Don't Read in the Closet volume one (62 page)

His lover...

He'd tried to
forget, then, that they only had two weeks together. Miki had hinted, from time
to time, that he'd like to see Hal after the holiday was over—but Hal had just
brushed it off. He'd known that once they were back in the real world Miki
would soon forget him. Better to live in the present than make plans for a
future that wouldn't happen, and sully a perfect memory with a rejection.

Now though...
now, he wished he'd gotten Miki's phone number, at least. Maybe they could have
stayed friends, if not lovers. He could hear Phil's voice berating him, loud
and clear:
Man, what were you thinking? A hot guy who's totally into you,
and you let him get away? I ought to come back from the grave and smack you
upside the head for that!

When the voice
turned into Miki's, saying "Hey, mind if I join you?" Hal figured it
was all still in his head and didn't look up even when he heard the scrape of
the chair. A pair of beefy forearms with strong hands attached joined Hal's on
the table, looking oddly familiar. Except for the shirt cuffs... Hal looked up,
hardly daring to breathe.

It was Miki,
grinning fit to burst. "Are you going to tell me you don't recognize me
with my clothes on?"

"What...?
How...?" Hal got a grip on himself. Then he got a grip on Miki's arm to
stop him from getting away again. "How did you find me? Damn, Miki, I was
so wrong about not wanting to keep in touch. I've been missing you so bad...
How long are you in town for?"

Miki laughed.
"Oh, pretty much forever. Dude, I work just a couple of blocks away. I've
seen you in here plenty of times—I dug the way you looked, with your nose
always stuck in a book, but I figured you were straight. When I saw you on
vacation I thought no way was I going to let that opportunity pass me by. So
how about it? Think we can make a go of it even without the beaches and the
sunsets?"

"Hell,
yes," Hal breathed. "Even with our clothes on."

"Oh,
yeah?" Miki raised an eyebrow, the eye beneath it twinkling. "Maybe
it's just a hunch, but I have a feeling they'll be coming off again before too
long."

Hal sent a
silent prayer of thanks to whoever was looking out for him up there.

He had a pretty
good idea who it might be.

THE END

Author bio:
JL MERROW is that rare beast: an
English person who refuses to drink tea. Having grown up by the seaside, she
also loathes fish and chips. She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where she
learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see the
inside of a lab ever again.
Her one regret
is that she
never mastered the ability of punting one-handed whilst holding a glass of
champagne.

She
writes across genres, with a preference for contemporaries and the paranormal,
and is frequently accused of humour.

Website
(including free reads section):
http://www.jlmerrow.com/

Blog:
http://jl-merrow.livejournal.com/

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/jl.merrow?ref=pr...

Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/298...

Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003AVKLUK

Some
of JL Merrow's other books:

Pricks
and Pragmatism

Camwolf

Sex,
Lies and Edelweiss

Muscling
Through (July 2011)

Wight
Mischief (November 2011)

Snared

Tortoise
Interruptus

Dulce
et Decorum Est

A
Ghoul Like You

Stroke
to His Cox

Selected by M.J. O'Shea

Dear Author,

These beautiful boys have a story to tell. A story of firsts. The
first stirrings of attraction, the first feelings of love, the first touch of
another, the first forever...

[PHOTO:
 
A black/white photo of two naked teenage boys
in a white bedroom. One sits on the bed facing right, leaning back into the
other kneeling behind him. His lover's right hand is across his arm and chest.
The left hand gently strokes his hardened penis as they both watch.]

Please tell us their story so that their love may live on...

Sincerely,

Moderatrix Lori

Genre:
contemporary

Tags:
virgins,
first love, enemies-to-lovers, high school, summer romance

Words:
14,012

BRIDGES

by M.J. O'Shea

Brooklyn Thorn
and I met for the first time in third grade. It was nothing short of
cataclysmic. I suppose it was inevitable for things to happen that way, like a
clash of Titans maybe. After all, his parents named him Brooklyn, mine named me
Dallas—yeah,
I’m
still working on forgiving them.
Truth is, with names like that we could either be best friends or hate each
other on sight.

We chose hate. At least he did. But believe
me,
I was happy to fall in line.

On that very first day, we met on the playground. He was
surrounded by his cronies, I was the new boy in town who only had one other
scrappy not so popular kid named Jeffie to back me up (we met in class that
morning and he offered me half of his Fruit Roll-Up at lunch. In my book, that
was friendship).

Brooklyn stood all close to me, like I was supposed to be
intimidated by his hugeness. He clearly had never been to public school in
Newark.
Please.
I just walked right
up and got in his face, even if it was a few inches above mine. What did some
kid from the butt crack of nowhere think he was going to do to me anyway?

“So you from Dallas,
Dallas
?”
He asked with a sneer. Like I’d never heard that one before.

I rolled my eyes. “Jersey.”

“That right? Well, then you don’t belong here, Yank.”

I didn’t know what
Yank
meant at the time but it didn’t seem like anything good. I also had no idea
what his problem was with me but I wasn’t going to let him get away with being
a jerk. Years later, I figured that it probably had something to do with my dad
coming in and taking over as management for the local Honeypot Snack Cake
factory instead of being one of the local workers like, uh, Brooklyn’s dad for
example. At the time, I didn’t really care.

“I don’t want to be here either,
Brooklyn.
”

I made sure that his name sounded like an insult. He’d already
pissed me off. Plus it was the truth. Sugarcreek, Texas was the last place I
wanted to be. I missed my old friends and my backyard, I hated how the sun felt
like it was boiling my brains, and I missed downtown being more than a block
and a half of ugly old buildings (with no pizza decent place). It sucked the
big one.

“If you want to leave so bad then why don’t you take your dumb
dad and get out?”

That question was paired with a punch to the eye that
came
flying out of nowhere. It was my first and not a very
strong one. But it took me by surprise—so much so that I didn’t manage to punch
him back until he was halfway turned to strut away, victory in hand. My fist
caught his jaw sideways on a half punch-half uppercut, and he reeled backward
and sat hard on the cement of the playground.

“What’d you do that for?” He yelled at me. I noticed his lip was
bleeding and he had his hand cupped around his jaw.

“You hit me first! What did you think I was going to do? Cry?”

“I don’t know. Run away like a yank. My dad says you’re all
pansies.”

“Your dad doesn’t know shit!” It felt cool to swear. I knew my
mom would ground me if she heard me talk like that. Good thing she wasn’t
listening. Unfortunately the playground supervisor was. She’d walked over to
see what the commotion was and found Brooklyn on the ground bleeding and me
swearing up a storm and rubbing at my rapidly swelling eye.

“You two!” She yelled out. “Follow me.”

And that was the beginning. Enemies for life.

****

Our next blow up was a few years later.

We’d managed to avoid each other completely, despite getting
stuck right beside each other in every yearbook, classroom, school field
trip... I cursed whatever quirk of fate made his last name Thorn and mine
Thomason. Even with the forced proximity, the cold war had been in force for
nearly four whole years, since that day in the beginning of third grade. We
managed to maintain icy silence punctuated only by glares and the occasional
insult. By then we’d moved on to middle school, where I was hoping to never
have to deal with him, but wouldn’t you know the shit was actually smart so we
were in the same advanced classes together.

All. Day. Long.

In math, I got to sit next to my own friends, at least the ones
who were in the same classes as me, but my language arts teacher had been
brilliant enough to figure out that the only person she could sit the
loquacious Brooklyn next to if she wanted him to shut up was me. Of course. So
she put him with me in early October and he hadn’t moved since.

I hated that woman with a passion that I’d before only reserved
for Brooklyn Thorn himself.

It was spring of sixth grade when things boiled over. The sun
wasn’t quite brain-meltingly hot yet but it had reached uncomfortable and was
heading toward unbearable pretty damn quickly. The heat
always
made me pissy. I’d never quite gotten used to it. I walked
into my two-hour language arts and social studies block with a sigh. Last class
of the day. Two fun-filled periods of Brooklyn Thorn. I hated him. I did. Even
though it was hard to remember why sometimes. That was until he glared at me or
kicked me under the desk and I glared back and I remembered that he was an
asshole.

I sat at my desk and hunched as far away from him as I could. The
teacher was handing out packets for a combined history and literature project.
Combined not only with the two subjects but by the fact that we had to work
with our desk partner. When I got to that part on the packet, I lost it—quietly
of course. I didn’t want to end up in the principal’s office. My parents hadn’t
taken it very well the last time.

“Looks like we’re working together, Blondie,” He muttered at me.

Since when had I gone from Yank to Blondie? I wasn’t even a real
blond anymore. Just kinda sandy. Oddly enough, his voice didn’t sound as
confrontational as it usually did on the rare times we talked. It didn’t really
register with me. I was too busy seething.

“Fantastic,” was my only answer. I’m sure I sounded pretty
bitchy. Too late, I looked up to see that his face had matched his voice. He
looked like he might be ready for a truce or at least a temporary detente. That
was until I talked. Then he whipped his face back until he was staring at his
packet. I could see his jaw clenching, teeth grinding. I wondered if I’d
actually managed to hurt his feelings.

“Just do your part and I’ll do mine. Think you can handle that,
Yank
?”

At least we were back to something familiar. I felt a little bad
though. A little. I mean, it would’ve at least been easier to get the dumb
project done if we weren’t sniping at each other.

“I think I can handle it. I’m not... stupid.” I looked him up and
down slowly as though I thought he might be. He knew what I was implying, and
it clearly wasn’t true or fair but I’d managed to guess correctly that it was
one of his insecurities.

“Fuck you, Yank,” he muttered under his breath. “Let’s get this
over with. We can divide the work and do it with as little talking as
possible.”

“My name’s not Yank.” Not like that had stopped him at any point
since third grade.

“Whatever.”

“Seriously, call me Yank one more time and I will take you down.”
All five two of me. I think the heat had made me go nuts.

“You and your prissy little friends can go ahead and try, fag
boy.”

I choked.
Fag boy?

I knew it was a generic insult, based on my size and general lack
of jock-ness, but it felt in that second like he could see into me, see what I
was starting to realize—that while all my friends were crushing on girls,
talking about their growing boobs and how good they smelled, I was noticing how
much I liked to look at boys. Like, I
really
liked to look at boys. I liked their smooth chests, the way their legs were
muscular and dusted with hair. I wanted to kiss them and see if their lips felt
as nice as they looked. I thought about it all the time. I also knew I wanted
nothing to do with those feelings. In places like Sugarcreek, they were enough
to get you dragged behind a car by a rope.

I slouched silently in my seat. There was no way I was going to
answer that taunt.