Page 2 of The No Repeat Policy

A shiver crawls up my back when I step out from the car and plant my feet on the asphalt. It’s so cold!

Boone. It’s familiar and unfamiliar all at the same time.

I grew up half an hour down the mountain. My whole childhood, but you couldn’t have convinced me back then that I’d be moving here…on purpose. It’s not a bad place. It’s so much better than where I grew up. It’s just not my vibe. Regardless, it’s going to have to do. I tried to stay in the city, but I wasn’t dealing with some contract position again. Three months here, six months there—always hoping to extend or searching for the next opportunities isn’t what I want. This position, though, sounds great if for nothing else than being a permanent placement. I couldn’t pass that up. So this is “home” now.

I’ll deal with the location in exchange for a full-time, non-contract position and an eighty grand salary right out of college. Plus, I get to do things from the ground up, form my own setup, my own team when the time comes. It’s a small company, but that means room for growth, right? It’s also a publishing company, Ellis Newman, which is neat. Technically, I’m just a glorified web developer right now, but if I do well I’ll be the first in line to lead their IT department. The one that doesn’t exist right now.

I round the back of my Volkswagen and pop the trunk. There was a moment coming up the mountain I didn’t think she was going to make it. In need of repairs is putting it lightly. I stare at the contents. A few boxes, a lamp, a monitor, and a lone duffle bag in the corner. There’s another box in the back seat with my only two suitcases. It’s everything I own. Everything. And it’s mostly clothes and kitchen stuff. I grab a box and head up the sidewalk to apartment 17, home sweet home.

Once I get the key to work in the lock, the door creaks open. I cross the threshold and I think it finally sinks in that this is actually real. Inside I place the box on the floor and breathe in the empty shell of a room. It’s deathly quiet, bare, and dark. I couldn’t flip the light switch with my box in tow, so I walk back and flip it.

Light blooms, revealing plain light gray walls. Equally plain but darker carpet borders an ash-gray hardwood floor in the small dining and kitchen space. A simple lone fan clings to the ceiling above where I plan to put the eventual couch and TV setup, the most important part of a house.

I’ve never lived on my own before. This is crazy new territory for me. There’s always been someone else. A roommate, family, a narcissistic ex. Someone. This time it’s just me, and honestly, I’m a little nervous about it. I’ve got it though. If twenty-three years on this godforsaken planet hasn’t prepared me for at least this, then I’m screwed anyway.

I go back outside and grab more boxes. By the time I’m done, there are boxes littering the apartment. I’ll be having dinner—at least tonight and tomorrow—on a beanbag I brought. It’s the same one I’ve owned since I was eleven. It’s been through a lot. It’s seen a lot. And I’m going to be sleeping on an air mattress until my new bed and mattress arrive later this week.

Ordering furniture is exhausting. It’s so hard to make a decision, and I don’t exactly have a ton in the bank. That shit is expensive. I can’t sleep on an air mattress forever though. You can’t have good sex on an air mattress. It’s too bouncy, untethered, but what am I thinking? The chances of finding a guy I want to hook up with here before my bed arrives is about zilch. Besides, I’ve done it in more awkward places than an air mattress. I’ll make do if the need arises. There’s always the kitchen counter.

* * *

Is it fucked up that I knew there wasn’t a gay club within forty miles before my interview with Ellis Newman, my new employer, weeks ago…before I ever searched for an apartment? I almost turned down the interview because the closest thing resembling a club was the Boone Taphouse, and well…no.

Sometimes desperation wins out though. That’s where I am right now. Their horrible excuse of a website claimed it’s a “nightclub.”

But again, uh…no. If the cowboy boots on over half the dudes or the country music blaring through the speakers weren’t enough, all the jacked-up trucks outside and the quote above the entrance make it very clear. I just walked under it and God forbid anyone in here realize I’m a homo. It literally says—under a lasso, of course—“God, Guns & Country”

right above “We got guns, trucks, and country girls. Your turn, city boy.” Signed Earl Dibbles, Jr.

How welcoming. Whoever Dibbles is, I’d rather not meet them.

The music is loud, but instead of bass thumping through the floor it’s the tapping of boots on the dance floor and the nearly unbearable twang of whoever’s playing tonight.

The room even smells of wood, leather, and whiskey with the occasional unwelcome whiff of something I swear smells like literal shit.

My senses are probably tricking me, implanting a scent my subconscious mind associates with the country that isn’t really here.

Growing up in the country wasn’t the best part of my life. Although I am disappointed by the lack of cowboy hats. Of all the country shit, that’s one I don’t mind so much.

I push through the Saturday night crowd. Slipping behind a couple dressed in matching American flag button-ups, I approach the long bar and get the bartender’s attention with a raised hand.

“What can I getcha?”

he asks, mouth covered in a burly brown beard that engulfs his neck and hangs over his chest.

“I’ll—”

But before I can answer he starts back up. “All pint IPAs are two a piece tonight.”

“Uh, okay.”

It throws me off for a moment. “Can I get a Vesper martini?”

That must not have been the right response because the bartender frowns.

“A Vesper martini?”

He draws it out, his left brow raised.

“Yeah,”

I nod. “You need the reci—”

“Shit, I can make it,”

he huffs and throws his bar towel over his shoulder. “Just can’t believe I’m about to.”

Uh. What do I say to that? Luckily before I can think of something he shakes his head and walks away from the bar, allegedly to concoct my martini. I’m not drinking piss, aka beer. That shit is disgusting, plus it takes way too much to get plastered.

I turn to face the crowd.

The bar overlooks a dance floor and raised stage.

This would be a great vantage point to watch a concert, even though no band I care for would likely ever grace that stage.

People up here must love it though.

The floor is alive with people.

Men and women dancing as couples, a few women on their own or together, jumping around, some on beat.

I don’t know the song.

It’s not like the chaotic energy in the nightclubs I’m used to, the pulsing rhythms, the flashing lights, the alcohol-induced excitement, getting everyone to their feet—or on the floor puking—and the occasional twerker.

It’s calmer, yet somehow crazier and rowdy.

I think I could get used to it. Maybe.

I mean the boys are hot. A lot of them actually. It’s one of those hard things to explain. There’s just something attractive about a country boy. I don’t know if it’s the tight blue jeans, or the plaid button-ups, the cowboy hats or boots, or maybe it’s in the way they talk, that little drawl. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been in the city for so long now.

I let my eyes float over the crowd, gauging the gayness of each as I sift through the crowd. I swear most people are at least a little bisexual whether they admit it or not. Country boys just tend to hide under a hard mean shell they’ve formed over years of growing up being told what a “real man”

is from people uncertain about their own masculinity.

I keep scanning the crowd.

There are old guys, young guys, most with girls wrapped around them.

And they’re all white.

Why the hell am I even here? This is so stupid.

What’s my goal? I just got in town.

I should be home getting ready for my first day of work tomorrow, but I’m here because that’s what I do on the weekends.

It’s what I’m used to, but it’s different here.

Back in Charlotte there were gay bars.

There were gorgeous guys everywhere, at least a quarter of them dressed in little more than thin straps or the tiniest shorts you can imagine, and half of those begged to be taken home.

What the fuck did I expect to find here? At least back in Charlotte I had friends to go to the nightclubs with.

Okay, well, I had friends.

His friends, so I guess not so much lately, but here? It’s one hundred percent just me.

But I stay, taking a seat along the banister, looking over the dance floor like some lonely freak.

This must have been what it was like living anywhere in the US twenty years ago as a gay man.

Looking but not daring to say a word.

Wanting to say something to the cutie that just walked by but keeping your mouth shut.

Regardless, the cuties keep coming with their female counterparts, their girlfriends and wives.

I’d love to lasso one of them in, but not only is that so cringe a thought, it’s simply not happening.

I’ll have to… Oh, woah.

At the entrance, a lone figure walks past the bouncer and trails the edges of the dance floor.

His hair is dirty blonde, wavy, and even from this distance I know it’d be soft to weave my fingers through.

He seems shortish.

He’s pushing on to the tips of his shoes to peek over the crowd, like he’s looking for someone.

Suddenly his gaze is turning in my direction.

I look away but keep him in the corner of my vision.

He’s pretty.

Definitely my type.

And the way he walked into the building.

It was almost a strut, not a walk.

There was a sway to his hips.

He stops before he gets to me and his eyes open wide.

Those eyes! They’re shocking under flashing lights.

Bursts of blue on a pale sky.

God.

I go to step toward him, and he starts in my direction.

What do I say? Hey there, beautiful? No, that’s lame.

I could… Never mind.

Just before he gets to my landing he takes a left and cuts around the beam separating the balcony from the rest of the bar and starts off across the edge of the dance floor.

Fuck.

He, swerves between people and tables in…is he in…heels? Okay, they’re not like girls’ heels, but they’re dress boots with heels, like real heels.

In a matter of seconds his arms are wrapped around a pair of girls, and he’s fist-bumping the guy who’s with them.

I watch for a moment.

The group’s mouths move nonstop.

He doesn’t seem to talk too much, but he smiles a lot.

This damn lighting is making it impossible to see him well though.

I don’t think he can be any older than me, maybe twenty.

Hell, he might be younger, probably used a fake ID to get inside.

Thirty minutes pass and he’s still here, and for some reason so am I.

I’ve been debating how stupid it would be to approach him, but I keep coming up negative.

Even if he would be into it, no one else in this building would be, and I’m not so sure I want to figure out what that would mean for me.

At least not on my first night in Boone.

I’m not scrawny.

I sort of obsess over the gym, especially since my ex first cheated on me.

A part of me thought it was my fault, and that if I could give him something better to admire, that he wouldn’t have a reason to browse the field.

I was wrong, but then the gym became a coping mechanism, a way to get out the pent-up anger under my chest that threatened to burst from my mouth for months.

It kept me going, and I never stopped.

It’s my muse, my therapist, my routine.

But that doesn’t mean I can take on an entire bar of drunk country boys.

This really shouldn’t be the first thing on my mind right now anyway. I turn and face the other direction, where the bar sits, watching patrons order beer after beer. I should be at the apartment, unpacking, getting mentally prepared for my first day at what my mom would have called a “big-boy job,”

getting my outfit planned, the normal. Not ogling the unattainable.

Fine. I need to leave.