Now first off, I have to tell you all that I’m going out of town for a couple of days. I’ll try to post on Sunday, before Gambling Men: The Novel comes out, just to give that some lead in, and I hope to have all sorts of pictures from the Giant’s game on Friday night and Santa Cruz on Saturday and Mate’s triumphant finish with his relay team on Sunday– in fact, I hope to totally inundate you guys with pictures, because those are fun! But in the meantime, my life has been consumed with two things: getting new pairs of glasses (which is a story so long and convoluted as to have bored me shitless even when I was running around town spending fucktons of cash to live it) and finishing Dex in Blue.
Okay– so I admit it–I’ve been riding the dragon hard these days! Dex and Kane are my guys at the moment, and they are… they’re… oh God they’re fun!
Now I love my guys–I love all of my guys–and I never write a story without trying to put something new into it. I figure I know and love (or not so much) a lot of people–they can all show up in my brain, right? But Dex and Kane…
They could be my most human, imperfect pair. Ever. I mean, I know I write about flawed people, some comically so and some not so much with the comedy, I am aware. Dex and Kane are both comically and tragically flawed. They have equal parts great and lowly, and they start off as fuckbuddies and are as surprised as anyone else when that thing turns into something really magnificent, and achingly perfect. These two guys were side characters in Chase in Shadow and like a lot of my side characters, they had to have their own story. So, this is Kane’s story, before he was Kane (his porn name.) I warn you, the language is a little raw, but there’s no onscreen sex, and hopefully, he’ll make you laugh just a little. (The model who inspired Kane is on the left, and Dex is on the right, btw;-)
He knew it hadnâtbeen forever. Hell, it was never forever. But the next day at school, the same girl whoâd drooled all
over his cock the night before was holding hands with her boyfriend and making
limpid eyes, and when Carlos walked by, she turned up her nose.
right where heâd been walking on his way to science, the one class he didnât
fucking hate, and turned around.
at me like that?â he asked, and he knew he had a reputation for being a player,
but the girls who were begging him to fuck them usually were at least a little grateful, right?
at you,â she said, her tiny little nose turned up, her plump brown mouth pulled
up over her two dainty white teeth.
âI donât look at trash.â
his own sneer, and he knew it wasnât pretty.
you said last night when I was cleaninâ your chute,â he said, and he knew he had it coming, but he still didnât see it coming when her boyfriend, Tomas,
who was actually a decent guy and didnât deserve to be two-timed like that,
cold-cocked him from the side.
teacher, Ms. Darcy, saw the whole thing, so Tomas got suspended while Carlos
got to sit in the nurseâs office with an icepack on his cheek, watching Ms. Darcy
look at him skeptically.
the one who swung first,â she said dryly, giving him a gimlet eye. She was in her late fifties, graying
and hatchet faced, but she was also hella fuckinâ funny when she was pretty
sure nobody like the weasley little vice principal who everybody hated and who
curled her hair in her office while she was getting drunk wasnât listening in.
said, his eyes wide. âHe just up
and hit me outta nowhere, I swear, Ms. Darcyââ
Carlos. Whatâd you say to him?â
eyes (which were normally a little narrow and devilish-looking, if he said so
himself) as wide as possible. âI
didnât say shit to him, Ms. Darcy,â but he must have put too much emphasis on
âhimâ and not enough on âdidnât say shitâ, because she raised both eyebrows.
her?â
blushed. Heâd actually been raised
better than to talk trash to a girl, but sheâd made him so mad. Geez, this girl had chased him.
Heâd been checking out the lizards under the F-wing when sheâd
followed him between the fence and the portable building, and then taken him
between the two portables, dropped his pants and sucked his dick. She hadnât even said anything. And
hell, itâs not like you just turned down that sort of shit, right? Carlos had been working out since the
seventh grade, and he wasnât stupid.
Heâd been carrying condoms in his pocket since the eighth grade because
girls just fuckinâ gave that shit
away sometimes, and what kind of fool turned that down?
innocence slipped and his halo crashed to his feet. Ms. Darcy was cool.
He hoped. âIt just made me
so mad, you know? There she was
goinââŚâ He cut his eyes sideways
and pulled up his teacher speak.
âSheâs, uhm, goinâ all⌠personal on
me yesterday, right? And
today? She just turns away like
Iâm trash, you know? And I didnât
expect hearts and flowers, but fuck, it would just be nice if she said hello,
you feel me?â
thing with her lips that old people did when they felt sorry for you but knew
they couldnât explain why. âWell,
Carlos,â she said after some consideration. He noticed he didnât even make her blush.
took the ice pack off his cheek, checked the bruise forming there and then put
the ice pack back. âYou know in
the old days, when it used to be the boys chasing the girls, right?â
grimaced. âThat was like, sixth
grade, right? That wasnât so long
ago.â
and put a hand on his shoulder.
âYeah, well, they used to tell girls stupid things like âWhy buy the cow
when you can have the milk for freeâ and âOnly trashy girls give it
awayââyouâve heard that?â
glumly. âYeah, well, everyone does
that, wonât nobody get some.â
then and looked around furtively before going to the little cooler that only
the nurse was supposed to get into.
She opened a big bottle of Motrin and pulled out two tabs and brought it
over to him with a bottle of water that had been in the fridge too. âHere, Carlos. Donât tell anyone I gave them to you,
okay? The nurse is supposed to
call your parents and all sorts of bullshit, but sheâs at the other high school
today, all right?â
medicine glumly, and when he was done swallowing Ms. Darcy started talking
again.
all Iâm trying to say is that other people wonât value you if you donât value you. Youâre a good looking kid, and you know
it, and youâve got girls chasing you all over the planet, and thatâs fun,
right?â
vigorously, and she laughed.
what you want, thatâs what youâre going to get. But if you want it to mean more, itâs got to be something
that doesnât just happen. Youâve
got to make it important, you understand?
Give it valueâjust donât give it away for free.â
thinking of something funny.
âYeah, well itâs not like people are gonna pay me to do that, right?â
her eyes. âThatâs not a career we
want you to aspire to, no. What
Iâm saying is, you donât have to marry everybody you bang, but theyâre going to
think youâre trashy if you let them treat you that way.â
ice on his jaw and shook his head.
âMs. Darcy, I know youâre trying to tell me something important, but all
I can think of is that if I got paid to have sex, Iâd be hella rich right now.â
her eyes with her hands and let out a long sigh, the kind that told Carlos he
was being stupid even when he wasnât trying to be.
with another sigh, âyou could do that.
Either way, baby, youâd probably better not talk trash to the girls you
sleep with, or your pretty face is gonna get way broken, okay?â
born with a cleft palate. Heâd
needed operationsâseveral of themâbefore his palate had been completely closed
and his upper lip was repaired with only marginal scarring. Heâd been luckyâall that had happened
when his family still lived in Mexico, because some charity doctor had taken
care of all of that and his parents hadnât had to pay a dime. If heâd been born here in the states,
odds were, he probably would have had that big, disfiguring gap all the way up
to his nose like heâd had when heâd been three or four, before the
operations. He had pictures.
knew his face was pleasingâhe had high cheekbones and those almond shaped eyes
and Spanish pale skin and a nice square jawâhe didnât take it for granted that
someone thought he was pretty. Even
if it was an old teacher lady, she was cool and he liked her, so he took the
compliment seriously.
careful with my face,â he said, nodding to show he meant it. âItâs all I got, right?â
her eyes. âYou got so much more,
Carlos. You know that, right?â
ice pack tight to his cheekbone and risked a look in the mirror. âYeah,â he said without irony. âLike now I know I got a black eye.â
Dex and Kane!! My boys! Oh how I lurve them. *sigh*
You are so good with characters. It makes me feel and writing that does that is rare.
Enjoy the weekend!
It takes heartache to become something wonderful. Go Kane.
:0)
Yay! I can't wait.
And I could feel you channeling through Ms. Darcy, too. =)