Belkin Lake

By Angelique Jurd

Is fifteen years too long to wait to ask for forgiveness?

To ask for a second chance?

 

Jason left his hometown of Belkin fifteen years ago and has never returned. But he's never forgotten Shaun or their time together.

If he goes back, will Shaun want to speak to him?

How can Jason convince him that the man he's become isn't as afraid as the boy he was?

That he can be trusted and that this time - he won't run?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Angelique Jurd
• Release date: Jan 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201610944

Angelique Jurd

In 2018, Angelique published her first novel Jesse’s Smile. Since then, she’s continued to write contemporary gay (MM) romance and her academic research in fan studies and the queerification of popular fiction characters by fans. Angelique is owned by three cats, three adult children, two temperamental computers, and a very patient boyfriend (not a partridge in a pear tree). She’s also pierced, tattooed, pansexual and proud. When she’s not writing (or swearing at her computer) she likes cold champagne, hot coffee, neat whiskey, loud Springsteen, and the Winchester brothers kicking butt.

Book preview

SHAUN

THEN

The Picnic

1

The senior class end of summer picnic is a tradition. Mom looks at me over the top of her glasses. You’ll be sorry if you don’t go, Shauny. Shauny? By nineteen, there should be some law that prohibits parents from using pet names.  It’s your last chance to hang with your friends before you all go off to college."

I fight the urge to roll my eyes; instead, I mop up the syrup on my plate with the last piece of waffle and cram it in my mouth. Mom does roll her eyes.

I swear I remember teaching you manners at some point. She passes me a napkin. "I’ve picked up an extra shift at Callaghans so I need you to watch Troy for me tonight, but I don’t need to leave until six-thirty. The circles under her eyes are darker than usual; Troy hasn’t been sleeping well with the heat, and she’s working as many shifts as she can get. Shauny, go have fun with your friends."

2

Summer isn’t usually my favorite time of year. It’s long, boring, and usually pretty lonely. I suppose my mom has figured that out the way mom’s do and she’s trying to make this summer different. The problem with my mom’s argument, however, is simple.  First of all, of the forty kids from my graduating class, I am friends with exactly two of them. Secondly, they are all going off to college. I, on the other hand, am staying here and commuting daily to the small college over in Springfield. My graduation present was a little blue hatchback so that I can do exactly that, and I try my best to not think about how much that purchase has contributed to my mother’s exhaustion. 

Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with Springfield, but nobody from Springfield U is likely to end up on Wall Street or in The White House, know what I mean? Especially not with a Library Science degree. Finally - and most importantly - I did not want to come to the lake. I may have only turned nineteen last month, but I have no delusions about my place in the world. Especially the world of adolescence.  And to be honest with you, my place is not that big. I’m five-feet-six if I stuff something in my shoes, my skin is that scary kind of white that by the end of the day will be a painful, blotchy red no matter how much sun lotion I put on, and if I am lucky I weigh ninety pounds. Well, I do if you throw me in the lake fully clothed so I’m soaked - which in all honesty is a likelihood if Martin Day and his pals decide to show up.

Let’s be clear. It’s not that I am bullied. Not really. Not the way Luke Jones is, thank God. Day and his merry band of dicks make Luke’s life a fucking misery. Poor bastard. It isn’t exactly a Broadway revue without them either. My mom works hard - too hard - to make sure we have a decent life. We get by okay, and we’re loved; even Troy knows that. It’s different for Luke though. Luke Jones’ parents have a little patch of dirt out near the turn-off to the lake, and his folks take whatever work they can get. Luke’s clothes are always faded or fraying, his shoes gaping, and I don’t remember when his book bag wasn’t held together with duct tape. To add to it, he has the cruelest case of acne I’ve ever seen. Mom’s always saying it’s a shame his folks can’t afford to get him some medical help for it but I’m not sure it would help you know?  Everything about him is a bully magnet unfortunately, whereas I’m mostly just awkward. Kind of geeky, like to read comic books and sci-fi, get good grades. But since Luke is nowhere to be seen, I am the next obvious choice.

Especially now, as I sit here, huddled under my towel, asking myself why I let her convince me. Coming to the lake was a dumb idea, and I had known it was a dumb idea so... why am I here? I am here because I let myself be convinced by my mother’s well-meant concern that I will regret one last get together with my friends. I should know better.

Damn it, I do know better. And yet, I still sighed and called Ryan and told him that yeah, I'd come with him to the picnic.

If I had just stayed home and hung out with Mom and Troy, read the new Spiderman, or I don't know, cleaned out my fucking closet, I wouldn't be sitting here trying to live down the worst humiliation ever.

Seriously.

What is wrong with my cock?

Eighteen months ago, the thing barely worked. Now it's got a mind of its fucking own. It's up, it's down. It's like a damned yo-yo. But did it have to happen today? Now? In front of everyone?

Why didn't I just stay home?

Tricia Anderson and Lou Murphy walk past me, nudge each other and giggle. Yeah, yeah, so funny.

Hey Boner, someone yells, how’s it hanging?

Fucking hilarious.

Let me explain. Just as I had started thinking that maybe Mom wasn’t so wrong after all and Ryan and I ventured to the lake edge to maybe go swimming, it happened. I’d popped a boner. Not a partial. Not something I could readjust to one side and ignore until I hit the cold water. A full-on, pointing north like some fucking cartoon dog, boner. Right in front of everyone. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Molly Pine had burst into giggles and announced it to the world - Shaun Layton’s got a boner - and everyone who wasn’t staring already, turned around and did so.

Every. Single. One.

I had scuttled back to my towel, and that’s where I sit now, wishing the damned earth would open up, swallow me, and put an end to my nightmare. I pull my legs to my chest and wince. Because of course, the fucking thing won’t go down, despite my complete humiliation. If the amused stares of the graduating class of 1998 aren’t going to make it disappear, nothing will. Okay, one thing would, but I am not slinking into the bushes to rub one out. Everyone would know. God, no thank you.

I groan and rest my forehead on my knees, trying to ignore the uncomfortable throb in my groin. Thanks to my mother’s dumb advice and my stupid teenage hormones, I’m going to be forever remembered not for winning a state-wide short story competition (didn’t even place in the national competition but that’s life) but for popping one at the senior picnic. I’ll be lucky if in twenty years' time everyone at the class reunion doesn’t greet me with ‘Hey Boner’. Know what? I’m never going to a class reunion. Ever.

Someone - I don’t know who - slaps my shoulder and makes the already pink skin sting.

Nice work Boner.

It’s not like I could help it. I’m nineteen and, apart from being a skinny white kid likely to get sand kicked in my face, healthy. I think. More or less. I have no say in it; it does what it likes. Well, no... it hasn’t actually done anything or anyone other than my right hand, but the point is, I didn’t exactly walk into the waters of the Belkin County Lake and think you know what would be fun to do right now?

Ryan appears from wherever he had disappeared to and flops down on his belly next to me. We’ve been friends since we were twelve and reached for the same comic book at the bookstore. Usually, around this time of the summer, his parents are dragging him off to some music camp or something, but they’ve decided not to this year. He’s stupid good at piano and is leaving in a week to go to Julliard in New York. It’s the most exciting thing to happen in Belkin in years; there was even an article in the local paper. What makes it even better in my opinion is that while we occasionally get a hotshot lawyer or a sportsperson and there was one year when some girl was a regular on a new television show - the show was cancelled after one season and so was her career -  the geeks don’t usually do good. I’m really pleased for him, but damn I’m going to miss him. He’ll be at the most prestigious music school in the damned country, and I’ll be stuck here in Belkin with the likes of Martin Day while I learn how to file library books.

Lucky me.

So? Ryan waggles his eyebrows at me.

What? Maybe if I pretend I don’t know what he’s talking about, he’ll drop it.

Who was it? Tricia? Jody? Oh, wait I know - it was Melissa, right? I mean those boobs, right? Don’t you just want to bury your face in them?

And just like that everything ... deflates. My balls ache but at least I’m soft again. The mere mention of burying my face in Melissa’s boobs did it. His stream of chatter dries up and when he looks at me, I realize he’s asked me something.

Uh... what?

Ryan sighs. Apparently, I’ve missed something important. "I said, why don’t you ask Melissa to go to The Melt tonight? Everyone’s going."

I snort. I’m not going to The Melt, with or without Melissa.  She sat next to me in bio this year and I really like her, but her boobs don’t do it for me. In fact, none of the boobs in our class do it for me. Don’t get me wrong, I like the girls the boobs belong to just fine. Just not in the way Ryan means. Not that I can explain that to him. He’s my best friend yeah, but I’m not sure he’d understand. Hell, some days I’m not sure I understand. I shake my head. 

I promised Mom I’d help her with Troy.

Something went screwy when Mom was pregnant with Troy, and he’s kind of stuck at age three even though he’s nearly sixteen. Ryan scowls.

Sucks to be you. Not really. I