It`s time for Tuesday Tales.
Today we have an excerpt
from A Star-Crossed Christmas, which
is a Cayuga Cougars short story being written for a hockey holidays anthology
coming out later this year. This short brings Mitch Adams, the new Cougars goalie back home to Conneticut for the holidays.
Can Mitch and his childhood friend, Shaun Sandbeck, an Olympic snowboarder, untangle the riotous emotions that a shared kiss two years ago left Mitch feeling? Or will they remain star-crossed and lonely during the most joyous of seasons?
Our word prompt today is
“Cozy”. In today’s scene, we get to see inside the head of our new goalie. It’s always interesting inside a goalie’s mind, isn’t it?
This story may have gay erotic
scenes, strong social issues addressed and mature language. If those things
offend now is the time to move onto another Tuesday Tales blog. Thanks for
stopping by!
All
that aside, it was an amazing job because I was doing what I loved, what I had
dreamed of since I was old enough to stand on skates. They were big on winter sports back home.
Hockey, skiing, figure skating, snowboarding. Liberty Springs – which was
located near the base of Mohawk Mountain - had a great rink as well as killer ski
trails. We also had an incredible snowboarding park that the Sandbeck clan had been
instrumental in getting built.
Shaun
Sandbeck was an old friend of mine. Maybe more than a friend if I were being
truthful with myself. What we were to each was kind of up in the air yet though.
We’d been inseparable as kids until college had led me to Boston U. while Shaun
had taken his ability to hit a perfect half cab quadruple back-flip and turned
it into Olympic snowboard slopestyle gold. Shaun had been one of three openly
gay athletes at the games last year. Him, a skier, and a figure skater. They’d
all gone on to win medals and the hearts of the world – or most of the world -
for being out and proud.
It
had been a couple of years since I’d seen Shaun in person. He kind of haunted
me. Not in that classic Scooby-Doo ghost sort of way, following you around
while you and Shaggy checked out creepy rooms while nervously eating Scooby
snacks. More in the way that we’d been so close and then we drifted apart and
then came back and got super close and then we lost each other again. It was as
if the fates were making it purposely difficult for us to come together as
adults. Adults who might have some sort of attraction thing maybe? Or maybe
not. It was such a --
“Mitch,
are you done in here?”
I
glanced up from the sweater in my hand to see my roommate on the road, Sander
March, our first line center, standing in the doorway, shoulder on the jamb,
eyebrows raised in expectation, clad only in his boxer briefs. The hotel bathroom
was still steamy from my morning shower. I’d pulled on some underwear and my
jeans and then had a long walk down memory lane. I’d been doing that a lot
lately, mentally slipping back to that last time Shaun and I had been together.
Maybe my meandering mind was due to the knowledge I’d be back in Liberty
Springs soon. Walking down Main Street, stopping at the Liberty Springs Café
for coffee, and then heading to Sashing and Scrim, the cozy quilt shop that Shaun’s grandmother ran. We’d both worked
there every summer as kids, helping with the heavy bolts of material, and being
fed Grandma Sandbeck’s cinnamon butter cookies. If I closed my eyes and
concentrated, I could smell cinnamon and vanilla and hear Shaun’s mischievous
laughter. Shaun and I had our first and only kiss in that quilt shop basement…
Sander
cleared his throat.
“Sorry, yeah.” I tugged the sweater
over my head, rammed my fingers through my hair, and called it good.
Copyright 2018
©by V.L. Locey
*~*~*
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5 comments:
Great post. Love the way you've used the Olympics in it too.
Love your use of the prompt and the quilt shop - and now I want a cookie! Great tale this week.
Love the trip down memory lane, recreating days of old. It brings us all back to our childhood times. I like the way you've fleshed out this character. Great job.
I love his sweet memories of Shaun. Everything is so vivid. And I love that they may have gone separate ways but reached the pinnacle of their sport. Great job!
Perfect weaving of his memories to the present. Great job! I loved how you worked cozy in there with the quilt store memory.
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