Between the Lines: River City

By J. Scott Coatsworth

What if you could hear the words behind the words?

 

Brad Weston's life seems perfect. He's GQ handsome, the chief of staff for a Republican California state senator, and enjoys the power and the promise of a bright future. And he's in a comfortable relationship with his boyfriend of six years, Alex.

 

Sam Fuller is Brad's young blond blue-eyed intern, fresh out of college, running from a bad breakup, and questioning his choices and his new life in politics. To make things worse, Sam also has a thing for the boss, but Brad is already taken.

 

While looking for a gift for his boyfriend, Brad wanders into a curiosity shop and becomes fascinated by an old wooden medallion. Brad's not a superstitious man, but when he takes out the medallion in his office, he sees the world in a whole new light.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. Scott Coatsworth
• Release date: Jul 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201473532

J. Scott Coatsworth

Scott lives with his husband Mark in a yellow bungalow in Sacramento. He was indoctrinated into fantasy and sci fi by his mother at the tender age of nine. He devoured her library, but as he grew up, he wondered where all the people like him were.He decided that if there weren’t queer characters in his favorite genres, he would remake them to his own ends.A Rainbow Award winning author, he runs Queer Sci Fi, QueeRomance Ink, and Other Worlds Ink with Mark, sites that celebrate fiction reflecting queer reality, and is a full member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).

Book preview

Between the Lines

Between the Lines

A River City Story

J. Scott Coatsworth

Published by

Other Worlds Ink

PO Box 19341, Sacramento, CA 95819

Cover art © 2021 by J. Scott Coatsworth

Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

Between the Lines © 2015 by J. Scott Coatsworth and Other Worlds Ink. Second Edition.

All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution by any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Other Worlds Ink, PO Box 19341, Sacramento, CA 95819, or visit https://www.otherworldsink.com.

Between the Lines is dedicated to my adopted hometown of Sacramento, and also to my hubby Mark, the only one who knows how to read between my lines.

Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

About the Author

Also by J. Scott Coatsworth

Ragazzi

The Redhead

On the Street

The Everyday Grind

Foreword

Between the Lines is one of my earliest published works—the fifth story that officially crossed the line from my fevered little writer brain to the printed word.

It was also my first published novella, crossing an important line in my career as a writer.

It started out as a few scenes I wrote in the early Nineties, and then stuck in a drawer.

When I started writing again in 2014, I found a call for an anthology that was looking for contemporary gay romance stories. I pulled the scenes out and dusted them off, and wrote the initial draft of the story, about 5,000 words, all in Brad’s point of view.

The publisher rejected it, but with a stipulation - that they would be interested in publishing it as a stand-alone story if I could extend it to 10,000 words.

Hell, yeah.

I added Sam’s point of view, and bingo, I had myself a published story.

This story is significant in another way too—it was the introduction to a whole new world. Brad and Sam, the main characters in this one, would go on to become part of my blog serial The River City Chronicles, a magical realism tale that eventually became my first self-published novel.

A note about the politics in this story. It was written in a time when we weren't as divided as we were today, though looking back you can see the trendline. In working on this second edition, I kept that part the same. Updating it to today's world would make Sam's decision to work for a republican senator almost unbelievable. I hope one day soon, sanity will be restored to the other great American political party.

Anyhow, there's something a bit, well, magical about River City, aka Sacramento, and this story is no exception.

I hope you enjoy it, and if you do, that you'll try River City to continue Sam and Brad's adventure together.

I plan to write more short stories in this world soon!

1

It began with a medallion.

Brad stared at it through the old, fogged glass, forgetting that he was in a hurry to get back to the Capitol Annex.

The piece was a simple wooden disk, hand carved with the shapes of leaves and forest boughs and polished by centuries of use, giving it a patina of great age. It sat upon a small green velvet pillow—the kind jewelers sometimes use, rather unsuccessfully, to enhance a plain necklace of false pearls. The kind you might expect to find on your grandmother’s settee, in a slightly larger size, embroidered with Home Sweet Home.

Yet there was something compulsive about it—something hidden in the dark crevices of the carving, filled with the dust of ages-that drew his gaze to it and wouldn't let go.

At least that’s what Brad would recall, years later, when he thought back on the first time he saw it: the moment when the lines of his mundane life snarled, snapped, and ultimately recombined into something quite different.

Of course, he didn’t know any of this at the time.

Brad had discovered the little curio store in the heart of downtown Sacramento quite by accident on his lunch hour, shortly after finishing a meal that included something called candied bacon, which he was pretty sure was neither. It had left a wretched taste in his mouth.

His six-year anniversary with Alex was the next day, and something about the place—a little boutique store with a faded sign that read Murdock’s Hardware and Fine Things, on a nondescript block of K Street—caught his eye.

Brad had almost missed it. In fact he was sure he had missed it many times before, on this busy Sacramento street that he walked four times a day, every day of the workweek. Funny how sometimes you know a place so well that you no longer really see it.

Crossing the threshold into the little shop, he'd felt strangely excited. Well, not quite excited. Entranced, maybe. Enticed by a strange smell inside—sandalwood or cedar?

Long rows of fading pegboard were full of tarnished metal hooks holding dusty little packets, some of them so covered in grime that it was impossible to tell what they held. Brad refrained from touching any of them, a little disgusted by the dust and general uncleanliness of the store. He liked things neat and tidy, everything in its place.

An old fluorescent light fixture lit the cramped space. It had a short—one bulb flickering with an annoying buzz, the other shining a steady, reassuring glow. There was no one else about, not even the owner. Hello?

From somewhere in the back of the shop, music drifted through the air, a little scratchy as if it were from a record player… an old song. Moon River? His grandmother would have known.

He wandered down one of the aisles, drawn by something he couldn't define. Some combination of the music, the incense, and strange a sense that there was something old and subtle at work here. The place was a window into the past, just a block away from the bustle of his office and the twenty-first century.

The lighted case sat at the back of the store, illuminated from inside, pushing back the gloom. It was filled with bits of junk: plastic lighters with pictures of World War II girls in bikinis, three decks of playing cards (the old style with the flowing red patterns intersecting like antique