Long Haul

Chapter 1

Tanner Bradac was a flight attendant, for heaven’s sake: ninety percent of his f*******: friends were gay. He knew from posts, status updates, and news articles on his feed that both Rachel Maddow and Fox “News” were breathlessly awaiting a Supreme Court decision that had something to do with same-s*x marriage. If asked, he probably even could have told you that it was expected sometime in June. His best buddy Jesse was probably on the edge of his seat, too, but Tanner wasn’t an especially political animal. He supposed he’d just as soon not be considered a second-class citizen in the eyes of his country’s legal system, but he had no intention of getting married—least of all now that Jesse was coupled up with hunky Willis and off the market—and his interest in the impending decision and its ramifications could have charitably been described as casual. When his phone jangled him awake on Friday, crew scheduling informed him that a rather grueling day of flying had been miraculously canceled; this was much greater cause for rejoicing than any old Supreme Court decision was ever going to be, and Tanner celebrated by turning off his alarm and going right back to sleep.

Almost always, Tanner and Jesse flew together. By virtue of a fortuitous hire date early in their company’s history, they enjoyed a greater degree of schedule control than many airline employees, and they leveraged this to buddy-bid matching trips. The trips weren’t always pretty, but to Tanner, flying with his best friend rarely felt like work. Most days it was more like they were just hanging out, gossiping and joking around and watching boys walk by, occasionally handing out a Coke or a hit of first-aid oxygen as the need arose.

Jesse had called in sick for this trip, though—and he would be spending the entire three days in the company of a doctor, if anyone asked, never mind that they would be tucked up in a quaint mountainside bed and breakfast in Ouray—and the reserve gods had smiled on Tanner by assigning Jesse’s open position to his favorite little crush. Clark Arnold was a decade too young, a shade too pretty, and entirely too perky for Tanner’s taste, which made Tanner’s stubborn attraction to him annoying as well as distractingly titillating. They had made a very off-hand non-habit of passing the occasional Sunday beer bust together—of “running into” each other at Packers and drinking just enough to be able to blame the heavy petting on the bottomless beer—but otherwise they didn’t hang out. Tanner was nothing like in love with Clark; just because Jesse lasciviously declared something ten times a day, winking like he had a bug in his eye, didn’t make it true.

Clark was fun to fly with, but the prospect of a free day to run around town with the kid held even greater appeal. Seven-thirty was a tad earlier than Tanner would ordinarily have sprung from his bed, but when Clark rapped a second time and called “I brought coffee” through the door of his hotel room, Tanner wriggled into a pair of pajama shorts, undid the security chain, and bade the little bumpkin a warm welcome.

“Thanks for that,” Tanner said, gulping gratefully at the proffered cardboard cup.

“Sure. Lots to celebrate today, figured we might as well start here.”

“Free coffee magically appearing at my door is something I’m happy to celebrate.”

“I wasn’t sure how you drink it,” Clark said, pulling little creamers and a pile of paper sugar packets from the pockets of his figure-flattering workout shorts.

“Black suits me fine.”

Clark shrugged, then set about tearing the little foil tops off and upending one, two, three, four, five creamers into his own coffee, stirring sugars into it until Tanner wondered if maybe the kid wouldn’t rather have just had a milkshake. Big teeth; thick, supple muscles; the shaggy shock of his hair shining like Rumpelstiltskin’s proudest achievement—Of course he’s a milk drinker, Tanner mused.

Once Clark had concocted a suitably sippable confection in his coffee cup, Tanner lifted his for a toast. “To cancellations,” he said.

Clark tapped his cup against the rim of Tanner’s, then said festively, “To equality.”

Tanner shrugged. They tapped cups again. He supposed he could always be counted on to drink to that, even from out of the blue. “And to non sequiturs,” he said.

“You mean you haven’t heard?”

“That we’re laying over until tomorrow? I thought that’s what we were celebrating.”

“Oh, we’re absolutely celebrating that,” Clark said with a grin. “But the Supreme Court ruled on gay marriage this morning. Like, just now.”

“And?”

“Well, and they said yes, or whatever. It’s legal in all fifty states, like pretty much starting now.”

“No kidding?”

“You haven’t been on f*******: yet this morning, I take it?”

“I went back to sleep after scheduling called.”

“Well check it out.”

Tanner plopped onto the edge of the unmade bed and reached for his phone, which was on its charger. Clark sat on the un-slept-in bed across from him and, knee-to-knee, they perused their rainbow-splashed f*******: news feeds, taking turns reading friends’ funnier or more emotional posts aloud.

Tanner didn’t own any property; he didn’t have five hundred dollars in the bank; he had no plans to adopt anybody, inseminate anybody, or otherwise come across a child, and even if he had, he would have been hard-pressed to imagine anyone more “single” than he had pretty much always been. His level of personal investment in marriage equality topped out right about at zero, but after a solid twenty minutes of uninterrupted celebratory posts—pictures of random hot models kissing; pictures of rainbow flags and wedding rings and two-men-in-tuxes cake toppers; pictures from friends who had traveled to other states, and even to other countries, to legally marry, captioned Finally!—he was near tears and grinning so wide his mouth hurt.

“It’s like all anybody can talk about,” he said. “It’s literally every post.”

“Did you see? Even Mile High changed their logo to rainbow for the day.”

Like himself and Clark, a full third of Tanner’s f*******: friends worked for Mile High Airlines. The fluttering rainbow-ized logo had practically choked his feed. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. “It’s like Pride exploded. The President is talking about it!”

“And saying ‘Hooray.’”

Tanner had carefully curated his f*******:—and i********:, and Pinterest, and Twitter; his only Republican friends were relatives, and he was pretty sure he didn’t even know any conservative Christians. He certainly didn’t hang out with anybody anti-gay; why would he? He understood that the news and info-tainment that popped up on his social media platform didn’t necessarily represent a statistical cross-section of America the Beautiful, but still, he was moved to say to Clark, “I’ve never felt so…so…”

And what was he feeling? Proud, sure, but he’d been Proud for a while now, and it’s not like he’d contributed anything to this particular outcome. Happy, yeah, but stuff happened every day that made him happier than this—an unexpected day off and a hot guy bringing coffee to his hotel room but two of the more recent examples. It was exciting, and it felt momentous, and even a little bit subversive, but it was another clip of the President of the United States hailing marriage equality as a step in the right direction that helped Tanner land on exactly the right word. “I’ve never felt so seen.”

“It’s exciting, right?”

“It’s a little bit awesome.”

He met Clark’s eyes and lingered, smiling. Clark’s smile spread wider and Tanner couldn’t bring himself to look away. What could he possibly find in this beige-wonderland hotel room that he’d rather look at?

Outside the room, now that was another story. “I bet San Francisco’s gonna be a scene today,” he said. He walked over to the wall-to-wall window, although it only looked out on the 101 freeway. The city was off to his right somewhere, certainly visible from the right angle at this airport-adjacent perch, but the hotel never gave airline crew the rooms with the views if they could help it. Someone had to look at the In-n-Out Burger, and it might as well be the people who were usually so tired they went straight to bed with scarcely a glance at the window.

“You think?”

“Don’t you? They’ll be dancing in the streets. When scheduling called, I kind of figured Hooray, pool day! But now…”

Clark joined him at the window. “I mean, I’m always down for the pool, but mostly ‘cause I like to see you without a shirt on.” Here he smacked the fur-lined alabaster plank of Tanner’s belly. It wasn’t upholstered with abs like Clark’s, but it was wrapped pretty snug on a thirty-something beer drinker who never went to the gym, and Clark had passed the last hour of more than one beer bust happily pressed up against it. “But now I can put a check in that box, at least for the day. If you wanna go into the city, I’m down.”

Jesse gave him unending s**t for it, but Tanner couldn’t help himself: he loved getting attention from eye candy like Clark. It so happened that he had a level head and a sense of humor and—Tanner knew because Clark had been called upon to prove it—the strength both of shoulder and of character to perform in-flight CPR for half an hour, but when all eyes in the bar were on Clark, Clark’s eyes were on Tanner, and for a guy who’d once been described by a one-night-stand as “a scarecrow with better hair,” the occasional ego boost was not unwelcome. Now that Clark had laid hands on Tanner, lounging with him half-naked by the pool did sound pretty fun…

Suddenly psychic, Clark went on, “Maybe we can chill by the pool for a minute after we get back. Get something really fruity from the bar. You know, in honor of the occasion.”

Tanner chuckled. “Sounds good. When do you want to go?”

Clark shrugged. He was definitely the rise-and-shine type; Tanner could tell by the ripe salty smell of him he’d already been to the hotel gym. “Whenever, I guess. Now-ish? We can find a place, maybe get some breakfast?”

“Yeah, yum. So what, like, half an hour? I just need to jump in the shower and put some clothes on.”

“Clothes?” Clark whined, again touching Tanner’s bare torso.

“Well, I was planning on it. You know, for riding BART and all that. But I guess I don’t have to. I mean, it is San Francisco.”