The Best Man Gambit

I'm forty-four years old and I'm hiding behind a buffet tent holding a two-year-old. This is my life.

The kid's name is Wyatt. He belongs to my cousin Cleo. He has a fistful of my collar and he's chewing on it like it's a jerky stick. I let him. It's easier than arguing with a toddler.

The Fitzpatrick reunion happens every August at my Aunt Maureen's place. Big backyard. Tiki torches. A buffet tent that smells like burnt hamburgers by four o'clock every year. Kids everywhere. Aunts everywhere. Questions everywhere.

"So Floyd, you seeing anybody?" Aunt Carol asks me for the third time today. Third time. Same question. Same tone.

"I'm dating around," I say. "It's fine."

"Dating around." She says it like I admitted to a felony. "At your age you'd think you'd want to settle."

I nod and drift away. This is my main skill at these things. Drifting. I've been doing it since I was thirty and people started asking why I wasn't married. Fourteen years of practice.

Here's the honest part, the part I don't say out loud at reunions. It's been a long time since anybody looked at me like they actually wanted me. Not liked me. Wanted me. There's a difference and I feel it every day.

I'm a nanny. That's the job. I watch other people's kids in their nice houses and I go home to my apartment at six. I date off the apps. The apps are a graveyard. I've got a folder of screenshots of conversations that died mid-sentence. A woman named Charlie who ghosted me after I mentioned I babysit for a living. A guy named Marco who only wanted to talk about his gym routine. A woman named Laura who was lovely and then moved to Seattle without telling me.

Three dates this year. One of them checked her phone eleven times. I counted.

So yeah. Stuck. That's the word. Stuck at forty-four, holding a chewed-up collar, listening to Aunt Carol explain my own life to me.

Wyatt spits out my collar and points at the cooler. "Juice," he says.

"Juice. Yeah. Good idea, buddy."

I carry him across the yard. The grass is burnt brown at the edges like always. Somebody's uncle is hogging the grill and arguing about steak temperature with nobody. Teenagers are on their phones by the fence, all of them, in a row, like a panel of judges.

And then I hear the laugh.

I know that laugh. I haven't heard it in probably twenty-one years, but I know it. It comes from over by the drink table. Big, unguarded, the kind of laugh that makes other people laugh even when they didn't hear the joke.

I turn and there he is. Justin.

He's forty-three now. Grey coming in at the temples. Still tall, still built like a guy who played rugby in college and never fully let it go. He's wearing one of those short-sleeve button shirts with little pine trees on it, which is exactly the kind of shirt Justin would wear.

I stand there with a toddler on my hip like an idiot.

Because there is something else I also don't mention at reunions. When I was twenty-two, I had a summer internship in the city, and Justin was around that summer too, and I had a crush on him. A real one. The kind where you rehearse sentences in the shower. I never said a word. Then we were twenty-three, at a party at some friend's apartment, both of us past the point of good judgment, and we kissed. In the kitchen. For maybe ten seconds. And the next morning we both laughed it off over hangover eggs like it never happened, and it never happened again, and then life happened, and now I'm forty-four with a chewed collar.

Wyatt yells "JUICE" again and Justin turns around.

He sees me. His face does this thing. This open, glad thing. He crosses the yard in about four steps.

"Floyd. No way."

"Hey. Yeah. It's me. I come with a toddler attached."

"Whose kid?"

"Cleo's. His name is Wyatt. He's currently running my life."

Justin looks at Wyatt and does a dumb voice at him, and Wyatt laughs, and Justin laughs, and there it is again. That laugh. I feel it in my chest like a low battery warning.

"God, how long has it been?" he says.

"Long time. Twenty-one years? Something like that."

"You look good, man."

"So do you. The shirt is a crime, but you look good."

He spreads his arms. "It has pine trees. It's festive. This is a festive event."

"It's a lawn party for people who argue about potato salad."

"That's every Fitzpatrick event," he says, and laughs again.

I get Wyatt his juice box. Justin grabs two beers from the cooler and hands me one, and we end up standing by the cooler where the shade is, which is where everyone over forty ends up at these things. It's a law.

"So what are you doing now?" he asks. "Last I heard you were doing something with numbers."

"I did that for about six years. Hated every minute. Now I'm a nanny."

He blinks. "A nanny."

"A nanny. Full time. Two families, actually. I watch four kids total and I like it way more than I ever liked a spreadsheet."

"Huh. That's great. Seriously. You were always good with kids at the parties."

"Turns out it's a marketable skill. Who knew." I take a pull of the beer. "What about you? I heard event planning through the grapevine."

"Event planning. Twenty years of it. Weddings mostly. I spend my weekends watching other people's happiest days and going home to a cat."

"Romantic."

"I'm divorced, actually."

I almost drop my beer. "What? Since when?"

"Six years ago now. It was amicable and boring, which is the worst kind. We just sort of stopped." He shrugs. "Marion remarried. She lives in Tucson now with a man named Moe who drives a Jeep. That's the whole story."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know any of that."

"Nobody does. I don't put it in the Christmas letter." He smiles, but it doesn't go all the way up. "What about you? Never married, right?"

"Never even close. My dating life is a graveyard, Justin. I've got screenshots. I could do a museum exhibit. 'Conversations That Died Young, 2019 to present.'"

He laughs for real this time. "A museum exhibit."

"Charlie, Marco, Laura. A woman who brought her emotional support parrot to a second date. A man who spent forty minutes explaining that he's 'a complex guy.'"

"Stop."

"I will not stop. The parrot sat between us on the restaurant booth. It judged me."

Justin is laughing so hard he has to put his beer down. And I'm laughing. And Wyatt is laughing because everyone else is, and for a second the whole yard is just this, the three of us by the cooler, cracking up.

"So yours isn't better?" I ask when it settles. "Divorced event planner with a cat. That's not exactly a winning hand either."

"No, it's terrible. My sister keeps setting me up with her coworkers. I've been out with four of them. One of them brought a résumé."

"A résumé."

"For me. Unprompted. She said I seemed like I had 'untapped potential.'" He shakes his head. "I tipped well and went home and watched a documentary about lighthouses."

"That tracks. That tracks so hard."

"Shut up." He's grinning. Then he goes quieter, turns his beer in his hands. "It's funny. The older I get the more I think about the stuff I didn't do. You know? The doors I just walked past because I was scared or stupid or both."

I know exactly which door he means. I have to look at the tiki torches so my face doesn't say anything.

"Yeah," I say. "I know the feeling."

"Floyd!"

Cleo. Coming across the grass at speed. Wyatt hears his mother and does the full-body wiggle, and I set him down and he runs to her like I never existed.

"Sorry, Floyd, he was driving Aunt Carol crazy. Oh, hey, Justin! I didn't know you were coming this year."

"Last minute," Justin says. "I owed Maureen a favor."

Cleo looks between us with that look cousins get, the one that's already composing a text to somebody. "You two know each other?"

"College," we both say at the same time.

"Well. Catch up, then. God knows neither of you is getting younger." And she's gone, hauling Wyatt toward the swing set.

Justin looks at me. "Your family is relentless."

"You have no idea. Carol's asked me if I'm seeing somebody three times today. Same question. Same face."

"What do you tell her?"

"That I'm dating around. Which is technically true if 'around' means 'into a ditch.'"

He laughs. Then he nods back toward the house. "They're all going to be out here until midnight, you know. Nobody goes in the basement game room anymore. There's a pool table nobody's touched since Uncle Ralph died. It's the quietest room in the state of Pennsylvania."

I know what he's doing. I'm pretty sure I know what he's doing. And my heart does this stupid hopeful thing that I thought was retired years ago.

"Is that so," I say.

"It is so." He finishes his beer. "I'm going to go say hi to Maureen first. Be rude otherwise. But if you got a minute later, I owe you twenty-one years of catching up. And the pool table's free."

He walks off toward the porch. Pine tree shirt, grey temples, that walk I'd know anywhere.

I stand by the cooler with my half-warm beer and my chewed collar and I think, well. Okay then.

* * *

I find Maureen on the porch and she holds both my hands and tells me I look thin, which is her way of saying hello. Then I go hunting for Justin and find him in the buffet tent getting a paper plate of burnt hamburgers, because it's 4 PM and the hamburgers have been burning since noon.

"Grab me one of those," I say. "The burnt ones are the best ones and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise."

"It's true. Charcoal is a flavor." He hands me a plate. "Sit with me before somebody claims us."

We sit in lawn chairs by the fence, eating bad hamburgers, and it's easy. That's the thing. It's just easy. Twenty years of nothing and then this, like we had lunch last week.

"You remember the Fourth of July party," I say. "The summer after the internship. Rick Delgado's place."

And his ears go red. Actually red. This is a forty-three-year-old man with a pine tree shirt and his ears are on fire.

"Floyd."

"That one time," I say. "In the kitchen. Ten seconds, maybe."

"Eight. It was eight seconds."

"You counted?"

"I've had twenty years to count." He puts his plate on the grass. "Look, I panicked. You panicked. We both laughed about it and then we didn't talk for a month and then it was just... over."

"We could have talked about it."

"I know that now. I was twenty-three and terrified and I thought if we talked about it I'd find out you were disgusted."

"Disgusted. Justin. I had a crush on you for the whole internship. The whole summer. You used to bring me coffee."

"You never said anything either."

"No. No, I did not." I look at my plate. "We were a couple of cowards, weren't we."

"The very best." He's quiet for a second. "So we just walk past it again? Twenty years older, same move?"

I don't answer that. Because I don't know yet.

***

The universe gives me an out and an opening at the same time, which is rude of it. Wyatt trips over a sprinkler head and loses his entire mind. Full meltdown, red face, the works. Cleo has her hands full with the twins so I take the diaper bag and carry Wyatt in, and he screams directly into my ear for the entire length of the yard.

I get him settled on the couch in the living room with his juice and about forty percent of his dignity, and I'm standing there rocking the diaper bag like an idiot when the door opens.

Justin. Holding my drink, which I forgot on the fence post.

"Heard you had a situation."

"Sprinkler treachery. He's down for the count."

"Want me to take something? I can carry stuff. I'm built for carrying stuff."

So I hand him the diaper bag and the juice cups and the random sock I found, and he says, "where to," and I say, "basement's quieter," and neither of us mentions that the situation is handled now. We just go.

The basement is cool and dim and smells like old carpet. There's the pool table with the dust cover on it and a couch with a blanket Aunt Maureen has had since the Carter administration. Upstairs, the noise goes all muffled and far away. Kids thumping. Dad rock. Somebody yelling about potato salad.

Justin sets the diaper bag on the pool table and doesn't say anything.

I stand by the couch. He stands by the pool table. There's about ten feet of basement between us and it might as well be an ocean.

"So," I say. "Pool."

"Floyd." He crosses over, grabs my wrist. Not hard. Just firm, warm hand, and my pulse is doing things under his fingers. "We're not twenty-three anymore. Stop overthinking."

"I'm not overthinking."

"You are. You've got the face. I've seen the face in a thousand wedding photos."

"That's my professional face."

"It's your 'I'm about to run' face." He doesn't let go of my wrist. "Look. We can go back upstairs and I'll tell Carol you're seeing somebody, and that'll be that. Or."

"Or," I say.

"Or you tell me to stop right now and I stop. Or you don't, and we see what happens. But we do it on purpose this time."

I look at his hand on my wrist. Then at him. Grey at the temples. Pine trees. The same guy, basically. Just both of us with more mileage.

"Okay," I say. "On purpose."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Come here."

He comes here.

The first kiss is bad. Genuinely bad. Our noses bump and we're both smiling too much and he tastes like burnt hamburger and beer, and I laugh into his mouth and he says "shut up" and pulls me back in. The second kiss is better. The third one, we figure it out. His hand slides up into my hair and mine settles on his waist and the ocean shrinks down to nothing.

"Twenty years," he says against my mouth. "Twenty years and we're bad at this."

"We're getting better."

"We are. That one had technique."

I laugh and he kisses my neck and that's when my hands start moving on their own, up his back, and then, because I'm apparently a braver man at forty-four than I ever was at twenty-three, under his shirt. His skin is warm and he's still built, solid, and his stomach jumps when my fingers trail up his ribs.

"Oh," he says. "Okay. Hello."

"Hi."

"You could've led with that twenty years ago."

"I'm making up for lost time. Give me a minute."

He pulls back just enough to look at me, and he's got that grin, the real one, the one from the cooler that went all the way up. Then he tugs his shirt over his head in one motion and drops it on the pool table next to the diaper bag, which is maybe the least romantic tableau in Pennsylvania, and neither of us cares.

"My turn," he says, and puts my hand flat on his chest.

His chest is warm under my palm. He's got hair there now that he didn't have at twenty-three, a little grey in it too, and I take my time because I've waited two decades and I'm going to be slow about it.

"Look at you, taking a tour," he says.

"Shut up. You got old in a nice way."

"That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all year."

I push him back until his knees hit the couch. He sits, springs squealing under him, and I drop down next to him. The couch complains again. It complains about everything.

"That spring's been doing that since we were in college," he says. "I remember it."

"You remember a spring?"

"I remember everything about this house, Floyd. It's a disease."

I get my shirt off. He watches. He doesn't do the polite thing and pretend he isn't looking, which I appreciate, because I'd rather be looked at than pretended at. Then his hands are on my shoulders, thumbs moving, and I lean into it and kiss his collarbone. He makes a low noise.

"Tell me if you want this," I say. "Plain. I need to hear it."

"I want it. Floyd, I've wanted it since the kitchen. Ask me again if you need to, I'll keep saying it."

"Okay. Then come here."

I get down on my knees in front of him, old carpet under my shins, and work his belt open. He lifts his hips so I can get his jeans down, and there he is, hard, straining against grey boxer briefs, and I pause with my fingers in the waistband.

"Yes," he says before I even ask. "God, yes."

I pull them down. He kicks them off one leg at a time and lands back against the cushions and the springs scream like the couch is being murdered. We both crack up.

"That thing is going to wake the whole reunion," he says.

"Good. Gives Carol something new to ask about."

I put my hand around him first. He's thick and warm and I've thought about this exact grip more times than I've ever admitted to anyone, and now I'm actually doing it at forty-four on a couch older than both of us. I lean in and lick the head, slow, and his breath catches.

"Oh. Okay. Hi."

"Hi," I say, and then I take him in my mouth.

I go slow. I'm out of practice and I want to do this right, so I keep it simple, my hand around the base, my mouth working the top, tongue doing the thing I like done to me because it turns out I know what I like. His hand finds my hair but he doesn't push, just rests it there, holding on.

"Floyd. Jesus. You're good at that."

I hum something back at him and he feels it, because he says a word that isn't a word. His hips lift off the cushion and the spring screams again and I laugh with him still in my mouth, which apparently feels incredible, because he grabs the blanket and says "do that again, do not stop doing that."

So I don't. I settle into a rhythm, taking him deeper each time, and he's making noise now, low and constant, and every noise he makes I want to keep. His thigh jumps under my hand. I feel the exact moment he gets close, the tension running up through him.

"Hey. Hey, I'm close," he says, and it's a warning and I pull off.

"Not yet."

"That's mean."

"Twenty years mean. I want you to last."

"I hate you," he says, and his hand is already in my hair again, guiding my mouth back down.

I work him for another minute, long and steady, until he's right at the edge again and his voice has gone thin. Then I pull off and wipe my mouth and stand up on my knees, and he stares at me.

"You are a cruel man."

"Your turn."

He's up fast for a forty-three-year-old former rugby guy, and I get flipped around and dropped onto the cushions before I know what's happening. The spring goes off like a firework. I'm laughing and he's pulling my jeans down and I'm helping, kicking, and then his mouth is on my inner thigh and I stop laughing.

"Wait," he says, sitting back. "You good?"

"Yeah. Yeah, keep going. Please keep going."

"Since you said please."

He takes me in his mouth and my whole thought process shuts down. He's good at this. He's patient the way I was, steady, and his hand is doing things lower that I won't be describing to anyone at brunch, and I've got my own hand clamped over my own mouth because the basement carries and there are nine children upstairs.

He notices. He reaches up, pulls my hand away.

"Let me hear it."

"The whole family is upstairs."

"The whole family thinks you're fixing the pool table. Let me hear it."

So I let go, quietly, and he gets a reaction out of me that I'll be embarrassed about later, and he keeps going, and the couch is squeaking on every single one of his movements like it's keeping a beat, like it's narrating. I try to warn him the same way he warned me and he pulls off, grinning.

"Not yet?"

"Oh, now you're mean."

"Twenty years mean," he says, my own line, thrown right back at me.

He comes back up and we end up tangled, kissing, his chest against mine, both of us hard and laughing between kisses about the spring, which has now squeaked so many times it's basically a band member. I've got my hand on him again and he's got his on me and we're just working each other like a couple of guys who have exactly one move and are very happy with it.

"Okay," he says into my neck. "Last round. On purpose. Yes?"

"Yes. God, yes."

It doesn't take long after that. It's messy and uncoordinated and the couch performs its entire percussion section, and when it's over we're both slumped back against the cushions, wrecked, panting, my head on his shoulder. His arm comes around me. He finds the blanket and drags it over both of us even though it's August and the basement is cool, which is a nice gesture from a man who just made me forget my own zip code.

The couch squeaks once more, a little settling noise, almost apologetic.

"So that's what we missed out on," he says.

I laugh into his shoulder. "That's what we missed out on. For twenty years."

"We could've been doing this every reunion. Every August. This couch."

"The squeaky couch."

"Our couch."

"That's a terrible thing to call a couch that Aunt Maureen owns."

"It's our couch now. Adverse possession. I'm an event planner, I know about venues."

I turn my head and look at him. Grey temples, pine trees on the floor where he threw his shirt, one sock on. He looks back at me and there's nothing nervous in it, which is new, which is the whole difference between twenty-three and forty-four right there.

"So," I say. "Now what?"

"Now Carol finally gets an answer. You're seeing somebody."

"I'm seeing somebody?"

"You're seeing me. As of about eight minutes ago. I don't do things halfway, ask Marion. Well. Don't ask Marion. Ask Moe."

I'm still laughing when a voice comes down through the floor, thin and shrieking and absolutely headed for us.

"FLOYD! FLOYD WHERE ARE YOU!"

Wyatt. Awake, apparently, and at full volume, and Cleo is going to be up one nanny very shortly.

"Up here," I yell, already moving. "Buddy, don't come down the stairs, I'm coming!"

Justin sits up with the blanket pooled in his lap and watches me hop into my jeans the way a man half my age would. "That was fast."

"You've met my workload."

"Give me your number. Real one. Not the one that dies mid-sentence."

I give it to him. He types it in while I do my shirt, and he sends me a text so I have his, and I watch the pine-tree shirt go back on over that chest and feel genuinely robbed.

"Saturday," he says. "There's a wedding I'm running in Scranton. Come early, I'll show you the venue."

"That an event planner line?"

"That's a me line. Take it or leave it."

"I'll take it."

We take the stairs up two at a time, which at our ages is a decision we'll both pay for tomorrow. Wyatt is standing at the top of the steps in a fresh diaper and a stolen visor, and he launches himself at me and I catch him, and Justin ruffles his hair and waves and heads out through the kitchen the way a man would if he had done nothing all afternoon but look at a pool table.

Aunt Carol intercepts me before I'm four steps into the living room. She's got a drawer open and a look on her face.

"Floyd. Have you seen the cake knife?"

"No, Carol."

"Justin was just in here, did he have it?"

"He did not have a cake knife, Carol."

"Hm." She narrows her eyes at me, then at Wyatt, then back at me. "You look different. Rested."

"I've been downstairs. It's quiet down there."

"Mm. Well. If you see a knife with a white ribbon on it, holler." She shuts the drawer and walks off and I stand there holding a two-year-old who is chewing on my collar again.

Justin, from across the yard by the tiki torches, raises his beer at me.

Saturday in Scranton. I can do Saturday in Scranton.