Small City Heart

by Erin McLellan

  Patrick took a long moment to ogle his boyfriend, the man he loved. The last year hadn’t been without incident or fights, but every moment, even the difficult ones, made him sure that he’d made the right choice. His career had floundered for a bit, but he’d managed to snag a handful of wedding gigs and score a few gallery showings in Kansas City and St. Louis.

  Now, he was tempted to abandon his plan to take photos of the creek in the setting sun, and instead let his camera make sweet, sweet love to Charlie’s impressive form, his pickup in the background and summer wheat cresting the horizon.

  Charlie smiled at him, like he could read Patrick’s hesitation. “Come here.”

  Patrick slunk over to him.

  “The clouds to the west are the deepest purple,” Charlie said in his ear, causing a shiver of want to ripple through Patrick. “And the willow leaves are almost neon green against the sky. The wooden bridge here is perfectly framed by the trees and sunset. The water is clear and white-capped from this week’s rain. The sun is pink.”

  “You’re so good at your colors.”

  Charlie laughed and kissed Patrick’s neck, which was not convincing Patrick to move away and work.

  “Take your pictures and then come back here and kiss me. You’ve been waiting for a day like this for weeks.”

  Patrick pulled back reluctantly with one last peck to Charlie’s lips. Soon, he lost himself through the lens of his camera, remembering Charlie’s words, focusing in on the willow trees and the old bridge, the rushing creek, the deep, colorful sunset. A stillness settled in him, one that he’d always associated with taking pictures, with living behind his camera, but it’d been showing up more and more often. And at unusual times, like when he’d sit on the porch with his mom and paint their fingernails. Or when having coffee with Arnold at Ronnie’s Diner. Or when Charlie would suddenly pull him into a hug and hold on tight for no reason at all other than closeness.

  The sun finally disappeared behind a limestone-tipped hill, and Patrick resurfaced as if coming out a daze. They’d been there at least an hour, but it could have been longer. Charlie hadn’t moved from his spot on the tailgate, leaning back on one hand, a ratty fantasy paperback in the other.

  Patrick froze and lifted his camera slowly, so as not to startle his subject. He snapped a picture of Charlie’s tennis shoes, swinging slowly in the shadow of the tailgate. Then another of his hand—strong and callused and so fucking gentle—holding the book. He moved his sights to Charlie’s face to find Charlie smiling slightly, secretly, like he’d realized Patrick’s game. Patrick took that shot for the gift that it was.

  He zoomed out and took a picture of the whole scene—Charlie sitting in his truck bed, the last dredges of daylight gilding his brown hair bronze, his strong body relaxed and casual.

  “You’re my muse,” Patrick said, only partially joking.

  “I feel so objectified.” Charlie smiled wider and didn’t look up from his book. “I think I like it.”

  “Good.” Patrick packed up his camera and gear quickly, and then slid between Charlie’s legs. “Do you think you’ll still like it when we’re older? Like when you’re an impossibly handsome silver fox, and I feel the need to lovingly take pictures of your sideburns? Or your gray chest hair? Or your saggy butt?”

  Charlie tossed his book to the side and raked his fingers through Patrick’s curls, pulling his long hair away from his face. He kissed Patrick softly, rubbing over his lips until they were sensitized and his heart was pounding. “I’ll always love having your eyes on me. I’ll always love you. And your camera.”

  Patrick pressed his forehead against Charlie’s and gazed into his dark eyes. “You’re not just my muse, you know?”

  “Oh?”

  “No. You’re also my home.” Patrick kissed Charlie’s ear and then pressed their cheeks together. “I love you. You’re my muse, my home, and my heart.”

  They stood there for another few minutes, their hearts beating as one, their souls settling, and then they left for a night of dancing, and community, and love. Together.

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  An Excerpt from CONTROLLED BURN (Farm College #1)

  Did you enjoy Small City Heart?

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  Check out Controlled Burn, a m/m college romance that will have you reaching for the tissues.

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  Read on for a preview of Controlled Burn!

  Chapter 1

  Sweat prickled on my neck as soon as I walked into the auditorium classroom. Why was it always hot as balls in here? It was going to make it hard to stay awake today.

  I slunk to my normal seat at the very back. I would gladly skip Ethics in News and Media if I could. It was a huge class, so it wasn’t like Dr. Milner would notice—it wasn’t like he even knew my fucking name. But his snooty TA, Jacob, took attendance, and it was something like fifteen percent of our grade.

  “Well, hello, Joel Smith!” I looked up blearily at the owner of the purring voice, only to be confronted by my obnoxiously perky classmate Paulie McPherson. “Rough night?” he asked with a chuckle.

  Paulie was this cute, swishy guy who had claimed me as a class buddy because he’d recognized me from the local gay bar. His name, he told me before the first class, was Paul, but everyone who was anyone called him Paulie. That first day, he grabbed a seat next to me, told me he had a 4.0 GPA, and always found a responsible person to befriend in case the world ended and he had to miss class. “Then I’ll be able to borrow your notes, and you can borrow mine if you miss,” he’d said. “You take good notes, right?” After a mumbled reply from me, he’d smiled and asked, “You’re not dumb, are you? I could go find someone else.” I assured him I was not dumb and would take excellent notes on days he was absent. Besides that exchange, we’d hardly spoken.

  Or, well, I’d hardly spoken. Paulie always tried to draw me into conversation.

  Good luck with that.

  “I’m okay,” I told Paulie. He shrugged, settled into his seat beside me, and arranged his pile of sticky notes and different-colored highlighters.

  This was definitely my least-favorite class. Journalism was not my thing. But my advisor had “advised” me to take it since I still needed my mandatory ethics credit, and the class was notorious for being easy. Which was what I wanted in my general education courses. Easy.

  The class clatter quieted as Dr. Milner approached the podium, and his TA dimmed the lights. The projector flicked on. Can I sleep without anyone noticing? I’d stayed out at the Lumberyard way too late yesterday, especially for a Wednesday night. And the evening had been a complete bust: not only had I gone home alone, but Travis, my best friend and housemate, had gotten lucky and kept me up even later. Loud bastard.

  I laid my head on the little tablet desk and closed my eyes.

  Dr. Milner cleared his throat. “As most of you know from the syllabus, today we’re focusing on the treatment of minors in the press, and we’ll continue to evaluate what constitutes private versus public matters.” Dr. Milner plodded on for a couple of minutes, and I tried to ignore the scratching of Paulie’s pen as he took notes.

  I pulled my jacket off the back of my chair and folded it up under my head as a pillow. The hot room and the hum of the professor’s voice were going to lull me to sleep.

  “Our case study is from a little-known incident in a small town in Nebraska, in which a young man died in a car accident while reading a text message from his alleged boyfriend. After his death, he and his boyfriend, both minors at the time, were outed by the press. Jacob is passing around a packet of the articles we’ll look at today, the first of which is titled ‘Online Exclusive: Local Baseball Star Dies Reading Sext from Boyfriend.’”

  I jerked my head up and al
most tumbled from the chair. The newspaper article on the projector at the front of the class caught my eye.

  Horror climbed my esophagus like bile. No, wait. That was actual bile.

  “Please take a few minutes to read the article,” Dr. Milner continued. “Make sure to consider . . .”

  Dr. Milner droned on, and I swallowed convulsively so as not to blow chunks. The girl next to me handed me a stack of packets, and I took one and passed them on to Paulie.

  Diego stared at me from the front page of the packet. It was his senior picture, and even though the copy was black-and-white, I knew his sweater was green and his eyes light brown. I knew he hadn’t liked this picture as much as the one in his letter jacket.

  This couldn’t be happening. I’d outrun this.

  Everyone in the room was rustling around, trying to find the article in their packet, but I didn’t need to read it to know what it said. The article quoted a source from the local police department that claimed Diego and his boyfriend had been sexting at the time of his death. It had the contents of one message: I love your mouth. You have the sweetest mouth in the world, D.

  My hands shook as I reached for my backpack. I couldn’t be here. I couldn’t do this. I knocked my packet onto the floor, and it flopped open to another article: “Sweet Mouth Texter Incident May Lead to New Driving Legislation.”

  The room spun sickly. For some reason, that news article always hurt the worst. Probably because it proved the depth of Diego’s parents’ hate. They hated me so much that they started a pointless vendetta with a slimy politician from their church to penalize people if they texted someone they knew was driving. It hadn’t worked, but it still hurt.

  Dr. Milner’s voice filtered in through my panic as I shoved everything in my backpack. “Jared Smith’s name wasn’t released in the press until he turned eighteen, a couple weeks after Diego died, but a substantial amount of personal information about him had already been exposed by one journalist in particular. She was eventually fired due to . . .”

  Three years and two states between my past and me; I’d changed everything to escape it. Even my name was different. Dr. Milner had no way of knowing that I had any connection to that boy in the news article with the perfect lips and killer smile.

  Acid rose in my throat, and thick saliva filled my mouth. I stood up, ready to flee. Which was what I always did. Run. A weight clamped on my elbow, holding me steady.

  From very far away I heard, “Joel, honey, you okay?” The room was tunneling to fuzzy gray, but I recognized Paulie’s sweet, lilting voice. I felt like the ground had turned to mush, and it was only affecting me.

  “Joel, you look like you’re going to be sick. You gonna ralph?”

  I nodded. My perpetually weak stomach lurched a little. He scrambled over his backpack and rushed me out of the classroom with surprising efficiency.

  By the time we made it down the long hallway to the bathroom, my dizziness had cleared, but blood still pumped in my temples. I told Paulie I was fine, and instead of retreating to one of the bathroom stalls “to ralph,” I slid down the wall to sit on the floor across from the urinals, bathroom germs be damned. Paulie wrinkled his nose before crouching beside me.

  “If you’re going to puke, you better warn me so I can move,” he murmured before his soft hand landed on my forehead. Hysterical laughter tried to escape my chest, but I pushed it down and closed my eyes.

  My God, I was not well. If seeing those articles for the first time in years could undo me so completely, I was obviously still a big fucking mess, which really shouldn’t come as surprise to me. I lived in my head every day. It wasn’t pretty.

  After a couple of minutes of deep breathing on my part and endless questions on Paulie’s—“Is it food poisoning? Are you hungover? Do you have the flu? How do you feel? I’m the worst nursemaid ever. I need you to tell me if you’re gonna ralph”—I finally opened my eyes.

  “It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m not going to ralph, but I can’t . . . I don’t think I should go back to class.”

  “Well, let me drive you home, honey. You look positively green,” Paulie said.

  “I live right across the street. It’s one of the reasons I took this class,” I said.

  “Well then, I’ll walk you home. It’ll be a pleasure,” he said with a sassy laugh. “Let me just go grab our stuff and tell the TA.”

  Paulie was on his feet so quickly and gracefully that the room spun again. As he left the bathroom, I called after him weakly, “But then no one will be here to take notes for you.” He either didn’t hear me, or didn’t care about class notes today, because he didn’t react at all.

  He also didn’t question me on the walk to my house, which was a relief. I didn’t want to delve into the pain of losing Diego without either the ability to sleep it off or a lot of liquid courage, and I simply did not feel strong enough to dredge up a lie for Paulie’s sake. The last thirty minutes, from the moment class had begun to the whole walk with Paulie, was almost like a dream—one where all of a sudden you’re naked in public or the nice guy next to you has a knife to your ribs. A bad dream. The type that makes you sweat through your pajamas and grind your teeth so hard your jaw aches for days. But nope. This sweat was purely the waking kind.

  So I shut down. Clicked my brain off like a light switch, something I was rather adept at, and guided Paulie to my home, which was an ancient, crappy two-bedroom house that was a five-minute walk from the campus cutoff. Paulie’s silence left me little to do but distract myself by staring at him. I’d never really given him more than a passing glance before. He was unfairly pretty in a slightly androgynous way. He made my skin prickle, but I didn’t find him attractive, exactly. Sure, he was attractive from a purely objective definition of beauty, but he wasn’t really my type. Short for a man, probably only about five foot seven, with dark hair shaved close to his scalp and a square jaw. He was already fighting a five-o’clock shadow, even this early in the afternoon, and his skull trim left his face exposed and open. Yeah, pretty.

  I stared, and he must have felt it because he glanced over at me and smiled. His lips looked plump and wet, and I was struck by the slight gap between his two front teeth.

  “You have a gap,” I said because I was a dork who wasn’t coping well at all. “I’ve never noticed it.”

  He side-eyed me like I was losing my nut, which was obviously the case. “I don’t think you’ve ever looked at me before today, Joel. It’s been quite the hit to my ego. Must be losing my charm.” He glanced at me through eyelashes so black and thick I thought he might be wearing makeup. There was teasing in his voice, and it made my stomach dip.

  He smiled again and skipped ahead of me. At least for a two-minute space of time, I hadn’t thought of Diego.

  The two men couldn’t have been more different.

  I let Paulie in through our front door, and we were immediately confronted with Travis, in his underwear, lying on the couch playing the ukulele. Poorly. He played every instrument poorly.

  Paulie gasped out, “Well, hello, Hot Pants!” in his musical baritone.

  Travis was seriously smoking. A six-foot-three black guy with long muscles and a spanking fetish—which, like his near-nakedness and bad musical ability, I was used to—Travis turned heads everywhere he went.

  “Hey! I know you,” Travis said. “Paulie, right? I’ve seen you at the Yard. You’re a good dancer.”

  “See, at least some people notice me, honey,” Paulie whispered to me darkly before wandering over to the other side of the living room, where some of Travis’s weird avant-garde decorations covered the wall.

  When Paulie turned his back, Travis swiveled to me, and his eyes bulged like they were going to pop out of his head. Travis and I both had men over frequently enough, but not usually before 10 p.m., and he had certainly never seen me with anyone like Paulie.

  Travis’s brow furrowed. “You all right, man? You look terrible.”

  I felt terrible but didn’t exactly relish
hearing that it was so obvious.

  “He got sick in class today. That’s why I walked him home,” Paulie piped in from across the room. He swiveled back to me. “You’re still a little pale. Maybe you should get something to drink.”

  “You’re probably right. Want anything? We have beer, Dr Pepper, and water.” I headed for the kitchen. Was it too early for beer? Some days I wished for an IV drip. The thought of drinking anything, even water, made my stomach flop, but I’d gladly take the buzz of beer over the ringing in my ears.

  “Milk is fine,” Paulie called after me. I hadn’t mentioned milk, but he sounded distracted. Travis had that effect on people.

  After stealing some of Travis’s expensive organic chocolate milk, for which I would surely owe him later, and downing a huge glass of water, not beer, I was less nauseous, but it still felt like a weight was pressing down on my chest.

  I led Paulie to my bedroom, and he plopped down on my bed.

  “Oh! This is nice,” he said and patted the mattress next to him. “Comfy too. So much room for activities.” He smiled up at me, and I wasn’t sure if he was flirting or if that was just how he talked to everyone. And, well . . . shit. He was so not my type—he wasn’t quite anonymous enough for me—and I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression. I sat in my desk chair on the other side of the room.

  “Your boyfriend is pretty hot,” he said slyly.

  I narrowed my eyes slightly. Travis and I did not give off boyfriend vibes.

  “He is, but he’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Oh, good. Think he’d want to be mine?” He grinned at me. A twinge of something—disappointment that I’d read his interest wrong, that he was interested in Travis, maybe?—echoed through my gut. That pang made me more honest than I probably had a right to be.