Unusual Attention

By B.G. Thomas

Until recently, Adam Brookhart has led what he considers a relatively uneventful life. His biggest problem is that he can’t let his guard down and allow himself to get close to anyone, emotionally or physically—until he meets Shane Farmer.

Shane lives in a small town many miles from Adam and is his complete opposite. In fact, he’s just about the last person Adam can imagine himself in a relationship with. But Adam is drawn to the man, and neither distance nor their differences can keep him away.

Late one night, while driving home from Shane’s house, something very strange happens. Adam loses two hours of time and has no idea how or why. But as he digs for clues, the answers he finds are totally crazy… and the man he is falling in love with might be crazy as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
• Release date: Aug 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781644058695

B.G. Thomas

B.G. Thomas lives in Kansas City with his two husbands—which yes, is different, but amazingly rewarding and wonderfully romantic. They have two sweet rescue dogs named Oliver (who the breed name Dorkie applies perfectly) and Frodo (who is just learning to be a dog). He is missing his soul dog Sarah Jane very much, but she will live on forever in several of his books and in his heart. He is also blessed to have a lovely daughter and they love to hang out. B.G. loves to read romance, comedy, fantasy, thrillers, mystery, science fiction, and even horror—as far as he is concerned, as long as the stories are character driven and entertaining, it doesn’t matter the genre. He has gone to literature conventions his entire adult life, where he’s been lucky enough to meet many of his favorite writers. He has made up stories since he was a child; it’s where he finds his joy. In the nineties, he wrote for gay adult magazines but stopped because the editors wanted all sex without plot, and edited his setups right out. “The sex is never as important as the characters,” he says. “Who cares what they are doing if we don’t care about them?” Excited about the growing male/male romance market—where setup and cute meets is where it’s at—he began writing again. He submitted a novella and was thrilled when it was accepted in four days. Since then the romantic tales have poured out of him. “It’s like I’m somehow making up for a lifetime’s worth of story-telling!” “Leap, and the net will appear” is his personal philosophy and his message. “It is never too late,” he testifies. “Pursue your dreams. They will come true!” You can read about whatever he’s working on right now or whatever he’s rambling on about at his website/blog at: bthomaswriter.wordpress.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/bgthomaswriter Twitter: twitter.com/BGThomasBooks He is always happy to hear from his readers!

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Unusual Attention

By B.G. Thomas

Until recently, Adam Brookhart has led what he considers a relatively uneventful life. His biggest problem is that he can’t let his guard down and allow himself to get close to anyone, emotionally or physically—until he meets Shane Farmer.

Shane lives in a small town many miles from Adam and is his complete opposite. In fact, he’s just about the last person Adam can imagine himself in a relationship with. But Adam is drawn to the man, and neither distance nor their differences can keep him away.

Late one night, while driving home from Shane’s house, something very strange happens. Adam loses two hours of time and has no idea how or why. But as he digs for clues, the answers he finds are totally crazy… and the man he is falling in love with might be crazy as well.

Originally published in Contact (Gothika #5) in October 2016.

1

ADAM BROOKHART was driving home from the little town of Buckman when it happened….

2

HE’D BEEN visiting his new… well, he wasn’t sure what Shane was at this point. Boyfriend? Could he really be a boyfriend?

Adam mentally rolled his eyes as he drove through the dark.

Nah. Me? With a boyfriend? It was to laugh.

So what was Shane, then?

Adam had to be honest with himself. It was looking like Shane was more than a roll in the hay. Because Buckman was just over a three-hour drive from Kansas City, and he didn’t even like to drive the fifteen minutes to and from work. That he’d drive three hours to see Shane was saying something.

And a half.

Was it the sex? Surely not. Yes, things had been dry for a while there, and his right hand (and even his left) had been getting pretty boring. So another human being was (hopefully) better than self-gratification. But if it was only sex, he could find a guy on E-MaleConnect or Grindr in far less time than it took to drive to hicksville Buckman, Missouri.

Of course there was no telling if a hookup from any of those services would be worth it—would be good sex—or if the guy who showed up would look (anything) like his picture.

So with Shane he knew he had a good-looking man—very good-looking, in fact. (Sometimes just a glance at the man would start the butterflies in Adam’s belly to whirling. How about that?)—and pretty damned good sex too.

But not the best he’d ever had.

Shane was pretty vanilla, and Adam had had just about every flavor Baskin-Robbins—Ben & Jerry’s too—had to offer and he liked variety. A lot. Yet while Shane wasn’t Raspberry Sinceri-Tea or Bourbon Brown Butter or even Cherry Garcia, Adam had to admit he was very good vanilla. Not the Best Choice or Always Save brands either. Not even Blue Bunny. No. Shane was the very best, Edy’s or Häagen-Dazs or the seven or eight dollars a pint variety—like you got from Glacé Artisan Ice Cream on Main Street—with the little flecks of real vanilla beans.Shane wasn’t very experienced. But what he lacked in know-how, he more than made up with a willingness—hell, an eagerness—to please. He was a quick learner, taking everything Adam taught him in bed and returning it with interest.

But it was more than looks or sex. If that’s all he had going with Shane, Adam could still have resisted the guy—especially given how far away he lived.

The thing was, he actually liked Shane. When was the last time he’d liked anyone? Anyone he’d had sex with, that was. He had sex with strangers. Friends, the people he liked, he never had sex with. It messed things up every time. Every time.

So what am I doing? he wondered aloud.

Am I dating?

Me?

Examine the evidence, he thought, which was something his sister would tell him to do (of course she would). He wiped at his eyes. There weren’t many cars on this long stretch of middle-of-nowhere road, but the ones that did pass in the opposite direction all seemed to have forgotten they had their high beams on. Not exactly a good thing!

Okay.

First and foremost was that—well, be honest and call it what is was—he was seeing a guy despite a whole passel of reasons why he shouldn’t. Reasons that were always deal breakers.

For instance, Shane smoked.

Adam hated smoking. With a passion. He’d never smoked a single puff off a cigarette in his entire life (although he had hit on something else a few times back in college). His parents both smoked, and he’d spent his entire youth going to school smelling like cigarettes, wearing clothes with burns in them (and oh, the teasing), and listening to his mother and father coughing (and coughing and coughing). Sometimes they’d be watching television, and Drew Carey or Frasier would say something funny, and they’d laugh and then they’d get to coughing and wouldn’t (couldn’t) stop. You could forget about hearing at least five minutes of the show. That wasn’t even counting the mornings he’d wake up because his dad was puking in the bathroom from his morning cough.

Adam hadn’t been the slightest bit tempted to try even one cigarette when the boys in fourth grade tried to get him to join them behind the school.

No way.

Adam had made up his mind by then that not only would he never smoke, but he would never grow up and marry a smoker.

No way.

He’d worried his whole growing-up life that he’d get cancer from his parents’ secondhand smoke. Why would he subject himself to more worry and fear once he’d gotten away on his own? Adam avoided one-night stands with smokers—they had to be really hot to get him in the sack—let alone anything more serious than that. Kissing a man who smoked was like licking an ashtray. Horrible. He’d told one-night stands they had to brush their teeth if they wanted to get it on. He kept extra toothbrushes in his medicine cabinet for just such happenstances.

And yet Shane smoked. But then again, he was a very considerate smoker. He always smoked outside, even when they were at Shane’s house. Never in the car, either Adam’s Subaru or Shane’s own pickup. Of course Shane’s clothes still smelled like cigarette smoke, which brought back some pretty bad memories. But—and Adam found this adorable and endearing—Shane kept a little bottle of spritz breath freshener on him at all times and used it regularly, even devotedly. And brushed his teeth if they were at home. You had to give him credit for that.

Because I hear that kissing someone who smokes is like licking an ashtray, Shane had said early on. Then looking at Adam, green eyes sparkling, that little smile of his tugging just the left side of his mouth, he added, And that’s not what I want you thinking about when we kiss.

Adam had immediately laid the man.

Oh, and then, good God, Shane liked baseball! Something else Adam had put on his list for immediate elimination in allowing a man to go from a fuck to anything more serious, even a fuck buddy. Adam hated sports. Another chokehold from his childhood. His father loved sports. All sports. Baseball. Football. Basketball. Hockey. Christ, he even loved bowling and golf. And as Mark Twain once said, Golf is a good walk spoiled.

Adam’s mother had been a sports widow. He and his mom had spent endless hours either in the kitchen baking something or in the garden or listening to books on tape while she sewed and while his father and his sister sat on the couch watching one type of game after another. Sometimes as many as two or three games in one day!

Adam had sworn he and his kids would never be relegated to other rooms, widowed and ignored by his wife, while endless hours of sports played on the TV.

But then somewhere along the line, the idea of getting married and starting his own family changed as he realized he was gay. Along with the idea of settling down with anyone. The thought of opening himself up to someone’s whims became ugly and suffocating.

So what did he do?

Why, he’d spent the last six weekends with a man who loved baseball. Baseball, of all sports. At least with football it was only around a dozen games in the fall and winter (he wasn’t sure and didn’t care). Baseball had over a hundred and fifty games in a season!

Yet he’d even gone to a baseball game with Shane—the Kansas City Royals versus… well, he wasn’t sure—and what was wild was that he’d had a pretty good time. Of course he figured that was mostly because he liked Shane’s company, the beers, and the excitement of the crowd more than watching men hit balls with sticks and then run around in circles. At least it was only baseball. Not basketball, and certainly not the ruination of a good walk.

Speaking of Mark Twain, Shane wasn’t a big reader. He’d read Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, and Adam had seen the Max Brand and Louis L’Amour novels next to his bed (and the toilet of course—he was a man). Oh, and some Destroyer novels. Not exactly what Adam thought