Saturday, March 30th, 2013
Word Count: 2056
“Can’t you tell me where we’re going now?”
Paris was beginning to wonder if it’d actually been a very bad idea to let the honeymoon planning be conducted by Chris in secret.
He could see this going one of two ways. Either Chris had given it even less thought than either of them had bothered to give to the wedding, which had inevitably been planned by other people who could claim to care more about making a spectacle of it than they could, or he’d gone a bit overboard and spent more money than was really necessary on a week-long vacation out of Destiny City. With the engagement ring serving as a precedent, Paris was beginning to wonder if he was about to find himself in a place he’d never even heard of before and couldn’t pretend to belong in.
Where did rich people vacation anyway?
Some of them had their own vacation homes, didn’t they? He knew the Gallos’ had a beach house, and a cabin in the mountains, and Nana had mentioned a castle in Belgium (Paris still hoped she was joking about that), and he was pretty sure there were a few other properties whose exact location he wasn’t yet aware of. Otherwise… rich people went to tiny little tropical islands with weird names, right? Expensive resorts with private beaches and fancy restaurants and butlers.
“Nope,” Chris said, handing Paris the only piece of luggage he’d been allowed to pack himself (his carry on), before ushering him out the door of the honeymoon suite in which they’d spent the night following their reception.
“Can’t you at least give me a hint?” Paris tried.
“You’ve never been there before,” was all Chris would say.
Paris rolled his eyes and jabbed his elbow into Chris’s side.
“What did we say about keeping secrets?” he said.
Chris snorted as if to say “look who’s talking,” but didn’t vocalize his thoughts, probably in an attempt to avoid a pointless argument.
Paris wasn’t concerned enough to keep going and didn’t feel like making a big deal about it anyway. He let the matter go as they made their way into the elevator. From there they descended to the lobby, where his mother, with Cal, Lilah, and Rhiannon, Peter, Michael, Momma, Beau, and Chris’s grandparents were already waiting for them.
“You guys are so slow,” Peter complained. “Come on, I’m starving!”
Momma delayed them for a few moments longer to give the requisite hugs and kisses, keeping an arm around Paris as the group made for the hotel restaurant, where a table for eleven sat in waiting.
They took their seats at random, Peter plopping into the first one he came across and opening his menu to begin making a critical perusal. Paris somehow ended up wedged between Momma and his mother with Lilah in her lap, separated from Chris on his right by the intrusiveness of Momma and Nana. He peered around them to meet Chris’s eye. Chris simply shrugged, bemused, and took a seat between Nana and Beau.
“Aren’t you so excited?” Momma asked, though she appeared far more excited than Paris thought he did at the moment.
“Well, yeah,” Paris said.
“I’ve had your bags packed all week!” Momma exclaimed. “They’re waiting for you in the car.”
“I thought Chris was supposed to do the packing.”
Chris at least had the decency to look abashed when Paris leaned around Momma and Nana to look at him again.
“Oh, well, I thought I’d just help a little,” Momma said, though it was clear by the look on Chris’s face that Momma’s version of helping resulted in her doing everything herself.
“Do I need my passport?” Paris asked.
Momma opened her mouth to speak again but stopped before she could say anything, staring at Paris and perhaps realizing that he’d been trying to trick her into revealing exactly where he should be expecting to go. He’d gotten the passport at Chris’s insistence just in case, but so far had no way to know if he’d even end up using it. Even if Momma didn’t end up giving him the name of the location, her answer would at least clue him in to whether they’d be leaving the country or not.
But Momma only hesitated, and when she seemed to come to a decision she smiled at him and lightly patted one of his cheeks. “You’ll see,” she said.
Paris pouted in an attempt to gain some pity from her, but she just giggled girlishly and turned to look over her menu.
“Mom?” Paris tried next, switching from his right to his left.
His mother just shook her head and looked over her menu through a pair of sunglasses.
“Mom, seriously, you are not hung-over.”
“You’re the one who wanted to be surprised,” she returned instead of confirming or denying Paris’s comment.
“Yeah, well, I hate surprises,” Paris said. He crossed his arms over his chest and gave up for the time being, considering what he wanted for breakfast instead, but looking for any opportunity he could find to trip someone up and trick them into spilling the beans.
The meal passed peacefully enough with a swell of comfortable conversation. Nana revealed the list of names she’d composed at the reception the evening before to be stricken off of her will, to which Michael responded with a snort, Momma and Beau with indulgent smiles, Grandpa Ed with a shrug, and Paris and Chris with a bit of awkward laughter. Then Momma regaled them all with a story of her and Beau’s honeymoon around Europe, which Paris listened to closely for any sign that he might be about to experience the same, while Marissa remained tight lipped about her honeymoon to France with Paris’s father. Michael snarked and made crude comments when he deemed it appropriate to do so, Rhiannon and Cal sat mostly quiet but paid attention all the same, Lilah babbled now and then, passed between Paris’s mother and Cal as they ate, and Peter grumbled about how he wanted to go on vacation, too, and complained when the waitress forgot to bring the catsup for his hashbrowns.
All in all, it was as normal a morning as any other.
Paris shifted with building anticipation, eyeing the clock as the minutes ticked passed or fishing his phone out of his bag to check the time there, as if it would show him anything different. He sent texts to Chris under the table, wheedling him for an answer, but all he got in response were a bunch of “love you”s and “<3”s.
Breakfast felt as if it lasted all morning. In reality it only took an hour and a half for them to order, eat, and pay the bill. Finally, they rose from the table together. Paris grabbed his bag and let himself be ushered out by Momma, who continued to giggle as they went.
They bid their farewells outside—to Nana and Ed, who would be returning to Boston the next day; to Michael and Peter who’d be taking Chris’s car back to their parents’ house; to Rhiannon and to Cal, who would be going home with Lilah; and to Lilah, too. Paris planted a kiss onto one of his baby sister’s chubby cheeks, consenting to hold her for just a moment before passing her off to Cal.
The party accompanying them to the airport consisted only of Momma, Beau, and Paris’s mother. Paris found himself in the backseat, wedged in the middle between Chris (who clasped his hand) and his mother (who would occasionally look at him or touch him like she wished he was five years old again).
It was a mostly silent car ride, with the occasional interruption by way of one of Momma’s overeager comments.
As they drew closer and closer to the airport, Paris began to imagine all the many different places he thought Chris might have planned to take him to.
A European castle. He wouldn’t be able to sleep after hearing all the ghost stories, but the food would be delicious and he’d have the opportunity to speak to people in French.
A tropical island in the middle of nowhere. Fiji? Fuji? He had no idea which name was correct, or where it was located, or what Chris expected to do there except sit out on the beach (okay, and maybe spend a lot of time in bed), but then Paris would get sunburned and feel uncomfortable the whole time and probably come home all red and blistered because of it.
A resort around a bunch of rich old people. They’d be the youngest couple there, unable to drink, barely able to gamble, stuck listening to a bunch of old fogies enumerating upon their youthful days that were now long gone, giving unwanted advice concerning a long, successful marriage that Paris would summarily ignore.
Paris had worked himself up so much by the time they pulled into a parking spot at the airport that he almost dreaded getting out of the car, and had to be encouraged out by Chris’s gentle tug on his hand.
“You’re going to have so much fun!” Momma exclaimed, rounding the car to give them even more hugs and kisses, babbling about how much she missed them already and that she expected plenty of pictures but not to worry about souvenirs because the important thing was that they should enjoy themselves.
“Okay, Mom,” Chris said complacently. “Just let me get our bags.”
He pulled Paris around to the trunk and said, “Oh, and you’re not going to need your passport.”
Startled, Paris had been so anxious that he’d forgotten to keep digging for hints. “Why not?” he asked.
“‘Cause we’re just going to Florida,” Chris said.
“Florida?”
Chris nodded and opened the trunk to get their bags. Paris had just begun to let his thoughts drift back to beaches and resorts and plenty of sunshine, when he noticed that the collection of suitcases Chris was pulling out of the trunk looked nothing at all like the suitcases they usually packed when they went away.
These ones would have looked just as plain as their usual set, except that each was decorated with a silhouette of Mickey Mouse.
“We’re going to Disney World,” Chris said, looking quite proud of himself when he saw Paris standing there dumbfounded.
A part of Paris wanted to start prancing around like a little kid, take some of Momma’s excitement for himself and start skipping and giggling and smiling broadly over the littlest thing, and then sing a round of obnoxious Disney tunes to pass the time in the terminal. Another part of him wanted to play it cool and not let Chris know just how happy he was, because he was nineteen years old and not really a kid anymore, but he didn’t know how to be mature and dignified about it either.
Chris was right, of course. Paris had never been there before. He hadn’t been to a lot of places, but this suited his fancy much more than old, haunted European castles or private beaches on picturesque tropical islands, and Chris had to have known that when he planned the whole thing.
“So I did good?” Chris asked when Paris could find nothing to say.
Paris wanted to be giddy. He wanted to launch himself at Chris and kiss him, then take him by the arm and drag him to the terminal and make him listen to everything he had to say about what he wanted to do while they were there, and how they had to go to all the parks, and ride on all the rides, and “Pooh Bear, I’ve never been on a roller coaster before,” and “I want pictures with Minnie and Mickey and Donald and ev-er-y-one,” and they had to do this and that and this again, and maybe they could take a day to go to Universal while they were there, and how he was so excited he thought he was going to die.
Instead, he did something much more embarrassing.
As Momma and Mom and Beau came forward to hug them and give their goodbyes, Paris burst into tears.
He ugly cried all the way into the terminal, while Chris laughed and grinned a smug grin he must have learned from Michael.
