Gap Year - 77. Chapter 77

March 12, 2004

The Bob Hope Airport

Burbank, CA

Will

“Holy shit,” Crawford said, as we got out of the limo and stood at the stairs of Stef’s Airbus. “We’re flying on this?”

“We are,” I said. I paused to sign off on the receipt for the limo, then greeted the co-pilot, who was focused on stowing our bags. “Come on,” I said to my three traveling companions.

I led the way up the stairs, and the first person I saw when I walked into the cabin was Marie. “Hey there!” she said and gave me a massive hug. “I am so ready for a vacation!”

“I’m always on vacation,” I said, giving her shit. “Travis Buck, this is my cousin, Marie Hobart.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said, and shook his hand. He held her hand, flipped it over, then leaned down to kiss it.

“I know,” he said, majorly flirting with her. I forced myself to stop laughing so I could introduce her to everyone else.

“Been too long,” Ryan said to Travis.

“No shit,” Travis said, which was a pretty warm greeting for two 17-year-old guys.

“Dude!” Ryan said and pushed past me to see Crawford. I raised an eyebrow at Marie, because this emotional outburst was way beyond the norm for Grafton.

“It has been too fucking long,” Crawford said, and gave him a big hug. It was hysterical, because as soon as they broke off their embrace, they looked around nervously, because two straight dudes weren’t supposed to be that into each other.

We were all busy greeting each other when the plane started to move, which was our cue to sit down. I found myself next to a handsome Hispanic guy. “Jesse Aguilar,” he said, and shook my hand.

“Will Schluter,” I said. He kind of looked like Ricky Martin, only a shorter version, but it was funny because not only was his body shorter, his face was shorter too. “S’up Mike,” I said, smiling at the guy on the other side of him.

“Thanks for inviting us along to Maui,” Mike said, grinning back at me. I chuckled internally, thinking how much nicer that facial expression was than the brooding frowns I’d gotten from him when we’d first met Bongo’s friends in Santa Cruz. “Dude, my life is not what I thought it was going to be a month ago.”

I laughed. “Yeah, the last time I saw you, you didn’t have a hot date.” Jesse blushed adorably.

“Yes, I did,” he said. “I was with you.”

“I guess you’re right,” I said, acting all stuck up. The plane took off, and once we were airborne, we got up and started walking around.

Marie gave our party the tour of the rest of the plane. When we got to Stef’s palatial bedroom, Marie frowned at me. “Stef said you claimed this room for yourself on the flight.”

“There’s another bedroom if you need to get laid, Starfish,” I said, getting a hateful look from her, and a laugh from everyone else. “I actually have a reason. I’ll tell you about it later.” Travis gave me a really odd look for that comment, but he shrugged it off quickly enough.

“You always have a reason,” she grumbled. “Have Dennis make you a drink.” Dennis was the flight attendant on the plane. He was short, cute, and a pretty fun guy. I was glad we ended up with him instead of Celeste, who was beautiful, chic, and professional. Dennis was better for fun flights, while Celeste seemed more comfortable on business trips.

“Hey Dennis,” I said, as I walked up to the bar.

“Good to see you, Will,” he said, and handed me a vodka tonic.

“Glad you’re here,” I said. “Thanks.” We were drinking a lot, so Jesse went up and volunteered to help Dennis out. I spent some time with Bongo and his girlfriend, Kelly, then found myself talking to Mike again.

“This plane is incredible,” Mike said. “You’re fucking up my world view, where I’m supposed to hate all of this decadence.”

I laughed. “Nothing wrong with doing things with style,” I said.

“Jesse’s the guy who used to work at the Foundation,” Mike said. “He heard from his friends how you rocked the place.”

I laughed. “It ended up being pretty intense, but the Board voted to let Jake take over. He was so excited about it, it was hard to say no to him,” I said.

“Morale has already done a 180, from what I hear,” Mike said. “It’s like people think they suddenly got new jobs working somewhere else.”

“I’m going to assume that’s a good thing,” I said. I realized that we had no music, so I took out my CD case and went over to the sound system. I was going to pop in American Idiot, but Travis had left a CD in the Toyota and I’d been dying to listen to it. As I slipped it out of my case and put it in, I almost started laughing, wondering if it was a recording of his father fucking someone else. But the CD had ‘waves’ written on it in Travis’s handwriting, so I knew it would be safe.

The tunes started playing, and they weren’t what I was expecting. The first song was “Walk Don’t Run” by the Surfaris, and that clued me in that this must be surf music from the 1960s. I’d heard this song and “Wipe Out,” but that was about my limit with this genre. “What the fuck is this?” Crawford asked.

“It’s mine,” Travis said defensively. “We can change it.” He seemed embarrassed that he was listening to something you wouldn’t hear on the top forty station.

“We can listen to something besides Usher,” I said. “Besides, it’s surf music, and we’re headed to Hawaii.”

“That’s why it was in the truck,” Travis said. “I like to listen to it because it reminds me of my grandpa. I had some good times surfing with him.”

“That’s pretty cool,” I said. My father was a little young for this genre, so we didn’t have a surfing music bond. I personally thought the music was pretty cool, even if it was really old, primarily because of the total beach vibes.

“What’s this song?” John asked emphatically.

“Perfidia,” Travis answered.

“What the fuck kind of name is that?” Crawford asked. The only way to shut him up was probably to put Linkin Park on instead, so I ignored him.

“Dude, we could do a remake of this for our album,” John said to Ryan.

“This song?” Kelly asked with disdain, then shut up when everyone gave her a dirty look.

“I can totally see that,” Ryan said. The song ended and they went back and played it again.

“Cam was giving us shit about how we needed to work on our instrumentals,” Bongo said. “We could add some words, but if it was mostly just music it would give us a chance to prove that we’re not just pretty boys with no musical talent.”

“You certainly are pretty,” I teased, getting laughs from everyone else. John, Ryan, Bongo, and Mike absorbed themselves into the CD, sometimes listening to the same song three or four times in a row, until Marie came up to me, shaking her head.

“Nice move, dipshit,” she said, teasing me. “We’ll have to listen to them talk about this for the whole flight.”

“If it wasn’t this, it would have been something else,” I said fatalistically. “They’re artists. It’s what they do.”

The phone rang, and that got odd looks from everyone, but I ignored them and picked it up. They all stared at me after I hung up, so I enlightened them. “That was the pilot,” I said to our group. “We’ve got headwinds, so flight time is six hours.” We’d already been in the air for an hour, but we still had a lot of time left.

The front part of the plane, what we called the ‘flying room’, was party central, with music and drinking. It was pretty rowdy. The next compartment was the ‘boardroom’, which had a big round table and was useful for meetings or as a dining room. This room attracted the crowd who was a little less exuberant and wanted to hang out and talk to other people. I thought that if the flying room was like a frat party, the boardroom was like a house party. I was having an absolute blast, but we’d been in the air for two and a half hours when I saw Travis start to fade. When he’d talked to me about being introverted, I hadn’t really gotten what that meant; now that I knew him a lot better, I understood.

“So why did you claim the bedroom?” Marie asked me.

“It’s not for me; it’s for people who need a space to be mellow,” I said.

“Seriously?” she asked.

“Seriously,” I said. “Look at Travis. See how it looks like he’s running out of energy?”

She studied him for a bit then nodded. “Did you keep him up all night?” she joked.

“Duh,” I said, and laughed with her. “Travis is an introvert. He’s had a hectic day at school, an intense drive to the airport, and now he’s at a fucking party on a plane. He’s going to need a break.”

“That’s just a reason to sneak off and fuck,” she said, shaking her head.

“Watch him,” I said. “Notice how he’s fading, like his battery is running down?”

She dropped her attitude and did what I asked. “I can see that. So is he done for the night?”

“No, he just needs to hang out for half an hour or so in a more sedate environment and he’ll be good,” I said. She shrugged, so I used that as a reason to break away from her and go over and talk to Travis.

“You got a minute?” I asked him.

“Sure,” he said. I led him to the back of the plane and into the bedroom. “Dude, I don’t know about this,” he said, assuming I was dragging him back here to get him to fuck me.

“This isn’t a booty break,” I said. “I just thought you might enjoy a quieter environment for a bit.” I left the door open to show that I wasn’t planning a sexual tryst.

He gave me a nice kiss, then smiled at me. “Thanks for thinking of me.”

“I always think of you,” I said, making him chuckle. He sat on the bed, rummaged through his backpack for his Sony PSP, and started playing video games. “I’m going to go get a drink.”

“Cool,” he said, because he didn’t expect me to miss the party.

I turned off the music, and got boos from everyone. “Look, I’ve got in my hand a copy of Green Day’s newest CD. It’s not going to be released for a few more months.”

“Then fucking play it,” Bongo said, making me laugh.

“Alright, but no stealing their tunes,” I said.

“We respect the intellectual property of other artists,” John said vehemently.

“I’m sure you do,” I said, annoying him but making everyone else laugh. I hit play then went back to the boardroom to hang out with that crowd.

I found Mike and Jesse in what looked like deep conversation, so I was going to avoid them, but they looked up when I approached and Jesse smiled. “Dude, have a seat.”

“Cool,” I said, and grabbed a chair.

“I have a question for you, but it’s kind of personal, and I don’t want to freak you out?” Jesse asked.

I laughed at that. “You’re saying you might freak me out?” I asked.

“Maybe,” he said, flirting with me. I laughed even harder.

“What’s your question?”

“I was just wondering if you and Travis were exclusive, or if you were up for playing with other people?” he asked a bit nervously. My big grin put him completely at ease.

“Well, this part of me and Travis thinks it would be a fucking blast, but I’ll run it by him,” I said.

“Hot,” Jesse said, cracking me up.

“Dude, you were too big of a pussy to let me fuck you, and now you’re into group sex?” I teased Mike, who blushed three shades of red while Jesse laughed at him.

“That’s not how it went down,” he insisted, but we were laughing too hard at him to listen.

“Mike’s the kind of dude who wants to get married, live in a loft in the city with his husband, and spend his weekends at protests,” Jesse said.

“Nothing wrong with that,” I said.

“I’m a little more adventurous,” Jesse said.

“That’s an understatement,” Mike said.

“Dude, you completely rocked your Foundation,” Jesse said, the admiration all but dripping off his words.

“It wasn’t just me,” I said. He looked at me skeptically. “It started with Mike, who despite having shitty people skills, convinced me to look at his report.”

“It worked,” Mike said. “I mean, the Foundation changed and I’m riding on your plane to Hawaii.”

“True that,” I said laughing, then got back on track. “I took his report and started to put together a plan to check out what he said.”

“Check it out?” Mike asked, all offended.

“Yeah, you had a lot of information in your report, but no solid data,” I replied. “Plus your grammar sucked.”

“Fuck you,” he said, making me chuckle.

“I worked with my grandfather, who’s a history professor at Stanford, to develop a motion to change how we screen grant requests, while Jake Pike took over and investigated the rest of the allegations,” I explained.

“Alright, what kind of research did he do?” Mike challenged.

“He took each of your points and compiled data from the Foundation to back it up,” I said. “I can show you the final summary if you want to see it.”

“Whatever,” Mike said, and I suddenly realized that he had been proud of his work and I was slamming it.

“Dude, you did a really good job,” I said emphatically. “If you hadn’t, it wouldn’t have been enough to even get this ball rolling.”

“You did,” Jesse said, and gave him a sweet kiss on the cheek.

“You have to remember that the people in that meeting weren’t really going to accept stellar undergraduate work as a reason to fire the director,” I joked. “Dude, I told you my grandfather was a history professor at Stanford. He’s a renowned scholar. That’s the league you were playing in.”

“Sorry,” he grumbled.

“I’m the one who should have apologized for making you feel like you didn’t do an amazing job,” I said. “Like I told you, we were all sort of blithely going down the road, unaware that we weren’t really accomplishing much.”

“That’s not true,” Jesse objected. “The foundation was doing some good things, it just wasn’t doing nearly as much as it could.”

“I agree, and so did the Board,” I said.

“How did Stefan react when you showed this stuff to him?” Jesse asked.

“He wasn’t very happy at first,” I said, and saw that worry him. “Think about it from his point of view. He’s got a million things going on, and he thought that the Foundation was solid. Suddenly it’s not something he can feel good about; it’s a problem he has to deal with.”

“Bummer,” he said.

“It’s all good,” I said. “He was irritated for a little bit, tried to vent it on me, then we had a talk about it, and he was on board.”

“I was kind of surprised that the employees seemed cool with Jake,” Jesse said.

“Why?” I asked.

“He doesn’t have a background in non-profits on either side of the house,” he said. I looked at him, confused by that statement, so he explained it to me. “Raising money, in the form of fundraising, and spending money, in the form of grants.”

“He got really excited about the Foundation when he was doing the research Mike was supposed to do,” I said, and got a playful punch from Mike in return. “He told me he wanted to run it and I was skeptical for the same reasons you just gave.”

“So did you vote for him to take on that role?” Jesse asked.

“I did,” I said. “I talked to Jake about how he didn’t know as much about this as he probably should, and he told me that he knew that. He saw a bunch of talent at the Foundation, and decided it was his job to try to basically enable the people working there to do their jobs, and to support them and their ideas.”

“Fuck,” Jesse said sadly. “I’m pissed off at myself for not keeping my mouth shut and for getting myself fired.”

“So reapply,” I said simply.

“The HR people there were in Craig Arundel’s pocket, and they hate me,” Jesse said.

“Look, I don’t know if you were that big of a dick that you burned your bridges,” I said. “I can’t guarantee you’ll get your job back, no matter how big your dick is.” Mike and I laughed at that.

“I’m not asking you to do that,” he said, and was pretty irritated. Rather than upset me, it made me realize that this was a big deal. He was having major regrets about having left the Foundation.

“Here’s what I can do for you,” I said in my serious tone. “I can get you an interview with Jake, and I can promise you that he’ll hear you out. Only that means that when HR tries to slaughter you, you need to be able to explain yourself.”

“I can do that,” he said.

“Jake is a good guy, but he’s not a pushover,” I said. He really got mad at that, but I ignored him. “I just didn’t want you to think sob stories would close the deal. He’s fair, but he’s not a sap.”

“Whatever,” he said, then smiled. “Thanks.”

“Glad to help,” I said. I cycled from room to room on the plane, having a really good time, until the pilots told me we were about to land.

“What time is it here?” Sierra asked. “My watch says 8 o’clock but it’s still light out.”

“There’s a two-hour time change, so it’s 6pm here,” I said. That seemed to be the clue for most of us to change the time on our watches.

“We should probably grab some food when we land,” Bongo said. I laughed when everyone, especially the guys, nodded in agreement. We’d had munchies on the plane, but they weren’t substantial enough to count as a meal.

“That’s not the plan,” I said, and got some moans. “We’re going to the house and we’ll have dinner there.”

“Sounds good,” John said.

“You don’t have to feed us all the fucking time,” Mike said.

“Dude, if you want to go out and get something, we can do that, but I made sure we have food covered while we’re here so we don’t have to worry about it,” I said.

“Yeah, you can buy food, but who’s going to cook?” Bongo asked. “Sure as fuck isn’t going to be you.” He said that, then tried not to be embarrassed because he’d learned I didn’t know how to cook when he’d spent the night.

“We’ve got two people staying with us who are going to take care of that,” I said, then focused on Mike. “We have a staff, not servants.”

“Fuck you,” Mike said, then laughed. “Who are these two people?”

“You’ll meet them when we get there,” I said mysteriously, although that was mostly because I didn’t know who they were either. “It’s set up so we don’t have to go out unless we want to.”

“What if we do?” John asked.

“We have two cars on the property,” I said. “Marie’s in charge of who gets to use them.”

“Fuck,” John said, acting like she’d never let him use one.

“I’m in charge?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“You like to be in control,” I teased, making everyone laugh.

“Whatever,” she said, and pretended to pout.

“We also have a car service available if you don’t want to drive or you can’t,” I said. “That’s the huge rule here. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to drink and drive, so don’t.” I think they were all pretty stunned at how forcefully I said that, but it was a big deal, and they seemed to get that.

“Got it,” Bongo said, and everyone else nodded.

The first glitch in my plans happened when we landed. There were two limos to pick us up, which should have been more than enough room if it weren’t for the band’s equipment, especially Bongo’s drums. We were stymied about how to load them. “No amount of arguing on my part was going to prevent them from bringing that shit along,” Marie said, shaking her head.

“It could be so much worse,” I said. “They could be Starphish.” My reference to John’s first band, which was awful, made us both laugh.

“True that,” she said. “We can send a car back for that stuff.”

“You want us to leave our equipment here?” John asked, horrified.

“My drums are going to sit out here?” Bongo asked, equally upset.

“Christ,” Marie said, shaking her head.

“Why don’t you guys stay here and guard your stuff and we’ll send the cars back to get you,” I said, and watched them grimace.

“We can take care of it for you,” one of the guys from the ground crew said helpfully.

“Thanks,” John said, making the best of a bad situation. “I really appreciate it.” I internally shook my head at how these guys could be high-maintenance now that they thought they were the New Kids on the Block.

The limo ride was short, and in no time we were pulling through the gates to my house. “Dude, this is beautiful,” Sierra said, which was saying something since her family was wealthy and they had a pretty awesome house in Brentwood.

“You haven’t seen the best part yet,” I said. We drove up and found three people waiting for us; one of them was Kiki. As soon as the limo stopped, I hopped out of the car, rushed over to her, and gave her a huge hug. “It is so good to see you!”

“It is good to see you too,” she said. We ended our embrace, and I introduced her to everyone. “This is Alana. She’s agreed to cook for you.”

Alana was beautiful, with a thin curvy body that only rose up to probably 5’3” tall. I guessed she was in her late twenties. She eyed all the guys in our crowd, shook her head, then looked at Kiki. “Looks like I’m going to be busy.”

“Bet on it,” I said, smiling at her as I shook her hand.

“Dinner is in 45 minutes,” she declared, getting cheers from the guys.

“This is Kimo,” Kiki said, introducing me to a guy who was about 5’ 10” and very handsome. He looked to be about the same age as Alana. “Kimo is your bartender.”

“I am not a bartender; I am a party director,” Kimo said, pumping out some serious energy.

“Awesome,” I said, then turned into a tour director. Everyone grabbed their bags and I showed them to their rooms. Travis helped me out by lugging the girls’ suitcases. I was so relieved when I could finally lead Travis up to my room. “This is home for the next week.”

“This is awesome,” he said. He made me pause for a bit, long enough to give me a very loving kiss.

“I have to go finish getting us all settled in,” I said, forcing myself to break away from him.

“I’ll start unpacking,” he said.

“Asshole,” I said, because I didn’t have time to do that now. I went downstairs and tracked down Kiki. “Thank you so much for getting things all set up.”

“It was not so much trouble,” she said. “They delivered another car today.” I walked out to the garage and checked out the new Toyota 4Runner that was pretty similar to the one we already had here. “It is pretty. I like red.”

“I like red too,” I said. She handed me the keys, then got ready to get in her car and leave. “You’re bailing already?”

“I have plans,” she said. I stopped and looked at her more closely, and could see that she was almost glowing.

“Plans?” I asked and blocked the door to her crappy Nissan to force her to talk to me. She gave me a dirty look. “What are you doing while we’re all here?”

“I’m spending some time with friends and family,” she said.

I zeroed in on her intently. “Who is he?” She grimaced, and that made me laugh.

“I have been dating someone, but I have not even told Kai about him. As soon as I do that, I will tell you,” she said.

“Alright,” I agreed grudgingly, gave her a final big hug, and let her escape.

Alana, Kimo, and probably Kiki had arranged dinner for us out back. I walked out onto the patio and smiled at the beautiful site arrayed in front of me. There was a buffet set up with all different kinds of food, and it looked as good as it smelled. Beyond that was the pool with its invisible edge, which seemed to command the eye to move beyond it to the ocean. Travis came out and stood next to me. “Are you fucking kidding me? This is incredible.”

“Come on,” I said, and led him toward the gazebo. “If you thought it was incredible before, check this out.”

We got to the gazebo and stared out at the Pacific. There was just enough light left to reflect off the waves, showing off some excellent surf. “This is the fucking bomb!”

“All this is nice and all,” I said, pretending like it was nothing special, “but you’ve already been to the most spectacular part.”

He grinned, knowing I was referring to the bedroom. “Let’s eat, take a break, then party with everyone.”

“I like your plan,” I said, then went back to rejoin the others. We had an absolute blast at dinner, and after we were done, Kimo turned into a DJ/bartender.

“This is incredible,” John said, just as he downed a shot. Brittany, the chick he’d brought with him, seemed pretty mindless, but maybe that’s what he wanted in a date right now.

“Awesome, right?” I asked. “I’m going to go unpack.”

“Right,” he said, giving me shit. I grabbed Travis and managed to escape with him upstairs to my bedroom.

“So you were supposed to show me something spectacular?” he teased, as soon as I locked the door behind us.

“Right this way,” I said, and walked up to the door in my closet, punched in the code, and led him into my Hawaiian sexual playground.

He started laughing. “Dude, this is better than the one in Malibu!”

“You think so?” I asked, but he wasn’t interested in having a conversation about the contrasts between the two rooms. His lips were on mine, my ass was in the sling, and he was inside me, taking me on one intense ride. I shot my load all over myself, so at least we didn’t have to wipe off the floors. I toweled myself off, then sensed that he was conflicted. “What’s up?”

“It would be kind of cool to check out the beach,” he said. I looked at him, trying to read his mood, then smiled when I figured out what he wanted.

“Dude, we are going to have to work on you chilling and enjoying the afterglow,” I teased, making him smile shyly. He was so fucking adorable. “Let’s go.”

“I, uh…” he began. He didn’t want to get roped back into the party downstairs, at least not yet.

I gave him a nice kiss. “I know the back way. We’ll avoid the rest of them.” That earned me a huge smile.