Chapter 2

CHAPTER

TWO

ARCHER

E li groaned and dropped his head onto the kitchen table dramatically. "Are you sure we have to do this now? My brain is tired from a week of shaping young hearts and minds."

"I know, but it's short notice, and if we don't get some place booked this weekend, we might not be able to get in anywhere. And come on, it's a bachelor party. How hard can it be to plan?"

Eli lifted his head and raised an eyebrow—one that sported two piercings. He was still rocking that messy art student vibe that I'd found so attractive when we first got together, and honestly? As his confidence had grown and he'd settled into his teaching career, he'd just gotten hotter. His hair was shaved at the sides and longer on top now, and he was sporting a half sleeve that had more than one of the moms at the private school he was teaching at taking a second—and third—look. Quite a few of the dads too. Eli pretended to be annoyed, but I'd caught him preening when I stopped by to collect him after school more than once.

I didn't mind. They could look all they liked. I was the one who got to touch.

"We're supposed to be looking at houses this weekend," he said, and shot me an exasperated look, as though it was all my fault that we hadn't found a place yet. The lease was running out on our rental, and we'd hoped to be able to move into our own place when it ended, except that every house we'd looked at so far was just wrong. And that wasn't because either of us was being too picky, I didn't think, just that our vision of a house—something modest in both size and budget—didn't match our realtor's vision of a house—surely the gays wanted something fabulous ? And fabulous was pretty thin on the ground in Hopewell.

Yeah, after all these years we were back in Hopewell. It felt strange, seeing the places we'd hung out at as college kids. Not much had changed in Hopewell, but we had, and we were now seeing a side of the place we'd never seen before—our weekends were spent driving between neighborhoods to look at houses, instead of the takeout places, the cinema, the liquor store, and Hole Foods.

Although, the liquor store normally got a workout after house hunting. There were only so many times you could hear "I know it's out of our agreed range, but isn't it darling?" before you wanted to stab yourself in the eye with a white fence picket. I was pretty much done with the whole process—and by the glum expression on his face, so was Eli.

"Okay," I said, reaching across the table and taking his hand, "how about this? We'll leave the party planning for now. And tomorrow we tell Jeannette that if she can't find us something in our budget then we'll forget the whole thing."

"Archer," Eli said, "I don't want to call her bluff and end up living in a trailer park."

"She's not the only realtor in Hopewell, is what I mean."

"No, but she's the best."

"Is she, though? We only have her word for that."

It was true. Jeannette's business card boldly proclaimed her to be, "The Best in the Business." Then again, you'd hardly add "Except for Larry a few blocks over." It was time we looked for a Larry .

"Anyway," I said, with more confidence than I felt, "after all this house hunting bullshit, organizing a bachelor party will be easy, right?"

Eli gave me a thumbs up, but he didn't look any more convinced than I was.

Because a normal bachelor party? Finger food and booze and maybe some strippers, right?

But for this bachelor party? That wouldn't cut it.

We were definitely out of our depth.

I was woken far too early the next morning by Eli gently shaking me. "Noooo," I mumbled into the pillow. "Saturday. Sleep."

Eli shook harder. "Wake up. I think I've found our house."

I rolled over toward him. His eyes were bright with excitement as he held out his phone. "New listing!" He waggled the screen an inch from my face. "Look!"

Okay, that had me shuffling into a sitting position and holding my hand out. Eli shimmied up the bed and sat next to me, resting a head on my shoulder as he opened the listing. "It has everything we want, and the price is right."

That sounded like the sort of lie Jeannette might tell us, but as I read the details and flicked through the pictures, I started to think Eli was right. "Jeanette isn't the agent."

"Good," Eli said. "I think she thinks we're secretly richer than we're telling her. I blame you. I'm a school teacher. I'm supposed to be poor. But you should have told her you worked at the CVS, not that you were a lawyer."

"But I am a lawyer," I said.

"One day, you're gonna get the hang of lying." He kissed my cheek. "Ugh, morning breath. Sorry."

He flung the comforter off him and padded, bare ass naked, to the bathroom to brush his teeth. The view more than made up for the morning breath. I considered following Eli to the bathroom and dragging him into the shower for a quick and messy handjob, but then my attention was caught by the listing again—which probably said more about how desperate I was to buy a house than the state of our relationship, because normally I would have been naked and wet by now.

"You should go look at the house!" Eli called, his voice muffled by his toothbrush.

"What? What are you doing today?"

"I told Marta that I'd help set up for her Model UN," Eli said. "Sorry. But I should be done by about eleven."

Now that he said it, I remembered him telling me something about it earlier in the week. I felt bad for not recalling, but Eli understood. This was my first year at a new practice, and there was a lot to learn. Not the law, as such, but the local stuff, like which judges liked us, and how Cal Fisher ran his office. Cal was a Hopewell institution. He dealt mostly with criminal law, though he liked to dabble in the occasionally interesting civil matter. When I'd heard he was looking to take on someone in family law, I hadn't expected to even get an interview. I'd only been practicing for a few years, and I was definitely still a little green. But Cal had liked me, and he liked that I knew Hopewell from when I was at Lassiter, so he'd offered me the job. Hell, he said that in a couple years we could talk about me becoming a partner, which was crazy. A good crazy though. A how-did-I get-so-lucky crazy.

Which was how I felt every time I looked at my life, honestly.

Even on Saturday mornings like this one, when instead of spending a couple hours in bed with my boyfriend, I was heading off to look at a house, while he was on his way to the high school he taught at. Model UN... they still had those? I guess I wasn't surprised, really. Of course I'd done Model UN when I was in high school, along with debating, and any other future-lawyer kind of extracurriculars I could sign up for. It just surprised me that Eli was getting involved, when, by his own admission, his only extracurriculars at high school had been reading manga and smoking pot. And they hadn't been approved by the school.

But Marta was new to teaching just like he was, so they had each other's backs. This weekend he might be helping her with Model UN, and next weekend she might... I don't know, help scrub out the kilns or something. Did you have to scrub out kilns? I wasn't really up to speed on kiln maintenance. I'd supported Eli when he'd decided to ditch his business major and train to be an art teacher instead, but that didn't mean I understood all the details of his work.

The point was, while Eli was heading off to school for a while, I was going to check out the house instead of spending the morning relaxing, and I wasn't even mad because this house looked like it might be perfect. Well, for a given value of perfect. It was streets ahead of anything else in our price range, that was for sure. I wondered briefly if someone had died there, and decided I didn't care. Someone was bound to die in every house eventually, right?

I called the agent, Jim. I tried not to sound too eager when I arranged to meet him at the house on Ramsay Avenue at eleven, but I wasn't sure I quite succeeded. Still, at least I didn't tell him I was a lawyer. Baby steps, right?

The house was in a good neighborhood. It was close to City Point, though maybe not technically in it. And Eli and I didn't care about the schools nearby or anything. And it wasn't a fancy house, but it was charming enough that if I ever had to invite Cal and his wife over for dinner, I wouldn't feel embarrassed telling them where I lived. There were certain standards you had to cultivate when you were a lawyer in a town like Hopewell—I'd tried to explain this to Eli once without sounding like a pretentious dick, and I wasn't sure I'd managed it—and this house worked.

At eleven, I pulled up in front of the house, and a middle- aged man with a genuine smile and no trace of a fake tan or veneers strode across the lawn to meet me.

"Archer? Jim. Jim Hopewell, like the town, ha. Nice to meet you!"

Jim was far more laid back than Jeannette. During our initial conversation the words "future resale consideration" were conspicuously absent, which was already a point in his favor. Jim asked what I was looking for, instead of telling me, and was happy to let me poke around the place without acting like he was about to spring a pop quiz on me at any moment. He also didn't have a list of other, better properties in case I didn't like this one.

Well, he probably did, but he didn't try to shove it down my throat. And he didn't have a card that told me he was ‘the best in the business', which meant he probably was. In short, I liked Jim. And I liked the house, too. Sure, there were a whole lot of stairs, and two of the four bedrooms were slant-roofed attic rooms that we'd probably use for storage. But the living area was bright and airy, and there were three bathrooms, a newly refitted kitchen and a trim, well kept exterior with fresh paintwork, and it was all the two of us needed. But more than that, it gave off an inexplicable sense of rightness. Eli had said all along that when we found our perfect house we'd just know , and suddenly I got what he meant. This felt like a space made for us.

"I like it," I said, opening and closing the kitchen cabinets for the third time while checking my watch.

Eleven thirty. Where the hell was Eli? I wanted him to see this place, and see if it felt as right to him as it did to me. I shot him a quick text.

Where are you?

Jim cleared his throat. "So you're new to town? "

"Yes and no," I said, silently grateful that he wasn't showing me the door yet. "My partner and I went to Lassiter."

Jim nodded. "And what do you do for a living?"

"I'm a lawyer," I said.

"Well, you won't have any trouble getting finance in place then!" Jim said with a laugh, and thankfully didn't immediately ask me why I wasn't looking to buy in Jordan on the James. "And your partner?"

"High school teacher," I said, a smile creeping onto my face as I remembered how I'd mistaken Eli for an art student all those years ago, because of his lip ring and his scruffy dark hair. I guess I'd been more prescient than either of us had known at the time. Mind you, I'd also thought I was straight, so maybe not.

"A professional couple," Jim said with an easy smile. "Well, you'll fit right in this neighborhood." He glanced toward the window as tires crunched on the gravel driveway. "That sounds like your wife now."

"Oh," I said, "we're not married yet. And it's not?—"

There was the clatter of footsteps and the front door swung open as Eli almost fell over his feet in his haste to get inside. "Hey! I'm sorry I'm late," he said, eyes wide, "only Latvia threw up in my car."

He was wearing torn jeans with a broken zipper, red Converse, a faded Ramones T-shirt, and his hair was the messiest I'd seen it since college. When he'd left home this morning he'd been wearing a blue polo shirt and chinos, so somewhere along the line something had clearly gone horribly wrong.

In fact, I was pretty sure the clothes he was wearing now had been donated to Goodwill months ago. Or, he'd been driving around with them in his trunk this whole time. Which also tracked.

"Latvia?" I asked.

"Latvia, you know, between Lithuania and Estonia," he said, as though that made anything clearer. "So, I promised Marta that I'd go get food for her kids. And this kid who is Latvia, his mom was there too, so Mom and Latvia volunteered to come along and help." He screwed up his face, his nose wrinkling. "I think his name is Deshaun? Anyway, we went to McDonald's, and do you even know how much it costs to get fifteen cheeseburger meals?"

Jim was watching, rapt.

"You will," Eli said, "because I paid with your card. So, on the way back, Latvia is like, ‘Mr. Fuller, can I drink my shake in your car?' And I said, ‘Sure, just don't spill it!' The good news is, he didn't spill it. The bad news is he projectile vomited everywhere , so on the way here I had to find a car wash with a wet vac. And his mom was like, ‘This is why I bought you that Lactaid!' and I was like ‘You didn't think to mention his lactose intolerance before now?'" He looked around the empty living room. "Wow, this place is great . We probably can't afford it now, because I want a new car. I mean, I got everywhere I could reach, but does the smell ever really go away?" He stuck a damp hand out to Jim. "Hi, I'm Eli, Archer's partner."

Jim, in a testament to his professionalism, only hesitated for the briefest second before he reached out to shake Eli's hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Eli. Let's take a look around."

Yeah, he was definitely going to be our agent from now on, and we were probably going to buy this house. And a new car for Eli. I'd bet Jim knew a guy.

"Holy shit," Eli said later that night, as we sat in front of the TV in our apartment, the pizza box open on the coffee table. "Did we just buy a house?"

"Pending finance and inspections and paperwork? Yeah."

"Fuck," Eli said under his breath. "Arch, we don't have enough furniture to fill a whole house." Then he snorted. "Look at us, adulting all over the place. Talk to me about stocks and bonds!"

"I don't know anything about stocks and bonds."

"Me neither! Should we?" He laughed. "But look at us, with our cars and our house, and our 401ks. The fuck did that happen? We are the adultest adults."

"Uh huh," I said dryly. "Are we adult enough to plan this bachelor party?"

"Oh, shit." Eli reached forward and grabbed a slice of pizza. "I've been repressing that. Can't someone else do it?"

"I'm best man, so no, not really."

"Just..." He shook his head. "What sort of party do you have for those two? I don't think beer and wings is gonna cut it."

"Maybe not beer and wings, but what about a cocktail night?" I asked, in a moment of inspiration.

Eli gasped. "At a museum !"

"Is that a thing?" I asked.

"I don't actually know. But we should find out."

"Maybe not a museum," I said, thinking of Marty and priceless objects in close proximity. "But a private room somewhere with a bartender and shots. Then if it gets messy it doesn't matter. And they're not expecting any kind of bachelor party, so really we're winning just by turning up."

"One of them's not expecting a party," Eli said with a grin. "The other one is a secret sap who expects us to plan something that might pass as classy."

" Classy ," I said. "I have a feeling our definitions of the word are very different."

I had no problem being asked to find some place for a bachelor party. The problem was the short notice. To start off with, neither of them had wanted a bachelor party at all, which was pretty on brand. But then last night I'd received a text message:

Change of plans. Need a bachelor party and it has to be classy .

It had been followed up ten minutes later with:

Please.

It was the ‘please' that got me. It meant the situation was desperate. So now, with a week to go until the wedding, I had to find some place in Richmond that wasn't just classy, but could also fit us in at short notice.

"We bought a house today, Arch," Eli said. "We can find a—a fancy fucking whiskey bar or whatever."

I blinked at him. "A fancy whiskey bar would be perfect, actually."

"Really? In that case, I'm a genius," Eli said. He grabbed his phone and tapped at the screen, pulling up a list of whiskey bars.

Two phone calls and one private booking later, I had to agree.

"Have I told you how awesome you are?" I asked. "In a single day you've managed to find our perfect house, plan a bachelor party on the fly, and wrangle a vomiting Latvia."

Eli wrinkled his nose. "That last part was more traumatic than anything. I might need another shower."

I laughed. "Babe, that's three showers today. I think you're clean."

Eli waggled his hand in a so-so gesture. "I dunno. Regurgitated milk is the worst ." He bounced to his feet and headed toward the bathroom, stripping out of his tee as he walked and calling, "Wanna join me?"

"Yeah," I said, a smile spreading across my face. We were older now, and adultier, but one thing hadn't changed. After all this time, Eli Fuller still made me weak at the knees.

And he always would.