Something Wilder(6)

The cab pulled up in front of the terminal at JFK, and they climbed out, retrieving their bags from the trunk. “Cost wasn’t what kept me from inviting you,” Leo explained as they made their way into the terminal. “Your habit of hitting on my little sister’s friends was.”

“They’re legal,” Bradley reasoned.

Bradley was his oldest friend, the one who’d picked Leo up when his world fell apart a decade ago and stood by him while he found his footing again. He was the teasing stand-in uncle and the joking, lighthearted counterbalance to Leo’s overprotective and overcompensating tendencies. He was also a shameless player.

“But still ten years younger than you,” Leo reminded him.

“Ten years means less when you’re older.”

“It still means a fair bit, Bradley.”

He smirked at Leo. “You’re changing the subject. You spoil her.”

“A man wearing a Rolex and a Prada crossbody should be the last person giving me a lecture on spoiling someone. It’s not like you need a free meal, either.”

“No, but I’d like one.”

Leo laughed at Bradley’s winning grin. “Cora’s moving to Boston. You know it was my job to get her through school.” Get her through school, yes, but also be her brother, father, mother, and benefactor, and make up for every tiny bit of adoration that had been robbed from his baby sister ten years ago.

“And you did that. Along with a weekly allowance, no student loans, and an apartment four blocks from the Columbia campus.”

“Which she shares with three other people,” Leo reminded him. “She’s not rolling around in a penthouse.”

Bradley waved this off. “Where we’re going, she won’t be able to call you. Will she be able to function without Big Brother?”

Leo was already sick of this conversation. “She’ll be fine.” At least, he hoped she would. “She’ll be too busy enjoying Paris to worry about checking in anyway.”

“But how will you be?” Bradley pressed.

“What do you mean?”

“Leo, this is the first trip we’ve ever taken where we can’t check work email or take calls.”

Dodging around a family repacking a suitcase at checkin, he cut a glance at Bradley. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve been mentally preparing for isolation based on your horrible packing list.”

“Horrible?” Bradley repeated, feigning offense.

They stepped up together to the ticketing counter, handing over their IDs.

“I don’t own cargo pants,” Leo told him. “And ‘heeled boots’? Are we talking Purple Rain or construction worker?”

“You know the rules. Don’t question, just pack.”

“I do know the rules,” Leo said, “but when I saw ‘hat with stampede string,’ I didn’t even know what that meant.”

In fact, Leo knew exactly what it meant, but the thought of why he might need a heeled boot and a hat with a stampede string made his stomach turn. Which was why he’d put off packing until this morning, when he finally—frantically—shoved everything into his duffel bag. Each of the three friends had a set of rules for these trips, spoken and unspoken. For example, Bradley refused to travel to Key West because the family of a woman he’d drunk-proposed to in 2012 owned nearly a quarter of the restaurants in town. Walter refused to visit any state with a real possibility of tornados. Leo’s unspoken rule had always been No horses. Bradley knew better than anyone why.

So even if this vacation didn’t take them to Wyoming, being near horses would undoubtedly take Leo back to a mental place he had—according to several ex-girlfriends—not emotionally unpacked.

The annual vacation tradition had begun the spring after he’d returned from Laramie, hollow and heartbroken. Bradley, acting on an equal number of good and bad intentions, had planned a guys’ trip hiking upstate while Cora was at YMCA camp in Vermont. On that trip, Leo had laughed out loud for the first time in seven months.

The following year, the three of them went away again, on a road trip to Maine that Walter planned. After that, as their incomes improved, so did the trips. There had been wine tasting in Oregon and cheese making in France. They’d swum with dolphins in Ensenada and kayaked through glaciers in Alaska.

Given that Bradley’s last getaway, three years ago, was a week in Ibiza, when Bradley had put “bail money” on the packing list—and good thing Leo and Walter had taken him seriously—they’d been mildly trepidatious about this year’s plan.

Leo was pulled from contemplating this any further when a voice from behind them boomed, “What’s happening, pussies?” They were surrounded by at least a hundred other travelers, and there was no reason to assume these words were directed at them, but Leo didn’t have to look to know that they were. While every traveler in the vicinity turned to see who had just shouted the word pussies in the middle of a goddamn airport, Leo turned to gape accusingly at Bradley.

“Seriously?” he hissed. “You invited him?”

Bradley immediately shrank back.

A reluctant glance over his shoulder revealed exactly what Leo expected: Terrence “Terry” Trottel—a man who had never served in the military yet was decked out in full camo gear and carrying a military-grade pack slung over his shoulder—sauntering straight toward them. Tall, thin, impulsively tattooed, and ineptly bearded, Terry was the kind of book that could be accurately judged by its cover.