“You’re doing it, Pinup,” Oscar growled, picking up the enormous cooler filled with drinks and snacks and loading it onto the back of the bus. Everyone agreed to leave their cars in the hotel lot for the day and ride up together, camp-style. To complete the camp theme, Archie was driving us in an old school bus, painted green and white and bearing the name of the hotel across the side. Used by the staff for years on campouts, it added to the ambience of the day, big kids playing in the mud.
Oscar brushed his hands off on his pants, then pulled her close. “Besides, you like it dirty.”
“I’m wondering how many innuendos can be crammed into just one day,” Leo mused, calling out to us through the window as he tugged Roxie toward the back of the bus.
“Speaking of getting crammed in,” Roxie said, laughing over his shoulder as he made like he was going to bend her over the seat.
“It all comes down to in-you-end-oh!” Logan laughed as Chad shuffled by with sleep still in his eyes. He gave Logan the finger, then came to stand by me.
“I’m glad you’re here, really, I am. You’re a great addition to this gang of fools, but will all the adventures you’re going to be planning start at five a.m.?”
“Probably.” I grinned, watching as Logan and Archie hauled bags of towels onto the bus. Sleeping with the manager of a hotel was pretty great when it came to supplies. He’d had the kitchen make up a bunch of sandwiches and salads for the day trip, and then raided housekeeping to get stuff to clean up with after the race. “Mornings are the best time for stuff like this, although it makes for a chilly start.”
Chad shivered on cue, and I pushed him toward the bus, laughing. Archie swung down from the steps, eyes dancing. “You ready to go roll around in the mud?”
I heard Natalie’s voice float across the air, still complaining about how filthy she’d be getting. I waggled my eyebrows. “One hundred percent ready.”
It was a little over a three-hour drive through some beautiful country up to Syracuse. Once we were on the road and everyone had had their coffee, the natural road-trip rules took over and everyone got into it. Beef jerky was consumed, Def Leppard songs were sung—loud and bad as nature intended—and the jokes just got raunchier as the day went by.
Archie drove, I sat shotgun up near him, and everyone else spread out. The gang was chatting, talking, laughing, it was a little like what I imagined traveling with the Partridge Family must be like. About an hour away from Syracuse, Roxie made her way up front, sitting down across from me.
“So how hard will this race be? Be honest,” she asked, looking a little nervous.
“It’s tough,” I admitted, thinking back on some of the courses I’d done over the years. “Not everyone makes it, and not because they’re pussies and just give up, it’s just a really hard race to complete.”
“Great, that’s just great. Leo will finish and I’ll be drowning in the mud with Nat.”
“Not necessarily, there’s tons of guys who don’t finish. Fit guys, super-in-shape guys. Women finish all the time, and there are men just strewn across the course behind them. I’m not saying that’s what’s going to happen today, but you shouldn’t go into it assuming you won’t finish. Go in assuming you will, otherwise you might as well just sit on the sidelines and eat hot dogs.”
“I like hot dogs,” she mused.
“They’ll taste better when you’re eating them afterward, covered in mud,” I said, “and victory.”
“You don’t quit, do you?”
“No,” I answered truthfully. I caught Archie’s eyes on me in the rearview mirror.
“Somehow just the thought that there’ll be a wiener waiting for me at the finish line makes me want it all the more,” Roxie said, and Archie choked back a laugh.
“Wieners are good,” I agreed.
“I wonder if I could get away with having them at the wedding,” she mused, and I tore my eyes away from Archie’s.
“At the wedding? Why in the world?”
“For exactly that reason. It’s the last thing you’d expect at the wedding, which is why it’s kind of terrific.”
“Your mother-in-law’s head will literally blow off her body if you serve hot dogs at your wedding,” I warned. As down to earth and cool as Leo was, his mom was the exact opposite. Blue-blooded, and a little bit cold-blooded from what I’d been told, she was hardly the picture of hippie-style warmth that was Trudy. Roxie had made inroads with Leo’s mom, true enough, but there was still a distance there. A distance that hot dogs would hardly breach.
“Maybe that’s part of the reason I’m thinking about it. I mean, I’d make sure they were really good hot dogs for goodness’ sake, there’s a butcher over in Hyde Park who makes incredible homemade sausage, but I kind of like the idea of having food like that served in that fancy house.”
“So you’re definitely having it on the farm?” I asked. Leo’s farm was located within the grounds of what I liked to call a compound. An enormous old Hudson River estate, the farm fit easily into the hundreds of acres owned by his family, and included a huge and high-up-on-the-bluff stone mansion. Which Leo pointedly didn’t live in, instead opting for a house he’d built himself on the other side of the property.
“I think so, I mean it makes sense. We both love Maxwell Farms, the barn is incredible, and hey, guess what, it’s free.”
“It is beautiful up there,” I agreed.
“But?”
“No buts. It’s beautiful. It’ll be a beautiful day for a beautiful bride and groom and we’ll all eat beautiful wieners.” I felt a strange tug on my heart. I’d of course be back for the wedding, I was in it for goodness’ sake, but I wouldn’t be here anymore. Depending on when they decided to tie the knot, I’d have packed my bags and headed down the mountain by then, off to another hotel, another property, another town, possibly even another country.
I’d be involved in the wedding, as involved as I could be through texting and FaceTime and emails and doing anything and everything I could do to be the best bridesmaid possible. Except for the day-to-day squealing and stressing and laughing and crying that Natalie would be doing with Roxie because she’d be here and I’d be there and unable to fully immerse.
Fully immerse in the wedding?
Fuck it. No. I’ll say it. Unable to fully immerse in this life, the life that the universe was picking up by the fistful and flinging toward me with a metric ton of squealing and stressing and laughing and crying and Archie.
But I couldn’t immerse. I had my own life, I couldn’t just swoop in and piggyback off this one. I’d worked my ass off my entire adult life to make something of myself, to stand on my own and be really good at what I did. I didn’t let anything stop me, or slow me down, or change who I was. I would be there for Roxie, and celebrate her and Leo and the life they’d chosen to live together. But I’d go back to mine at some point.
And suddenly, for the first time ever, I wasn’t so thrilled at the prospect. And that was more dangerous than anything.
I swallowed hard, then forced a smile. “So wieners it is. Are we doing chicken wings too?”