Cruel Summer
By Blue C.
wi1dfire_b1ue@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Don't be stupid. This story depicts homosexual males kissing, dancing, having sex, and other activities that they find enjoyable. If that is not your thing, then really, why are you here?
Copyright 2005 by the author. This story is not to be posted anywhere without the author's permission.
Note: This is the sequal to my story in the High School section entitled Like Kings. Reading that story is not necessary to understand this one, but you may want to anyways.
Prologue: Light Up a Cigarette
Jer wakes at dawn from a dream about a blue-eyed surfer named Joshua. This is not important, or so Jer would have you believe. "I can't keep hoping for something that I won't ever have," he'll tell you, if you mention the name, or ask why he sometimes stares for a moment too long at the surf boys that he encounters at work. The impossible is for saps he`ll say, but still the "goddamn fucking dreams of him" keep coming. One came today.
"Fuck!" he yells to the world at large. Lucky for Jer, his actual roommate is gone for the summer, so no one is around to hear him say, "Why am I still dreaming of him? Out, out damn spot!" he says, pounding his forehead with his fist. The headache comes quick, so he stops, but he's still irritated at his own weakness. The love of songs and fairy tales is just bad fiction as far as he's concerned.
The soft light of morning finds Jer on the balcony, sitting precariously on the cold steel railing, smoking directly under the hand-painted sign that says "Jer's Smoking Section." The sign was a gift from his roommates, who do not share his ability to wake up so early without an alarm clock. Jer quite likes having the mornings to himself, just him, a lit cigarette and a pad of paper with pen. Some people turn to alcohol to forget the past, some to sex. Jer has tried it all, and came to the conclusion that the best way to exorcize his ghosts is through poetry. "It's like we're living out some love song," the first couplet reads. In minutes, Jer has filled the page with his bitterness and longing. He calls the poem his "Fucked Up Love Song."
It's like we're living out some love song, the way I need you the more you do wrong. At times, I've wished that you'd stop breathing, and in the same breath kept you from leaving. Boy I can swear this, one day I'll kill you, but I know that same night I'll dream about you. What love is this that makes me grin as hair turns gray and I writhe within? I want you so bad to get the fuck out, (to fuck me ragged), cause damn, you're too good. You make me scream and sing about you these crazy lyrics, this fucked up love song.
Jake is walking up the stairs to his front door, careful to not make a sound. He tries not to skip and dance up the double flight, but it's difficult. He can still taste Trevor on his lips. They'd spent most of the previous twelve hours kissing, among other activities, so maybe it's no wonder that Jake is ready to break out into a musical revue. But he must be quiet. There is a close call when step fourteen almost groans out a betrayal, but he manages. He fumbles with his keys before realizing the door is unlocked. "People are so trusting and friendly here, they don't even lock their doors," his father was fond of saying, mostly to explain why he spent all his time in San Francisco. Jake pushes the door open, letting the light fill the dark interior.
Cigarette Smoke. When asked later, Jake will say that he first knew something was wrong when he smelled tobacco in his living room. His mother, Eve, had quit smoking three months before, but in front of Jake when he enters is his mother, sitting up in a chair facing the front door, the smoke curling from her fingers of her left hand, while her right has a death grip on an object in her lap. A cordless phone to be precise. The hand clenches and unclenches every few seconds as Jake watches.
Obviously caught, Jake waits for his mother to make the first move. This turns out to be another mistake. "I hope it was worth it," she says, her expression unreadable. She says one more word, but not quite loud enough for him to hear. Jake is horrified to realize it was "faggot."