Page 91 of String Boys

Where were they?

Whenever he thought of sex, he thought of Seth, on his bedroom floor, staring at Kelly trustingly, needing him so badly, but never admitting to it, not once, because he knew Kelly had more than he could bear.

Until Kelly promised him he’d never let him down.

That’s where they were.

Oh.

School started—Kelly enrolled in American River, because it was a little bit farther away than Sac City and he’d see fewer of the assholes he’d gone to high school with. Kelly’s mom made him take a full schedule, but Kelly got creative and took four classes, back to back, on Tuesday and Thursday, plus a night class on Monday when nobody had anything special after school, so he could find a part-time job.

He applied in retail—Arden Fair, K-Street, even Sunrise—but didn’t hit pay dirt until he found a vintage clothing store in Old Sac, right across from his sisters’ favorite store, Candy Heaven.

It wasn’t glamorous, but it wasn’t food service either, and Kelly counted his blessings.

Besides, they let him do his homework when the store was slow and everything had been picked up. Score!

The only setback was, well, the other gay guys, who had apparently decided Kelly was chum and they were sharks.

As. If.

But it did make shit uncomfortable sometimes.

“Marco, you grab my ass one more time, I am walking out that door,” Kelly snarled one morning in late October. The place had been hopping all day. Vintage clothing stores were great places for Halloween shoppers looking for the weird and wonderful. Besides being cleaned out of most of their 80’s fashions and their faux 20’s fashions and hospital scrubs, lab coats, and their cheap ball gowns and such, they’d also been raided for all the ugly Christmas sweaters under the sun. Kelly’s boss, Vashti, had shown Kelly where the secret stash was. They’d go up the day after Halloween.

Kelly loved some of his coworkers—Julia, who was prickly and shy and biromantic but demisexual, Raven, who was every bit as much of a woman before the surgery as she would be afterward, Callum, who was square and plain and gruff, but who could tell when a customer was having a bad day and point them to the complimentary M&M’s in a heartbeat.

Good people here; Kelly approved.

But Marco and Clifton he could fucking do without.

“What’s the matter, Kelly? You afraid a little ass grabbing’s gonna break your hymen?” Marco teased, a lewd smile under his dark brown Tom of Finland mustache. It really wasn’t his fault. He was just being a crude asshole, but lots of guys were. But Matty had gotten out of rehab and spent the entire last week knocking on the door in the evenings, trying to see Chloe and screaming Kelly’s sexual history across the apartment complex, and Kelly was a wee bit sensitive.

Kelly whirled around and pinned Marco’s skinny body against the shoe shelves, a hand at his throat.

“You. Do. Not. Have. My. Consent.” He bit out each word, specifically, like chewing leather bullets.

Marco’s eyes widened, and he struggled against Kelly’s hand. “Okay… okay. Sorry. Just playing. Jesus, Kelly. I was just flirting with you!”

Kelly let go of him, and he sagged against the shelves, knocking the women’s boot section into pink vinyl disarray. It was telling how shaken he was that he didn’t raise a hand to his styled hair, and pale blond Clifton came running back to make sure he was okay.

“You two pick that shit up,” Kelly snarled and stalked down to the register, where Vashti was looking at him in surprise. “What?”

Vashti shook his head and gestured with his chin to the back of the store. “Sorting dock,” he said quietly. “We’ll talk.” Then, louder, he said, “And Marco, not another word. Consider this your first and second warning. Hands to yourself.”

Kelly got out to the sorting dock and moved automatically to a pile of donations. Ugh. The garbage bags they’d been packed in reeked of cat pee. He shredded the bag and started carting the clothes to the industrial-sized washer to sort. He managed to put together a load of jeans from that bag alone and dropped it in the washer, silently forgiving the people who’d bagged them. Indigo attracted animals—ammonia was part of the fixative in the dye, and it got pissed on a lot.

He added an extra helping of fabric freshener to the tray and started the load, and then leaned back, catching his breath. His pocket buzzed, and seeing that Vashti wasn’t there yet, he checked it.

Seth had sent him a video—something he’d had to do for a project—and Kelly’s heart swelled a little. He lived for these.

He hit Play and saw Seth standing in a blackened room with only his instrument and his music. He was wearing a bright neon blue T-shirt over his jeans, and Kelly blinked. That wasn’t usually his style. For one thing, the shirt looked new.

Then he started to play, something simple and bouncy, and just as Kelly got into the melody, the screen split, and there was Seth again, but this time wearing neon yellow. He was in the middle of playing the same song, but a different part, the harmony, and Kelly gasped. Oh, this was fun! Then Seth appeared again, this time wearing neon green and playing a… a sort of bigger violin—a viola? Was that the word?—and it was playing the alto line of the song. Kelly laughed delightedly and clapped his hand over his mouth. Oh! Seth had not told them he was learning other instruments. Was that part of his coursework? And just as Kelly was amazed at what his boy could do, the screen split a final time, and there Seth was, playing the bass line on a cello.

He kept it simple, none of the flourishes or complex finger work he did on the violin, but Kelly could still hear it—that pure, sweet instinctual knowledge of how to make that instrument sing.

The song, which started out simple, grew complex and powerful, swelling into a final amazing, moving crescendo that literally left Kelly breathless.