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Sometimes his mom asks him how’s Lucas? And Mike will disguise a sob as a cough, and say I don’t know.
Lucas is good, Mike thinks. So good it’s almost painful to stare at him and Max’s engagement photos on the fluorescent screen, their smiling faces burning into his retina.
The first picture is of Max’s hand, nails painted Moonstone Bleu, skin freckled and slightly tanned from the Hawaiian sun (looking back, Mike should’ve expected it when he learned they were going all the way to fucking Hawaii.) It’s a thick, diamond-studded band that has a stripe of turquoise running through it, so obviously, perfectly Max it hurts.
The last is of the proposal, Max’s face crinkled and her hands to her lips in surprise, Lucas on one knee, his mouth curled into a nervous smile, even though he’s got nothing to be nervous about – it was a long time coming, their intertwining. Mike remembers many a drunken conversation with Lucas about the whole ordeal.
I don’t know, Mike… he’d mumble, fidgeting the ring in his right, nursing a beer in his left. I want it to be perfect for her. I want us to be – ready.
And Mike would’ve laughed if he wasn’t so hopeful, so stupid. Instead he’d said, gingerly: Take your time. You’ll know when. You always have.
And he tried not to think about it outside of those moments, when they’d eventually end up on Mike’s corduroy couch and each other's lips, Lucas breathing hard, beery exhales into his open, wanting mouth. Lucas always looked so… intense in those dim, fleeting nights, so loving, so intent on pinning Mike to the cushions, like he wanted to cement the two of them there, intertwined, forever.
It always started by wrestling. Heated arguments about the Chicago Bulls, TV shows. Mike would say something slightly rousing, and like clockwork, Lucas would cock his head, punch Mike’s shoulder lightly, and say soberly, Okay, Mike, that can’t be right.
And hell, half the time Mike was just saying anything just so Lucas would stop talking about wedding bands and paperwork and the impending ball-and-chain. Mike would kick his shin, escalating their tussle until Lucas would chase him down the hall like they were thirteen and stupid, until he cornered Mike on the damn couch, until the air shifted and they were sweating and drunk and touching way too much, and simultaneously, not enough at all.
They’d lick into each other's mouths, leave hickies, palm each other through their jeans until they were soiled and shameful. Mike always liked to sit in it after, relishing those sweet moments where they bask in the other's unabashed love, still pressed to each other, wet and sticky, breaths heaving.
But Lucas, ever the clean freak, would get up after a moment, clear his throat, and ask for Mike’s jeans, eyes carefully averted to the side. He’d grab them both a new pair of boxers, and much later, the jeans would show up on his bed, folded and freshly washed, smelling of clean, powdery linen and the slightly woody scent of Lucas’s apartment.
The last time they’d had such a night was after Lucas and Max’s farewell party, almost a year and a half ago. They wanted to move closer to her dad in San Diego. Mike remembers learning about the news over dinner, almost offhandedly, as Max listed off what sights and restaurants and landmarks they had to hit, stars glimmering in her eyes.
Later that night, caught between the bathroom and the bedroom, Lucas asked if that was okay with him. That they were moving away for good.
Mike nodded. How could he not? He’d never seen Max so hopeful. Lucas so happy. He knew he never had a say, when it came to it.
He left their apartment that night feeling dizzied, wanting to call his mom but knowing he’d have nothing to say to her at all. He contemplated calling Will – he knew this stuff best – but it was four AM in New York, and as kind as Will was, he wasn’t without morals, and he probably would have shut Mike down gently.
Which made complete sense. Max was his friend. Lucas was too. What was he thinking?
So the two moved away, and Mike stayed, and someone new moved in (an old married couple, what a premonition), and now they’re fucking married.
He guesses Lucas was ready at last. Oh, fuck it all.
Mike clicks the thumbs-up button and hovers his fingers over the keyboard. He types out What took so long? before cringing, deleting it and typing out Congratulations Official Best Couple, a reference to their Senior High yearbook nomination. He thinks of calling Lucas, but the rational side of him throws his phone across the room, hoping that by doing so, he never has to hear from them again.
—---------
We invite you to celebrate the marriage of Maxine and Lucas, the card says in swirly, gold font. There’s watercolor flowers on the borders, and inside: May 12th, 2014, Carmel-By-The-Sea.
Mike doesn’t realize he’s shaking until he reaches for his phone and hits call under Lucas’s profile picture: him blacked out after his twenty-first birthday surrounded by empty shot glasses. The phone chirps twice before stopping abruptly, the sound of static buzzing through the phone.
“Oh – it’s Mike!”
“Lucas,” he says fondly, but his voice comes out surprised. “Hey, I got your invitation. I’ll be there.”
There’s distant, Max-esque cheering on the other line, meaning he’s on speakerphone. Mike clears his throat.
“Let’s go! I knew you’d make it,” Lucas says confidently, and Mike is stupid, because he can’t stop smiling at how good he sounds, how much he misses his voice.
“Who else is coming?”
“The party, obviously. My family, Max’s dad. A couple guys from the basketball team, Max’s girlfriends from college. It’s a full house. Oh, by the way –”
Mike’s heart quickens. “Yeah?”
“Well,” – a deep breath – “Max and I, we’ve been thinking and talking about this a lot. You’re my best friend, my brother, the heart of the party. I couldn’t imagine my life, or Max’s life, without you. So – be my best man at our wedding?”
Mike laughs, a bubbly, huffy sound. “Is there a universe where I decline?”
“Definitely not this one,” he hears Max call out from afar. He can imagine her now, in her striped boxers, hair in a messy knot, probably tapping away on a computer at the dinner table, one knee propped up on the chair.
“I’d love to,” Mike continues. “But I don’t think I’m the one you want planning the best Bachelor party.”
He means it in the kindest, most earnest way possible, but the words come out a little standoffish, blunt. Mike’s only saying – surely one of Lucas’s basketball buddies would do a better job at party-planning. God knows Lucas had gone to enough of them during their highschool years (after the whole monster-dimension thing) to be well aware of that fact.
Mike had, in what he quoted to be a protestive fashion, boycotted most of these parties, opting to spend his Friday nights playing DnD or movie marathon-ing. Looking back, he wishes he had gone, if only to have seen Lucas young and drunk one more time.
“No way,” Lucas says, always the guy pulling Mike’s head out of his ass. “I wouldn’t pick you if I didn’t trust you with my life. I promise you’ll be fine with a bit of tedious party-planning,” – a laugh, though not unkind – “and anyway, it’ll be you, Will, and Dusty.”
“Oh.” Mike says dumbly. He feels a little stupid, for having thought he would be Lucas’s only best man. They’re the party, after all. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Thank you. I’m always right, actually. No guessing needed.”
Lucas, ever the cocky bastard. Mike huffs into the phone.
“We’ll see how right you are when I make us go, like, golfing or something.”
“I actually happen to like golfing, thank you very much. Dusty would never let that happen.”
“He would if it meant beating your sorry ass at it.”
“On my wedding!” Lucas faux-gasps. “Micheal J. Wheeler, is that a challenge?”
Mike’s heart threatens to beat out of his throat. This familiarity, this easiness of their banter, unlocks a younger, more reckless side of Mike. He feels infinite; he pictures Lucas right next to him, sitting on his cushion on their corduroy couch, feet propped up on the coffee table, giving him a playful smirk that was so Lucas-esque it made his head spin. Mike finds himself buzzy all over, nerves like lit sparklers, aching for a materialized Lucas more than he thought he ever could (if even possible).
“Lucas Charles Sinclair,” he says, unwavering. “I think you’ll regret the day you made me your best man. I can already think of all the hole-in-ones I’ll be winning in two months, just you wait.”
“Yeah, yeah, as fucking if. Do your worst, I dare you.”
“Shut up, both of you,” Max yells, but it’s a familiar sound, and the way Lucas laughs at that, all breathy and excited, only makes Mike’s chest tighter.
They talk for a little while. Mike talks about his new short story for the Atlantic: “On Dissociation,” a little ficlet that he had fashioned from an old writing assignment about a man who took this new-age medicine to purge his incessant daydreaming. It wasn’t very good. He doubts it would even get published – his professor, he remembers, had commented that the man’s relationship with his doctor was “wholly unnecessary and slightly unnerving for a story about addiction,” which had been funny because the story had little to do with addiction at all.
Lucas says he’s been doing well at his new office job, that everyone is so welcoming in Cali and that he’s thinking of coaching a Basketball league for the little kids in the area. Max’s doing well too – she’s a social worker trainee or something of the like. It’s a lot of paperwork, but good paperwork, because there’s little Max won’t do to help those kids, stacks upon stacks of legal jargon be damned.
So they’re great, and they’re well, and they’re married. And that’s great too.
Before they hang up for the night, Lucas asks for the link to his short story.
“It’s not released yet,” Mike rushes to say, partially as an excuse. It’s a really – personal sort of story, like he’s thrown up his guts and pasted them on the wall for everyone to ogle at. But that’s all art, or so Will liked to say. There was an inevitable vulnerability to being a creative, to show yourself to others and let yourself be seen. He just wasn’t ready for Lucas to see him yet.
“Shucks.” Lucas smacks his lips. “Send it to me later?”
“Sure,” he says, even though he knows he probably never will.
“Sweet. Well,” – and he grunts cartoonishly, as if stretching, and Mike would be rolling his eyes if he wasn’t so turned on – “I think I’m gonna go hit the hay. It was nice catching up, dude. Hey, let me know about the best man stuff, alright? I think it’ll be great.”
“You have far too much faith.”
“I’m serious, I trust you guys. And I can’t wait to have all of us in the same place again this spring. It’ll be like the old times!”
Old times. Mike’s mind automatically darts to the hungriest, most sinful of places. When Lucas says old times, does he mean old versions of themselves, too?