The New Assistant: A Gay Love Story

By Raiden King

I lost a lot that day. Almost everything.
That day they still come to my door to ask me questions about.
That day the reporters won’t ever forget…
I knew I would mourn…
And I knew I would grieve…
But I never truly realized that… one day… I’d move on.
It all started with my new assistant.
His eyes looked into my soul. I felt as if I was falling into them.
I became obsessed with him.
Me, a man previously married to a woman!
And here I was, fantasizing about a colleague at work, a subordinate, no less. What a cliché.
But it was what I was feeling, and I was determined to keep it to myself.
I failed, of course.
Everything all started to unravel when I told him he was beautiful.
And my world stopped dead.
*
The New Assistant is a steamy stand-alone M/M gay romance book that depicts loss, grief, and a budding new and unexpected love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raiden King
• Release date: Jun 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9788834132913

Book preview

love.

Chapter 1

It really does help, making things grow.

I thought it was just an exercise at first, something she’d given me to do because she was out of ideas and I wasn’t any better. I’d lied to her at first, telling her I’d done it and it hadn’t helped, but she knew I was lying, and told me to go back and do what she’d said, or she’d make me come in five times a week instead of three. I did, and the first thing I bought was a set of four potted flowers. All you had to do, the instructions assured me, was stick them in the ground deep enough so they didn’t fall over. And water them.

So I did.

The change was drastic and a bit frightening, to be honest. I thought I would just water them and forget about them, but I didn’t. The moment they were in the ground, set in a small brown patch of plain dirt where I’d dug away the grass, I knew things were different, that I was moving, doing. The very next session, I told her what I’d seen, what I’d really seen, and she hugged me at the end, and told me I was going to make it, now, she was sure of it.

The potted flowers had grown into bushes after a few months, but died after an especially nasty frost. I bought tomatoes after that, then green onions, and then something called Swiss chard, that looked like lettuce but tasted strange. Soon I had three rows of corn and had planted pumpkin seeds. They still haven’t come to anything, but the man at the nursery told me they can sometimes lay there for years before they sprout. So I haven’t given up on them, slow as they are.

There’s a bench in the garden and I’m sitting on it, watching my tomatoes. There’s a garter snake winding itself around one of the stems. He’s lived here for a few months now, but I don’t mind him. He doesn’t bother the plants, and since he’s been here, neither does anything else.

I look at my watch. It’s nine seventeen. At nine twenty, I’ll get up from the bench and go inside. I’ll lock the door behind me and set the alarm, and I’ll sit down at my kitchen table. My apple tart is waiting there for me now, cooling after being in the oven this morning. I’ll use my blue fork -- my Sunday fork -- to eat it, chewing slow, so the taste lasts longer. When I’m done, I’ll put the plate in the dishwasher beside the others, and I’ll wash the fork by hand and put it in the drawer beside my Tuesday morning fork.

I’ll walk to the living room window and look out. My neighbor’s bird feeder will be alive with movement and noise, and I’ll smile and remind myself that I’m grateful to see such a beautiful thing. At nine forty, I’ll leave the window and walk upstairs and shower, using the foam green scrub brush and the Old Spice body wash. I’ll get out and dry off, humming the True Blood theme song. I’ll toss the towel into the laundry basket under the sink and walk naked into my bedroom.

I’ll wear the green shirt. It’s a polo, and it’s nice without being dressy. I’ll wear dark wash jeans, the ones with the fake Levi tag, and my black sneakers. I’ll walk to the garage and get into my sedan, fastening my seatbelt before I start it. The door will rise behind me, and I’ll ease out, careful not to scrape my SUV. I’ll close the door and back into the street. The flower shop is around the corner, and I’ll go there, picking up the usual.

The flowers will rest on the back seat as I ride on the highway at sixty to seventy three miles per hour. After ninety minutes or eighty nine miles, whichever comes first, I’ll take the Wilmington exit. I’ll pull into the Sweet Park Cemetery and park in the lot. Sundays are busy days for cemeteries, so I’ll be a great distance from Michael and Tisha and Ronald F. Willard and Marianne. But I won’t mind. Because it’s a beautiful day and a beautiful time to be alive and