Hi folks, this is my first time here (thank you, Delilah), so I figured I’d introduce myself and share a second-chances short story I wrote, just for fun.
I’m Kaje Harper. I write gay romance (with a little YA on the side), and I’ve been published since 2011. I started writing much earlier, back in 1974, when, as a teen, I read The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren, and had my heart ripped out by her words. In those days, a happy ending for a gay couple in fiction was rare. Pain was the rule. I set out to write some romance, to give two men in love the same joy and family and happy endings that het folk like me got to have.
Many, many years (and hoarded stories and novels) later, my husband asked, “Are you ever going to try to publish one of those?” To appease him, I sent one off. And to my shock, the publisher wanted it.
Fifteen years on, here I am with about 70 published books, hundreds of unpublished stories, and a side-career I enjoy the hell out of. And I am still trying, every day, to give fictional same-sex couples their romance, their joy, their hope.
I have a bunch of free books out there you can download from most retailers. (Given my day job, I can afford to sometimes share my writing.) You can find novels like my WWII-to-2011 epic romance Into Deep Waters, or my high fantasy with PTSD Nor Iron Bars a Cage, or a contemporary bi-awakening The Rebuilding Year, or my werewolf paranormal Unacceptable Risk for free.
You are also welcome to join my Facebook Group – Kaje’s Conversation Corner – where the following short story first appeared. I write a new story almost every Sunday, for folks to start a morning with my guys. There are over 100 stories on the group you can read.
I love writing. (Can you tell?) I love reading too, and I do a lot of reviewing, to share my favorite books with the hope other readers will enjoy them too.
Gay romance is vitally important, more now than ever before. When we shine a light on the fact that love is love, that all consenting adults are worthy of respect and joy, we make the world a better place (and have a ton of fun, and some heat, along the way.)
I hope you enjoy this story, and any book of mine you might pick up. I hope you read all the wonderful authors out there writing queer fiction (including my friend Gabbi Grey who introduced me to Delilah.) Thank you for being readers, one of the best ways to escape the world for a moment. Also one of the best ways to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. With luck, you’ll enjoy a few of the sneakers, Oxfords, and cowboy boots I have to offer.
Try Again
Nights were the worst. The house ticked and clicked and creaked, and every noise should’ve been Tim coming home. Except they weren’t. Six days, and I was going crazy there in the dark.
I hate these nights alone. Reflexively, I patted the bed to coax our dog up where she wasn’t supposed to be. Except… Tim took Bella with him. When he left me.
Shit.
I got up and stretched my cramped back, the scrub pants I wore slipping down my hips. I tugged them higher, aching for Tim to laugh and say, “Putting on a free show?”
In the mirror over the dresser, I saw what he would’ve seen. An older man with gray in his beard and a belly that no longer stayed flat without more work than I’d given it recently. Tim was ten years younger than me. Was it any wonder he’d traded me in? Probably he was out right now with someone younger and more fun, someone whose abs looked like a cheese grater and whose hair had no betraying silver strands under the lights of a club.
Not that we’d been to a club in ages, for him to see my hair catching lights. Not that we’d been anywhere.
Do you blame him for leaving?
I didn’t. Not really. I hurt, probably always would, but the words he’d thrown at me when he walked out the door with Bella had been only the truth. I was too fixated on my career, aiming for head of orthopedic surgery a decade younger than my dad had managed. I was forgetful, and missing celebrating the ninth anniversary of our first-date had been the last straw. And I was an unfit parent for Bella-dog, with the hours I spent out of the house.
I wandered downstairs to the kitchen. Rain lashed the window, and sodden branches flailed against the city-lit sky. I hoped Tim was somewhere warm and dry. He wasn’t a fan of storms. Neither was Bella, but at least they had each other for comfort. Thunder and lightning had never bothered me, not since I was little. There were enough real things in the world that would hurt me; no need to start worrying about noise and lights locked safely outside.
The overhead light dazzled my eyes when I flicked it on. I’d promised Tim I’d install a dimmer switch. I was handy like that, knew a lot about repairing and electricity and plumbing, since Dad had Uncle Joe teach me solid man-of-the-house skills. Too bad I was weak on the follow-through. I’d meant to get to it. I had the parts in a drawer.
Suddenly, being alone with idle hands and too much in my head made my chest tight. I’ll do it now. Six days too late, of course, and stupid, with darkness outside and lightning in the air. Still, the need to fix this one thing I could fix was too strong to resist. I got out the replacement switch, pliers, screw drivers, flashlight. The breaker box was handy on the other wall. Flashlight in hand, I pulled down the breaker, plunging the kitchen into darkness.
Taking off the old switch was the matter of a few minutes, even though one screw was painted shut and needed a razor blade to free it. Connecting the new one was trickier. The wires were stiff, their insulation brittle, and they didn’t want to bend and fit back in the box. I wrestled with it, leaning on the plate to bring the screws close enough to bite in the threads.
Outside, the storm whistled and growled, rumbles of thunder following each other like Godzilla surf on a giant beach. Something thumped the front of the house, and I just hoped it wasn’t the old apple tree losing a branch. I got the top screw to turn a few times, catching in the receptacle. Carefully, I set the lower screw in place and eased the screwdriver into it. Yeah, take that. I’ve got you now.
Lightning flashed and a clap of thunder hit hard enough to feel the vibrations. I jumped, popped out the screw, and with a little “plick” into the silent aftermath, the other screw came out, bounced, and rolled under the fridge. The pressure of the bent wires pushed the new switch out to dangle like a half-passed placenta, trailing wires.
“Fuck!” I dropped to my knees, shining the flashlight under the stove. The dust bunnies mocked me with a flicker of silver far off in their midst. When was the last time I offered to clean the damned kitchen? I reached under, but the front grill jammed my wrist, not even close to the distance I needed. Holding the screwdriver by the tip, I swept underneath there, raising a storm of allergen-filled tumbleweeds, but no screw. On my second pass, the screwdriver slipped from my hand and rolled under too.
I was left staring at my empty fingers.
“Shit!” I sat up, glancing around the dark kitchen wildly for a better tool. Spatula? Broom handle? It seemed like too much effort to stand up. I guess you’re not man enough to fix a switch after all, huh Charles?
The first sob caught me by surprise. The second one ripped out of my chest like it had claws. It hurt so bad. I curled on my side, knees to my chest, teeth gritted. Real men don’t cry. Real men don’t fucking cry. Except I knew how wrong that was, all that toxic shit I thought I’d slammed a coffin lid on years ago. Tim cried at dead birds and sad movies. He’d let me hold him when the tears fell, and made me feel strong and important and needed.
Outside the storm raged. Inside, the old house was a realm of silence and dust and lost dreams. I closed my eyes, ignoring the hard floor against my forty-year-old hip. Another crack of thunder. Another rumble that my stupid brain could pretend was the garage door going up. I hope you’re safe, Tim. I hope you’re with someone good, who’ll let you cry on them. Jesus Christ, I miss you so much.
The tears came then, not the wild angry sobs I was expecting, but a gentle purging of everything inside me, in shudders and soft sounds and a flood I couldn’t resist. I scrunched my eyes shut and let my cheeks get wet and my throat clamp down around those sounds. For once, I’m going to feel what I damned feel.
“Charles! Are you okay?”
It took an instant for Tim’s voice to register, but his hand on my shoulder and the swipe of Bella’s tongue across my face were too solid to be ghosts.
I opened my eyes, staring, as Tim pushed Bella away. “Sit, girl. You might hurt him.”
I caught his wrist. The delicate bones were solid under my fingers. Radius, ulna, trapezium, scaphoid. Words that had taken me away from him. I pulled his arm to my face and kissed the soft skin there, over those bones, then remembered I didn’t have that right anymore.
I dropped his arm like it was hot and pushed up to sitting, scrubbing at my face. “Sorry, so sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”
“You’re scaring me, babe,” he said, peering at my face in the thin beam of the flashlight. “What’s going on?”
“I’m fine, I, um…” I missed you. I tried to fix something. But outside the operating room I’m a failure. I couldn’t get words out. Bella popped her butt up and came back over, big tail wagging, to slurp over my face with her tongue. I didn’t push her off, because it was an excuse to close my eyes and not have to look at Tim. “Did you come for your things?”
“Do you want me to take them?”
“No!” I bit my lip.
“Why are you on the floor in your pajamas, Charlie?”
“Why are you here?” I was suddenly angry. Why couldn’t you let me have my breakdown in secret? Why do you have to know how weak I am? “It’s got to be―” I glanced at the clock. “It’s past midnight. What are you doing here?”
“I missed you,” he said, with a simplicity that was Tim at his best. “I was sitting in a motel room, hugging Bella, both of us miserable, and I simply missed you. And I thought, nothing’s worth losing your arms around me. You’ve been my home for the last nine years, and I wanted to go home.” He bent to meet my lowered gaze. “Is that all right? Can I come home?”
“Jesus. Tim.” I grabbed him and pulled him close. Bella danced around us, licking at our necks, then, at a more distant peel of thunder, crouched down and tried to crawl into both our laps. Instinctively, with long practice, we moved our bodies apart to make room for fifty pounds of worried dog. I kept my face pressed to Tim’s hair, though. “I missed you too. So much. I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t eat and every noise wasn’t you coming back and I tried to fix the light switch, the way I promised you, except the wires are stiff and the screw went under the fridge and I dropped the screwdriver under too. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Tim gave a watery chuckle against my shoulder. “I’m not that attached to the screwdriver.”
I couldn’t laugh. “You were right. I’ve been chasing a dream and I lost you along the way and it’s not even my own damned dream, it’s my father’s.”
“You’re allowed to want to do well at your job.”
“Yeah, but I don’t even want to be Chief. All it means is more paperwork and personnel hassles and less time in the OR. I got so blinded by being shortlisted this early in my career…”
Tim kissed my cheek. “You know, if your old man was still around, I’d kill him for the ways he still twists you up, twenty years later.”
“You wouldn’t.” I choked on a giggle as Bella lifted her nose to lick under my chin. “Stop, girl. Enough slobber. Tim, you’d never kill anyone. You’re the best person I know.”
“Itch powder in his shorts, then. A bad picture of him on Twitter.”
“My fierce protector.”
“Am I?” Tim pulled back to look up at me. “I feel like you don’t need me. I’m a warm body in the bed and a hot meal, the times you actually make it home before midnight.”
“No. Jesus, no. You’re… you’re the reason I can get up in the morning and go to work. The reason I can look someone in the eye and tell them they’re going to lose a leg, and not break down myself. You’re the center of everything.”
“Oh.”
“You should never feel you’re not special. I screwed up, I know, but I’m going to fix it. I’ll be different. I took my name out of the running for Chief, I can’t breathe without you, I swear I―”
He put his fingers on my mouth. “Not tonight. No promises, no plans. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
I nodded vigorously and kissed the tips of his fingers, trying to show him how much I wanted that.
He smiled softly. “Right now I’m beat, and you look like ten miles of rough dirt road.”
I cupped a hand over my chin, where the most white showed. Maybe I should shave my beard. I’d thought it gave me gravitas, for that Chief of Surgery position, but Tim deserved someone younger―
Tim pulled my hand down and nipped my chin. “And I don’t mean the gray hair, dork. You look like you need sleep as bad as I do.”
Exhaustion suddenly overwhelmed me. There was nothing I wanted more than our bed, and Tim in it. “Yes, please. Except I didn’t finish the switch.”
“Is it safe to leave it?”
“It’s hanging out. It’s a mess.”
“But is it safe?”
“I suppose so, as long as the breaker’s off. The fridge is on a different circuit.”
“Then come to bed, babe. We’ll figure it out in the morning.”
As we stood, I took one last look at the shadow of my incompetence on the wall, but Tim switched off the flashlight and took my cold fingers in his warm ones. Bella followed us upstairs to our room. I climbed into bed and sat propped against the headboard, watching Tim get undressed. He stopped at boxers and got in beside me. “No sex, hon. We both need to sleep, and talk.”
“Can I hold you?” I asked tentatively.
“Please.” He turned out the lamp and rolled on his side facing away.
I eased up behind him and slid a knee forward to touch his thigh. When he didn’t object, I worked an arm around his chest and pulled him against me. He sighed deeply and pressed my hand over his heart.
There were a hundred things we’d need to talk about in the light of day, but right now, as the last of the storm faded in the distance, there was nothing I wanted more than this quiet moment with Tim in my arms. I was about to kiss the back of his neck when the bed bounced, something hit my back, and I almost bit my lip.
“What the― Bella, what are you doing up here? The storm’s gone. Your bed is down there.”
She gazed at me, dark eyes reflecting the faint light, and whined.
Tim cleared his throat. “Um, while I was gone, I just might’ve maybe let Bella sleep in the bed at night?”
“Might’ve?”
“Well, there was too much space. And not enough you.”
“So you replaced me with a hairy Lab-mix?”
“Maybe?”
At my back, Bella trod in a circle and lay down with a contented sigh. I stared down at Tim. “We’re never getting her back on the floor, are we?”
“Probably not.”
“Do we need a bigger bed?”
“Not if we sleep close.”
Warmth rose in my chest, strangling any words I could’ve found. That’s all I want, now and always, you and me, sleeping close. With a big hairy dog snoring at my back, I gathered the man I’d almost lost into my arms, settled against his back, and closed my eyes.
### the end ###
You can find me online on my blog – kajeharper.com – or on Facebook, Book Bub, and Goodreads : Links
I always love watching basketball in Spring because the games have such high stakes and the fact so many friends and family members get behind their teams that make it to the tournament. I always have my main team (the school I went to) and then my other faves with teams that family or friends went to or that I took classes or went to conferences at. So, it made sense that I would write a college basketball romance where a teen soap opera star named Valeria runs into the ex she never got over on the streets of New York City. Davis St. James is still as adorable as ever and now he’s transferred to a school nearby where he’s playing basketball.
