Chapter 40: Honeymoon: Part 2.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Fosters.
AN: Please leave lots of reviews. All of them are greatly appreciated. This is the last of honeymoon chapters. It may seem rushed, but I decided to shorten the honeymoon, because I want to start a new arc in Chapter 42, and I need Chapter 41 to be a transition chapter.
Connor's POV:
The rest of the week flew by faster than we could have imagined it. Every day, after sleeping in until twelve thirty in the afternoon to sleep off the nights of intense physical activity, Jude and I spent the days exploring the island.
We tried to play golf at one of the courses, but neither of us could take each other seriously in the typical golfing outfits. To be honest, the only part of my outfit that didn't look absolutely hideous was the black beret. We both looked so ridiculous, that the game immediately degenerated into the two of falling over laughing while trying to play the game, while driving a golf cart at near supersonic speed between holes. I laughed when Jude got so frustrated at not hitting the ball, that he started ranting. He got so pissed that when he caught somebody looking at us as if we'd lost our sanity, Jude nearly flew at him, threatening to put the fear of god into him with, and I quote: the glorified tire iron you snobby bastards call a golf club.
I have never laughed so hard in my entire life. I was literally on the ground laughing.
Needless to say, we were asked to leave soon after. Jude was relieved to be leaving the golf course, but he still used the golf cart to do gleeful donuts on the back nine while laughing uproariously while I stood nearby, again clutching my side at my husband's complete and total lack of sanity in his gleeful display.
We went to Fort Holmes, the highest point on the island. The view was extraordinary. You could see the whole of the Straits of Mackinac from up there, and we took many pictures and selfies, and kissed a bunch. We visited Fort Mackinac, all the while Jude listening patiently as I rattled off trivia that I had read in a fact book I had bought online prior to leaving San Diego. Again, we took lots of pictures on Jude's camera, and kissed a bunch more.
In fact we did that a lot. Kissing. When we visited Arch Rock, we had our guide take a picture of us kissing under it. At the Round Island Lighthouse, we took a selfie with the lighthouse in the background, and again our lips were locked. In Eagle Point Cave, which we had stumbled across quite by accident on a hike and decided to have our lunch there, we ended up kissing again, and then a whole lot more than that. We probably spent way too much time kissing, but neither of us can bring ourselves to fucking care.
Tonight, we swam in Lake Huron for hours on end. In the end, when we were both tired out, we finally dragged ourselves from the lake before curling up together on a blanket on the deserted stretch of beach to watch the sunset. We bantered, and I tickled him quite intensely after a particular jest that just screamed "shots fired" and begged for swift retaliation. And yes, we kissed. A lot. Again. You can probably sense a pattern here. In fact if you haven't, I would be worried about whether or not your IQ begins with a decimal point, because it's pretty obvious.
As Jude and I sat together on the beach, his arms wrapped around me and his head tucked into the crook of my neck, the hot summer sand drying us, we watched the sun slowly fall beyond the horizon, the sky turning from blue to orange, we held each other tightly, content just to stay in that moment forever. We both knew that tomorrow was the day we were going home, the day we would finally turn our cell phones back on after a week's absence. The day we returned to our lives in San Diego.
Jude placed a kiss on the side of my head before returning his head to its previous position.
"I don't want to go home tomorrow." He said.
"I don't either. But we have to." I said.
He made a whining noise, and I snorted in amusement.
"I bet you when we turn our phones back on, we'll have at least a hundred messages from everybody..." I joked.
"Oh, don't even joke." He moaned, "It'll take the whole flight back to sort through them all."
"... Plus tomorrow we find out if our album was a flop or not." I commented, "I'm kind of eager to find out how many copies have sold."
"It's only been five days," Jude said, "Probably not that many."
"Hey maybe if it does well enough we can buy a summer house up here?" I joked.
He giggled.
"Sounds like a plan dear."
I laughed.
"That sounds so weird coming from you." I laugh, "It'd be like me calling you honey."
"Or sweetie." He added with a giggle.
We lapsed into comfortable silence as we watched the sky darken as the sun fell below the distant horizon.
"We should probably head back to the hotel." Jude said, unwrapping himself from around me and holding out a hand for me to grab. I accepted the hand and pulled myself to my feet. We packed up our stuff and started the hike back to the Grand Hotel.
It took us an hour to complete the trek back to our hotel room. By the time we got inside and undressed, we were exhausted. Not so tired that we couldn't have sex, but still very tired. Even after that it was the earliest night we got to sleep the whole week, at just after 10:30 at night.
We awoke at just after 9:30 the next morning. After enjoying a shower together, we dressed and packed our bags. We were met at the steps of the hotel by Maxwell and his golf cart, ready to take us back to the airport where the plane waited for us to take us back to San Diego.
He almost had a heart attack when he saw we had three boxes filled with saltwater taffy, and two more filled solely with fudge.
We got a kick out of that.
Too soon, we were in the air, staring out of the windows at the island bellow us. An island that both Jude and I had grown to love in the cruelly short week we had spent there.
Jude and I shared a look about ten minutes into the flight.
"Ready?" I asked.
He nodded.
"I'll go first." He said.
Jude pulled out his cell phone and pressed the power button. After a few seconds, it booted up.
"Well, that's anticlimactic." He said.
He only had five missed text messages, and one missed call.
I pulled out my phone and did the same.
I only had three missed texts, two missed calls and one email.
"Huh. Not a bad as I expected." I said.
I flipped through my text messages. One was from my parents, telling me that they had picked up my car from the airport, but would be waiting for me at the airport when we got back, and to enjoy my honeymoon. The rest were from the band. One included a link to a website.
"They sent me a link to a review about the album." I said.
"They sent me the same one." Jude said, "This is it. This is the moment we find out if all that work was for nothing."
I opened the link.
"What does it say?"
I breathed deeply and began to read.
"When it was announced months ago that Metallica had signed an unknown San Diego metal band, comprised of six members, with a two gay couples, one on dual lead vocals and the other on guitar and bass, to their record label, many people were skeptical about this. We all knew that any band handpicked by Metallica would sell an assload of records without even trying. What kind of band would it be they asked. Based on the first two singles released by the band on their four song debut EP, both of which were relative hits, many of the most cynical people in the world o heavy metal thought as one, another band trying to resurrect the dying art of thrash metal, a genre where the only bands left that could play that kind of music were members of the old guard with only one or two exceptions. Bands like the Big 4, Testament, Overkill, Exodus, and Kreator. When I popped in Cold Embrace's debut album for the first time, it was just out of curiosity to see what Metallica's protégé band sounded like. I expected a carbon copy of the legendary thrash band, with a more amateurish sound and clumsier style of playing. I expected a band trying desperately to fit into the mold that it had forced itself into an identity crisis. But that is in no way what I got. What I got was a great fucking album."
"Finally," Jude interjected, "I was beginning to think the worst."
"What I got was a musically diverse album from a band that are comfortable in their own skin, playing high speed thrash one track, a ballad the next, a Slayer-esque song to follow, and a doom metal track after that. I see why this band caught old Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield's attention. They're just that fucking good. The opening track, a rerecorded version of the bands first single, Demon's Charm, was relentless in its savagery. The doom and gloom of the hauntingly beautiful Memories is enough to give me goose bumps. My hats off to you guys. Keep this up, and we'll be calling it the Big 5 of Thrash before the end of next year."
Jude and I sat in silence.
"It's kind of irritating that some people still think gay people can't play good metal music." Jude pointed out.
"Yeah, but it's still a good review." I said, "I wonder what James said in his email."
I opened up the email and handed it to Jude for him to read.
"It was sent yesterday." He said.
"Read it."
"Dear Jonnor..."
Here Jude paused and looked to me, as if waiting for something.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing, it's just usually you interrupt and rant about how much that relationship title irritates you." He said.
"It's grown on me." I said, "Keep reading."
"Dear Jonnor, Hope you are enjoying your honeymoon. Can't wait to see you guys when you get back. Oh, and advance warning, don't freak out about the fact that your bank accounts are considerably fuller than they were when you guys left. The projected sales for the album during its first four days was a bit off. The album sold..."
Jude paused, and his eyes widened.
"Holy dear mother of god." He exclaimed.
"What?" I asked, "How many?"
Jude gulped.
"Connor," He said, "The album s-sold fourty seven thousand copies in its first four days."
I stared at my husband, and my eye bulged out of their sockets as my jaw simultaneously decided to make acquaintance with the carpet.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" I asked.
"No. I'm dead serious." He said, "Fourty seven thousand and counting. Connor... our album's going to debut in the top 10."
We stared at each other for a second, before launching out of our seats into each other's arms, squealing as loud as it was possible for two men to squeal. I peppered Jude's face with kisses.
"We did it! We FUCKING DID IT!" I cackled, "I can only imagine the kind of shit Castor, Jeremy, Austin and Jax are getting up to right now."
"Oh my god, they're probably going ape shit." Jude said through uproarious laughter.
The first thing we were gonna do when we landed was go home and drop off our bags, go find our band mates and celebrate.
But right now, in that moment, my husband and I stood, wrapped in each other's loving embrace, bathing happily in the light of our success.
AN#2: Okay so that's the end of the chapter. Please leave lots of reviews. Like I said, when I hit 175 reviews, I'll upload two chapters at once.