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Category: Erotica/Erotic Romance/Gay Fiction
Description: Braden Porter is a tow-truck driver in Anglesey, Maine, and is, as far as he knows, the only gay man in town. It's only when chocolate kisses start appearing around Valentine's day that he starts to get the feeling that he might not be alone after all.
eBook Publisher: MLR Press, LLC/MLR Press, LLC,
eBookwise Release Date: March 2012

Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [46 KB]
Words: 9152
Reading time: 26-36 min.

Chapter One

It was definitely time to leave when the girl at the bar tore her shirt off and stood there flashing her red bra and cleavage. Aside from the fact that it meant people had had way too much to drink, I wasn't interested in looking at boobs and didn't want my buddies to know that.

I flagged down the bartender to settle my tab for the night, which wasn't much since all I'd had was a few beers.

"Hey, Bray, you ain't leaving yet, are you?" Mike said.

"Don't call me that." I already knew I could be a jackass sometimes. Didn't need the reminder of having my name shortened to sound like a donkey's call.

"Sorry, Braden." He curled his lip. "So what's the deal? You too good to stick around with us?"

"Tired." I gave an exaggerated yawn. "And I have early shift in the morning. Someone's got to be on to haul your ass out of the ditch."

The guys around us laughed and Mike glared. He'd already had two DUIs and a half dozen minor accidents that year. Pretty much every time, I was the one called to tow his pick-up. Too bad the guy wasn't smart enough to get a clue.

A couple of my other buddies tried to talk me into sticking around till we found out whether the blond chick would take off anything else, but I waved them away and headed out the door. They could goggle at the chick if they wanted. She did the same thing almost every night she showed up, and one or more of them would get lucky with her. Then I'd get to listen to the bragging the next night.

Nothing much ever changed in our town.

Nothing except what I found when I opened the door of my tow truck out in the parking lot. There were chocolate kisses on the driver's seat again. Third time this week. A pile of them, with red foil wrappers driving home the fact that Valentine's Day was tomorrow. Or today, actually, since it was past midnight. I didn't know who the hell kept leaving them, but it was starting to get on my nerves.

Probably I should have locked the truck. That would have kept the candy phantom out. But I'd grown up here in Anglesey, Maine, affectionately known to the natives as East Armpit in honor of the smell from the paper mill the next town over, and no one here ever locked their doors, houses, or cars. No one except the few flatlanders who'd moved here from Massachusetts or wherever because they believed the hype that Maine was the way life should be.

I started to sweep the chocolates out onto the pavement so I could run them over with the truck, then I changed my mind. I'd had a couple beers too many inside while I listened to the guys talk about the chicks they planned to hook up with, and a little food in my stomach and sugar in my blood wouldn't hurt. I dumped the candies into the cup holder and swung up onto my seat.

I turned on the engine but didn't leave the lot. My boss, Bob Riley, was good enough to let me use the truck as my personal vehicle, since I couldn't afford a car unless I also wanted to make it my home, and I didn't want to screw myself out of a good thing by risking a DUI. So I stuffed chocolate into my mouth and waited for the buzz to fade enough that I could drive.

Some of the other guys left the bar and waved at me on the way to their cars and pick-ups. One of them had to have been the candy phantom. The bar sat on the edge of town, and not many people stopped there just for the hell of it. The thing was, I didn't think any of those guys were gay, which meant none of them would be likely to dump a pile of chocolate in my truck cab. Especially not somewhere they might get caught doing it. If it had been someone from the bar, it had probably been one of the girls, and I didn't want a female Valentine.

Being the only gay guy in town--as far as I knew--really sucked, and not in a good way. Back in high school it hadn't been so bad. There wasn't a hell of a lot to do in East Armpit other than fool around and fuck. If us guys hadn't been able to get girls to fool around with us, we'd do ourselves or, sometimes, each other. No one cared so much about having their dick sucked by another guy if it was just a substitute for a girl's mouth.

Mostly with the other guys, we'd just used hands or mouths. No actual sex, because that would have been gay. I'd had one exception in my life. My ass cherry'd been popped by my best friend Gabe one night after high school graduation when we'd gotten shitfaced and his girlfriend had walked out on him. He and I'd both understood it was just because he wanted a place to stick his dick, not because he was into fucking other guys. At least that was what he said.

For me, that kind of thing hadn't been a substitute. The girls I'd screwed around with were the substitutes for the guys I really wanted to fuck.

Now we were all in our twenties and the high school fooling around stuff was over. I went out drinking with the guys some nights, and they all either went home to their wives or picked up a girl at the bar, depending on their marital status. I went home by myself. When I wanted to get laid, I headed to one of the cities. Augusta or Bangor, or even to Portland if I felt adventurous and had the time to stay over in a hotel for the night since I didn't want to drive two hours home after getting drunk and taking a cock up the ass. The rest of the time, I was alone.

Being alone sucked ass. And not in a good way.

"Porter, you there? Over."

Damn radio. Bob shouldn't have been calling me. Terry had the night shift; that was why I'd gone out drinking. I wasn't on call till six a.m. and it was only one.

Couldn't ignore the boss though, since it was his truck. I picked up the mic and thumbed the button on the side of it. "Yeah, boss."

"You in any shape to drive?"

Okay, so he did know what I'd been doing. I felt less buzzy, so I figured I'd be okay behind the wheel. "Should be. What happened to Terry?"

"Phone me."

I hung up the mic and took my cell phone out of the glove box. I hadn't bothered bringing it into the bar because most people who would call me were there with me, and Bob shouldn't have been calling. He had, though. The phone showed I'd missed three calls from him.

Whatever was going on, he didn't want it going over the radio. That meant it was pretty bad.

I dialed his cell number and he picked up on the first ring. "Where's Terry?" I asked again.

"Five car wreck out on Forty-one. Someone decided a stop sign didn't apply, best the statie who called me can tell. Two of the cars are drivable; one of the others has a fender in the tire. The other two are totaled."

"Shit." A wreck like that meant someone'd been hurt pretty bad. Maybe killed. I fucking hated fatals. We didn't get them often, but when we did they stuck with me for a while after I'd dropped off the car wherever it needed to go.

"Yeah. Terry's taking the worst of the cars now. The staties called Corman's in Farmington to come out and get the other one that's totaled because the driver's Corman's cousin. Need you to take the one that isn't totaled over to Tingley's."

"Sure." Tingley's was one of two garages in town. We didn't have a grocery store, but we had two garages. Life in a small town.

"Okay. Head on over. They're waiting for you. Nearest cross street is Sawmill."

"That explains it." Sawmill Road and Route 41 was one of the shittiest intersections in the area. The stop sign at the end of Sawmill was hidden by trees, and even if a driver knew enough to stop, 41 curved in both directions and you couldn't see what was coming at you.

"Call me when you have the car," Bob said. "Tingley's had a couple vandalism incidents lately. Smashed windshield, slashed tire, that kind of thing. He thinks it's junior high kids, but he wants someone there when we drop off cars now, so I have to call Gutierrez and let him know when you're on your way."

"Okay."

I hung up with a big old grin on my face. Vince Gutierrez was why Tingley's was my favorite garage. Not that he knew that. I knew how to be discreet when a guy gave me a hard-on.

The wreck scene was worse than I'd expected. Two fire trucks, Anglesey's and one from the nearest town, sat there with their lights going. Three ambulances had lined up along with three state patrol cars, since Anglesey didn't have their own police. One of the cars lay on its passenger side with the roof and driver's door caved in. Another one was piled up against a boulder at the edge of the ditch. The other three were scattered around the road. I spotted the one I was supposed to take immediately but couldn't get to it because one of the ambulances was in the way.

People were standing around bleeding and crying while the staties and the EMTs tried to sort out who was hurt worst and who was okay to go home. I swallowed hard and climbed down from the cab. Happy fucking Valentine's Day.

After a little while we got everything sorted out and I hauled the car, a blue four-door with a baby seat in the back--thank God, the baby hadn't been in it--onto the flatbed of my truck. The driver was on his way to the hospital with an arm that probably shouldn't have been dangling the way it was, so at least I didn't have a passenger.

I called Bob as soon as I'd steered the truck out of the obstacle course the wreck had left and then enjoyed the silence on the way to Tingley's. I didn't even turn on any music, because the loud rock and country in the bar had given me a headache.