GENRE: Gay Erotic Romance
LENGTH: 32,244 words
RATING:

Julian Junk was often teased about his last name and his father's occupation as a garbageman. Mackensie Keller grew up privileged and spoiled. As teens, Junk and Mickey make plans for their future, but when Mickey is sent off to boarding school, he tells Junk their parents are probably right -- they just don't belong together.

Back in town ten years later, Mickey is all grown up. He and Junk reconnect as adults, but so much was said, and so much has changed. Though he asks for forgiveness, which Junk grants, though old romantic feelings are quickly rekindled, Mickey is reluctant to bring a new man into his young daughter's life after his last relationship's failure. He's also harboring a secret, one that threatens to spoil upcoming Thanksgiving plans.

Once Junk discovers the source of Mickey's dilemma, he devises a crafty plan to make everything right. Will it work out? Will Mickey accept his help, and can the two of them make a go of it with so much stacked against them?

EXCERPT:
Note: may contain sexually explicit scenes of a homoerotic nature.

Back home that night, I tried to come up with the perfect plan. One of the boxes earmarked for the city dump still sat on the foot of my bed. I'd been sleeping around it almost a week, forced to sleep diagonally, my feet on the left side only, as not to kick it off the edge. I did something else diagonally four nights in a row, too, something I did while recalling my one real date with Mickey as an adult. Night five was gearing up to be more of the same.

The box was marked JUNK, all capital letters. Now, it could have been junk as in trash or Junk as in me. The rather sizable cardboard carton was filled with almost every gift I had given Mickey back during our childhood. The toaster was in there, and the horse clock, busted in half, now. The skateboard wasn't, because of its size, I figured. I'd already unloaded that, passed it on to a new owner. Well, technically, I'd passed it on to Andrea, and she'd found it a new home, along with Mickey's better ones. Whatever JUNK meant, the fact the entire box was at the curb to be chucked and buried under all the other garbage collected from dozens and dozens of cans that day offered a rather clear message. Mickey no longer wanted any of it.

Leaning over the side of the bed, I pulled out the recycled gift I'd never passed along. I remembered the day I'd found and pulled it from an "extra" pile, after Mrs. Cooper, an elderly woman who always gave Pops and me cookies at Christmastime and lemonade on the hottest summer afternoons, had passed away. Seeing her belongings tossed haphazardly onto the side of her lawn, these items that no doubt meant the world to her suddenly deemed garbage by whoever was left in charge of her home, it crushed me.

I'd noticed the frame partway down the pile. It was a tryptic design, golden filigree rectangles on either side with a space for an eight by ten photo. The middle frame was a heart. I was seventeen when I'd brought it home, and even though Mickey was hundreds of miles away from me at the time, my first thought was of him. I'd immediately envisioned his smiling face on one side, his latest school picture, only maybe a little older in my head. The other side would feature my doofishly handsome mug, and in the middle, our little girl or little boy. Now, I could only see Violet there.

I'd replaced the glass in all three frames and polished the thing to a gleaming luster. Somewhere in my fantasies, Mickey would come home from New Jersey one day to sweep me off my feet, so we could start our little family. We'd place the frame on the mantel of our fireplace together, where it would be surrounded by bunnies and eggs in spring, Christmas cards, and pine boughs in winter, and gourds and a pilgrim hats at Thanksgiving.

"So close," I whispered. "So close."