white people represented, of course. I noticed there was a guard at the top of the main stairs and one to the right, blocking the hallway leading to the office and kid’s quarters. “Hey there!” Tay said excitedly.

“Hey!” I said and gave her a big hug.

“Let’s not make out,” she said, making me laugh. “At least not yet.”

“Dude, that got me into some trouble, which was a shame, because it was really nice but basically innocent,” I said.

“I know that, you know that, and I think Zach finally got the picture,” she said. She seemed proud of herself as if she’d made him see reason.

“So how’d you get stuck on door duty?”

“I’m just giving Daddy a break,” she said. “Here’s my relief now.” I turned to see Curtis Buck strolling toward us. He was about 5’10” tall, with gray hair and a stocky body that made him look solid, not fat. He looked like a caricature of what you’d expect a communist to draw when they thought of an American capitalist pig.

“Hello there,” he said, and thrust his hand out at me. “Curtis Buck.” He had a deep voice, one that was very forceful. I almost laughed at how he was pushing out some serious power, but he didn’t do it with the intensity or the grace that my father did.

“Will Schluter,” I said, shaking his hand.

“I haven’t seen you for years,” he said, shooting me a smile that seemed fake. “You’ve grown into a handsome young man.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “Enjoy yourself.” Before I could respond he turned his attention to Taylor. “You’re off duty Princess.”

“Thanks Daddy,” she said. She put her arm through mine and led me past the ‘vagina’ of the stairs and into the huge room that was full of people. “These people are mostly relatives or business acquaintances,” she whispered to me.

“Then let’s not stay here,” I whispered back, making her giggle. We walked out onto the deck and found the younger crowd. She led me toward Zach, who was talking to a stunningly handsome guy. I stopped her before they saw us. “Who’s Zach talking to?” I asked her quietly.

“My brother,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “T is all grown up.”

“That’s Travis?” I asked.

“You can put your eyes back in your head any time now,” she teased.

“Dude, how’d you end up with a smoking hot little brother?” I asked.

“It’s genetics,” she said. I laughed, but that annoyed her a bit.

“That makes sense,” I said. I hadn’t seen Travis Buck in years, and the last time we’d hung out we were both tweaking out on puberty. I’d been ahead of him, shit, I’d been ahead of everyone, but he hadn’t been that far behind me. Since then, he had really bloomed. He was tall, as tall as I was, and looked almost exactly like that basketball player dude in the movie Pleasantville. I scanned my memory and remembered that the character was named Skip, but I had no idea who played him. We resumed our trek over to them.

“You made it!” Zach said when he saw me and gave me a man hug. I felt guilty for all but drooling over Travis.

“Yeah, finally kicked that hangover,” I said.

“Time to start on a new one,” Travis said, focusing my attention on him.

“Dude, you turned into a God!” I said to Travis, making him laugh. Zach looked a little jealous.

“You’re pretty hot too,” he said. “You can be one of my saints.”

“I think I’m more like the Holy Ghost,” I said irreverently, flirting with him.

“It’s been for-fucking ever,” he said. Taylor dragged Zach off to see some friends, while Travis led me off to the right, down the cruising path. “What have you been up to?”

“I managed to finish up high school a semester early, so I’m a free agent until fall,” I said. “What about you?”

“I am so jealous!” he said. “I’m still plodding through at Brentwood, trying to finish up.”

“Weed?” I asked.

“Duh,” he said, making me laugh again. We sat down on a bench and I pulled out my one-hitter and handed it to him. I was trying not to lust at him as he wrapped his lips around the bat. “This is some good weed.”

“It is,” I said. “Got it from my cousin. He’s my source for drugs.”

He laughed, then pulled out a snuff bullet. “Want some?”

“Fuck yeah,” I said. I did a couple of bumps, but he didn’t do any. I figured maybe he’d already hit it enough. The coke fired me up, putting me in total party mode. “I went to a frat party last night and got wasted, so this is just what I needed.”

“Glad I could help,” he said. “What happens to you this fall?”

“I’m going to Harvard,” I said.

“You always were smart as fuck,” he said.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m still trying to figure it out,” he said. I stared at him, telling him to go on. “I could stay here and do UCLA or Pepperdine, or I could go back east to one of the Ivies.”

“What are you leaning toward?” I asked.

“I was actually thinking about Harvard, but if you’re going there, that makes it lame,” he said, giving me shit.

“Who else is going to help you with your homework?” I asked.

“True that,” he said. We hung out and I was in heaven, reconnecting with him. He was one of those guys who had sort of ghosted out of my life, and now that he reappeared, I remembered how much fun I had just being with him.

“We should hang out some time,” I said.

“Absolutely,” he said. We exchanged phone numbers. “I need to go back and be a good party host.”

“Thanks for taking the time to break away and hang with me,” I said. Our eyes met, and they were like magnets. I felt myself falling into his pale gray eyes until he shook off the trance for both of us.

“Come on,” he said. “You have to say hi to Big.”

He led me back up to the party and dragged me over to see his big brother, an apt description. Trevor Buck was a big boy, not because he was fat, but because he was muscular and he was big-boned. It was no surprise that he had a bunch of people around him like a royal court. “T!” he said, greeting his little brother.

“Hey Big, you remember Will Schluter?” Big’s eyes focused on me and he raised his eyebrows.

“Dude, you used to be a scrawny little punk,” he said. I rolled my eyes at him, but he smiled, showing off some serious charm.

“I’m all grown up now,” I said in a seductive way, making him laugh.

“Your brother’s a perv,” Big said to Darius.

“Duh,” Darius said, making us all laugh.