GENRE: Gay Romance
LENGTH: 6,365 words
RATING:

When Jack meets Tom, he’s immediately smitten. But the time isn’t right for romance. Instead, they become best friends. Tom has just bought his dream café and is working around the clock to get it up and running. Jack totally understands since he’s establishing himself as a CPA.

After Tom’s sister dies, leaving him with her six-year-old son, Jack realizes Tom doesn’t have the time or energy to do everything the boy needs. So Jack offers to help raise the boy. Despite Jack’s reluctance to declare his love and Tom’s exhaustion, they adjust into a semblance of a modern family.

When Zack is ready to go off to college, though, the dynamic is threatened. Will their nuclear family explode or become fused forever?

EXCERPT:

One afternoon about a year after his mom's death, Zack asked me, "Do you like my dad?"

His homework was done, and we'd been trying to figure out if we wanted to go to what he'd called a hot new movie or stay in the apartment and play board games. The noise of customers and the smell of Tom's cooking had risen into my rooms and adjoining office.

We had been having a quiet, dull afternoon until he casually lobbed the bombshell question at me.

"Do I like Tom? Sure. I'm his best friend, aren't I?" I wondered what he was getting at. I feared what it might be.

"So why don't you live at our house?" His guileless questions tripped off his tongue.

"I guess because we're only friends. We aren't lovers." I could see the potholes but wasn’t sure how to avoid them.

"Why not?"

Earthquake! Fissure! What was I about to fall into?

Grasping for an acceptable answer, I said, "I don't know. We just aren't."

Like every time we talked about something Zack really cared about, he got quiet.

I'd noticed he was a little like me since he would spend an inordinate amount of time internalizing before he would timidly venture into areas he thought were touchy and ask a question. When he did, however, he turned into a small version of Tom, boldly blasting away until he got an answer he liked.

His question about why I wasn't living at his house had been a kick in the gut to me. Could I blurt out that Tom had never suggested it as a possibility? Would Zack accost him with the same question? Could I face Tom the next day if Zack did?

I’d always told myself Tom and I were both too busy building our lives. Tom had never asked me to move in with him, much less asked me out on a date. We'd never kissed. Sure, we'd hugged, the quick man-hug of friends.

Still, I’d let us unwittingly dig a gorge between us. The truth was I was too chicken to tell Tom I was gay. That I loved him. That he was my life.

If he rejected me after all this time and everything we'd been through, I would die.

Whenever I thought about confessing, I’d asked myself why someone with the body of an athlete and the personality of a genial, much-loved star would want a short, pudgy, shy, precision-obsessed bald man. There was no sane answer to the question.

Most frustrating these days was my non-existent love life. I was so tired lately I'd stopped paying for male companionship. I'd even started masturbating, which I didn't prefer.

Tom, Zack, and I were stalled on the treadmill of life.