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By Debbie McGowan

Simon is young and handsome. To the people around him, he looks like he's got it all - money, looks, a future with a wife...

All mapped out by his parents.

But Simon is gay.
And Simon is high.

And when Simon sees his fake girlfriend Jess alongside a boy called Taz, suddenly all the choices explode.

Will Simon follow his orders?
Or will he follow his heart?

* * * * *

A fully stand-alone short story - part of Hiding Behind The Couch. For readers of the series, this coincides with Ruminations.

Part of Take a Chance Anthology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beaten Track Publishing
• Release date: Dec 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781786451040

Debbie McGowan

Debbie McGowan is an award-winning author of contemporary fiction that celebrates life, love and relationships in all their diversity. Since the publication in 2004 of her debut novel, Champagne—based on a stage show co-written and co-produced with her husband—she has published many further works—novels, short stories and novellas—including two ongoing series: Hiding Behind The Couch (a literary ‘soap opera’ centring on the lives of nine long-term friends) and Checking Him Out (LGBTQ romance). Debbie has been a finalist in both the Rainbow Awards and the Bisexual Book Awards, and in 2016, she won the Lambda Literary Award (Lammy) for her novel, When Skies Have Fallen: a British historical romance spanning twenty-three years, from the end of WWII to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967. Through her independent publishing company, Debbie gives voices to other authors whose work would be deemed unprofitable by mainstream publishing houses.

Book preview

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Hiding Behind The Couch Series

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by

Debbie McGowan

Beaten Track Logo

Beaten Track

www.beatentrackpublishing.com

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First published 2016 by Beaten Track Publishing

Copyright © 2016–2023 Debbie McGowan

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

eBook ISBN: 978 1 78645 104 0

Beaten Track Publishing,

Burscough. Lancashire.

www.beatentrackpublishing.com

Simon is young and handsome. To the people around him, he looks like he’s got it all—money, looks, a future with a wife…

All mapped out by his parents.

But Simon is gay.

And Simon is high.

And when Simon sees his fake girlfriend Jess alongside a boy called Taz, suddenly all the choices explode.

Will Simon follow his orders?

Or will he follow his heart?

* * * * *

A fully stand-alone short story – part of Hiding Behind The Couch. For readers of the series, this coincides with Ruminations.

Part of Take a Chance Anthology.

* * * * *

WARNING: includes descriptions of illegal drug use and moderately explicit scenes of intimacy between consenting young adult males.

Contents

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About the Author

By the Author

Beaten Track Publishing

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Music vibrated the fabric of the building, vodka ran riot in his veins, the coke snaked into his brain, his brain, his brain… His head was going to explode. The bass beat repeat, repeat, over, and over, and over, swell bending the corridor, floor curling before him, walls falling away, away…

Simon pressed his palm to the wall and stopped, waiting for the world to level out. He’d been high before, been hammered before, been both together many times over, hoping, believing it would feel different. He’d get the buzz, the thrill, the ride of his life, but it never came. All he felt was numb, and a little amused he was as hard as rock and could have shagged for hours without getting anywhere. He’d done that a few times, too.

Set off again, swagger…stagger…up that impossible hill. He kept his eyes focused on the doorway ahead, the kitchen-makeshift-bar-source-of-light-and-life, a dazzling rectangle non-existent in the dim-yellow crowded crazy mass of people and empty bottles that refused to roll.

You OK, mate?

Huh? Fatal error, turning his head to see who’d asked. Concerned? No, standard greeting. He compensated, over-compensated—or hadn’t moved at all—and stumbled sideways into the soft wall. Soft wall?

Simon fell against him, merged with him. They kissed, lips, tongues, unable to breathe, hands under shirts, in pants grasping and tugging, too hard, too futile. What am I—oh, fuck it. Air, he needed air, and threw his head back, a hot mouth clamping to his neck, sucking so hard he’d swear to fucking God his jugular was about to burst.

Yet the pain, sharp and exquisite, barely registered through the fog of too-much-shit.

You got a room? asked the vampire courier who’d brought the coke and stayed to