Gap Year - 82. Chapter 82

March 20, 2004

Maui, HI

Will

Travis and I finished lugging our boards up the hill, and as soon as we passed through the gate into the yard, his tension level soared. It was the same thing that happened to him every day we got back here, ever since he’d found out about his father’s financial struggles. It was like the only times he could relax and let himself go were when he was surfing or fucking. Of course, I was more than willing to help him out with both of those activities. “I’ve got a few phone calls to make,” Travis said, and looked at me a little sheepishly.

“Dude, that is fine,” I said. “I’m going to chill here for a bit before I take a shower.”

“Let’s do that together,” he said, and leered at me. He was so cute, I couldn’t help but giggle. I watched his sexy form as he wandered into the house, then took in the rest of the area. It was that time of day when everyone had come back from their activities, and were off in their respective caves, chilling or whatever before dinner. It was weird that in this house full of people, I was the only one outside by the pool. That changed almost immediately when Marie came strolling out of the house.

“Hey there,” she said, and smiled broadly at me.

“Hey!” I said, and gave her a somewhat distant hug since I was still wet from the ocean.

“Come hang out with me,” she said, and led me out to the gazebo.

“Gladly,” I said. We walked out and took our seats. “What’s everyone up to?”

“They’re either recovering from the party last night, from drinking on the beach all day, or if they’re really organized, doing some packing,” she said.

“Pretty much what I thought,” I said. “I’m betting you already packed.”

She frowned at me. “Pretty much.” I laughed at her, then with her.

Kimo walked up and handed both of us drinks. “Piña coladas this time.”

“Hard to beat those,” I said. “Thanks.” We both focused on taking a few drinks while Kimo walked away.

“This has been incredible!” Marie said to me.

“It really has been,” I agreed. “We took a bunch of different people, threw them together, and everyone had fun.”

“I’m stunned there was no major drama,” she said. “Even John and Brittany got along.”

“Why is that a surprise?” I asked.

“I mean, she’s not the most mature person in the world, and he’s not known for being great in relationships,” she said.

“True that,” I said, when I was done laughing. “I think the big saving thing for them was that she loves to surf. That gave her something to do while he was ignoring her to focus on the band.”

“See, and after you mature a bit, like me, you realize how cool it is that your boyfriend has something to do and you can have some time to yourself,” she said, making me laugh again.

“Look at you, all into your own personal space,” I teased.

“You did a great job pulling this together and making it work,” she said to me lovingly.

“That’s not quite right,” I said, correcting her. “I get props for pulling it together, but you get the credit for making it work.”

She nodded in agreement. “We make an awesome team.”

“We do,” I agreed.

“So what’s your plan for college?” she asked me. I didn’t answer right away, so she poked me a bit. “We were supposed to have that figured out before we go home. That’s tomorrow.”

“I’m going to go to Harvard,” I said bluntly.

“Why?” she asked.

“I had a good talk with my father about that,” I said. “He reminded me that I’m a good student, that I’ll keep my grades up no matter where I go, and that means that if I don’t like it at Harvard, I can always transfer back to Cal or Stanford, or someplace closer to home.”

“I didn’t think about it that way,” she said, pondering my words.

“I didn’t either,” I said. “I mean, I had it in my mind that if I said I was going to Harvard, I would be locked in there for at least four years, regardless. He made me realize I had options.”

“He’s pretty smart when his head isn’t up his ass,” she said, which really made me laugh.

“No shit,” I agreed. “For right now, at least, he’s got his shit together.”

“I think my mom is getting there too,” Marie said. “I was kind of surprised. I mean, she just broke up with that idiot, and I figured that would blow her psyche up.”

“She did seem to bounce back from that really fast,” I said, since I would have expected Claire to have been messed up for a lot longer.

“I asked her about it,” Marie said. “She said that she’s been going through this hell since she found out my dad had his new girlfriend. So it’s not the beginning of the process; it’s like the middle.”

“Makes sense,” I said, although I had no way to evaluate that. “Did she tell you she slept with Scott Slater?”

“I told her she was glowing, and that forced it out of her,” Marie said in a smarmy way, all proud of herself for sleuthing that out of her mother. “She said it was a lot of fun because there had been this attraction when they were both in high school that they never acted on.”

“I can see that,” I said. In a way, sleeping with Travis had kind of been like that, the opportunity to realize a latent attraction.

“She said it was also fun to freak out your father,” Marie added, which was hilarious.

“He didn’t actually seem all that bothered by it, so that made it cool,” I said. We sat there and just enjoyed the sound of the surf and the sunny weather for a few minutes, in what was a contented silence. “So what are you going to do?”

“You mean for college?” she asked. I gave her a dirty look because that should be obvious. “I was struggling with it until about ten minutes ago.”

“What?”

“I thought about what you said. I talked to John and he agreed. My parents would completely lose their shit if I stayed in California. They’d be sure it was because of them,” she said.

“They would?” I asked, emphasizing the past tense.

“I knew that I had to go back east. It was still bugging me, but you just pointed out that even if I go to Harvard, I’m not locked in there. I can always transfer,” she said. “So that’s where I’m going.”

“That is awesome!” I said. I made her get up and I gave her a huge hug. This one was more intimate, since I was dryer. “I am so glad you’re doing this with me.”

“That’s also part of it,” she said. “I kind of knew that in the end you’d end up going to Boston, and I wanted to go with you. It’s easier now that I know I have an escape hatch.”

“To Harvard,” I said, raising my glass.

“To Harvard,” she said, and clinked glasses with me.

“I kind of dropped the ball on housing because I was thinking about not going there,” she said. “I need to get that figured out.”

“Shit,” I said. “I did the same thing. All the crap that’s happened in the past month distracted me.”

“Understandable,” she said. “We’ll probably end up with rotten assignments and roommates with no hygiene.”

I laughed. “If things are bad, we can stay with Matt and Wade. I get Alex’s old room. You can have the one JJ used, so you can deal with his residual bitchy vibes.”

“That’s a bad decision on your part, because that will just make me crabbier, and you’ll have to put up with me,” she said in a faux smarmy way.

“Maybe,” I said, and rolled my eyes at her.

“We’re leaving in the afternoon around four,” she announced.

“That works,” I said, like I had any choice.

“Are you coming back to Paly or are you staying in LA?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I need to talk to Travis about that.”

“It’s not a big deal,” she said. “Plane has to go to both places anyway.”

“I’d better go get ready for dinner,” I said. I gave her a kiss on the cheek and went up to my room where I found Travis still on the phone. He was wearing a towel around his waist, so he must have shed his swimsuit. I was so tempted to go up and rip the towel off of him then see if I could distract him by playing with his dick. It was obvious that he was in a pretty deep conversation, so instead I nodded at him and went into the bathroom.

I was still in a playful mood, so I went back out to the bedroom, stark naked. He turned to face me and smiled, despite his conversation, then turned away. I stroked my dick a few times to inflate it, so when he looked back I stared back at him half-hard, and raised my eyebrows in a suggestive way. “I have to go,” he said, and ended his call, then followed me into the bathroom, where we lovingly washed each other off, then he fucked me.

“Sorry if I distracted you,” I said to him as we were drying off.

“You aren’t sorry at all,” he countered.

“Yeah, I know, but it seemed like the right thing to say,” I said.

He chuckled at me and shook his head. “You think everyone will go apeshit crazy partying tonight?”

“I’m not getting that vibe,” I said honestly. “I mean, after last night, I’m still pretty ripped up. I’m guessing they are too.”

“Yeah, that was pretty much no holds barred,” he said. We’d all drunk like fish and most of us had done ecstasy, and that meant a fun, rowdy, boisterous crowd. I’d paid the price, though, as it had taken a supreme effort to even drag my ass out of bed this morning to surf. “It would be nice to hang out, you know, just the two of us.”

I walked up and gave him a nice kiss. “Let’s do the same thing we did the night we got here. We’ll be social butterflies until everyone else fades, or if they don’t, we’ll party with them until we can sneak out unnoticed. Then we can go walk on the beach.”

“I’m all over that,” he said, his introverted self getting excited at the possibility of shedding our whole group and just spending time together.

Dinner turned out to be much more mellow than even I had predicted. It was like the week of solid partying had finally taken its toll. After dinner was over, Travis vanished to make a phone call, while I found myself hanging out with Marie and Ryan. “You figure out if you’re going to Paly or staying in LA yet?” Marie asked.

“No, but I can make that decision in the air tomorrow,” I said. “It’s funny, of the ‘new’ couples that came on this trip, none of them seem any closer.”

“What do you mean?” Ryan asked.

“Look at Crawford and Sierra,” I said. “I kind of figured this would be their chance to, you know, get together instead of just be people who were sort of dating.” They understood that I was referring to their making their relationship more formal, and exclusive.

“I think shit happened in all of those cases to derail things,” Marie said, referring to the three couples I’d been talking about. Ryan and I just looked at her intently, asking her to explain her statement. “Sierra’s father is a borderline alcoholic. Crawford seems like he might be the same way. She doesn’t want to deal with that.”

“He’s not that bad,” Ryan said, sticking up for his friend.

“You’re right; he’s not that bad, but it’s kind of an issue,” I said. Crawford had a tendency to drink until he was completely fucked up. “I can see how, because of her father, it seemed like maybe a bigger deal than it was.”

“Maybe,” Ryan allowed.

“John and Brittany both came into this deal knowing exactly what it was,” Marie continued. “She knows that John is off to be a rock star, and that he’s a cute hook-up at best, but she figured she’d get to go on a cool trip to Hawaii and have fun. John liked that she didn’t pressure him, and he figured she’d come along and he’d get laid. And it worked out just like that.”

“Makes sense,” I agreed.

“What about the dudes?” Ryan asked, referring to Mike and Jesse.

I looked at Marie, who said nothing. “You’re not as good at reading gay dudes?” I teased.

“They hook up, but Mike is way more into Jesse than Jesse is into Mike,” she said.

“I stand corrected,” I said. “Good job.”

“The whole time they were here, Mike was focused mostly on the band, while Jesse was trying to figure out how to get you into bed,” Marie said.

“Pretty much how things usually are,” Ryan joked, cracking me up.

“He picked a bad time to try and get in my pants,” I said, shaking my head. We were laughing at that when I saw Travis come walking out of the house with a purpose, clearly looking for me.

“Hey,” he said, trying to be pleasant, but he was too flustered to pull it off.

“We’re going for a walk on the beach,” I announced, and could sense Travis’s relief.

“Have fun,” Marie said. “I have to help Ryan pack.”

“Yeah, that’s what you’re going to do,” I taunted, shooting a leer at them. We used that as an excuse to bail, going quickly down the steps to the sandy beach, as if we were worried that if we didn't hurry we’d end up with company we didn’t want.

We got onto flat land and started walking. “I’ve been thinking about this open relationship thing, and if we’re going to do that, I don’t think Zach should be off limits,” Travis said, in a pretty nasty way.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that he was trying to start a fight with me; his tone alone was enough to tell me that. I resolved to stay calm. I pulled out a joint, stopped and sheltered it from the wind as I lit it, then took a hit. I handed it to him, while he looked at me incredulously, since he hadn’t gotten the reaction he wanted. That turned into a frown, but he took a hit of the weed as we walked on the beach, then another. “Okay,” I said, finally answering him.

“I mean, he’s probably the only dude I have around that I can fuck, so it’s not fair that I’m celibate while you fuck half the country,” he said, still trying to get me to fight with him.

“That’s fine,” I said, in the same nonchalant way I’d answered him before. I could sense his extreme frustration, but I could also tell the pot was mellowing him out. We walked on in silence for a bit. “You want to tell me what this is really about?”

“I told you what this is about,” he countered loudly. We walked on for a hundred feet, then he headed toward a picnic table and sat down. I sat down across from him, the table symbolizing the gulf that was between us.

“This isn’t about Zach at all,” I said. “You’re trying to start a fight with me because you want to push me away.”

I was right and he knew it. I could read it in his eyes, which glittered in the moonlight, and in the frustrated expression he got when he knew he’d been busted. “I have to go away.”

“Tell me what that means,” I said.

“I am not safe, and I won’t be safe until I’m eighteen and can control my own shit,” he said adamantly. “My lawyers keep talking about ways they can try to protect me, but I know in my heart that it won’t work.”

“You’re convinced your father is going to have you killed?” I asked. “I mean, that’s pretty extreme, even for him.”

“No, it’s not,” he asserted strongly. “Don’t you get it? Your father was right. I’m not his son. I can’t be.”

“How do you know that?” I asked and watched as he got enraged. “Travis, I’m not arguing with you, I just want to hear your rationale.”

“I don’t look like him, for starters,” he said. “If you look at both Big and Taylor, they both have some of his features. I don’t have any. I’m taller than him, my hair’s a different color, and my face is long and thin, while his is rounder.”

“You’re right about that,” I agreed. “You really don’t look like him at all.”

“As soon as I slotted that into my fact list, that I’m not his son, everything started making so much more sense,” he said. “At the best of times, he tolerates me. He must look at me and see not only my mother, but all the things about her that he hated.”

“He spent a lot of time keeping tabs on you, like he did with Big and Taylor,” I suggested.

“We talked about that before, remember?” he asked, because we had. “If he wanted to know what I was doing, he’d know. He tracks me just enough so no one notices that he completely hates me.”

“Your grandfather must have known this,” I said, getting clarity. “That’s why he set your stuff up so it was pretty much out of his control.”

“That’s why,” Travis agreed. “There has to be a whole lot more to that story, but I had a really good relationship with my grandpa. He loved me even though I wasn’t his real grandson. I guess that's something my father could never do.” I felt so bad for him I reached over and briefly held his hand, and got an appreciative look in return.

“Like you said, your father probably lumped you in with your mother,” I said. “I guess since he hated her, that meant he didn’t like you.”

“My grandfather wouldn’t have had that problem, because he always got along with her, and treated her really well,” Travis said. “He made sure she had money after she left my father, so he couldn’t try to starve her out and get a better settlement in the divorce.”

“Do you have any idea who your father is?” I asked.

“No clue,” he said, and shook his head. “I have no idea who she would have been fooling around with eighteen years ago. Could be anyone.”

“Did your father accuse her of fucking around?” I asked.

“All the time,” he said. “He was always ranting about it. He thought she was hooking up with everyone in LA. Hell, she even accused her of fucking around with Robbie.”

“Hayes?” I asked, and gasped. Like he’d be referring to anyone else named Robbie.

“Probably not true, but he was one of many dudes he yelled at her about,” he said. I looked at him intently, trying to decide if he looked like Robbie at all, or even like Matt, but there was nothing that stuck out.

“I doubt that,” I said. “Robbie was pretty much gay.”

“Pretty much,” Travis said, pointing out the uncertainty.

“At least my father isn’t your real father,” I said. There was nothing similar between Travis and my dad.

“Yeah, he’s so gay he never even came up as a possibility,” Travis said, and we both actually chuckled at that.

“Can’t you ask your mother about it?” I asked.

“She won’t tell me shit,” he said. “She’d be mad at me for implying that she had an affair while she was married to him, and she’d probably be worried that if it got out, he could come back and snake some of her money away from her.”

“She’s probably the only one who knows,” I said.

“No, she’s not,” he said. “My father, I mean Curtis, knows. There is no way he would have left that out there as some unsolved mystery. He’s probably furious that he’s got someone in his family that’s not a real ‘Buck’, so he’d be super-determined to make sure I wasn’t from some psycho family.”

“Maybe he’d tell you,” I suggested. “I mean, if this is out in the open, maybe he won’t hate you.”

“He doesn’t work that way,” Travis said, looking at me like I was an idiot. “The fact that his wife not only had an affair, but got pregnant, and then brought a kid that wasn’t his into the Buck family is a major hit to his pride. No way is he going to be able to handle that kind of ego blow and be calm about it.”

“Look, you don’t have to convince me your father is a complete asshole,” I said. “I mean, there aren’t many people douchier than he is.”

“See,” Travis said.

“But as awful as he is, it’s hard for me to believe that he’d try to have you killed,” I said. “I mean, he must have some feelings for you.”

“You do not get it at all,” he said firmly. “I am masquerading as his son when I’m not. I’m a living, walking embarrassment to him. He may not hate me personally, but he hates what I represent.”

“Still…” I began, because it still seemed so extreme. Shit, even Elizabeth Danfield had limits on how evil she could be.

“Look Will, you come from this classy family that is all refined and educated,” he said loudly. “You’re all fashionable, cultured, multilingual, and have perfect manners. You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

“Alright, maybe we are, but it’s not like you’re a fucking peasant,” I retorted, my volume going up because I was losing patience with him. “You come from a California old-money family, and your mother is a fucking Swiss aristocrat.”

“Your family got rich owning land or investing in the tech markets,” he spat back. “My family got rich from investing in oil and gas, and land mostly in the Central Valley.”

“So,” I challenged.

“Those industries, especially in California, are cutthroat. Don’t you know what a knife fight it is, arguing for water rights in the Central Valley? Don’t you realize how gloves-off you have to be to dominate in that world? That’s what my family did; that’s what they do,” he said. “It’s violent, it’s corrupt, and it’s not that different from the mob.”

“I’m not going to sit here and have you lecture me on how I live in some safe bubble when I was almost killed last year by a bunch of mercenaries hired by drug lords,” I said through gritted teeth. We sat there, staring at each other, and I was so angry I knew that I must look like my father when he was pissed. When my dad got really mad, his nose flared, although not to the degree that Robbie’s had, and his eyes glazed over and were completely impenetrable. Travis finally got that he had pushed me too far.

“I’m sorry,” he said. And of course, as soon as he said that, my anger at him evaporated and it was replaced by concern for him and his situation. I wondered if I’d ever be able to win an argument with this guy.

“Forget it,” I said. “It’s not really relevant anyway.”

He nodded to acknowledge that, and to thank me for accepting his apology. “So that’s why I have to vanish until my birthday. My lawyers don’t understand my father or my family, at least not like this, so they don’t get it. Over the past few days, I’ve finally gotten through to them.”

“So you’re going to go into hiding for a month?” I asked. He nodded. “Where are we going?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You said you have to go into hiding for a month,” I said. “I’m going with you. Where are we going?”

He stared at me, stunned, then a tear fell out of his eye. “Will, you can’t go with me.”

“Sure I can,” I objected. “I’m free, I have no major commitments. I’ll tell my family what’s going on, and then we’re off.”

“I wish you could,” he said, and wiped the tears away. “It would make this so awesome.”

“Why can’t I go with you?” I challenged.

“Because I have to go into hiding,” he said. “I’ve got it set up. It’s like a private witness protection service. If my father finds me, I’m dead.”

“If you’re obviously running from him, doesn’t that make it riskier for him to have you killed?” I asked. “I mean, that makes the whole thing a lot more public.”

“He is ruthless,” Travis insisted. “None of that will matter.”

“So I’ll hide with you,” I said. “My family will understand.”

“No, they won’t,” he argued. “It will be risky. They won’t let you do that.”

I actually laughed at that. “Let me?” He looked at me blankly. “They know to pick their battles with me, and they know they’d lose this one.”

He smiled slightly. “Will, I really love you. Just having you say you’d do this, that you’d run off with me, means more than you’ll ever know.”

“I love you too,” I said. His words were sincere, but there was no denying the big ‘but’ that was about to come, and I wasn’t wrong about that.

“It’s bad enough that one rich dude from a well-known family goes into hiding,” he said. “You have an even higher profile than I do. If you go with me, there’s no way we can hide. We’d be too obvious.” That was hard to argue with. If someone was looking for us, it would be easy to do a profile on me. My recent photos with Paris Hilton at the GM fashion show were just one of my many public displays.

“We could dye our hair,” I joked. Probably the only way for us to really hide was to do what Scott Slater had done, and as much as I loved Travis, I wasn’t going to have my entire appearance reworked to spend a month in hiding with him.

“Right,” he said skeptically.

“What if you run into trouble and need help?” I asked, thinking more about this. “How will you get in touch with me?”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone. “This is a burner phone like we got when I was hiding from my father. Keep it handy, and I’ll try to contact you as much as I can. I’m not sure if I can do it often.”

“I am going to be a fucking mess while you are gone,” I said. “I am going to miss you so much. It’s going to feel like part of my soul has been cut out. And I’m going to be worried shitless the entire time.”

“That’s why I was trying to start a fight with you,” he said. “If we broke up, then it wouldn’t be so bad.”

“You’re a stupid fucking idiot,” I said loudly. “That would only make things worse.”

“Yeah, well I couldn’t pull it off anyway,” he said, and seemed annoyed by that. That did nothing but make me angrier at the whole situation, and at him.

“So what happens tomorrow?” I asked.

“We fly back to LA. You go back to the Bay Area, and on Monday, I vanish,” he said.