Page 110 of A Mean Season

No one would try the door though. His parents were on a bus tour to Laughlin, Nevada. His brother had a twenty-one-year-old girlfriend who had an apartment in Seal Beach. Still, Pete locked the door and stuck a chair under the knob. He wasn’t ashamed of who he was, but he knew his family would be unhappy if they found out, and he didn’t like making people unhappy.

They were happy to have the afternoon to themselves. Larry would be leaving for school in Santa Barbara soon. It weighed heavily on both of them.

“I don’t want to go,” Larry whispered. “I want to stay here with you. I want to stay naked with you forever.”

“I don’t want you to go, but you have to.”

“No I don’t. I can tell my parents I don’t want to.”

“If you can go to college, you have to.”

“Do you want to go to college?” Larry asked, a bit doubtful. Pete had hardly been a stellar student.

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“I thought your uncle was getting you into the longshoreman’s union.”

“Yes, he thinks he can do that.”

“Then you’re set. You’ll always have money.”

“And I’ll only ever be one thing. I’ll be twenty in a few months. I don’t think I want my whole life decided for me.”

“We’re not going to see each other very much, are we?” Larry asked, clearly unhappy.

“We will. I’ll come visit you. We’ll have sex in your dorm room.”

“I’m going to have a roommate.”

“Then I’ll get a hotel room.”

“And then what?”

“Trust me. It’ll be okay.”

“It’s four years.”

“Four years ago you were, what, fourteen? Fifteen? Did you think you’d be in my bed, sticky with cum, thinking about how much youlovedme.”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not making fun of you. Not really. I want you to love me. I love you.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

Larry thought for a moment. “When I was fourteen, I didn’t think I’d ever love anyone. Didn’t think Icouldlove anyone. I didn’t think queers did that.”

“Well, apparently they do,” Pete said, kissing him. “Don’t worry about the future. Things will work out. I promise.”

Year of the Rat

Runner-Up 2021 Rainbow Awards

“It’s a mystery you can’t put down. You’ve got the good, the bad, the ugly and the innocent all trying to fight for different reasons. Most are bad and some good. And it’s a page turner. You never know what’s lurking around the next corner, who’s in cahoots with who, and how it’s going to end. The perfect mystery.” — Becca,Lovebyte Reviews

Long Beach, California 1996. Despite having little obvious experience, bartender Dom Reilly is hired as an investigator for the Freedom Agenda, a not-for-profit justice project. His first case involves a twelve-year-old homicide, in which a teenage girl was viciously murdered. The boy in prison for her murder, Danny Osborne, is seemingly exonerated by DNA evidence but the authorities refuse to accept it as proof. Dom and his boss, Lydia Gonzales, slowly put together an iron-clad case, one the district attorney can't ignore. As they do so, each puts themselves at risk—threatening not only their personal reputations, but their lives.

---