Never Met a Stranger

By J.M. Snyder

English professor Gavin Dozier hasn't had much luck when it comes to love. When his last boyfriend cheated on him, he was driven to experiment with women. Sex with Marian, though, had its own dangers, and before he knew it, he was a father. Now estranged, the only thing Gavin and Marian have in common is their daughter Evie, a precocious seven-year-old who stays with Gavin every other weekend.


While out with her daddy, Evie meets the heavily-tattooed Brody Phelps, a sketch artist with serious talent who still dresses like a brooding punk rocker, even though he's in his thirties. Brody is instantly attracted to the sexy college professor, but knows Gavin is out of his league -- the man has a kid, which probably means he isn't gay, and besides, Brody never even graduated from high school. Guys like Gavin don't go for guys like him.


But when Evie leaves Gavin's cell phone behind, Brody has the perfect excuse to meet up with them again. To his surprise they hit it off, and when he asks Gavin out, the professor accepts.


Even though Evie brought them together, will her demanding personality pull them apart? Is Gavin ready to trust his heart to someone else again? Can Brody overcome his own fears of inadequacy and let Gavin in? And what will Marian have to say when the father of her child starts dating again?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: May 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781611526189

J.M. Snyder

An author of gay erotic romance, J.M. Snyder began self-publishing gay erotic fiction in 2002. Since then, Snyder has worked with several e-publishers, most notably Amber Allure Press and eXcessica Publishing.Snyder’s short fiction has appeared online at Ruthie’s Club, Tit-Elation, Eros Monthly, and Amazon Shorts, as well as in anthologies released by Alyson Books, Cleis Press, and others.For more book excerpts, free fiction, and purchasing information, please visit http://jmsnyder.net.

Book preview

Section 1

Part 1: Gavin

Chapter 1

At nine o’clock in the morning, Gavin Dozier is pacing the hall of his tiny apartment, waiting for his turn to use the bathroom. Whoever decided one would be sufficient in a two-bedroom place was out of their mind, because he has to be in his office at Richmond State College in a half hour, and that isn’t going to happen. He hasn’t had a shower yet, he needs to brush his teeth, he needs to take a piss, damn it, and the door is firmly shut against him like it’s been for the past twenty minutes, ever since his daughter Evie zoomed past him with the backward cry, Me first!

What could a seven year old possibly be doing in there for so long?

The next time he passes the door, he stops and raps quickly. Evie, honey? Did you drown in there or something?

Daddy! she shrieks. It’s half a shout of independence and half a cry for help.

He tries the handle; it turns easily in his hand, but he only opens the door a crack. Need a hand, sweetie?

Don’t look! she shrieks again. At some point after her fifth birthday, Evie began talking in exclamation points. Gavin hopes it’s just a phase she’s going through, but he isn’t so sure. A few female students of his still do the same thing.

I’m not looking, he promises, placing his free hand over his eyes so she won’t see him peeking through the fingers. He eases the door open further and ducks his head inside the bathroom. The water is running in the sink, there’s toothpaste squirted all over the counter, and the strong scent of honeysuckle fills the air. Are you finished in here yet, Evie? Daddy needs to use the bathroom, too.

Suddenly his daughter erupts in loud, choking tears. "I’m st-st-st-stuck!"

Lowering his hand, Gavin catches sight of Evie perched precariously on the edge of the tub and fights back laughter. Her face is all scrunched up in obvious distress; he can’t so much as smirk if he doesn’t want her to sulk for the rest of the day. But it isn’t the first time he thinks, Kids do the damnedest things.

He doesn’t even want to know what happened. One small leg is covered in the opaque white tights Marian says Evie has to wear because she can’t seem to remember to sit like a lady in a dress. The tights are pulled all the way up to her hip on the one side—no underwear beneath them, Gavin notices, which means they’re going to have to come off and go back on again. If it took twenty minutes to get this far, then there’s no way he’s going to make it to college in time to meet with Lacey, or is it Stacy? Maybe it’s Cayce, he isn’t sure, some undergrad in his freshman comp class who wanted advice on an upcoming paper but couldn’t meet during his regular office hours. He told her at the time weekends were bad for him, but she’d insisted.

And now this.

The tights are only halfway on—the other half dangles into the tub like a shed snakeskin. The tub has a few inches of sudsy water in it, and from the dried rings on Evie’s skin, it’s obvious she didn’t wash the soap off after she attempted to take a bath. Her blond hair hangs in straggly clumps around her shoulders, the ends wet and soapy, the dry crown wispy with flyaway strands. Her bangs have toothpaste in them, for some reason. More toothpaste is smeared across her cheek, and there’s another swatch above one eyebrow. The dress she’d picked out to wear hangs bunched around her neck like a cape.

Yeah, they’re not leaving the apartment any time soon.

Honey, Gavin starts.

With a shrill cry, Evie clasps her tiny hands over the front of her flat chest. Daddy! Don’t look at my nips!

That does it—he can’t help but grin. Your what?

Her hands reposition themselves over her nipples. My nips! Mommy says I can’t let boys see them, so don’t look!

He takes a deep breath and mentally counts to five. Well, to three, that’s as far as he gets before the grin returns. I’m your daddy, he points out. I don’t count.

He’s speaking gently with the misguided notion that if he talks softly enough, she’ll stop with the histrionics. No such luck. Her eyes glisten wetly and she rubs the back of one arm across her nose as she sniffles. Somehow she manages to do so without moving her hands, which are still clamped steadfastly on her chest. You’re a boy, Evie says with a pout. You do too count.

Another thought strikes him, this one disturbing. Wait, are you showing other boys your…what’d your mother call them, again? Your nips?

Through her tears, Evie giggles. Noooo, she says, drawing the word out in such a way that Gavin remains unconvinced.

"If I hear about you showing other boys anything, little lady, there’s going to be hell to pay," he threatens.

Evie giggles harder. You said the H word!

Gavin struggles to keep a straight face. God, to be that young and innocent again, when hell was considered too bad to say out loud! I’m serious. Now let’s get you dressed.

He eyes the lukewarm water in the tub, the toothpaste smeared everywhere, the wet and wrinkled clothing she managed to half pull on. His mind wants to shut down—it’s almost too much trouble to think through everything he needs to do to get her ready to leave the house. How does Marian manage it on a daily basis? He can barely get through a weekend visitation without feeling overwhelmed.

I’m the adult here, he reminds himself. If I don’t take charge, no one will.

Grabbing the dress around Evie’s neck, he eases it up over her head and tosses it in the corner. Then he has her stand up so he can shuck off the tights. She plops onto the edge of the tub and lifts her leg as he pulls the tights off, and they join the dress in the corner. Then he unstoppers the tub, lets the water drain away, and turns on the faucet full-blast. Ever taken a shower? he asks his daughter.

She shrieks again, this time with delight. No! Mommy says I’m too little.

You’re just the right age. Gavin pulls up the shower release, then tugs the curtain across the tub. Go on, honey. Get in.

Evie shakes her head. Her eyes are huge, her little pot-belly thrust forward over her legs almost belligerently. I’ll fall down the hole!

What hole? Gavin doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Come on, kid. It’ll take five minutes to clean you up this way. Get in.

No! The hole! She starts crying again.

Then Gavin gets it. She means the drain. With an exasperated sigh, he leans into the shower and stops up the drain, getting thoroughly soaked in the process. The tub starts to fill immediately. Wiping his damp hair back from his face, he tries again. There, it’s plugged up. You won’t fall in. Now come on, please? For me?

Evie gives him a distrustful glance, then peers around the curtain into the tub. Satisfied, she hops in and starts laughing as she splashes in the spray. It’s raining!

Gavin catches sight of his reflection in the mirror above the sink. His blond hair is curling around his ears, the ends dripping water onto his shoulders, discoloring the T-shirt he wore to bed. His hazel eyes are almost golden in the overhead light, but the circles under them look like fresh bruises. He hopes Evie doesn’t use up all the hot water. He’s going to need a long, soothing shower to make it through the rest of this day.

He rubs a hand over the stubble on his chin and sighs. Then he pulls out his iPhone to send an e-mail to Lacey—or Stacey, or Cayce—postponing their meeting. It’s already fifteen after nine Saturday morning and the weekend stretches out in front of him like an obstacle course. He’s had Evie with him less than twelve hours, and already he needs a break.

How the hell does Marian do it? he wonders.

Chapter 2

Evie is seven going on seventeen. She has her mother’s pretty face and her father’s soulful eyes, and even in a child so young, the combination spells danger. Gavin’s seen the way she struts around when she knows she looks good, and complements only increase her already high self-esteem. On the one hand, it’s nice she has such a high opinion of herself at such a young age. On the other hand, though, he knows she’s going to be a firecracker when she hits high school. She’ll grow into one of those painfully pretty popular girls who rule over their classmates and can do no wrong. Cheerleading, parties, dates…he’s already dreading it.

It seems like just the other day she was a small baby, so frail and tiny in his arms. He remembers clearly the very first time he held her, there in the delivery room, even before Marian did. So perfect in every minute detail. So beautiful already, it nearly broke his heart. When he looks at her now, growing like a dandelion, fast and wild, his arms ache to hold her again like he did when she was born. Tightly swaddled in a receiving blanket, the world held at bay by his embrace. Nothing could touch her if he didn’t want it to. Nothing could harm her if he didn’t let it.

Gavin remembers being her age once, a precocious little boy himself, for whom the days stretched out ahead into eternity. Now he’s thirty-five and every moment seems fleeting, as if each time he blinks, time flickers by before he can open his eyes again. Before he knows it, she’s going to be ten, then fourteen, then driving. Then eighteen, then off to college, then married, then having children of her own. She’ll be on the outskirts of his life before he knows it, no longer the center of his world but orbiting just out of reach. If he’s lucky, she’ll call once a month to check in, maybe visit on the holidays. He’ll miss these moments together, so carefree and innocent, he knows he will, so he tries to remind himself to savor every chance they have together. He wants to remember every word she says, every expression that crosses her face, every little thing that goes into forming the woman she’ll one day become.

It’s difficult because he doesn’t see Evie as often as he’d like. In an ideal world, he and Marian would live together, maybe even get married; he would be there in the morning when Evie awoke and he’d kiss her when he tucked her into bed every night.

But things are far from ideal. Marian may be the mother of his child, but he doesn’t love her. He never did. Theirs was a rebound relationship from the start. Marian Jacobs had just broken things off with her long-time fiancé, and Gavin burned from learning his live-in lover had been cheating on him. What made things worse was that, while Gavin was holding office hours, the Jerk was seeing students off-campus in the townhouse they shared. Gavin found out and left, moving into what was supposed to have been a temporary apartment that soon became permanent. When he heard the Jerk was trolling frat parties looking to score, he thought two could play that game, and crashed a cast party the drama club was throwing after a successful run of Guys and Dolls.

There he met Marian, a part-time adjunct who also had a bit role in the play as one of Miss Adelaide’s Alley Kittens. She was still dressed in a provocative little cat costume, which was what drew Gavin to her in the first place. In his mind, she was as different from the Jerk as a person could be—female, for one, and pert and blond and pretty, for two and three and four. A little flirting in the corner, a couple beers laced with what tasted like Kahlúa, and before the evening was over, the two of them were half-undressed and fumbling towards orgasm in the hall closet.

If that had been the end of it, Evie would be someone else’s daughter, not Gavin’s. Though he and Marian weren’t ever officially a couple, and he still thought of himself as gay, they still met for the occasional booty call. After a bad date, he knew he could call her up and lose himself in her for a few hours, no questions asked. She did the same, dropping by his place to crash when she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, make it home. They could go weeks without seeing each other—Gavin even met a guy he was sort of serious with for a little while, and Marian patched things up with the fiancé at one point. But they always seemed to gravitate towards each other again, hungry for a warm body and hot sex, and not much else.

Then she got pregnant.

Though she claimed from the beginning the baby was his, Gavin had his doubts. How many other guys did she screw around with? He didn’t know, and didn’t really want to ask. It wasn’t until Evie was born that he knew for certain, and it wasn’t because of the paternity test Marian insisted on. From the very start, Evie had his chameleon eyes, the same hazel hue that turned blue in some lights, green in others, and every now and then flashed an almost cat-like gold. And the first time she opened those eyes to look at him, Gavin felt everything inside him turn to mush. This was his daughter, no doubt about it.

For a short while, he tried to make things work with Marian. But as much as he enjoyed the sex, he wasn’t being true to himself. He didn’t love her, and he knew he never would. They didn’t need a judge to work things out, though. He agreed to pay for Evie’s expenses, whatever they might be, at an uneven eighty/twenty split, and in exchange, he spent every other weekend with his daughter, as well as a full month over the summer and the days after Christmas until she had to go back to school.

As much as Gavin would like to be a full-time father, Evie’s quite a handful. Marian agreed to so much visitation because she, too, needs a rest sometimes. Already Gavin looks forward to dropping Evie off at her elementary school Monday morning, even though he hates himself for it. Was he such a handful at her age?

He suspects the answer might be yes. That would explain why every memory of his as a child involved one or both of his parents with a stiff drink in hand. It’s not even 9:30 in the morning, and he’s already wondering if wherever they go for lunch will serve alcohol. Then again, hard liquor got him where he was in the first place.

He loves Evie with all his heart, he does. But he doesn’t understand where she gets all her energy from, because he’s already ready to call it a night, and the day hasn’t