Hawaiian Wedding

Chapter 2-2

When Lane passed Remy’s email address onto Chell, who he kept thinking of as Shelly, he hoped that would be the end of it. Remy could pass off the wedding details onto her and relax…or, at least, relax as much as he could during grant season. But Lane was working late one evening on the sketches for a planned sidewalk mall as part of a downtown revitalization project his firm was teaming with Remy’s on, when he got an angry email from his lover that simply read, WTF??? Three exclamation points to underscore Remy’s indignation. Lane smirked as he scrolled down to read the attached message.

It was from Chell.

Aloha, it read. No refs needed, brah. Ask Lane to vouch for me. We’re tight. Send me your wishlist and I’ll make it happen. Mahalo!

Though Lane didn’t really know what half the message meant, he got the gist of it. Apparently Remy had asked Shelly for references. Bad move. A moment after he read the email, the phone on his desk rang. He didn’t have to look at the display to know it was his lover. When he answered, he barely managed to say hello before Remy started. “You’re tight?” Remy snapped. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Does she think I don’t need to know who else she’s worked for in the past because she knows you from back in the day?”

“Hello to you, too,” Lane said.

Remy sighed in disgust. “I have half a mind to fly out there and set this whole damn thing up myself.”

“Right now?” Lane glanced at his desk calendar—grants were due in less than a month’s time. “How are you going to explain it to your employees when you have to let them go because there’s no money in the company after you failed to secure federal funding for future projects when you ran off to Hawaii to elope during grant season?”

“s**t,” Remy muttered.

Lane let him simmer. Sometimes with Remy, the best thing to do was let his anger peter out. Anything Lane said to try to calm him down would only stir the pot more.

After a long moment, he asked, “Do you vouch for her?”

Rubbing his eyes, Lane admitted, “What do you want me to say? I haven’t seen her since high school, so I don’t know what she’s like now. Hell, we weren’t even really friends then, it’s just her locker was next to mine so she sort of knew me. I think she thought I was cute or something. And…” He laughed at the sudden memory that came to mind.

“What?” Remy asked, suspicious. “And what?”

“One year my sister had a party,” Lane explained. “Shelly snuck in a bottle of Mad Dog, or whatever it’s called. We didn’t know until she was s**t-faced. My parents were out for the evening but they’d said no alcohol, and Angie was terrified they’d find out, so she confiscated the bottle and told me to take Shelly upstairs to her bedroom and try to keep her out of sight until she sobered up. At some point Shelly started coming onto me and I…I had to tell her I wasn’t interested.”

Through the phone, Remy laughed. “I bet you weren’t.”

Lane grinned. “She was insistent. When I said no, she started to cry. Said it was because I thought she was ugly, that all the other kids thought she was weird, stuff like that. Finally I told her I liked guys just to shut her up. She passed out shortly after that and didn’t even remember any of it the next day, but I was a nervous wreck for weeks because I was so sure she’d tell the whole school I was gay. No one else knew but my sister. I was so sure my secret was out.”

“Wait,” Remy said, “she knows now, though, right? I mean, she knows you’re marrying me, right?”

“The whole world knows,” Lane assured him. “Hell, it’s on Facebook.”