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False Start

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False Start | Janey Chapel

False Start

Tucker

whole thing started on the first day of my senior year at

Caswell College in Danesboro, North Carolina, home of the
Wildcats, when I first laid eyes on Whit. There I was, sitting
pretty: popular, a little bit of a badass, a jock of the “track-
pack” variety. Not the quarterback or the point guard, but
certainly higher in the social strata than any scrawny
freshman could ever aspire to. Whit was lean and awkward,
all wrist bones and spiky dark hair. He’d been in college for
about four minutes—he still had the dorky orientation folder
tucked under his arm, first-day jitters buzzing like bees
through the crowd as he climbed the steps to the main
entrance of the building we called All Hall, where most
classes were held.

See, I thought I’d heard someone call my name, so I

turned and looked, and there he was, backpack falling off
one shoulder, the red folder marking him as cannon fodder
for upperclassmen.

Our eyes met, and the buzzing feeling, that adrenaline

spike, focused on me. His eyes went wide and his mouth
opened, and he was just a kid, right? What was he,
eighteen? Maybe nineteen? But I didn’t look away. I didn’t
trip him, like Spew (short for Stuart Pugh) or Sammy Pitt
(you can guess what his nickname was) would have done. I
didn’t nudge him aside with an admonition to respect his
elders or look right over him the way we tended to do with
underclassmen.

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Any of that could be forgiven; for that matter, it was

pretty much expected.

Instead, I stared at him, and he at me.
“Hi. It’s Tucker, right?” he said. His voice didn’t match

the protruding wrist bones, the nervous shuffle from one foot
to the other. He sounded deep, smart… confident. A real
contradiction. “Tucker Locke?”

I nodded.
He stuck his hand out like we were grown-ups meeting

at the sixteenth hole, like there weren’t a couple hundred
students parting around us like we were an island in a
flooding river.

“I’m Whit Jamison,” he said, and I found my hand

pumped and squeezed. He had long fingers. “I went to
Southern High too. You were a senior when I was a
freshman.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t remember you.”
“No reason you would,” he said. “I was, like, three feet

tall then.”

“Tucker Locke,” I offered. Then I felt color climb up in

my cheeks. He’d already said he knew who I was. I chalked it
up to my own first-day jitters. I put my sweaty palms down
to the same thing. I had a harder time explaining the way my
heart jumped in my chest, or the way I kept looking between
his eyes and his mouth.

It was a moment, nothing more, but it set something in

motion that ended up defining the entire year. Hell, my
entire life.

My memories of senior year go something like this:

classes, being hungry enough to eat a bear, cross-country

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training in the fall, competing, eating some more, track
training in the spring, meets, studying. On the weekends I’d
drink on Saturday nights and then go to church on Sunday
mornings—a minor dichotomy compared to the other part of
my life that year: meeting up with Whit late at night. When I
think about Caswell, I think about the noise in the halls, the
tap of fingers on keyboards, and the way light filtered in
through the classroom windows. When I think about Whit,
it’s always of nighttime and heat, the way his breath caught
when I touched him, the slick slide of his tongue. Light and
dark. I separated the two as completely as I could.

Those eight dizzying months of secrets and discovery

came to an abrupt halt when my two worlds collided on the
Friday night between final exams and graduation. I’d walked
a fine line from September to April, living one life for
everyone else—my friends, my teachers, my parents, my
future clearly mapped—and another in stolen moments with
Whit. What did it say about me that those few hours with
Whit were the happiest of my life, but I couldn’t bring myself
to let him into any other part of my life?

Whit invited me to the movies. Like, you know, a date. A

simple enough request, he seemed to think. “It’s just a
movie, Tuck,” he said when he asked. “Come on, you’re
graduating. Live a little,” he said.

He didn’t understand. I’d been doing exactly that: living

a little. Stealing time, taking something for myself before the
real world came knocking. Every time we found an hour or
two to be together, the world brightened, even in the dark.

I told him I had other plans, hanging out with a bunch

of seniors at Stuart Pugh’s house, a little pre-graduation
party. He looked at me intently, and I thought he’d push it,

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but then I slid my hand up the back of his T-shirt and that
took care of conversation.

But it turned out Spew and Spit wanted to go to the

movies too. Their girlfriends even rounded up a date for me—
a redhead with pendulous breasts named Martha-Dunn
Dewey who I’d known since kindergarten. Trust me, if I’d
wanted to date her, I’d had plenty of opportunities. I went
along—what else was I supposed to do? I even held her hand
as we walked up to the ticket line at Danesboro’s only
fourplex. At nine o’clock on a Friday, a bunch of people were
milling around, and the line stretched down the sidewalk.

And of course, three people ahead of us in line stood

Whit, his back to me. It hadn’t occurred to me that he’d
come by himself because I’d never have done that in a
million years. But that’s Whit for you, that’s the kind of guy
he was.

When he got to the ticket window, his voice carried

when he said, “One for Scorpion King.”

Spit leaned over and spoke loudly enough that I saw the

words strike Whit in the back of the neck. “Hey, who knew
fags liked action movies?”

My spine straightened, but before I could say anything,

Spew chimed in, “Maybe he wants to bend over for The
Rock.”

Shut up! I wanted to say. Shut the fuck up!
But then Martha-Dunn curled her lip up and said, “Ew,

that’s gross. Don’t even make me picture that.”

I watched as red swept up from the back of Whit’s collar

all the way to the tips of his ears. He turned, and his eyes
narrowed on Spit and Spew, then widened when they landed

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on me, on my face, then on my sweaty hand, still clutching
Martha-Dunn’s.

I wanted to run, but I felt like I was made of stone.
I should have stood up for him. Obviously. That goes

without saying. Hell, I should have stood up for myself,
because I was like him, just like him, only I didn’t have the
balls to say so. I didn’t have the courage. We’d been meeting
in secret for months because I couldn’t bring myself to give
him up, but I couldn’t stand beside him, either, and take the
kind of licks he absorbed every day just for showing up and
not pretending to be something he wasn’t.

I should have done something, but I didn’t.
I didn’t say anything. He didn’t say anything. He stood

there for a second; then he went into the theater lobby, the
back of his neck still red, while Spew and Spit laughed at
their own stupid jokes.

He was waiting for me—his cheeks on fire, his mouth

set, and his eyes ablaze—when I came into the lobby a few
minutes later, with Spew and Spit behind me.

No. Just… no. Nothing good could come from whatever

would happen when that unholy trio came together.

I took a hard left and veered off into the concessions

line, shaking off Martha-Dunn with a curt word about
getting popcorn. I ignored Spew’s shouted, “Yo! Tuckeroo!
We’ll save you a seat.” And I ignored the feel of Whit’s gaze
on my back.

The brightly colored board above the concessions stand

showing enormous packages of Skittles and Milk Duds and
Twizzlers blurred as I stared at it, my heart thumping in my
chest.

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Then, from behind me, I heard, “Your friends are

assholes.” Whit’s voice, soft and familiar.

No argument there, but I couldn’t make myself say so.

The candy board blurred even more. I blinked a couple of
times and dragged in a breath.

“Why didn’t you just tell me you were coming with

them? With her?” Whit asked.

My heart thudded again. “This isn’t the time,” I gritted

out through my teeth. Not the time and not the place, not in
front of all these people. Couldn’t he see that?

“Then when?” he asked, and he must have taken a step

forward, because I swear to God, I could feel him up against
my back, his breath warm on my neck when he whispered,
“Why can’t you just be with me? Just once. Tuck—”

“Back off,” I snarled. I meant it literally, physically, right

then and there. I was so scared and so angry I could hardly
breathe. I felt trapped, afraid of what onlookers would see,
sure that somehow they would know what we’d been getting
up to, that it was written all over me in some kind of
invisible, pornographic Sharpie. But I meant it figuratively
too. I took what I could get; why couldn’t he do the same?

Silence.
When I finally worked up the courage to turn around, he

was gone.

The movie sucked. In the back row, Martha-Dunn

offered to do the same, rubbing her tits against my arm, but
I declined, probably more politely than the brush-off I’d just
given Whit.

Whit and I never talked about it. We never touched

again, either. It was as if it had all been a dream, as if I’d

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never held him, never kissed him, never felt him tremble, hot
under my hands.

We passed each other a couple of times over the next

few days, but I studiously avoided eye contact. I knew what
I’d see: the same disappointment I saw when I looked in the
mirror.

I know now that I blamed him for my own failing. I let

fear define me. That was the main difference between us—he
met life head-on, and I ran at the first obstacle I
encountered.

I graduated a week later and moved to Richmond a week

after that. I spent the next six months studying for the
LSATs like my life depended on it, which I guess it did.

My parents thought I was (finally) being industrious.
They had no idea how far I was willing to run.
And that’s how the whole thing ended.

Whit

ALONEY

Look, sorry to butt in here, but that’s not how it

happened. I mean, yes, the essential facts are all there in the
right order, but look at the phrasing he uses, the drama
involved. I suppose if you wanted to look back and spin it
that way, you could. Tucker obviously did. I just… I don’t
remember it being quite that angst-driven. Want to hear my
side of the story?

It all started—

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Wait a sec, I have to back up a little, because context

matters, and Danesboro, and Caswell College in particular,
add a whole boatload of context.

You’ve heard of blue states and red states, right? Well,

we joke that the only blue in The Old North State is Carolina
Blue for the Tarheels and Duke Blue for that other team. But
that’s not entirely true—we have patches of blue, mostly
where the big universities are, and then we have big,
sweeping swathes of red, where there are churches (mostly
Protestant) on every corner, revival tents pop up like
dandelions in the spring, and you’ll find lots of the same last
names in phone books because everyone’s pretty much
related to everybody else.

Danesboro’s not that big, at least not geographically.

But it’s big enough to support Caswell College, named after
Jonas Caswell, who came over from Scotland in the late
1800s, built a fertilizer factory, and spawned fourteen
children: seven with one wife, seven with another (after the
first one wore out). He would roll over in his grave if someone
called him a philanthropist. The truth is, he gave the money
to start the college to make sure the plant always had not
only line workers, who barely required a high school
education, but managers who’d perpetuate his work ethos.
Not that he’d have phrased it that way, but that was his
intention. Oh, and he wanted those fourteen kids of his to
stay right there in Danesboro and not gallivant off to
Charlotte or Raleigh or one of those other citadels of sin and
debauchery.

I’m probably being a little hard on Uncle Jonas. Yes, I’m

a Caswell on my mother’s side. In Danesboro we’ve got lots of
Caswells and Pughs, Tuckers, Pitts, Youngs, and Lockes,

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and yes, one Tucker Locke, Tucker being his mother’s
maiden name. That’s a Southern trait that leads to girls
being named “Willingham” and “Duffey” and boys being
named “Littleton” and “Dane”—how else do you think the
town got its name?

Small-town life can be hard on people who are… let’s

say different. If you’re a young man, for example, who
reaches the age of fourteen and awakes one morning awash
in testosterone, and you realize you could give a shit about
the girls you’re supposed to notice at school and instead
spend as much time as possible shadowing a senior
dreamboat who happens to be a guy, well, that’s a problem.
While I should have been studying algebra and world studies
and English, instead I memorized Tucker Locke’s class
schedule and managed to plant myself where I’d get to see
him multiple times a day. I might have stalked him a little, in
a barely pubescent way.

Then he graduated and went off to college, which was

across town but might as well have been on the moon, and I
buckled down and learned that whole factor-of-X thing.

I give my parents all the credit for me turning out okay.

You’ve seen the stories, you know the stats. Life’s not easy
for gay kids, and some of them don’t make it. I did. I made it.
But I couldn’t have done it by myself.

“Mom, I think I’m gay,” I told her over breakfast the

morning after my high school graduation. I’d gone to
Carowinds’ Grad Nite the night before and crashed at about
4:00 a.m., still wearing my clothes. I crawled out of bed four
hours later and dragged myself to the kitchen counter,
hoping there might be an Eggo in it for me. Maybe it was the
fatigue talking, but I’d finally gotten tired of keeping it all in.

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I’d known for, like, four years that I was 100 percent
homosexual, so the “I think” was mostly designed to soften
the blow for my poor mom. I decided to start with her
because she was the one I was most worried about. My dad’s
the most easygoing guy I know. I think that comes from
teaching college-level history for twenty years—he’s got a
broad view, a unique perspective, and it seems to make him
more relaxed about day-to-day crap than most people. He’d
be an easy sell; Mom, I wasn’t so sure about.

She took her time answering, carefully measuring coffee

into the machine and watching it start to drip into the pot.

“What makes you think that?” she asked finally, once

the coffee was done, its burnt-marshmallow smell filling the
kitchen. I could see her hand shake a little as she poured
herself a cup.

“Um,” I said. “Well… uh….” Look, I said I was tired; I

hadn’t thought much beyond the initial pronouncement.
After another awkward minute, I said, “I don’t like girls. I
mean, I don’t like them.”

Do I have a way with words or what?
“Is there someone special you do like?” she asked,

putting her mug down on the counter, splashing a little
French roast. She seemed to steel herself a little. “A boy, that
is?”

The million-dollar question. “Yes, there’s a boy I like.

But he’s straight, and he’s in college, and I’ve never even
talked to him, so this isn’t about that. About him. It’s about
me.”

We were both red as beets by then. God help me if she

decided she had to give me “The Talk” again, this time about

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using non-oil-based lube with condoms and the tactical
importance of the prostate.

“Well… that’s…,” she said. (As you can see, I get my

silver tongue from my mom.) She cleared her throat. “I’m
sorry. That’s too bad.”

Before my heart could drop to my feet, she kept going as

she wiped up the spilled coffee with a paper towel. “If he
doesn’t feel the same way, that’s a shame. He’s missing out.”

See what I mean about my parents getting the credit?

That was it for Mom. Dad, on the other hand, was the one
who stuttered his way through a clinical presentation on the
potential complexities of anal sex and presented me with
condoms and lubricant that he had to have bought at the
Walmart in Asheboro, because no way in hell would he have
gone to the Youngs’ pharmacy to get them.

And, yeah, he’d known for a while, he told me later, and

had been waiting for me to come to terms with it.

I love my folks.
If my mom got shit from her friends that summer, I

never heard about it. If Dad’s colleagues at Caswell gave him
skeevy looks, he never told me about them. I told my high
school friends about me being gay, but most of them were
headed elsewhere to college and so that part of it was
actually pretty easy—we were all going our separate ways.
With my parents’ blessing and full support, I went off to
Caswell College that August as an openly gay freshman.
Certainly not the school’s first gay student, but perhaps the
first one unwilling to deny it. I was going to change the
world, or at least our little corner of it. I had big plans: I’d
start a Gay-Straight Alliance; I’d offer my services as a disc
jockey for dances and play a lot of Shakira and Outkast. If I

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wanted to wear eyeliner, then by God, I’d wear eye liner. If I
wanted to hold hands with the mythic boy of my dreams, I’d
damn well do it.

Then I got outside All Hall that morning, looked up, and

saw the back of Tucker Locke’s head. I knew it better than I
knew my own. God knows I’d stared at it enough. Almost as
if he could feel my laser gaze boring into the back of his
beautiful head, he turned around and looked right at me.

In all my klutzy glory, I went straight up to him and

introduced myself. He looked even better than I remembered.
He had always had great hair that stood up off his head in
thick, dirty-blond waves. That hadn’t changed. I wanted to
tangle my hands in it. Instead I held my hand out for him to
shake, wearing every ounce of confidence I’d ever had.
Totally faking it, in other words.

See, that’s the part I think Tucker got wrong. He

thought I had that confidence all along, when, really, he’s
the one who gave it to me.

I’d wanted him for so long, almost a third of my

cognizant life. And now, four years later, when I looked at
him, he looked back. He shook my hand, talked to me. He
asked if I wanted to meet him at the Atrium for lunch so I’d
have someone to sit with. He didn’t tell you that part, did he?
Well, he did. He took me right under his six-foot-two-inch
wing and introduced me to some of his buddies. And then
his jackoff friends, the future fertilizer-factory workers, told
him I was gay, right there over the lunch trays. One of them,
I don’t remember if it was Spew or Spit (honestly, they’re
awful names, but that’s what we all called them), said his
mama had heard about it from Lianne Young, who played

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tennis with Duffey Caswell, who was co-chair of the
Presbyterian Women’s Circle… with my mom.

I owned it. I’d kept my trap shut for four long years of

high school, but I was done with that shit. “Yup, that’s
right,” I said, sitting up straight and smacking the table a
little, because I’d only been on campus for four hours and I
wasn’t about to back down on my very first day. “I’m gay.”

That was the last time I had lunch with Spit and Spew.

Tucker managed to get through his whole sandwich without
bolting, but I didn’t have lunch with him anymore, either.

Hey, you knew coming into this it wasn’t going to be

smooth sailing, right? What about my plans to change the
world, you ask? When I said “Gay-Straight Alliance,” you
didn’t know that meant screwing around in secret with a
straight boy, my commitment to outness melting into an
infatuated puddle. But don’t worry. It gets better.

Because although the Pughs and the Pitts had raised

generations of narrow-minded, openly hostile bigots, the
Lockes weren’t quite that Paleolithic. When we passed each
other in the quad, Tucker always said hello. He never
pushed me around like some of the upperclassmen did.
When I left my biology book in the men’s locker room after
swim team practice once, he found me in class and returned
it to me. He was civil, I guess you could say.

Looking back on it, I see that was his way of thumbing

his nose at his peers. It was his own small step, being nice to
the gay kid. I soaked up every minute of his attention and
otherwise mooned from afar, like I always had.

It felt familiar, comfortable, even, learning his habits

and tics. I studied him like a book, with a degree of
objectivity I later attributed purely to lack of intimate

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knowledge, which might explain why, when he finally came
on to me in the men’s locker room—me running late from
swimming, him coming in early for cross-country training—
all by our lonesomes in the echoing space, I was more
shocked than anything else.

He touched my shoulder, which was bare because I’d

just showered and pulled on jeans, but hadn’t yet put on a
shirt. When I turned around to look at him, he leaned down
and kissed me. I remember his breath was hot and jagged.
He tasted like cinnamon gum and his lips were chapped. I
remember leaning my head back, knocking it against my
locker, and how he swallowed the gasp I made. I see it in
pictures in my head. Not a video: snapshots.

We ended up dry-humping against the wall behind the

showers. I vividly remember the urgency of his hips pushing
against mine, so at odds with the look on his face, like he
couldn’t believe it was really happening. I have no idea what
he saw on my face, but probably much the same. You’d
think what I’d remember was having an orgasm induced by
something besides my own by-now-expert right hand. But
what I’ll never forget is the brush of his hair against my neck
when he dropped his head down on my shoulder, and the
groan of pleasure he breathed out against me.

That first time was the only time we ever touched on

campus property. We found plenty of other places to go,
including the back parking lot at the VFW, deserted every
night but Wednesday, and a falling-down barn out along
County Road 48. But the old defunct waterworks facility
became our favorite haunt, with its tunnels and dark
corners. I didn’t care where we went because his touch
transported me.

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Corny, huh? But still true.
For an entire academic year, I loved him with four years’

worth of pent-up passion.

In the end, though, it wasn’t enough, and maybe that

means it was always just a crush. Idols with feet of clay, and
all that. I expected more from him than he was ready to give.
I pushed him. I wanted him to acknowledge me… us. He was
graduating, so I thought, what difference did it make? Why
couldn’t he come out? Why couldn’t we be together
someplace that didn’t smell like mildew or cow shit? I
couldn’t see past my own completely justifiable wants. I
asked him out on a date, deliberately waiting until all our
sports were over, until his exams were done and he could
breeze into graduation. Everything we’d done, we’d done in
secret. But this one time, I wanted to go out together, like a
real couple. I thought I’d been pretty patient, frankly. I’d
gone along with every single request he’d made of me. He
didn’t want me at his races? Fine. He didn’t want to come to
my swim meets? Well, okay, whatever.

I just wanted this one night. Him and me, and The God-

blessed Rock in a loincloth. Who could turn that down?

Tucker Locke, that’s who. Oh, he went to the movies,

just not with me. No, he showed up at the movie I’d invited
him to with a girl who had the largest breasts I’d ever
personally witnessed. Oh, and his jackoff friends. Let’s not
forget them.

I’m not going to lie to you—it chapped my hide. I got up

close to him, so no one would overhear me, and I pressed
him for an answer. He growled at me to back off. So I did. I
finally realized, right there in line with a bunch of folks
waiting to buy overpriced Cokes and gargantuan tubs of

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popcorn, that there just wasn’t any point in pursuing it.
Pursuing him. I’d lost my taste for The Scorpion King, and I
knew Tucker sure as hell wouldn’t want me to come watch
the movie with him and his overly mammaried date. I huffed
my frustration into the collar of my shirt and then left the
theater, handing my ticket to a kid waiting in the line
outside the box office. I thought somebody should get to
appreciate The Rock in all his glory.

The bottom line? Tucker couldn’t come out. He wasn’t

ready yet.

For all I knew, he never would be.
And that pissed me off, really, solidly pissed me off for

weeks. He avoided me, for the most part, and the few times I
saw him before graduation, he walked by me like he didn’t
even see me. And then, right about the time I worked out in
my head how unfair I’d been to make demands on him when
it had taken me four stinking years to come out to my
parents, when I knew how hard it was to be different in a
town where you’re related to practically everyone, he was
gone. Just… gone. To Richmond, I heard through the
Danesboro grapevine. To go to law school.

Tucker Locke. My first crush. My first lover. I look back

with fondness and a little exasperation on that ridiculous,
exhilarating year we spent getting busy in the dark and
staring at each other across the cafeteria, but I’ll never be
sorry it happened.

What Tucker did was make me more certain than ever

that I couldn’t live a lie. I couldn’t pretend to be someone I
wasn’t. I couldn’t split myself in two. See what I mean? I
didn’t start my freshman year with abundant confidence, but

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I ended it that way. I got over it, over him, and got on with
my life.

But I have wondered, from time to time, what he’s done

with his.

Tucker

STILL

run.

I’ve been running all my life. My mother told me once

my first steps were actually a halting gallop across the
backyard, but I’ve only run with purpose for the last, oh,
sixteen years or so. Ever since I had a choice between
football and track and field at the start of tenth grade and
decided track would be less work. I didn’t know, when I
started, what it would come to mean to me.

I used to run to win. I loved the lunge for the finish line.

I never felt the weight of myself until then, until it was over.
Then I’d wonder how on earth I’d carried myself so far, so
fast, when each step that didn’t matter felt like it might
shatter me—jarring, arrhythmic, heavy as lead, as if my body
only knew one speed and never wanted to slow down, never
wanted to stop.

I don’t run to win anymore. I haven’t since I graduated

from Caswell and realized that at the University of Richmond
Law School nobody gave a shit what sport you played at
Podunk U. Frankly, I never did like looking at the back of
someone else’s neck, feeling the sand their heels cast up
sting my legs. But winning wasn’t the only reason I ran. The

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great thing about running… the beauty of it… is that the
only person I really have to beat is myself.

My best time. My smoothest stride. My fastest pace or

farthest distance. I don’t really need any more competition
than myself. No, I can beat myself just fine. So I don’t run on
teams or on tracks anymore. I run in the streets, dodging
puddles and passersby. I run in the park, through the
woods, wearing the scratches on my legs like tattoos. I run
every morning, rain or shine.

All my life, I’ve run.
I ran from Danesboro to Richmond, and from Richmond

to Washington, DC. I fled the Bible Belt like the devil himself
was on my heels and ran like hell toward the big city.

I ran from the boy I was and the man Whit Jamison

wanted me to be.

I’ve been running, seriously, for half my life, and what

I’m just now figuring out is that if what you’re running from
is yourself, you never get very far.

It wasn’t quite a lightning-bolt discovery, but close. It

came in the mailbox, of all places. Vellum envelope, familiar
seal. It seems like we hardly ever get first-class mail
anymore. It’s all automated now, Evites and PayPal. But a
few things—wedding invitations, baby announcements, that
kind of stuff—still get hand-delivered, quaint relics of the
way things used to be.

This time the heavy cream paper didn’t require me to

send a gift of any sort. This time it came from Caswell
College, trumpeting the ten-year reunion of the class of
2002.

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Ten years. It’s been ten years. And suddenly, all those

weddings I didn’t go to and those babies I’ve never seen
seem… real. In the ten years since I left home, my
classmates have gone on and made real lives for themselves.
Gotten married, had children. Settled down.

What have I done? Moved out of state, gone to law

school, and then disappointed my father (again) by joining a
firm he’d never heard of in DC instead of coming home and
turning his law office from “Locke & Young” to “Locke, Young
& Locke.”

I don’t mind the work. It gives me something to do, a

good excuse when I need one—everyone knows the hours
attorneys keep, the deluge of work. “Sorry, sweetheart, got a
big case” can get me out of just about anything I don’t want
to do. It reminds me a little of college, when all I had to say
to a girl was, “Sorry, Coach is training us hard.”

In the time it took most of my former teammates to meet

girls and marry them and have honeymoons in Cabo, I dated
a succession of tall, thin women with short, dark hair who
thought I was chivalrous for taking them out and then
leaving them at the door with a kiss. I liked them—they were
all smart and funny, and I enjoyed their company.
Sometimes, when I couldn’t dredge up any more reasons not
to, I had sex with them. If I turned them over and took them
from behind, I could even come.

I never stayed with any of them for very long.
And I never dated any men, never even hooked up. Not

once. I see gay men all the time—DC is full of them. But I’ve
never met a man who seemed worth the risk. How stupid
would it be to put myself out there for some stranger when
I’d already bailed on someone I actually cared about? Easier

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to stay in the box, going through the motions of normal,
than go through that again.

Staring down at the invitation with its polite “please

respond,” I realize I’ve been running in place all this time. I
haven’t accomplished anything.

Maybe if I go, confront the ghosts of all I can’t bring

myself to admit, the vivid reminders of the things I’m
supposed to want, something will change. I’ll either be able
to stand firm and confess all, or I’ll finally give up and accept
the life my parents want me to have and my friends assume
as a given.

I think it’s time to go home.
Time to find out who I am when that first stuttered

footstep falls; time to see if I can hold up my own weight
when I’m no longer running.

I’

gotten very good at not thinking about Whit Jamison. I

buried him, deep as I could, which isn’t ever quite deep
enough.

I don’t swim much anymore, for example. Whit swam for

the Caswell team that year. He specialized in freestyle and
backstroke, and though I don’t think he won any events, he
qualified for some NCAA meets and held his own against
swimmers from bigger schools.

Between cross country in the fall and track in the

spring, I stayed crazy busy. And then, during my slack time
in the winter, he swam. I did my thing, he did his, but we
made time to be together around the edges.

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I used to watch him practice, telling myself the spectator

seats at the pool made a great quiet place to study. In truth,
the only thing I studied was his lean body slicing through
the water, a seductive length of pale skin and swim-honed
muscle. All that skin seemed indecent, somehow, or maybe it
was my reaction to it that strained the bounds of decency.

The smell of chlorine makes me hard to this day.
I still see him sometimes, in the fine bones of someone’s

back, in a wing of smooth hair, half-seen on the Metro,
turned away from. A cheekbone catches the light in a
restaurant and ensnares me. Mere traces of moments that
still lodge sharp, dodging bone, piercing deep.

But I do manage, on a day-to-day basis, not to think of

him directly.

So the lurch my heart gives as I drive into town startles

me. I can’t mistake it for anything else. It’s only ever
responded to one person that way: immediate, instinctive,
utterly uncontrollable.

It’s not Whit’s reunion, I remind my heart. He was three

years behind me, and is undoubtedly now many miles away.
He’s probably in the Peace Corps in Mozambique or writing a
sitcom for NBC or something. This isn’t about Whit. It’s
about me.

Of course it is, my heart retorts.
It’s got nothing to do with him.
I don’t think either of us really believes that.
I came in a day early. I got up at the crack of dawn, and

drove through the snarled Friday-morning commute down I-
95 to I-85. I told myself it was so I could spend more time
with my parents, who I see less and less of as the years go

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by, and never here at home. But really, it’s so that if I can’t
stand it, I can still leave, with no one the wiser. If just
parking on the main drag on a Friday afternoon makes my
heart feel like it’s going to clamor out of my chest, that might
have been good thinking.

Walking down the four-block stretch of downtown

Danesboro near the theater sends a chill across my arms, up
my neck. Compared to DC, or even Richmond, Danesboro
looks like a toy town, and the college, snugged right up
against the business district, looks even smaller.

Looking back, it’s a wonder we managed to pull it off as

well as we did. We weren’t exactly careful, were we? What’s
really shocking is how long it took the whole shaky house of
cards to come tumbling down.

I don’t know that I can do this. I’m not sure I’m strong

enough. I wasn’t strong enough then, and nothing I’ve done
since makes me feel like I’ve gained any momentum.

I’m probably overthinking all of this. It’s hardly the

scene of the Apocalypse, no matter if it seemed just like that.
We make more of things than we should, don’t we, at that
age?

Was it really so bad?
Was it?
I pass the box office at the AMC theater, where I saw

Whit that night, drawn to it by some residual, still-dramatic
kernel inside that appreciates the irony.

The deep breath I take reminds me my heart is still

pounding.

There’s no dismissing him now, no turning away from

the face I can still conjure with absolute clarity. In my mind,

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he’s always nineteen—gangly limbs and smooth skin, sharp
planes and soft lips, all burning eyes and narrow shoulders
and cutting wit, his own need balanced against the comfort
he always offered.

I loved him. And I never had anyone frighten me the way

he did. He shook me, took me from what I knew, showed me
what I really wanted, then told me the price: I had to admit
to it.

I knew I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t have him. Not out loud,

not in public.

I hurt him because I was afraid. Because I wasn’t strong

like him. Because I had no idea who the fuck I was or how to
get what I needed. Because I couldn’t imagine being who he
wanted me to be.

I wanted it all at twenty-two, and what I’ve learned at

thirty-two is that I can’t have it all. The way I’m going about
it, I won’t have anything.

Despite the many things I’m unsure of, I do know this: I

can’t live the rest of my life the way I’ve lived the past ten
years. I must have something of my own, whatever it is. I
can’t keep glossing over the surface of my life. I can’t… I just
can’t keep running.

So I’m here. The first lap’s done. I’m here, where I loved

him, consciously raising him to the surface, thinking about
him, letting him soak in. Against my own will and intentions,
he’s there in me.

I put my hands in my pockets, start walking again, and

head onto the campus toward All Hall.

It’s good I’m here. Maybe I can exorcise this ghost once

and for all.

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Maybe I’ll find that, yes, it was adolescent angst. Not so

bad, really. Water over the dam. I’ve probably built it up in
my mind more than I should. If I’d talked to him that night
at the movies, instead of shutting him down, or if I’d been
brave enough to tell Spit and Spew and dumb old Martha-
Dunn that they were out of line, maybe we could have stayed
friends or something, and I wouldn’t associate my entire
college experience with those few awful minutes. If I’d come
back every Christmas, been to a few weddings, a couple of
christenings, it’d be no big deal. It couldn’t possibly be as…
intense… as I remember. Surely time has given all of it an
emphasis it lacked in its present.

I’ll meet and mingle, and it’ll be okay. Normal.

Everything’ll be fine.

Hall hasn’t changed much. It still smells like floor

cleaner and gym socks. It’s quiet now: classes are done for
the day, students scattered to their million activities. I hear a
hum in several classrooms as I pass by—study groups, I
guess, or clusters of students tending to their various clubs.

There isn’t much else to see at this time of day on a

Friday. I’m headed back down one of the classroom
corridors, trying to decide how to waste a few more hours so
I don’t have to spend them in stilted conversation at home,
when I hear a student’s voice ring out through one of the
half-closed doors: “Mr. Jamison, the scanner’s not working.
Again.”

The name arrests me. I shake my head. It’s a common

enough name in Danesboro. The thought stirs that it could

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be Whit’s father, who taught history when I was a student
here, though he should have retired by now. I stand still
outside the door.

Then the response comes, in a voice that, despite its

deeper timbre, I would still know in a dark room: “Have you
tried turning it on, Elizabeth?”

No one else sounds like him. I’ve listened through the

years, trying to hear that combination of humor and
affection and sarcasm in other voices. I haven’t heard it until
now. The thumping sound echoing his voice in my ears is my
heart, which painfully asserts I knew it! I knew he was here.
It beats so hard I can feel it in my throat, and it makes me
cough. Loudly. The hum inside quiets.

Crap.
It takes a startling amount of courage to open the door.
Whit’s standing at a table, bent at the waist, pointing

something out to a student. All I can see is the top of his
familiar head and his hands, also familiar.

He raises his head. He looks… different. The image I’ve

carried of him for ten years shifts, expands, molds itself onto
his new, older face. I see afternoon stubble on those fine, fine
cheeks. His hair is shorter, and the clean lines of his
cheekbones and jaw aren’t as strict as they once were. But
his eyes, when they meet mine, are exactly the same. I’ve
seen that expression before too. I saw it the first time he
looked at me on the steps that day. I remember it vividly: I
looked at him, and he at me, and something happened. A
jolt. Fear. Attraction. Fear of attraction.

Shock widened his eyes then, and it does so now. For an

instant I can see the boy in the man’s face. For one

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heartbeat, he lets me see inside. Then something new slides
across his face. I think it’s distance, but I can’t be sure. I’ve
never seen him distant before.

Then he straightens and comes around the table. Now

it’s my turn to be shocked. He’s tall. When he gets close
enough, I have to look up a little to meet his eyes. He’s
actually even taller than me now. His narrow shoulders have
filled out; he seems to have finally caught up to his elbows
and knees. He looks… good.

He puts his hand out, smiles. “You look just the same,”

he says.

I take his hand, pump it once, twice. Even his hand

seems stronger, bigger. He’s a man now. “You don’t,” I blurt
out.

He laughs. “We can’t all be finished at nineteen,” he

says. Then he gestures to my hair. “What’d you do?”

I run a rueful hand across my short hair. “Got tired of

it” is what I tell him. Got tired of women talking about it,
wanting to touch it. I never wanted anyone… else’s… hands
in my hair. So I cut it off.

“You’re a teacher?” I ask. I’m sort of dumbfounded, not

just at finding him here, but at the whole “Mr. Jamison” bit.
This is the kid I remember needing a hand to get over the
fence at the waterworks.

No. This isn’t the kid. This isn’t a kid at all anymore.
He smiles again and, like his eyes, his wide, clear smile

is the same. Seeing the blend of familiar and unfamiliar
makes me feel off balance, and I have to concentrate to hear
what he’s saying, not just get lost in the things I recognize—
his eyes and his mouth.

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“Yeah, hard to believe, I know. They moved Grimsley up

to the advanced classes and yearbook, and here I am,
working on the Daily Wildcat,” he says with a shrug.

There’s a pause I’m probably supposed to fill, but after

too long a minute, he says, a little more softly, “I wondered if
you’d come.” There’s another momentary pause; then he
adds, “For the reunion.”

I nod. I’m having trouble putting thoughts into words.

He backs up a step, which helps, then turns back to the
table. The students busy themselves suddenly, and the
increased noise makes me realize how quiet it had gone
while we talked.

“We’ve gone entirely digital,” he says. “Take a look.”
I don’t care much about the college newspaper, but I’m

grateful for the awkward space he’s filling, for the attempt at
normalcy. Seeing him is… I can’t even describe it. I listen as
he gives me a quick tour of the program they’re using now,
demonstrates the digital cameras, the recalcitrant scanner,
and I must make appropriate responses, but mostly I’m just
watching him—the ease with which he talks to the students,
his comfort level with his job.

He’s always been relaxed in his body. Now he seems

relaxed in himself.

Whit always did have his shit together better than me.
He’s been talking for some time now, and I realize the

tone of voice of the last part was a question, but have no idea
what it was. “Sorry, what was that?”

He’s maneuvered us to the far corner, away from the

students, where he’s been showing me the latest in digital
readers. He looks away, focusing on the keyboard, and says,

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“I wondered if you might want to get a beer with me later?
Unless you’re meeting up with classmates?”

“No, no, I haven’t made any plans,” I say.
“Do you keep up with them?” he asks. “Stuart and

Sammy?”

Spew and Spit. The asshole and the jerk.
“No,” I tell him. “I don’t.”
I could say more about what I think of Spit and Spew,

and of myself when I was with them, but not here. Maybe
later I can tell him. He doesn’t say anything more, and I
know it’s my turn. He’s carried the conversation so far, and I
never did answer him, so finally I say, “A beer sounds good.”

I’m sure I imagine that his shoulders relax a little. All he

says is, “Cool. How about Rocky’s? Around nine?”

Rocky’s is a good spot. Been around for ages, but it’s

not a place most people we know would go. I’m surprised at
how easily my mind slips into its furtive channels, already
lining up excuses, wondering what people will think if we’re
seen together. Wondering how long people’s memories are.

Wondering why the fuck I still care what people think.
“Tucker?”
He’s turned to face me again, still maintaining his polite

pose. I swallow. “Yeah, nine. Okay. See you then.”

He nods, but before he can say anything else, his

attention is claimed by a student, and as I leave, I hear him
saying, “I think it’ll work better if you put it in right side up.”

It makes me smile. I can hear the “dumbass” he’s

refraining from saying out loud.

It looks like Whit’s learned discretion after all.

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Whit

OLY

shit. I can practically hear the questions my intrepid

young reporters are dying to ask, but I distract them with
vague threats to their bylines if they don’t knuckle down and
get the dang paper put to bed on schedule, tapping my
watch impatiently and muttering about hard deadlines. The
looks on a few of their faces tell me I’m not fooling anyone,
but they grant me the modicum of respect my status as
educator entitles me to and settle back down to work. I give
it five minutes before one of them asks if that hot old dude is
my boyfriend.

It’s embarrassing how many different ways I dreamed

up seeing Tucker Locke again. At first, in those early weeks
after he stood there like Helen Keller while his buddies
cackled over an erotic tableau involving me getting reamed
six ways from Sunday by Dwayne Johnson, I imagined
Tucker tossing pebbles against my window and me climbing
out and running into his arms. He’d tell me he’d changed his
mind and he was sorry it had taken him so long. He’d invite
me to the movies, say he wanted me to meet his parents.
He’d take my face in his hands and kiss me, right there on
my front lawn, and….

It’s possible I’ve watched too many John Hughes movies.
The summer after my freshman year in college, I worked

at my uncle’s ice-cream stand. The pay was crap, but the
perks made up for it: steady work and all the ice cream I
could eat. I pigged out on everything from chocolate-chip

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cookie dough to orange sherbet. At night, after work, I swam
in the outdoor pool at Caswell, lap after lap, looking down at
the bottom of the pool on my freestyle laps and up at the
night sky on the backstroke. I would hold long conversations
with Tucker in my head, and I could almost see him nod as
he decided I was right, I’d been right all along.

Some people fantasize about getting laid; I fantasize that

people tell me I’m right. Insert your favorite symbol for
“facepalm” here.

I switched off swimming with hours and hours in the

college gym lifting weights. The coach planned to add
individual medley to my event lineup for my sophomore year,
and I needed to build up shoulder strength for butterfly. My
mom grilled me steak for dinner just about every night,
saying I needed the protein.

I grew four inches between May and August.
If my parents knew I was lonely, they never said

anything about it. They just kept feeding me.

Eventually the routine accomplished its purpose, and I

started to live in the present instead of remembering the past
or inventing the future. So it had probably been almost a
decade since I imagined an entire conversation with Tucker
Locke. It’s good to know that in the heat of the moment, in
the startled rush of seeing him again, I managed to string
together a few coherent sentences.

I think I even asked him out, didn’t I? Did it come

across like that? I was going for nonchalant (when what I
really wanted to do was put him on like a coat and wear him
for the rest of the day), but it’s been so long since I had to
say one thing while feeling another, I have no idea how
successful I was.

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I guess we’ll see when he shows up.
If he shows up.

Tucker

HIT

’

waiting for me outside Rocky’s, hands in his jeans

pockets, rocking from one foot to the other, just the way he
used to. Some things have changed, but some things stayed
the same. When he sees me, he smiles, and that’s familiar
too. Then he’s tugging his hands out of his pockets, reaching
for me, and instinctively I draw back, looking around to see if
anyone’s watching.

It’s the wrong thing to do; I recognize that almost

immediately. Whit steps back, lifts his empty arms, and laces
his fingers behind his head, leaning back into his hands.
“You really are just the same, aren’t you?” he asks, turning
away, his voice low, angry. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

Before I can change my mind or even question the

wisdom of it, I’ve closed the space between us and turned
him toward me with the rudder of his elbow. Then I’m sliding
my arms around his back, just long enough to feel the new
stretch of muscle, the unexpected breadth of him, taken
aback again at finding him so big. I squeeze him, probably
too tight, and let go before he can untangle his fingers
enough to touch me.

“You’re right,” I tell him. “And you’re wrong.”
He’s still angry, and worse, wary.

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“Come on, let’s get a beer. I’m buying,” I say. I turn

toward the door and look back to see if he’ll follow. He drops
his arms, hesitates, then shrugs and walks toward me.

“You’d better be buying. That jacket would set me back

a whole paycheck,” he says as he passes me. Yes, that’s
better. That’s the Whit I know.

The place is crowded, noisy. Busier than I remember it. I

take a quick glance around the patrons, but most people
aren’t looking at me. They’re looking at Whit, and then I can
see what they see: a tall, handsome, confident man. No
wonder they look at him.

The bartender obviously knows Whit well, because

there’s an open beer bottle—Sam Adams, it looks like—
waiting for him before he even reaches the bar. He raises the
bottle in acknowledgement, then gestures it in my direction
and says, “Matt, you remember Tucker Locke? Couple years
ahead of me?”

Matt’s short, round, and probably around fifty or so. I

think he’s a Young, though his nose has a Dane-ish tilt to it.
He looks me over, narrows his eyes, and says, “A runner,
weren’t you?”

“Still am,” I reply, leaning over to shake his hand.
“In town for the reunion?” he asks, and I nod even as I

turn my head, looking to see if I recognize any faces in the
crowd.

Whit sees right through me. By the time I’ve finished

perusing the faces, he’s got a beer in his hand for me, and he
leans over, getting close enough so I can hear him say, “Matt
says the patio’s quieter.”

I slide a ten-dollar bill onto the counter and say

“Thanks” in response to Matt’s “Welcome home.”

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Then we’re back outside, where it is indeed quieter and

proportionally darker. I wonder how often Whit’s brought
men here, how often “quieter” has meant “more private.”

Yes, I do understand I gave up all claims to jealousy ten

years ago.

The patio stretches from the front down the side of the

building, and I suppose in the summer it’s filled with
overflow from inside. Now it’s just a few round tables and
some chairs stacked in a corner, with mildewed umbrellas
leaning forlornly against them. We have the space to
ourselves. I guess most people don’t enjoy sitting out on a
brisk October night.

I kind of like it.
Whit arranges a couple of chairs at a table, then drops

down into one with a sigh and starts talking. Nothing
personal, no questions, just an update on Danesboro, circa
2012. I remember some of the names he mentions. He tells
me his friends Jamie and Emma got married in 2008 and
have a pair of twin boys who will undoubtedly wreak havoc
as soon as they learn to walk. Emma I remember vaguely:
tall, thin, short dark hair. Jamie I don’t remember at all. The
birth of the twins apparently ended a decades-long feud
between their two families, and now they have barbeques
together on the third Sunday of every month.

I only know some of the names he mentions—I never did

pay much attention to underclassmen, but I don’t mind. It’s
good to hear his voice, and I try to do my part to hold up the
conversation. When there’s a short lull, I stutter out a
question that’s been bugging me since I saw him in All Hall
this afternoon.

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“Has there been any trouble with you being—I mean,

you know, being a teacher and being gay?”

He quirks a smile at me for my inept phrasing.

“Chancellor Maxwell might not have hired me, but he retired
while I was working on my master’s degree, and by the time I
applied for a job, the new guy, Arch Bellamy, had started.
Let’s just say he has a more evolved view.”

“That was lucky,” I say. What a difference a decade

makes: I don’t remember any openly gay faculty when we
were students.

“Yeah. It’s also possible there might have been a little

nepotism at work,” he continues. “My dad retired around the
same time, and I think he put in a good word for me on his
way out.”

“Where’d you get your master’s degree?” I ask him.
He grins. “Easy U.”
That makes me laugh, which I think is what he

intended. When you go to a small school in a small town, it’s
hard to feel superior, but we always made fun of the
Danesboro kids who ended up at East Carolina University in
Greenville—ECU, better known as Easy U. I hear it’s a little
harder to get into (and out of) now, so I know he’s making an
effort to keep things light.

I let his voice relax me. The Sam Adams helps too, I

can’t deny that. Soon, I’ve even stopped looking up at every
footstep. Customers come and go, just inside our line of
sight. A couple of them raise their hands at Whit, and he
raises his hand back.

“So you’re happy here,” I finally say, interrupting a story

about the dedication of the new playhouse.

He takes another swallow of beer. “Yeah, I’d say so.”

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He looks at me. We’re not sitting directly under the one

meager patio light, so his face is mostly planes and shadows.
“And you?” he asks.

I want to look away, but I don’t. I came here to discover

certain things, and there isn’t an easy way to do that.

“No,” I say, so quietly that he leans forward. “I wouldn’t

say so.”

More light catches his face the closer he gets, and I’m

struck by how beautiful he is.

“You were right, before,” I say, swallowing the last of my

beer. I put the bottle on the table and do my own bit of
leaning. “I haven’t changed much. I’m still….”

God, I can’t even say it. I suck in a breath. It’s quiet. No

one’s around. If I can’t tell him, I’ll never tell anyone. I know
that.

He tilts his head. “What?” he asks. His anger from

earlier has bled away, and the sympathy I see on his face
melts something inside me, loosens something up.

“Scared to death,” I say in a rush. “I’m still scared to

death. I’m… paralyzed.”

His eyebrows knit together. “Tucker—”
“All I do is work and run.” I can’t stop now that I’ve

started. “I… I don’t know what to do. I’m alone all the time,
and I don’t….”

He’s got his hand out now, firm on my arm, away from

the light, and he’s making shushing sounds. “It’s all right,”
he says, wrapping his hand around my arm, holding on.

I knew it wouldn’t be easy, letting go of some of the

things I’ve been carrying all this time, but I didn’t know it

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would physically hurt. My chest feels tight, my throat’s sore.
I lick at dry lips and try to breathe.

“Something has to change,” I whisper, and he nods, his

eyes locked on mine, his hand warm even through my jacket.

Laughing voices coming out the door break the spell. He

leans back in his chair, taking his hand off my arm, and I
shiver a little.

The voices wane as the patrons wander off, and I realize

we’ve been sitting here a long time. Rocky’s always closes at
1:00 a.m., and it’s almost that now.

The light on the patio goes out abruptly, and we’re left

in darkness, with only a nearby streetlight’s glow to see by.
Matt appears around the corner, then stops when he sees
us. “Sorry, y’all, just came for the empties.”

Whit picks them up and takes them over to him. Matt

smiles at him, then raises his chin at me. “Just put up the
chairs when you go,” he says.

“Sure, Matt,” Whit says. “Good night.”
And then we’re alone.
“He’s… okay,” I say. I’m not sure why I’m so surprised

by that, but I am.

“Yeah,” Whit says, sitting down again, stretching out his

legs. “He’s a good guy.”

Quiet descends. I can see my breath now when I talk,

but I make no move to leave, and neither does Whit.

“He probably thinks….” I can’t quite get it out, but Whit

knows what I mean.

“That bother you?” he asks, not looking at me. If I

hadn’t known him well once, I might not hear how carefully
he’s listening for my answer.

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“Not right now,” I finally say. I guess it was a good

enough response, because he turns his head toward me, lets
his gaze rove over me.

Abruptly, heat steals through my body, throwing off the

chill. I slide down a bit in my chair, trying to ease the
sudden constriction of my jeans, and I know he sees that
too. My mouth’s dry again, but it’s got nothing to do with
fear now. It’s arousal, pure and never, ever simple. I start to
lean forward, then check myself.

Whit drops his chin, raises his eyes to mine. “Your call,

Locke.”

That voice, saying my name like that, seems to reach in

and pull me forward, and then I’m out of my chair, crouched
in the space between Whit’s legs, wrapping one hand around
the back of his neck, tugging him down, and sending my
other hand straight to his cock.

He’s hard under my hand, the insistent heat obvious

even through his jeans. He’s been sitting there for I don’t
know how long, long enough that his jeans are warm to the
touch on the outside. Sitting there. Wanting me.

After all this time. After what I did to him. He still wants

me.

His mouth slams into mine, driven there by the

pressure of my other hand on his neck, and he makes a soft,
smothered sound, presses his lips to mine for a sharp, sweet
second, then breaks away.

“Tucker, Tucker, Jesus, not here,” he moans, pulling

back, his mouth saying no, but his hips make their own
vehement plea, thrusting up into my hand.

“Where, then?” I ask, stroking the back of his neck. He

closes his eyes, rolls his head against my hand.

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“Oh, Christ, I don’t know,” he says.
“Where’s closest?”
That gets a shudder from him, and he shakes his head.

“Your car. My apartment. I don’t live far.”

I press harder between his legs.
“I think it’s dark out by the dumpster,” he gasps.
Amazingly, that makes me laugh, and then he opens his

eyes and laughs too.

“My car,” I hear myself say, and then I’m uncoiling from

my crouch, letting him go reluctantly, wondering if I’ll really
have the balls to do this if I stop to think about it.

He stands, too, and then he’s right there, perfect height,

and I can’t stop myself from leaning toward him, kissing his
open mouth. He tastes like beer, but underneath, he tastes
like he always did. I eat at his mouth, suddenly ravenous.
God, we fit now; it’s easy, so easy to brush against him, our
hips level now, groins bumping, catching.

He takes my head in both hands, tilts it, and strokes his

tongue into my mouth. The fumbling I remember from our
early attempts has disappeared. He knows exactly what he’s
doing—where to touch, how deep, how hard.

He’s very, very good at this.
I push him away before I completely forget where we

are. I have to look away from his glittering eyes, his swollen
mouth. I rub impatiently at my crotch, then motion him
toward my car.

I don’t give myself time to think about it. I just unlock

the doors and usher him in. Then I’m in, too, and the car’s
started, and we’re moving. He directs me to a place near the
public golf course, an off-road that leads to a grove he must

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have found since I left town; otherwise, we’d have added it to
our list. Here, we only have moonlight.

I twist the ignition off. I swear I can hear my heartbeat

thrumming in my chest. I hear him breathing fast through
his mouth. I turn to look at him, and he’s almost a stranger.
I hone in on his eyes, on his mouth, searching again for
familiar things in his unfamiliar face.

The air between us feels charged. I’m close enough now

to smell him, the scent of his arousal heady in the close
space. He unbuckles his seatbelt, and the soft click makes
my cock twitch. I undo mine, too, and turn to him. Now that
we’re here, I wish we’d gone to his apartment. We’re two big
men in a BMW 328i, and there’s not enough room to move,
let alone take any clothes off. But going to his place
seemed… I don’t know. More serious, somehow. More
deliberate, less spontaneous. I’m ashamed to admit I’m still
looking for ways to excuse this.

He’s waiting for me to decide; I know he is. If I turn the

car on and drive him back into town, he won’t be surprised. I
think he’s probably expecting that, even as his body tells me
he hopes it won’t happen. He’s forcing me to choose.

Your call, Locke.
I reach for him.
He sighs into my mouth and smiles a little against me,

then licks at my lips until I open wide enough to suit him,
and I let his mouth drag me under. The need that never
really abated leaps forth again, shunting aside everything
but my desire to get closer. I chafe again at the confined
space, banging my elbow on the dash in an effort to bring
him closer, our knees cracking painfully as we each squirm
toward the other.

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Fucking hell. It’s not going to work like this. It can’t. I

let go of his mouth, push him back against the seat, and
start burrowing through his clothes. If I can’t have
everything I want, I will at least have this. He drops his head
back, panting, while I unbuckle his belt and unzip him,
reaching for him. Then I have him in my hand, hard and
thick and noticeably larger than the last time I saw him.

“Good Lord, Whit,” I say, running my hand down the

considerable length of him.

He looks over at me, then down at himself in my hand,

and grins. “Yeah, I kind of had a growth spurt in college.”

“No shit.”
I think it’s beautiful, and that in itself is a revelation. It

really isn’t that the women I dated were lacking, it’s that I
want what men have. I want this, this strong indication of
need, this unmistakable, ungovernable evidence of want.

I can’t deny that I love being here, looking at Whit’s

cock, feeling the pulse in it, the slickness at the tip. Before I
even know I’m going to do it, I bend down and lick him, then
slide the plump head into my mouth.

He goes rigid underneath me, every muscle seizing, and

he groans, “Tuck.”

Yes, yes, that’s what I wanted to hear. I didn’t even

know until he said it, but that’s who I want to be for him. I
did this for him only once, but then I was so nervous I don’t
remember enjoying it, and I can’t even tell you for certain if
he enjoyed it. I’m enjoying it now, and there’s no question he
is too. I love the helpless thrusts he makes, love the hand
that grapples for a grip in my too short hair. Finally he
settles for holding my jaw, and I feel the brush of his thumb
across my cheek. When I realize he can feel himself there,

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feel himself moving in and out of my mouth, I moan,
splinters of pleasure searing to my own cock. He likes the
hum of me around him; he tells me so. Well, murmurs it,
and that’s it, that’s all I need—his voice in my ear, his
strong, hot cock in my mouth, his hand on my face. I come
without warning, soaking my jeans, my hips thrusting wildly
into empty air.

It’s all I can do not to bite him, to maintain some control

under the force consuming me, but before I’ve even pumped
out the last of it, I’m sucking him down, farther than before,
farther than I knew I could go.

Whit’s hand moves from my jaw to the top of my head,

pushing now, urgent, no longer so sanguine, and his other
hand grabs at the dash, bracing himself so he can thrust
harder, faster. I let him, open as wide as I can. I’m still not
taking him all, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Four heavy
thrusts, five, six. I’m starting to see stars, but I can’t stop, I
won’t, and then I feel it, tunneling up the shaft, bursting
forth; streams of it, it feels like.

I cough him up instantly, spitting the stuff all over both

of us.

“God, I’m sorry.” I’m mortified, but he’s laughing, even

as his hand goes to his cock, stroking himself, milking the
last of it.

“No, no, I should have warned you,” he says. I still hear

laughter in his voice, and when I look up, breaking the
fascination of watching his hand on himself, he looks…
satisfied. Happy. I have to kiss that laughing mouth, and it’s
not until his tongue moves with purpose in my mouth that I
realize he’s tasting himself there, cleaning me inside.

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It’s not until he wraps his arms around me as well as he

can, given where we are, that I realize I’m shaking. He
nudges me back into my seat, then matter-of-factly brushes
his hand across the front of my jeans. I know he can feel the
wetness there, know he knows what happened.

“Tucker, how long’s it been?” He sounds incredulous.
“I haven’t been with anyone—”
He scoffs, and I don’t blame him.
“I have. Some. With women,” I stutter out. He goes still,

his hand still cupping me. “But I haven’t been with anyone—
”

“Male,” he interjects.
“—anyone who… mattered.”
He stares at me.
“Since you.”

Whit

ESUS

I clear my throat, fumbling for words. I’m still kind of

blissed out over having had his mouth on me, and his car
smells like spunk. He’s sweating and his hands are still
trembling. He looks well and truly rattled. We fogged up the
windows, and I’m still sitting there, unzipped, waving in the
breeze. Not the ideal circumstances under which to try to
talk a man out of a tree, but it’s vividly clear Tucker’s
clinging to a very high branch, struggling to get a toehold. In
this analogy, he’s the kitten and I’m the fireman. Got it?

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After tucking myself back in and zipping up, I check

over my shoulder in the backseat for something we can mop
him up with. He can’t be comfortable sitting there with a
lapful of come. There’s a Hardee’s bag crumpled up on the
floor behind the driver’s seat, and when I fish it out, I find
two creased but apparently clean paper napkins. Good
enough. We’ll start with getting cleaned up and see where we
go from there.

“Here,” I say, handing them to him. I wipe my own

sticky hand on my jeans.

I look him over while he shoves paper napkins down his

pants and swabs them around. I thought I’d prepared myself
pretty well for Tucker 2.0, given how little prep time I got. I’d
given myself a stern talking-to in the mirror while I changed
my shirt yet again, killing time before heading out to Rocky’s.
“Down, boy,” I’d said to my reflection, which looked
disturbingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. “Relax. You’re a
hot mess. This is not some fairy tale where Prince Charming
figures out he’s queer for the royal tutor. Keep it light.” I
even rehearsed some things to say, conversation starters if
things got too awkward.

Should have known better, really. Things were never

awkward with Tucker and me. Between humping like minks
in some dark corner and surreptitiously eye-fucking in the
Atrium, we found some time now and then to just sit back
and shoot the shit. Not about important things, like him and
me and what we were doing, but we were always surprisingly
compatible when it came to talking about things that weren’t
important.

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So he caught me by surprise at Rocky’s, opening up to

me in ways I literally only dreamed about. Now he tells me I
mattered.

What we had together mattered.
He tried saying something like that once before. He

pressed his face into my neck one time, after we’d stroked
each other off in one of the waterworks tunnels, and said,
“This is the only thing that’s real.” I remember trying to get
him to look at me, but he wouldn’t, and then we heard a
noise, or his conscience woke up or something, and the
moment was gone. But I remembered what he said, played it
back in my head for years, and I think about it now.

What a waste of time and energy. What a waste of a

lovely man who has a lot to offer—as long as you’re willing to
make the effort to get past the layers of insecurity and
uncertainty, and did I detect a faint whiff of self-loathing in
there somewhere?

I’m alone all the time. I’m scared to death. I’m…

paralyzed.

God. That’s so fucking sad.
The Tucker I knew at least took a chance, in fact spent

eight months or so taking crazy chances in locker rooms and
public utilities. He got that far, but no further, and it sounds
like nothing’s gone right for him since.

Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t be his salvation. I can’t make

his decision for him, and I’m not going to be his out-of-town
fuck buddy either. I can’t… I won’t… take a step back in the
closet, skulking around looking for a dark place to fuck. I’m
not going back, not even for him. I am who I am, and if he

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still can’t deal with that after all this time, too bad. We’re not
doing this again. It’s too damn hard.

Did that all sound good? The right mix of tough and

sensitive? Yeah? Well, I’m full of shit. If he said to me, “I’m
going back to dating women now, but can I call you for a
quickie behind the Food Lion sometime?” I’d hate it, but I’d
still probably meet him. I don’t seem to have a lot of limits
when it comes to Tucker.

But he doesn’t need a lecture right now.
More than anything else, he needs a friend. That, I can

do.

Tucker

ALWAYS

wake up at the same time. Weekdays, weekends,

holidays; it’s all the same to my internal clock. My body
wakes up wanting to run, needing it, and today’s no
exception, despite the late night.

It’s a ritual by now, damn near a religion.
So when I wake up in my old room on Saturday

morning, posters still on the wall, track and cross-country
trophies collecting dust on the desk, I tug on shorts and a T-
shirt, tie my shoes in a half-asleep daze, then slip past my
parents’ room, down the stairs, and out the side door. I
stretch out in my old familiar spot, leaning against the big
hunk of rock beside the driveway, the surface worn smooth
in spots.

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Then it’s one foot in front of the other, slow at first,

working out a few up-too-late kinks, waking up, but it
doesn’t take long to find the rhythm, especially on roads I
know as well as these. Then I’m free, floating, body
humming, mind clear. There’s no way to explain it unless
you’ve felt it. The best way to describe it is that it makes me
feel like the world’s tilted right for that length of time. That
whatever else happens in the day, there’s been something
pure and good about it as long as I have this time.

It’s the only time I’m truly comfortable with myself.
Usually I try not to think of anything when I run. I

count steps or repeat some phrase whose cadence has stuck
in my head. Today, though, my mind wanders—too many
things to think about—but I don’t mind. I wonder if all that
effort of suppressing Whit deep in my subconscious weighed
me down, because thinking of him now, purposefully
drawing him forth, makes me feel lighter, faster.
Remembering what we did last night sends a bolt through
me, spurs me on.

So while my feet take the straight path toward town, my

mind heads elsewhere: back to the car, our continued
conversation and the calm of the ride home, Whit’s hand
steady on my thigh.

I dropped him in front of his building. He invited me to

come up, but it was late, my head felt like a million little
soldiers were holding target practice inside it, and my crotch
still felt like a swamp despite Whit’s efforts to clean us up.
Really, all in all, it had been a pretty long, electrifying,
exhausting day.

So I just dropped him off. He didn’t ask if he’d see me

again, didn’t ask how long I’d be staying. It made me wonder,

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briefly, if most Friday nights went like this for him—a few
drinks, some conversation, a quick hummer in the car.

He just said he hoped I’d enjoy the reunion and wished

me good night.

I turn the corner past the campus and give in to the

impulse to go around the outdoor track one last time. One
lap leads to another, and another. My feet seem to recognize
where they are; they want to go faster, they want to sprint.

My feet, after all this time, still want to win.
The last time I was home, I screwed everything up. Torn

between wanting Whit and the need to be normal, to be like
everyone else, I chose the safest path. The straight one, if
you will. In doing so, I lost something I never found again.

But I think what I did to Whit was worse.
I force myself to slow down. My heart’s jumping in my

chest and my legs feel shaky. I haven’t run that hard for a
very long time.

I lowered Whit’s expectations of me ten years ago, and I

don’t think anything I’ve done in the little time I’ve been back
has changed his mind about me. I disappointed him then. I
may not have done it yet this go-round, but I think he’s
braced for it, expects it.

And maybe that can be the catalyst I need to make

those difficult decisions. He may be the catalyst.

HEY

’

holding the reunion at the same hotel where we

had our post-graduation party, and if you were in the right
frame of mind, you might think it had never stopped, that

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we’ve all been living here for the past ten years, making do
with crab puffs, pesto dip, and bad champagne.

It hasn’t been awful. It’s even been kind of fun. Those

seem to have been a pretty important ten years. That is, I
don’t think our twenty-year reunion will be as much of a
shock. It’s almost a cliché—seeing the athletes who’ve run to
fat, the disappearing hairlines on some men, the bulges of
pregnancy on some women. There seem to be lots of
ordinary-looking spouses showing pictures of ordinary-
looking children, but a few stalwart singles eye each other
over the buffet table.

Many of them look older than they are, and listening to

them reminds me that my life isn’t the only one that has
disappointed, that’s been difficult in some way. Compared to
many, my life is easy: I don’t have financial worries. I don’t
hate my in-laws. I don’t have in-laws, which, from the
grousing I hear, is a good thing.

Mostly, though, I’ve spent the evening feeling like I

belong somewhere else. Like I’m standing somehow outside
them, watching, but not really participating. I can’t seem to
find any commonality, any overlap. I can sum up my life in
three sentences, which I’ve done multiple times over the past
couple hours, and so I’ve ended up listening more than
talking.

I might have enjoyed it more if virtually every person

who came up to me hadn’t said some variation of “God, I’d
know you anywhere. You haven’t changed at all!”

I know they mean it as a compliment. It’s obvious that

most of my teammates haven’t run a day since they
graduated, and deep inside I’m proud of my body; I know I
look good. Whit thought so. Said so.

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But when I hear it (and I’ve heard it all night long), all I

can think is, Yes, I know, I’m still the same confused,
messed-up dude I was in college.

Only after last night, I must admit, I don’t feel quite as

confused as usual. After last night, I feel a little better about
things. I’m not sure I’m ready to stand before the gathered
and out myself, but I do think I can now say, beyond any
reasonable doubt, that I’m gay. Which is more than I’ve been
able to say before, even to myself.

I never could quite get used to the word in my mouth.
But I think, given the fact that putting my mouth on

another man’s dick made me come without ever being
touched, I certainly qualify for the queer category.

We sat in the car last night for another couple of hours,

and I found myself telling him about my life, or the lack
thereof. I always did end up telling Whit more than I meant
to, more than I’d told anyone else, always showed him more
of me than anyone else got to see. That’s still true, despite
the time spent apart, the distance. I actually told him about
my few pathetic attempts at “real” relationships, and hearing
his hoots of laughter made me reassess my own view of
them, so much so that by the time 3:00 a.m. rolled around, I
was laughing about them too.

Laughing more than I have for a long, long time.
One thing I managed not to tell him, one secret I kept

for myself, is that every woman I’ve gone out with in the past
ten years has looked like him. Well, like his nineteen-year-
old self. I’m actually relieved, in a strange sort of way, at just
how appealing I find his grown man’s body.

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I think I was drawn to Whit then because of the person

he was, and therefore the package he came in appealed to
me. The same is true now, only it’s even stronger. I want
more. I want to stand up with him, without any clothes on,
with all the lights up, and look him over from head to toe,
read the changes in him with my fingers, my mouth.

I want that now.
To hell with the punch bowl and the dress-up clothes

and the photos of babies.

To hell with all the things these people have, that they

think I should want.

I just want Whit.
Right now.

CHECK

my watch as I climb three steps to the landing of

Whit’s apartment building. It’s just past eleven. He’ll either
be out or in, right? If he’s in, fine. If he’s out… I don’t want to
think about it, or who… or what he might….

His name’s printed in neat block letters over a mailbox

for 2-A, and I’ve been staring at that little slip of paper for
about five minutes now.

I left the party in full swing. Three hours seemed more

than enough time to talk to people I no longer have any
interest in. I did see Stuart Pugh, talked to him long enough
to know we have nothing to talk about. I was tempted to take
him aside, tell him I spent last night with my face buried in
Whit Jamison’s crotch, just to see the look on his face, but I
decided Whit deserved better than that.

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Hell, I deserve better than that.
I looked at Spew’s bloodshot eyes, his double chin and

padded gut, at the derisive looks he got from his wife, and I
decided he probably didn’t need one more thing to be pissed
about.

I’m procrastinating. Just go on up, will you?
Whit takes so long to answer, I’m sure he’s gone out. My

heart jumps at the distorted “Yes?” I finally hear through the
door.

“It’s me.”
The door opens before the words leave my mouth, which

makes me smile, and I hear him say, “Come on in.”

His place is nice. Small but clean, with a courtyard view

below. It suits him. He’s dressed down in sweatpants and a
faded red Wildcats T-shirt, bare feet. Obviously he didn’t go
out. As unfair as I know it is, that pleases me beyond
measure.

“How was it?” he asks, motioning for me to sit down on

the couch in the living area. “Want a beer?”

“No, thanks. Maybe just some water?” Through a door, I

can see into his bedroom. The covers are rumpled; a light on
the nightstand shows a book facedown on the bed.

I’d like to think he’s been waiting for me.
He brings me a glass, then folds himself into the other

corner of the couch, drawing his knees up. He raises his
eyebrows. “Well?”

“Stuart Pugh looks like shit” is what pops out first.
I do like hearing him laugh.

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“I’m shocked,” he says. He waits a bit, then asks,

“Really, how was it?”

“It was fine,” I tell him, stretching my legs out and

resting my head on the couch. “None of it seemed quite real.”

He nods. “I remember the first time I saw Emma’s two

pups. I couldn’t believe they actually came out of her. That
they were Jamie’s kids, you know? I’ve known them both
since we were little kids, and here they are, making more.”

He does seem to understand. It’s quiet for another

minute or so. Then he says, “Was it worth coming for?”

Whit’s voice always has layers to it. His words have

shades of meaning. Sometimes I miss what he’s going for,
but not this time. I know what he’s asking.

“No, it wasn’t,” I tell him truthfully. “But getting to see

you was.”

I like being able to see him in light. I can see the flush

that stains his face, brightens his eyes.

I feel a rush of affection for him; no, something stronger

than affection. I want so much to be like him—confident,
open. Maybe if I spent enough time with him, it would wear
off on me?

It makes me wonder who I’d be now if I hadn’t been so

afraid back then. What would have happened if, instead of
turning him down, I’d gone to see the damn Scorpion King
with him? Even if it meant seeing Spew and Spit there, and,
hell, Martha-Dunn too? If I’d been able to acknowledge him
then, and what we were together, who we were to each other,
who would I be now?

“I’m sorry, Whit,” I say before I can think better of it.

“For the way we left things.”

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“Old news,” he says, waving one hand. “It doesn’t

matter.”

“It does to me,” I insist.
“All right, then. Apology accepted,” he says easily. He

stretches out his legs, pushing his bare feet against my
thigh, kneading me with his long, bare toes.

I put my hand on his foot, squeeze it.
“Whit….”
He’s got one arm out already. “Come here,” he says

softly.

I stand up. “You come here,” I say. I want to stand with

him, feel how equal we are. He rises slowly, tugging up his
sweatpants with one hand, and I can see he’s not wearing
anything underneath them. I can also see the swell forming
beneath the soft material.

I start to draw him into my arms, but he urges me

toward the bedroom. “Nosy neighbors,” he says, and I realize
I would have happily kissed him, and more, in front of his
living room window.

For once, I hadn’t given anyone else a thought. Sad as it

is to say, that feels like progress to me.

He closes the blinds in his room, and the door too. We’re

cocooned now in private space, with no one to worry us and
nothing to stop us. I’m hard in the time it takes him to strip
off his T-shirt.

He reaches for the bedside light, but I stop him.
“Leave it on.” My voice sounds hoarse, and the hands

that drag my own shirt over my head are trembling.

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He turns to look at me, then sticks his thumbs under

the waistband of his sweats and shucks them off. He drops
them carelessly on the floor beside him, stands up straight,
and I’m stuck, struck dumb by him. By the changes I see. I
remember the vulnerability of him then—his delicate
collarbones, his visible ribs, the china-fine texture of his
skin. I remember straddling him, touching him, thinking he
felt like a bird beneath me. I remember being afraid to let
him take my weight, afraid I’d squash him.

No worries there now.
He looks bigger without clothes on; he used to look

smaller. He’s built in strong, elegant lines now, long and
lean. Muscular thighs, good shoulders. That cock that grew
along with the rest of him bobs to life, stretching toward me.

He’s just standing there, letting me look at him.
“You’re—”
“Oh, God, don’t say it,” he says, covering his face.
I go to him, pull his hands away. “Gorgeous.”
“Nooooo,” he groans, flushing bright red, until his face

just matches the shade of his eager cock. It’s fun teasing
him. I’ll have to do it more often.

“You’re a fine one to talk, Locke,” he says, and I wonder

if hearing him call me by my last name will always turn me
on.

I’ve got his hands behind him now, our fingers laced,

locked, his bare chest rubbing mine. He rocks against me;
the friction feels amazing. I reach over and up just a little
and take his mouth with mine. I kiss him the way he seems
to like, open and deep, and it’s good, I like it too, like the
strength of his tongue against mine, the breathy sounds he

False Start | Janey Chapel

makes. I press against him, tilting him back with the
leverage of our hands behind his back, and his hips join in
the rocking.

“Get these off,” he says, rubbing his leg against my

jeans.

It means letting him go, but it’s worth it to be naked. He

leans toward me again as soon as I straighten, and I gather
him close, skin pressing skin now in a million needy places.

“You feel so good,” I tell him, sliding my hands along his

rib cage, feeling the firm muscle and bone under my fingers.

“You have changed, Tucker,” he says, licking a warm

wet streak up my throat. “You’d never have said that then.”

“I felt it,” I tell him. “I just didn’t know how to say it.”
He squeezes me, then rubs his hands up and down my

back. “You did all right,” he says. “I still remember some of
the things you said to me.”

Now I’m the one blushing and he’s the one with the

gleam in his eye.

The smartest move at this point seems to be to shut him

up, which I can do quite well, and by the time I pull back
this time, he’s not teasing anymore. He’s dead serious,
breathing hard, cock hard, arms tight around me.

“Tucker, have you ever…?”
He’s treading lightly, letting the pause tell me what he

wants to know. “No. I told you… you were it.”

“Would you be willing—”
“Yes. Anything.”
I don’t care what he’s asking. Whatever it is, I’ll give it to

him.

False Start | Janey Chapel

And it occurs to me, as he moves me to lie facedown on

the bed with my legs spread wide, that this is what I should
have done ten years ago.

I fought when I should have surrendered.
I held back, when giving in might have made everything

so much better.

I’m not fighting anymore, and I’m certainly not holding

back.

But maybe he wasn’t ready for that. Maybe he was more

ready for most things than me, but not that. Not this.

Maybe we had to grow into this.
I hear him now behind me. The tip of one long finger

traces my backbone right to the base and then beyond. I
moan when he gets where he’s going, and spread my thighs
reflexively wider. I feel two fingers there now, careful but
firm, then something cool and wet, and now he’s pushing
inside, going slow, but going, not stopping, not pausing until
he’s buried them deep.

I hear my choppy breath and feel his other hand,

soothing on my back. “Easy,” he says. “You’re doing great.”

I thought just having him inside was pretty incredible,

but then he starts to move his fingers, plunging them in and
out. I pick up the rhythm, use it to rub my cock into the
bedspread, friction again, wonderful friction.

It’s transparently obvious Whit is expert at this. I feel

I’m in very good hands for something as frightening as I
imagine this to be. He uses his hands, inside and outside,
until I’m writhing on the bed, humping it, until sweat slicks
down the hand on my back as well as that slippery stuff he’s
using inside slicks his fingers. My heart’s lodged

False Start | Janey Chapel

permanently in my throat, and I’m feeling things inside I had
no idea my body was capable of.

I want more.
“Put it in,” I mouth into the pillow. “Whit, put it in.”
Then his hands are gone and I’m cold, empty. I look over

my shoulder. He’s sweating too, his hair spiked with it, chest
and arms streaked with it. Bright patches of color smear his
cheeks, his throat, down his belly. I see the fine tremble in
his legs, the unconscious twitches in his very hard cock.

He steps to the nightstand and holds up a condom. “You

have to use one of these. Always, Tucker. Every time. I
shouldn’t have let you… last night… without one.”

“Don’t worry,” I say, dropping back to the pillow,

rubbing my hips into the bedspread again, seeking some
shadow of that earlier feeling.

“I’m serious. If you’re going to be doing this, you have

to—”

“I don’t plan on doing this with anyone but you,” I tell

him, “so please, please, will you stop talking and just…. Put.
It. In.”

Nothing happens. I wait. He still doesn’t move. Finally, I

raise my heavy head again, make the effort to look over my
shoulder. “Please.”

He takes a shuddering breath, then rips the package

open with his teeth and rolls on the condom without even
looking. My God, he’s good.

I brace myself on my elbows, dig my cock into the bed,

and lift up for him. He wets me down some more, so much I
can feel the stuff dripping down over my balls—we’re making
a hell of a mess. Then I have the weight of him between my

False Start | Janey Chapel

thighs, the heat of him, and finally, finally, the press of his
cock against me.

He holds me open with one hand and guides himself in

with the other. Jesus, it hurts. He’s big. He was big in my
mouth, but that’s nothing compared to how he feels in my
ass. My hard-on retreats, aghast. He gets maybe a third of
the way in before I’m squirming under him, trying to get
away.

“I’m not sure I can do this,” I whisper, sure he’s splitting

me open.

“You can,” he whispers back. “Relax, Tuck. Breathe.”
I want to tell him he should try to relax and breathe

with a bat stuck up his ass, but bite my tongue (literally)
when it occurs to me that of course he knows how this feels,
of course he’s done this before. He’s the expert.

So I do what he says. I breathe and try to relax. When

his hand nudges under me, I let it in, let him wrap his
fingers around my poor, defeated cock, let him hold it, stroke
it. He drapes himself on me, rubbing his mouth on the back
of my neck, holding still inside.

I feel the first flicker of life in my dick again at the same

moment I take my first deep breath in a while. I wonder if
there’s a connection, so I do it again. Yes, that helps.
Another pulse of heat hardens my dick, and my ass isn’t
quite so panic-stricken. I lift my head an inch, brush against
him, and I can feel him smile against my neck.

“Good,” he murmurs. Then he puts the hand not

occupied with my cock on the side of my hip and bumps
forward again, pressing slowly, slowly in. I heave another
breath.

False Start | Janey Chapel

He moves a little, adjusting his stance, then tugs on my

hip. “Get up,” he says, encouraging me with quick, hard
strokes on my finally renewed erection. I’m not at all sure I
can move, especially with him wedged inside, but I try, and
after a few false starts, I’m up on my hands and knees and
he’s kneeling behind me. Then he gets another couple of
inches in, and it doesn’t hurt anywhere near as much as it
did.

No, something’s starting to feel pretty good. It starts as

pressure but then slides into something better, lighter. He
starts to pull back and then moves forward again, little
thrusts that take him deeper, then deeper still. One
especially deep, firm stroke creates a jolt that makes my
cock leap in his hand, makes my knees shake.

“That’s it, Tucker, that’s it.” He makes it sound like I did

something good, but it’s him doing it all. He’s the one doing
something good.

Now every thrust creates that wave of sensation, the

building pressure of pleasure drowning out the last aches,
the painful stretch. Now each time he plows forward, I push
back, no longer just taking it; trying to give something back.
Then we’re there, in a powerful rhythm, and we’re connected
now, at the heart, at the very center of us. His hand on my
hip keeps me steady. His hand on my cock makes me shake.
Deep inside, miniature explosions are going off with every
lunge he makes.

I can take it for about a minute before the mini

explosions coalesce into something huge and powerful and
unfamiliar and good, so, so good. I grunt, coming raggedly
on his fingers, still pinned by his rock-hard cock. I don’t
know how much longer I can hold myself up; he just turned

False Start | Janey Chapel

my whole world inside out. My arms are like rubber, and the
backs of my thighs sting with effort, but I hold on, brace my
elbows, lock my knees, and keep shoving back on him,
maintaining the rhythm until he breaks it, until he gasps
behind me, jabbing hard now, over and over and over until
I’m certain I feel him swell up inside me, certain I can feel
his heat flood the condom.

He drops down on me, I collapse to the bed, and we lie

there, gasping for breath, melded together with sweat.

I really had no idea how much I’d missed out on in the

past ten years. But I don’t plan to miss out on anything
more.

I don’t know how long we stay like that, but he’s gone

soft inside me by the time I feel his fingers holding the base
of the condom as he pulls himself gently out. Even that
lesser sensation makes me shiver. When I imagine doing it
again, my cock tries manfully to stiffen.

I roll over as he tosses the condom in the wastebasket.

He glances at me, and when he catches my eyes on him, he
slants me a grin. “Take it easy tomorrow. You might be sore
in some unexpected places.”

I make a rude noise. “Unexpected? I can tell you exactly

where I’ll be sore.”

He snaps off the light, plunging the room into darkness,

then goes to the window and opens the blinds. He throws
open the sash, letting in the cold night air. It feels like
heaven on my overheated skin. His profile in the moon
shadow is as seductive as his nakedness in light. If I could,
I’d draw him, just like he is now.

“I wish I could—” I start to say, but he cuts me off.

False Start | Janey Chapel

“I know, Tucker. It’s okay. This is more than I—”
Now he’s the one who stops. I don’t know what he was

going to say. He didn’t know what I was going to say. We
really should just talk in complete sentences.

I guess he thought of this as… what… a fling of some

sort? A one-time thing. Maybe that’s what he’s been
accustomed to. Maybe that’s all he’s known. Or maybe that’s
all he expects of me: one more secret he’s willing to keep.

“No, it’s not okay,” I say. “It’s not enough. For me.” I

don’t know how to phrase it so he’ll understand.

“Tucker….” He sounds resigned, the patience in his tone

just irritating enough to goad me.

“I want to try, okay? I want… I want to see you. A lot.”

He just looks at me and blinks. A thought like a splash of
cold water dashes over me. I’ve assumed a lot here. “Do you
want that? If I could, would you?”

He continues to stare at me, then licks his lips and

says, “Of course, you dope.”

Oh. Well, good.
“You could come up to DC sometime. I’ve got a nice

place, right on a park,” I tell him, wondering why in hell I’m
extolling the virtues of my condo.

He nods, lifts one shoulder.
It’s the easy way out, I know that. In DC, it’d be a lot

easier to blend in, just two in a sea of people. It wouldn’t be
like that in Danesboro, where gossip spreads faster than
butter on a hot biscuit. But maybe that’s not enough. Maybe
I have to do it the hard way too.

“Or I could come down here,” I offer, embarrassed at

how tentative I sound, “if you’d rather.”

False Start | Janey Chapel

Finally, he smiles. I did the right thing saying that, I

guess.

“I’m going to do this,” I tell him, or maybe I’m telling

myself. “I want to… and I can’t do it halfway. I know that.”

“How about if I meet you in the middle,” Whit says,

crooking his finger at me. I lean in and he kisses me, then
ducks his head and licks a heated streak across my
collarbone. “No gay-pride parades. I promise.”

He seems to hear something in my silence. He lifts his

head up, and even in the gloom, I can see the kindness in
his eyes. “Don’t think of it in global terms,” he says. “You
don’t have to make some big universal proclamation. Bring it
down to a micro level: it’s one person you care about meeting
someone else you care about.”

My parents. My old coaches. My college buddies. My

employer and new colleagues. Maybe a press release would
be easier.

It will help, I think, to be able not just to say, “I love

men.” The truth is I love one specific man, one unique
individual. And I can’t look at him and not imagine everyone
else will love him too. There’s so much about him to love.

Yes, Whit being Whit will make it a lot easier for me to

be me.

He drops onto his back on the bed beside me, then

leans up on his elbows and says, “But I want to make one
thing perfectly clear, Tucker Locke.”

I raise my eyebrows at him.
“If you break my heart again, I’ll break your nose,” he

says. I’m certain he’s absolutely serious, but all I can do is
grin at him.

False Start | Janey Chapel

“You could, too,” I assure him, sliding my hands up the

bunched muscles in his arms, bearing him back to the bed.
“But I think I’m still faster. I could outrun you.”

“Not by much,” he mutters, but his arms have wrapped

around me tight, holding me down.

With any luck, we won’t have to test that.
With any luck, there will be no more running.
And there will be no breaking of hearts.

Whit

those fantasies I had about meeting up with Tucker

again somehow never included watching him sleep. It’s
possible I might have been kidding myself when I said all
that stuff about how I was over him, and how it was just an
adolescent crush and it wasn’t that big a deal.

Turns out… it was. He is. He’s all that, a bag of chips

with a Cheerwine chaser.

Tucker Locke’s sleeping in my bed. All these years later,

here he is, drooling on my arm, bony elbow jabbing me in
the ribs, callused feet rubbing mine.

I’d like to slide my hand down between his legs, find his

sleepy cock and wake it up, but he’s so deeply asleep I can’t
bring myself to disturb him. Not when he looks this…
contented.

He’s still an emo drama queen and pretty much a closet

case to boot. But he’s trying, and that counts for something.
Does that sound condescending? I mean, he’s a hotshot DC

False Start | Janey Chapel

attorney and I’m a teacher at a small college in a small town.
Is it weird to say how proud I am of him for stepping up even
this much?

I hope we’re wiser as well as older. He’s able to say some

stuff now he couldn’t ten years ago, and I can admit my way
isn’t the only way. As far as lessons learned go, that one’s a
doozy. We all have to find our own path in our own time. If
we find a path we can walk together, well, aren’t we lucky.

Later, over brunch at The Waffle House, I’ll try breaking

it down for him. “I’m not willing to skulk around in secret,
but I am prepared to let you set the pace,” I’ll tell him. “It’s
not a race. Nobody’s timing you. Some people get off the
block faster, that’s all. Doesn’t mean you can’t still run a
marathon,” I’ll say. What do you think? Too much? Too
Vince Lombardi? You know, back then, the first time around,
we never talked about this kind of stuff. Raging hormones
combined with secrecy, plus Tucker’s massive gay freakout,
led to a lot of, shall we say, repression. But this time, so far,
it’s different. He’s talking, I’m talking, and even if there still
seems to be some leftover flopsweat from the massive gay
freakout, he seems to be getting there, one foot in front of
the other. And if he can stick it out this time, stick with me,
well, I think we’ll go places.

Or, hell, forget about going places; maybe we’ll just stay

right here.

Maybe Tucker Locke’s ready to come home.

Tucker

False Start | Janey Chapel

’

a beautiful day. Just by lifting my head a few inches, I

can see outside Whit’s bedroom window. I slept like a rock,
and now it’s a perfect morning for a run. The sun’s just
peeking over the horizon, so it won’t be too warm yet and the
grass will still be wet. I can almost feel it, slick under my
flying feet, dewdrops splashing up. I can hear the quiet
already, my own heartbeat and breath the only sounds in
the world. I want it. I want the peace of it.

Part of me still yearns, instinctively, to run.
It’s what I’ve always done, and I do it well.
But I drop my head back down instead, onto the pillow

made by Whit’s arm. It’s comfortable. I’m comfortable right
where I am. Not as sore as I thought I might be, either.

Whit’s good at what he does. Always was. But it’s

different now. The man is different from the boy. He grew up,
and I wasn’t there to see it. He stayed here, sure of himself,
his place, while I ran and ran and ran.

I lean back and find that the curve of my back fits

neatly into Whit’s chest. His arms tighten around me. Strong
arms, long muscles under the smooth skin I remember so
well. His knees tuck in behind mine.

The lure of lying here with him is the first thing I’ve

found in ten years that rivals the peace I’ve only ever found
on my feet.

I’m tired of running.
Today, I think I’ll sleep in.

About the Author

ANEY

HAPEL

found a paperback romance in her

grandmother’s bookcase at the age of eleven, inhaled it in
one sitting, and then proceeded to devour thousands of
romance novels in a variety of genres over the course of
several decades. Eventually, her husband said, “Stop
reading! Start writing!” After a lifetime in the South, Janey
now lives in the Northeast with her husband and daughter,
where she volunteers with the PTO, struggles to adapt to
actual winter, and writes fiction in her spare time.
Visit her blog at

http://janeychapel.livejournal.com/

Also from

ANEY

HAPEL

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

Published by
Dreamspinner Press
382 NE 191st Street #88329
Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the
authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover Design by Mara McKennen

This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is
illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon
conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. This eBook cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No
part of this eBook can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the Publisher. To
request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press at: 382 NE 191st Street
#88329, Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

Released in the United States of America
April 2012

eBook Edition
eBook ISBN: 978-1-61372-470-5

Document Outline

False Start
About the Author
Also from Janey Chapel
Copyright

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