About Here and Now
by Anah Crow
25 pages
/ 11900 words
ISBN: 978-1-60370-655-1, 1-60370-655-0
Available file types - html. lit, pdf, prc
Eli is home from college, and looking for someone to keep him company besides his mom. When he answers an anonymous online ad, he thinks he might be losing his mind. That kind of thing is dangerous, but Eli has needs, and he just can't resist. He plans to meet his conquest in a park he knows from his childhood, but he might be getting more than he bargained for. Will Eli find just the thing to make his vacation perfect?
Sample
“Are you sure you don’t want me to do your laundry?” Eli’s mother poked her head into his room without knocking and startled him. He barely rescued his laptop before it slid away onto the floor and tried to keep his expression neutral at the same time.
“Uh, Mom. I’m twenty-five. Been doing my laundry for ten years.” Eli gave her a weak smile. “Remember? You made me start when I was fifteen?” He felt fifteen right now, sitting cross-legged on his bed in his childhood room, with his laptop hiding what was left of his erection.
“Oh, well, that was when you were young and greasy and disrespectful.” His mother leaned in the doorway and smiled at him, pride all over her face. “Now you’re all grown up, and you’re going to do your Ph.D. Maybe you’ll meet a nice girl, and then my life will be complete. Well, until the grandkids.” She held up a hand. “But no pressure, of course. Just remember that I’ll only really have energy to chase them around for another fifteen years or so.”
Eli looked at her, standing in the doorway of his room, and she looked like something out of a minivan ad, small and blonde and perky. She matched his dad perfectly. His dad had salt-and-pepper hair and almost the same physique he’d had back when he was a wrestler in college. Eli knew exactly what they wanted from him, exactly what they hoped for, for him, just by looking at them.
“I’ll keep it in mind, Mom,” Eli promised. He kept it in mind all the time; he could hardly get it out of his head. “Got a lot of studying to do first, though.” He gestured at his laptop and gave her what he hoped was his cute smile.
“That’s my boy.” His mother’s face lit up. “Don’t study too hard, sweetie. You’re supposed to be on vacation.”
“I won’t, Mom.” Eli kept smiling until she closed the door, and then he sagged back against the wall with a heavy sigh. There wasn’t any kind of vacation here; nothing made him less tired than he was, than he had been for years.
His computer screen had a fractal image on it, along with a set of calculations, but when Eli hit alt-tab, it pulled up his browser with a half-completed form on it. M4M. Local hookups. Eli’s hands were unsteady. He’d never done it before. But he hadn’t gotten laid in so long, and he couldn’t take his chances actually trying to meet someone in his tiny hometown. A whole summer without sex, a whole summer of hiding, a whole summer just like the rest of his life in this place. He looked at the closed door.
“Sorry,” he muttered. Then he filled out the rest of the form and hit send before he could change his mind.