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  Published by

  Harmony Ink Press

  382 NE 191st Street #88329

  Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA

  [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover

  Copyright © 2012 by Robbie Michaels

  Cover Art by Anne Cain [email protected]

  Cover Design by Mara McKennen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may 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 Harmony Ink Press, 382 NE 191st Street #88329, Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA

  [email protected]

  ISBN: 978-1-61372-713-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  July 2012

  eBook edition available

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61372-714-0

  For my mother, who taught me to always be ready to reach out a hand to help someone in need.

  There really was a “Bill,” although that’s not necessarily his name. There really was a Mark (that’s me). There really was a truck full of chocolate and only four of us to unload the whole thing. Bill really did sit beside me and talk to me that morning. He really was as hot as I’ve described, and I was immediately in love.

  As we talked, I learned something else that made me believe we were destined to be together forever. Somehow we got to talking about birthdays, and as we talked, I learned that we had been born thirty-six hours apart. In all my years, I had never had anyone who shared a birthday with me or even came close, so to hear that this man who sat beside me was one of the first humans I ever met seventeen years earlier just made me absolutely convinced our paths were destined to cross in a tremendously romantic way.

  Most of this story is real, but it didn’t all happen in the order I’ve told it here. I’ve woven together dozens of threads, dozens of experiences that really did happen, to make the story that you are about to read. So this is my story—my stories, actually, all woven together into what I hope you will find to be a good read.

  —Robbie Michaels

  Chapter 1

  MY WEEKEND days were too precious to be wasting them like this! I was not happy. My father had gotten me into this, and I was not happy. No. He wasn’t here giving up some of the only free time he had during the week—I was.

  Every year the senior class took a big trip during spring of senior year. For the first few years the trip had been to a beach in Florida with a couple of days at Disney World. Thankfully, though, over the years the options list had grown bigger. My class was planning five days in Washington, DC. I wanted to go but had my doubts about spending so much time constantly with my classmates. I debated not going, but my mother thought it would be something approaching a high crime for me not to participate in my senior class trip.

  Paying for those trips took a variety of fund-raising efforts, all of which I hated since they all involved selling stuff to raise money, and I hated going door to door to sell things. I felt like a young telemarketer, and it was not a good feeling. Plus, I was lousy at it.

  Our latest and greatest was candy, chocolate in particular. There was some local (more or less) candy factory that made chocolate that was popular. I didn’t eat much chocolate, so I didn’t care—I had just gotten done with acne, and chocolate was rumored to be a cause, so I had sworn off the stuff with a vengeance. No chocolate had passed my lips in a couple of years.

  I was such a horrible salesman—hey, I only had so many relatives I could hit up for magazines and oranges and stationery and stuff. Chocolate was the latest thing in a long line, and quite honestly, everyone was totally tapped out. So my mom got a letter from our class advisor telling her that students who hadn’t met their quota (really, a quota) could earn extra points by showing up at the school on Saturday at eight o’clock (yes, a.m.) to help unload the chocolate truck.

  So there I was standing outside the front doors of the school at seven thirty on Saturday. My mother believed in punctuality times ten. If she was due somewhere at eight, then getting there at seven was better, and seven thirty was really pushing it. So she had dropped me off before anyone else was there. What if I had the date wrong? What if nobody else showed up? How was I supposed to get home, anyway?

  Every conceivable horror scenario played out in my mind. Really, what else did I have to do except stand there on a cold fall morning freezing my nuts off waiting for anyone else to show up? Finally, after twenty minutes in the cold, a door was opened from inside the school. I spotted my senior class advisor, Mr. Davis. I knew the man’s name, and while he was really popular with a lot of the kids, I didn’t know him as well as others did. A lot of others had had him for some class or another, but I hadn’t, so we didn’t really know each other.

  My dad had apparently gone to school with the guy, so when the letter came home, my dad was extra gung-ho that if this guy asked, I was going to deliver. In this case, I was not going to deliver but unload. So at 7:50 a.m. on Saturday morning there we stood, and I didn’t have a clue what to say to the guy. I didn’t know him. How should I know what to talk with him about? My life sucked some days. Well, most days lately, but that’s another story.

  I endured an interminable five minutes while the man continued to babble, followed by another five minutes, and then another five minutes of the same, and another five minutes of the same. I didn’t know what to say to the guy, but he didn’t seem to have the same problem—the man hadn’t shut up since he’d let me into the school. I didn’t need to pee, but I was tempted to tell him I did just to have a couple of minutes of peace and quiet. But I was a good boy and stood there listening, paying what I hoped looked like rapt attention to his every word.

  I had learned early in life that adults really liked it when people listened to them, so all I had to do was look like I was paying close attention to what they were saying and they usually would just babble on endlessly. So by that point I’d had years of practice and had perfected my skill to a fine art.

  Just when the old man and I thought that we were going to have to unload the truck all by ourselves—could this day get any better?—at 8:10 another car appeared and dropped off two girls. Oh great. Just who I needed, I thought as I saw who they were. One of the girls was this incredibly popular cheerleader who gave every impression of being the perfect person—golden hair, perfect skin, perfect build, not an ounce of fat, athletic, smart. And because she had all that going for her she had just about every heterosexual male within twenty miles sniffing around wherever she went. And in case you couldn’t tell, I didn’t like her. But I think the feeling was mutual. Actually, I’m convinced that she didn’t like me first and that my not liking her was just a reaction to her not liking me. Yeah, that’s it! Are you buying any of this? I hope not, since I’m not even buying it. I don’t know why I didn’t like her. Possibly it was because I didn’t like myself and felt that nobody liked me.

  I wasn’t one of the jocks—no! Not a jock! Definitely not a jock! Not by a very, very long stretch. I was about as useless at sports as they come. There was nothing wrong with me—don’t get me wrong. I had all the requisite limbs and everything worked, but I just didn’t seem to be very good at sports, the all-
important admission card to the inner sanctuary of teenage male heterosexuality.

  I was good at math. But that didn’t seem to count for squat. I couldn’t hit a baseball to save my life—and that counted big time with my classmates. I couldn’t dribble a basketball, I couldn’t catch a baseball, and I couldn’t climb a rope. They all made fun of my lack of athletic ability. I hated it. Whenever we played any kind of organized team sport, I was always without fail the last person picked—the one that neither team wanted. No, the one that both teams dreaded having, because they knew I was a weakness to be exploited by the other team. Teenagers could be such vicious assholes.

  So, the cheerleader and I had little in common. No, correction—we had nothing in common. Well, actually, I take that back—we had something in common in that we both liked dick. The town I had grown up in was small—too freaking small. Everybody knew everybody and was probably related to half of the town—sometimes in ways you couldn’t discuss in polite company. So, popular cheerleader and I had known of one another for years. Well, at least I knew who she was. How could you not know the girl with the golden hair and the smile who was class president?

  And in her wake came another girl I really didn’t know. Perfect cheerleader always had some girl or girls-in-waiting. I guess this one was the latest cheerleader-friend wannabe. I didn’t know, and I really didn’t care. It was 8:10 a.m., and there were still only three of us to unload a whole freaking tractor-trailer that was due to arrive at any minute. Oh, could this day get any better?

  When the two girls got inside the school doors they made a big show of complaining about how cold the morning was. Really, they had had to walk twenty-five feet from where someone had dropped them off to the door of the building. Get over it! I had had to stand out there for twenty minutes freezing my nuts off! They didn’t even have nuts! If they had I might have been more interested. A lot more interested. But they didn’t so I wasn’t.

  If I had thought it was difficult to talk to the class advisor, that had nothing on the next ten minutes. Perfect cheerleader sucked up to the class advisor like none I have ever seen, and he was lapping it up like you wouldn’t believe. I thought the old goat might have a coronary when she batted her eyelashes at him for about the twentieth time in two minutes. And her girlish little giggle and the light touches of her hand on his arm. Jesus! Don’t tell me she was doing the guy! My God! He was… he was… well, he was my dad’s age, and he was ancient!

  At 8:20, after nearly losing my breakfast from watching the cheerleader nearly hump the old man’s leg, another person arrived. Oh, great. Bill Cromwell. Now, don’t get me wrong. Bill was drop-dead stunning gorgeous. The man could stop traffic with his good looks. He had it all—body by God, athletic ability, brains. I hated to think of it this way, but in some ways he was the male version of the cheerleader who was nauseating me at the moment.

  I, of course, had never been allowed into the inner sanctum of heterosexual teenage male jocks, so all I had been able to do was look at the guy (discreetly, of course) from a distance. I didn’t know him at all. And I was sure he didn’t know me. Why would he? We’d only grown up together and been in classes together most of our lives.

  Sue, the golden-haired cheerleader, greeted Bill with a cloying hug and kiss on the cheek—gag me! He had apparently just rolled out of bed and hadn’t shaved and had a heavy, heavy five o’clock shadow. Gorgeous black five o’clock shadow. Pull it together! I ordered myself. Don’t make a fool of yourself in public, especially not around a jock.

  I had never been this close to the man before. And that’s how I saw him, as a man; he was certainly no boy. Needless to say, I was shocked when he walked over and sat on the bench next to me, leaving the two cheerleaders on an adjoining bench.

  By that point I was nearly hyperventilating because this teenage near-deity was sitting a foot away from me. My God, the man was gorgeous. I could smell his musk, and even his un-showered musk smelled gorgeous. I wanted to close my eyes and just lick his body to get a better taste, but I knew that such a move would be the absolute kiss of death to a high school student, so I kept my mouth shut.

  While the girls chattered away about something and the advisor went off to call the candy company to find out where our truck was, I was absolutely bowled over when Bill, God who walked among mortals Bill, started to talk to me. I was terrified that my tongue was going to get all tied up and that I would trip over it and make a fool of myself. I was torn between two overwhelming feelings—one, oh my God, Bill Cromwell is talking to me! And two, don’t talk to me—I’m just a mere mortal! I’m not in your league!

  “Hi, I’m Bill. You’re Mark, right?”

  How did he know who I was? Now I had an entirely new reason to be concerned. “Right, Mark,” I responded.

  Looking at me with those beautiful brown eyes of his—brown eyes surrounded by gorgeous eyelashes that seemed to be, like, a mile long. Had nobody else ever noticed them? Was I the first?—Bill started to talk about an upcoming test we all had in our calculus class. I found calculus to be easy and fun, but apparently everyone else was finding it to be a struggle. But then, what can I say? I liked math, and math seemed to like me.

  Since there was still no sign of the truck, we had time to talk. Bill asked me where I had applied for college and what I was going to study. I didn’t know if he had planned to go to college or not—I didn’t know anything about the man aside from the fact that he had a body by God and eyelashes that kept tickling me from a foot away.

  Not only did Bill plan to go to college, but he named off several places where he had applied—good schools one and all. As he talked on I was doing my best “pay attention” routine, which was proving to be very difficult because I was talking with a god. Who wouldn’t be impressed communing with a deity? In teenage boy terms this was akin to being admitted to the inner sanctum, the holiest of holies. The curtains had been pulled back, ever so briefly, and I had been allowed to see what others got to witness on an everyday basis. I was conversing with the most popular guy in our school!

  I was paying attention—or acting like I was—and he was talking, and I was a pig in slop. And wouldn’t you know it! It was just then that the damned truck arrived. So I wasn’t alone to unload the truck, but there were only four of us—two cheerleaders, one god, and me. Like I said, I’m no jock, so I didn’t have the sculpted body of an athlete. Still, I did spend time in the weight room at the gym. When you suck at team sports you come to excel at the more solitary ones. The coaches were only too glad to spare their prize teams from my presence, and I was still able to earn my credit for physical education. A win-win situation. Still, I was no muscle-bound man.

  We moved outside to figure out how this was going to work. While we had two adults, the advisor and the truck driver, they both turned out to be utterly worthless. The advisor complained that he had a back problem, and the truck driver simply opened the truck and told us to get our boxes. He went inside the building to use the bathroom, and we didn’t see him again. Great, so that left just four of us and one freaking big truck full of boxes.

  Everybody in the senior class had been given a catalog and charged with selling as much chocolate as possible. The candy company had boxed each person’s order, and the truck was filled with those packages.

  When we looked at the boxes, Bill and I looked at one another and shared an honest assessment. “Damn!”

  The two girls went into the school to retrieve a dolly. Bill climbed up into the back of the truck. Oh! My! God! The man had an ass that was a work of art! Holy sweet Jesus! I nearly came on the spot as he climbed the ladder steps built into the truck, thrusting his gorgeous ass nearly into my face. His jeans pulled tightly across his backside, and I probably could have counted the number of hairs on each butt cheek—if I hadn’t been one step from hyperventilating.

  Bill’s jeans were old and tattered. I had noticed inside earlier that he had several tears in his jeans. There was one spot on the left leg in particular th
at had nearly driven me crazy. The man was hairy—not gorilla hairy but masculine hairy. His legs were covered with a nice coat of black hair that matched the black hair on his head and on his face.

  Let’s see. Hair. Check. Nice skin. Check. Muscle. Check. No underwear. Check! Wait a minute! Time out! No underwear? Oh, dear Lord, I was going to die right on the spot, either from self-combusting or from having Bill beat me into a pulp because in a moment of weakness I licked his body. One way or the other, I could see the inevitable path.

  But to both my disappointment and relief, Bill was now in the back of the truck, so the rips in his jeans were less in evidence. They were still there but much more discreet now. But I knew where they were so I knew where to keep watch.

  I was grateful that I had a coat on that covered my erection. Bill assessed the situation (the truck, not the erection), and in his usual take-charge manner said that he and I should move the boxes to the edge and that the girls should load them onto the dolly and move them inside the building. Well, they objected to that plan. They didn’t want to be lifting boxes down from the back of a tractor-trailer. So Bill came up with a new plan: he would move the boxes to the back of the truck, I would lift them down and load them on the dolly, and the girls would haul them into the school and unload them inside.

  There was only one dolly and a whole lot of boxes, so it was a slow process. A very slow process. The first part of it was ultra slow because the two girls made a big show of the work being so hard. They should have tried lifting those boxes down from the back of that big-assed truck and then we’ll talk about something being hard. They of course had to pull the dolly together, complaining up a storm in the process.

  Bill and I had no choice but to wait until they returned with the empty dolly to repeat the process. Until we had cleared some space in the back of the truck he couldn’t even move boxes from the front of the truck toward the back. So we were stuck. Every time he bent over to lift a box or move a box, my eyes were riveted on his jeans to make sure that the rips were still there and that I hadn’t missed anything. One time he caught me looking and said, “What?”