Strike!: A Gay Young Adult Romance Story

By Derek Clendening

Tyler and Jamal are mortal enemies at the bowling alley except for one problem—Tyler totally has a crush on Jamal. As teammates, they know that they are better together than they are apart, but they still make a bet that will boot one of them off of the team. Only when they are apart can Tyler and Jamal express and pursue their feelings for each other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Derek Clendening
• Release date: Mar 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310872891

Book preview

Strike! A Gay Young Adult Romance Story

By Derek Clendening

Published by Mausoleum Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Derek Clendening

Strike!

Also by Derek Clendening

About the Author

Strike!

Jamal and I just didn’t like each other. Yeah, that sounds harsh, but we were fiercely competitive with each other. Even though we were teammates on the Cheektowaga Chiefs youth bowling team, we showed each other up any time could. It wasn’t enough that we both carried a two-thirty average and that our team was in first place in the city of Buffalo. Jamal just had to be the star of the team with his high scores and his trick shots. Okay, okay, I sometimes hogged the spotlight, too. I confess.

But there was way more. If I got five strikes in a row, Jamal would rack up five strikes even if it killed him. If I picked up a really sick spare, Jamal would purposely miss a strike so he could pick up a tough spare, too.

Game, set, match.

When he really wanted to rub it in, he would hold up his finger pistol-like and pretend to blow smoke away from it before stuffing it into his jeans like his pocket was a holster. I always looked away when he did that. At the very least, I had enough class not to make stupid gestures when I did something awesome. Does a really great bowler have to rub it in?

At least we’re on the same team, Jamal sometimes said. We’ve got that going for us.

He made it sound like it was a small consolation for having to bowl with such a pain in the butt. I was honored.

His swagger wasn’t the only thing about being on the same team with him that was killing me. What drove me absolutely cuckoo bananas was acknowledging the way I felt about him. Except that it couldn’t be right. I couldn’t actually like the guy, could I? He was far too arrogant and we’d never been very friendly to each other. I’d heard of how people who really don’t like each other sometimes end up . . . liking each other. But that wasn’t going to happen to Jamal and me. It just wasn’t.

From the start, I’d been impressed by Jamal’s smooth, dark skin, his super fit body and perfectly-straight teeth. He was tall and perfectly-proportioned and it seemed like there was no look that he couldn’t rock. I’d known him for the two years we’d been teammates and, in the last year, he’d grown out a set of dreadlocks that really did something for him. He had been hot before but, at that point, he quickly became the total package. I could admit to myself that I’d stolen looks at him