The Road to Amazing

The Road to
Amazing

Copyright © 2016 Brent
Hartinger

Smashwords
Edition

For Michael Jensen

And for everyone who fought
for marriage equality —
Talk about a leap of faith!

CHAPTER ONE

I'd come to the end of the gravel
road. If I went any farther, I'd drive straight into Puget
Sound.

"This is wrong," I said to my
boyfriend Kevin, sitting next to me in the car. "It's another dead
end."

"We're going to be late,"
he said. "We need to call and tell that Christie woman." He looked
at the clock on the dash of our rental car. "Oh, geez, we're
already
late."

"No, wait," I said, spotting something
through the pine trees on our left. "I think that's it."

It was early evening, right after
sunset, but through the trunks of those trees, I'd seen the vague
outline of a house. It was grey, and long and angular, like a
collection of boxes all spread out and askew, perched at the edge
of a cliff and looking over the water. It was called the Amazing
Inn, but it wasn't an actual inn, with a desk clerk or a bellhop or
anything like that. It was just a big house you could rent for the
weekend. There wasn't even a sign outside.

"Finally," Kevin said, even as he sat
stiffly in his seat.

The Amazing Inn was located on Vashon
Island in the middle of Puget Sound in Washington State. To the
northeast of the island was the city of Seattle, and Tacoma was
located directly to the south. I read somewhere that Vashon Island
was surrounded by some three million people — all the people
crowded into those cities on the mainland — so naturally you'd
expect the island itself to be crowded too. But it wasn't: there
were only a few thousand people on what was actually a pretty big
piece of land. Every time the state had proposed building a bridge,
the islanders had revolted.

And so, despite being so close to
everything, at least as the seagull flies, Vashon Island was hard
to get to. As a result, it felt a little bit like a world apart, a
place out of time, with woods and farmlands and rolling hills. But
it didn't feel "rural" exactly either, because it didn't have that
redneck-y vibe, with trailer parks and Bible verses posted
everywhere. On the contrary, the island was covered with organic
farms, and artists' studios, and funky little coffee
houses.

In short, Vashon Island
was a cross between Burning Man and
Anne
of Green Gables
.

The part we were on, the upper west
side of the island, was especially empty. It was probably because
of all the steep hills and twisty roads. The forests grew really
thick here, and there weren't very many houses. The ones that were
here, like the Amazing Inn, were built atop cliffs right above the
beaches and coves, and tucked away at the end of long, winding,
gravel roads.

It was funny, because Kevin and I had
been to this exact spot once before, a couple of months earlier,
when we'd decided to rent this house in the first place. It hadn't
seemed so hard to find then, but that had been in daylight. Now it
was late on a Friday at the end of September, and the lights in the
house were all off, which was why it had been so hard to
see.

"We should send out an email," Kevin
said. "Tell everyone it's hard to find."

"Yeah, maybe," I said.

We sat there for a second,
then Kevin said, "So where
is
she? Maybe she already came and left."

He meant Christie, the person who'd
showed us the house before. Now she was meeting us to hand off the
key, and also take us on a final walkthrough. Unlike a real inn,
there wasn't anyone living on-site, so we were going to have the
complete run of the place all weekend long.

I glanced at the clock. "We're fifteen
minutes late," I said. "I can't believe she wouldn't wait fifteen
minutes."

"But what do we do if she doesn't show
up?"

"I guess we could send out an email
about that too. 'Don't come. The ceremony's been
canceled.'"

Kevin didn't laugh, not even a smile.
He was nervous, not just about our being late, but about the whole
weekend. And, well, it was also a really stupid joke.

I guess I'm sort of burying the real
story. Kevin and I were getting married. That's why we'd rented
this house for the weekend. The actual ceremony was taking place in
two days, on Sunday afternoon — sixty-seven guests in all. But we'd
invited our closest friends to join us here for the two days
before, partly to get everything ready, but also because we wanted
to celebrate.

Why didn't I mention this until now?
It's not because I was dreading the wedding — that I had serious
doubts, or last-minute jitters, or anything like that. That's also
not why I made that stupid joke about canceling the
wedding.

Kevin didn't have any doubts either. I
was sure that's not why he was nervous.

He and I met when we were sixteen. We
connected online first, then in person in a park at night (probably
not the best choice on my part, but hey, it worked out in the end).
He ended up being my first romance. We'd been on and off again for
a long time after that, but then two years earlier, we'd gotten
together for good. We'd gone through some difficult times, and also
some really good ones. In the end, I'd been the one to propose, and
he'd accepted without hesitation.

The time had been so right. And ever
since that proposal, I hadn't doubted for one second that it was
exactly the right thing to do.

I wanted to marry Kevin, and I was
certain he wanted to marry me.

It's funny, because contrary to what
the religious nutjobs tell you, I think gay guys like weddings more
than anyone. And it isn't that we're mocking the institution of
marriage, or because we want to destroy it all to hell. It's
because we really, really want to get married.

What a concept, huh?

It makes sense when you think about
it. Almost every older gay person alive today has been told most of
their lives: "You don't fit in! You're not good enough for
marriage! You can't have a star on your belly!"

For a while, that made a lot of gay
people (understandably) angry and offended. "To hell with you!" a
lot of us said. "We didn't want to be part of your stupid old
institution of marriage anyway!"

But then society changed. It said,
"Okay, we've changed our minds. I guess we'll let you get married
after all. You can totally thank us now."

Some gay people were still
pretty bitter about this, especially the older ones who had to put
up with a lot more shit than the rest of us. And every gay person,
except maybe the gay Republicans, was at least a little annoyed by
this expectation that we were supposed to be so incredibly grateful
that society was finally treating us the way we should have been
treated all along, like they were somehow doing us this
huge
favor.

But despite some lingering bitterness,
most of us gay folk went running straight for the elaborate wedding
cakes and flash-mob wedding proposals. "Yay!" we said. "Now we can
have stars on our bellies too!"

When it comes right down to it, a lot
of us gay guys are romantics at heart. You can take us out of a
Broadway musical, but you can't take the Broadway musical out of
us. (Yes, yes, I'm stereotyping shamelessly. But come
on.)

With my entire being, I wanted to
marry Kevin Land, and I was just as certain that he wanted to marry
me too.

* * *

Headlights appeared behind us, tires
crunching on the gravel road.

"Here we go," Kevin said, turning for
the car door. We both stepped out into the little parking area,
which was also sort of a cul-de-sac.

The other car parked next to ours, and
a woman climbed out — Christie, the person we'd met before. She was
this slight Asian woman, a little like a hummingbird,
simultaneously no-nonsense and a little bit flighty.

"Sorry!" she said. "Sorry I'm late!
I'm so, so sorry!"

I was about to tell her that she
didn't have anything to worry about, that we'd been late too, and
only arrived a minute or two before she did, but she didn't give me
a chance.

"Really, I'm sorry!" she went on.
"Just so sorry."

She'd given us about four more
"sorrys" than was necessary. In ten seconds, she'd gone from being
sympathetic to annoying.

I looked at Kevin, both of us rolling
our eyes a little behind her back.

"Don't worry about it," I said to
Christie.

"It's fine," Kevin said. "Can we look
at the house now?"

We grabbed our suitcases from the car,
and Christie led us to the big grey house, apologizing a couple
more times along the way.

"Oh!" she said when we reached the
front door. "You're the ones who are getting married, aren't
you?"

"Yeah," Kevin said, "that's
us."

"That's so great! Congratulations, I'm
so happy for you."

Maybe Christie was this happy about
all the couples who rented her house for their weddings, but I
think part of it was that Kevin and I were a gay couple. And can I
just say? Out of all the people we'd dealt with over our wedding —
caterers, gift registry people, the clerk at city hall — not a
single person had acted weird about the fact that we were two guys.
On the contrary, a lot of people had acted like Christie, excited
by the semi-novelty of it all.

I can't tell you what a nice surprise
this was, especially after all the bullshit you hear about the
horrors of gay marriage from politicians and conservative
Christians.

"Where are you going on your
honeymoon?" Christie asked us.

"We're not going on one," I said. "We
couldn't really afford it. Maybe next year."

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Christie said. "I'm
really sorry."

"It's okay," I said, and behind her
back, Kevin and I smiled at each other again over her new string of
apologies.

The truth is, this time
Christie sort of
had
done something wrong — though not something she had to
apologize for. Kevin and I couldn't afford a honeymoon, and it
sucked to be reminded of that. Hell, we could barely afford this
wedding. The year before, we'd moved from Seattle to Los Angeles,
and now I worked as a barista, trying to make it as a screenwriter,
and Kevin did freelance writing and editing for IMDb. So to save
money, we'd moved the wedding from summer to fall (when the rates
were cheaper), and we'd given up on the idea of a honeymoon
entirely, even a weekend away.