Ghoulish - Joel Abernathy Page 0,1

gotta do somethin’!” Chuck cried.

“This is exactly why I didn’t say anything,” Colt said, tossing a couple of split boards into the growing pile. At the rate they were going, the damn high-rise wasn’t going to be done anytime in the next decade. “It’s not even my real birthday. It’s just some random date my first foster family picked, and everyone insists on making a big deal about it.”

“Oh, yeah. I forget you’re adopted sometimes,” Evan said, scratching at his scruff. “How’d they not even know when you were born?”

Chuck gave him a withering look.

“Because no one gave me up. They just dumped me,” said Colt. Everyone he’d known for long enough asked about his origins eventually, and Colt knew it was better to be blunt about it. Secrecy only invited more questions.

Subconsciously, he knew it was probably part of the reason he avoided forming close attachments. At least, that was what the court-assigned shrink he’d seen from the ages of ten to eighteen would have said.

“The cops found me wandering around on the side of the road in Exeter when I was two. For all I know, Colt’s not even my real name, just some word I was babbling,” he snorted.

“Damn,” Evan murmured, shaking his head. “That’s some real Little Orphan Annie shit, bro.”

Colt snorted. “You’ve got the soul of a poet, Ev.”

“Hey, it’s their loss,” Chuck said, shaking Colt hard enough by the shoulder that he nearly tripped. “All the more reason to celebrate. You guys still like strip clubs, right?”

“Dude, he’s bi. He likes all the strip clubs,” said Evan. He paused, as if he was weighing the benefits of non-heteronormativity for the first time in his life.

“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” Colt said, rolling his eyes. There was only one person he wanted to disrobe, but it was always a fifty-fifty shot as to whether that someone was going to turn him down or not. “Like I said, I have dinner plans.”

“Dinner,” Chuck sneered. “You hear that, Evan? Our boy’s got a dinner date.”

Evan grinned. “Ooh la la.”

Colt rolled his eyes. He wished it was a date. With Jason, he could never be quite sure. They had been best friends ever since the Jagers had adopted Colt and taken him into their home at the age of eleven. Even though they had grown up next door to each other, their relationship hadn’t changed much. Jason was the only living child of a “good Catholic family,” and he had been doing the hokey pokey in and out of the closet since his teenage years.

Nonetheless, Jason was the one who’d asked Colt out that night, and Colt was cautiously optimistic that the other man might finally be ready to try out a different dance.

After grudgingly agreeing to go out with his coworkers for drinks over lunch, Colt finally managed to get the small construction unit back on track. Chuck wasn’t the most organized foreman, but he was good to his crew, and he knew his weaknesses. He’d realized Colt had a knack for planning and logistics years ago and was more than happy to delegate.

Colt headed home an hour early, as planned. It was just enough time to get back to his apartment, grab a shower, and change into something less plaid before he went to pick Jason up at his dorm.

Jason was two years Colt’s junior, and he’d moved into the dorms his first semester at Brown University. Colt knew he would have moved out even sooner if he’d had the chance, but Jason’s family was nothing if not traditional.

As Colt pulled up in front of the dorm in his well-loved but less-than-flashy pickup truck, he felt as out of place as usual. Ivy League college kids definitely weren’t his people, with one notable exception.

Chapter 2

The front door flew open and Jason breezed out, a thousand-watt smile on his face. With floppy brown hair that was always falling into his eyes, begging to be fixed, and big brown puppy eyes to match, Jason was an idealized version of the boy next door.

Hell, he was literally the boy next door, in Colt’s case. As kids, Colt had always been both fascinated by Jason’s nerdy charm and quick wit--his Jasonness, for lack of a better word--and driven to protect him. Despite the fact that Jason was far from the scrawny kid he’d once been and that he was now a good solid inch taller than Colt--a fact that never ceased to irk him--that instinct had never changed. Jason was good