Jump to content
    ColumbusGuy
  • Author
  • 1,243 Words
  • 1,556 Views
  • 13 Comments
Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 

ColumbusGuy's Prompt Responses - 2. Prompt 344--First Line

strong>"Why didn't you just tell me that?"
The first Jay and Miles story!
A fulfillment of a dream I've had since high-school...names are changed to protect the terminally shy who never had the nerve to follow through.

“Why didn’t you just tell me that?” Though the words were nearly whisper-soft, I could tell that Jay was angry. I looked around to see if we were alone, and thankfully, we were. I’d seen him around a long time, but this junior year art class was the first we had shared--and the first where I had dared speak to the blond boy. I was nearly eight inches taller than him, and a good twenty pounds heavier, but he was the more outgoing and popular one with many friends and a confidence I could only envy. I pushed my thick glasses farther up on my nose, and mumbled, “I’m sorry….”


The school parking lot was rapidly emptying of cars, since art was our last period, and I realized that once again, I’d missed my bus. Shit--nothing was going right today! Our school held about 700 students, but only because it served the three local districts in our mostly farm-oriented county. A forty minute ride would see me home, thanks to the long routes, but to walk was still going to be more than six miles. By rights, I should have a car...but fate had decreed that my vision wasn’t good enough to get a license...and that put the final nail in the coffin of what ought to have been my social life. That, and the fact that I wasn’t into sports despite my height, and I liked to read.


I turned to start the walk home, the afternoon hot despite it being mid-April, and resigned myself to once again being alone; Jay had been open and friendly from the first day in Miss Jones’ class, and I had drunk up that attention like a man in a desert finding a water-hole--only to lose him thanks to my cowardice. He traded good-natured jibes with everyone, and after a few days, I found myself hesitantly giving back those same school boy lines: What’s up? Why don’t you grab it and see!...Bite me, dickhead! You wish!...and the one that had started this mess yesterday...Blow me!...and my automatic rejoinder: Right--name the time and place! Jay had laughed back, as was high-school custom since this was all in fun--but I had missed the change which came into his vivid cornflower blue eyes.


As we left class, he had handed me a note: Meet me at the bridge by the cemetery east of town at 10!--Jay. I hadn’t read the note until I was on the bus...and I was in a panic! Was he serious?! Was it a trick?...but he had never, as far as I knew, played mean tricks on people...Did he really expect me to be there? Oh god--what if someone found out my secret! While I wasn’t popular, and only had to suffer the occasional knocking of books from my hands, if it got out in this town where everyone knew of you--if not actuallly knew you, that I was gay...then what life I had would become a living hell. I couldn’t risk it, much as I wanted to!


I walked closer to the berm as I heard the crunch of gravel and the hiss of tires on tarred country lanes behind me. A rusty dark blue Ford pickup probably thirty years old stopped next to me. “Get in, asshole--you want to walk all the way home?” came Jay’s voice from the dim interior. I debated for a second--walk in the unusual heat, or be the object of ridicule by my former friend? If I got in, was there a chance I could salvage our friendship? I already felt pretty damn low, so it couldn’t get much worse…and climbed up onto the running board to open the door.

 

http://s.hswstatic.com/gif/1940-1941-ford-half-ton-pickup-4.jpg


For a few minutes, we rode in silence, then I noticed we weren’t headed to my house...we were headed up a narrow dirt road toward the edge of a little wood east of our small town, closer to his house than mine, since I lived a mile west of the corporation limits. Jay stopped with a faint squeal of brakes and shut off the engine. He pulled a bottle from behind the seat and used an opener to remove the metal cap. I stared at the glass bottle with the brown frothy liquid inside. “Choc-ola?”


He laughed, “Dry town, remember? And my dad would kill me if I drank and got pulled over!...Now--talk! And I don’t want the Bicentennial Minute version!” I laughed at the reference to the history segments on CBS which had aired nightly for over a year to celebrate the country’s anniversary extravaganza. The laughter died when I looked into his eyes--so earnest that I couldn’t lie to him. “Tell you that my mom wouldn’t let me out alone late at night after watching that damn Helter Skelter movie the other night? That I’m a chicken-shit coward, and that you’re wasting your time with a friend like me….” I had no pride left, but still, I turned my head to look out the open window, letting the tears flow quietly.


“Mikey…” the soft voice again, only this time accompanied by a hand rubbing the back of my neck, trying to ease the tension there. Mikey--he called me that after the boy in the cereal commercial, since no one could think of a nickname for Miles--”Mikey, why didn’t you at least call last night?” Was that pain in his voice? I risked turning toward him, and I thought I could see a hint of wetness in his eyes, but I couldn’t be sure through my own watery browns. “I waited for over an hour...and you didn’t show!”


I couldn’t believe what my ears were reporting! “You...were...there?” I sniffled like a little kid, and hung my head so he wouldn’t see me like that. He was serious? He wanted...or at least hoped...for the same thing I did? “Jay….”


The blond’s next move nearly made me cry harder: he removed my glasses, and wiped the tears away with his thumbs, then with a kleenex from his pocket! “Let me guess--you were scared? Well, so was I…” he paused and took a deep breath, letting it out in one ragged burst. “You could have shown someone the note, or told someone I’d hit on you...but I had to hope that you might feel like me.”


“But, you have so many friends--why me?” I was so confused, but my heart felt lighter than it had in years as he spoke again, pushing my dark hair back as he put my glasses back in place. “Mikey, stop putting yourself down--you are a nice guy--honest, caring and I think you’re cute!” He laughed when my face colored up like a fire engine! “What, so you think I can walk up to one of my other friends and say ‘I wanna suck ya’, and get away with my life? Fat chance!”


Jay took my hand in his and gave me a searching, almost pleading, once-over. “Mikey...I want to be real close friends with you! Later, I want to try all those things we joke about--when it feels right. If you want that too, then just say ‘Yes’, and I’ll be over to take you out for pizza on Friday! How about it?” There was no way I could resist those blue eyes….


“Yes, anytime you want, Jay!”


    


    

   

Next time in Prompt 352: Jay's sister.
Copyright © 2014 ColumbusGuy; All Rights Reserved.
  • Like 13
  • Love 1
Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 
You are not currently following this story. Be sure to follow to keep up to date with new chapters.

Recommended Comments

Chapter Comments

  • Site Administrator

I thoroughly enjoyed this. You captured their nervousness well. Nice prompt!

Link to comment
On 08/03/2014 11:13 PM, Valkyrie said:
I thoroughly enjoyed this. You captured their nervousness well. Nice prompt!
Thanks Valkyrie! Where my first prompt was all true, this one is mostly fiction: there was a rural school, an art class, and an exchange of banter with a blond boy, but it never progressed beyond that much to my regret. In fiction, we have another chance to make events turn out as we would have liked.
  • Like 1
Link to comment

And isn't that what's it's like growing up when you think you might be the only one . . . careful. I enjoyed your prompt, ColumbusGuy.

Link to comment
On 08/04/2014 03:42 AM, Ron said:
And isn't that what's it's like growing up when you think you might be the only one . . . careful. I enjoyed your prompt, ColumbusGuy.
That's exactly right, Ron--and the main reason I didn't have my first experience until I was in college...back then, small towns were no place to try to be different.
  • Like 1
Link to comment
On 08/05/2014 12:31 AM, comicfan said:
I remember this all too well. Nicely done.
Thanks, comicfan...that means a lot coming from the creator of the prompt! It's bad enough growing up gay in any town, but in a rural one back in the 70s--dang that was hard. I've enjoyed writing since 7th grade, and tried to get published with some sci-fi/fantasy but with no luck. Why did it take thirty more years for the world to invent internet sites like G.A.? :) My nephew had no such problems growing up in the 80s...lucky bastard.
  • Like 1
Link to comment

Sweet, but I'm unable to work out what Miles had said before the first line of the story and why he thought he had to walk off afterwards.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
On 09/27/2014 11:28 PM, Timothy M. said:
Sweet, but I'm unable to work out what Miles had said before the first line of the story and why he thought he had to walk off afterwards.
I was constrained by the first line, but I can speculate that my idea was something like this: he couldn't really face Jay, and said he was 'busy'...fill in your own line. :) He had to walk off because his confidence and self-esteem was so low that he couldn't imagine Jay wanting to still be friends. I had a lot of problems with that for years.
  • Like 1
Link to comment

So sweet! Scared and unsure of themselves, but there´s a glimpse of hope.

I noticed there´s more to their story, that´s great :read:

Link to comment
On 10/15/2014 06:49 PM, Suvitar said:
So sweet! Scared and unsure of themselves, but there´s a glimpse of hope.

I noticed there´s more to their story, that´s great :read:

J&M are now in their own story thread...all future chapters will be there rather than in Prompts. Keep in mind, 'Hope springs eternal'. I'm working on a new chapter right this second.
  • Like 1
Link to comment

It's not fair that you hide Jay and Mikey in these little prompts.

 

Okay, I should have been more careful, and read everything, and liked, and commented. I'm not perfect!

 

Is this the genesis if JM? Cool! :)

 

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
3 hours ago, Geron Kees said:

It's not fair that you hide Jay and Mikey in these little prompts.

 

Okay, I should have been more careful, and read everything, and liked, and commented. I'm not perfect!

 

Is this the genesis if JM? Cool! :)

 

 

Not hiding...in plain sight, but I have done all my prompts lately as parts of Tales of Three Worlds

Genesis in the sense that they were the first parts before I decided to go whole hog and make it a much longer story, but the texts are identical unless I caught typos in the story versions.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
10 hours ago, ColumbusGuy said:

 

Not hiding...in plain sight, but I have done all my prompts lately as parts of Tales of Three Worlds

Genesis in the sense that they were the first parts before I decided to go whole hog and make it a much longer story, but the texts are identical unless I caught typos in the story versions.

 

Thought so. Deja vu is right.

  • Love 1
Link to comment
View Guidelines

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Newsletter

    Sign Up and get an occasional Newsletter.  Fill out your profile with favorite genres and say yes to genre news to get the monthly update for your favorite genres.

    Sign Up
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Our Privacy Policy can be found here: Privacy Policy. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue..