About My Boyfriend Has a Scar

by M. Raiya
24 pages / 6500 words
Ebook zipped file contains - html, lit, Adobe and Sony optimized pdf, prc, epub

A gay teen's worst nightmare is to be caught in the act by someone who disapproves. Gage snaps under his conservative father's fury and bolts, fleeing school, the family farm, and his shy, quiet boyfriend, Kyle. Ten years later, a violent thunderstorm brings the two together again. Can weathering the storm mend the damage?

Sample

Almost there, I thought, starting down into a dip where a normally placid brook went under the road in a round, metal culvert. But tonight, my headlights showed a raging torrent filling the culvert with angry, swift-flowing, muddy water. The road, which had been built up directly over the culvert, was still intact there, but about fifteen feet farther along, water waiting to go through the culvert had backed up and formed a pond. This pond was now spilling over the road beyond the culvert, creating a twenty-foot washout from water hurrying to rejoin the main brook downstream.

"Oh, shit," I said, hitting the brakes. The brook did this every couple years or so, but I hadn't thought it had rained that hard tonight. I actually hadn't been home for three weeks -- we must have been having a wet spell to saturate the ground.

Beside me, Gage laughed. "Look at that. I think the brook's making a statement about me coming home."

"Don't be stupid," I said, inwardly cursing the brook for choosing tonight to flood. "This isn't the first time we've had to wade." I backed up to the top of the hill and pulled over, getting my car as far off the road as I could.

"I don't know. It looks pretty high," Gage said. "Listen, why don't you drive to the Shelby's, or somewhere? I'll sleep in the backseat and head out at first light, if you don't mind."

"Are you kidding me?" I asked.

"I really don't want people to see me." Gage shifted uncomfortably. "But there's no reason you can't have a dry bed."

"Look, my house is right there." I pointed at the light. "We've done this a hundred times when we were kids. Come on."

"You've got good clothes on," he said, gesturing to my dress shoes and dark suit.

Clothes were the last thing on my mind. I took my cell phone out of the center console and put it in my jacket pocket, found a small flashlight in the glove compartment, then gave a nod. "Let's go."

Gage hesitated a moment more, then sighed. "All right," he said. Together, we got out into the storm.