Title: Big Love
Author: Rick R. Reed
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: May 18, 2020
Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 64100
Genre: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, high school, teachers, bullying, deep closet, coming out, family drama, gender-bending, out and proud
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Synopsis
Teacher Dane Bernard is a gentle giant,
loved by all at Summitville High School. He has a beautiful wife, two kids, and
an easy rapport with staff and students alike. But Dane has a secret, one he
expects to keep hidden for the rest of his life—he’s gay. But when he loses his
wife, Dane finally confronts his attraction to men.
A new teacher, Seth Wolcott, immediately
catches his eye. Seth is also starting over, licking his wounds from a breakup,
and the last thing Seth wants is another relationship—but when he spies Dane on
his first day at Summitville High, his attraction is immediate and electric.
As the two men enter into a dance of
discovery and new love, they’re called upon to come to the aid of bullied gay
student Truman Reid. Truman is out and proud, which not everyone at his
small-town high school approves of. As the two men work to help Truman ignore
the bullies and love himself without reservation, they all learn life-changing
lessons about coming out, coming to terms, acceptance, heartbreak, and falling
in love.
Excerpt
Big Love
Rick R. Reed © 2020
All Rights Reserved
Truman Reid was white as a stick of
chalk—skin so pale it was nearly translucent. His blue eyes were fashioned from
icy spring water. His hair—platinum blond—lay in curls across his forehead and
spilled down his neck. He was the kind of boy for whom adjectives like “lovely”
and “pretty” would most definitely apply. More than once in his life, he was
mistaken for a girl.
When he was a very little boy,
well-meaning strangers (and some not so well-meaning) would ask if he was a boy
or a girl. Truman was never offended by the question, because he could see no
shame in being mistaken for a girl. It wasn’t until later that he realized
there were some who would think the question offensive.
But this boy, who, on the first day of
school, boldly and some might say unwisely wore a T-shirt that proclaimed “It
Gets Better” beneath an image of a rainbow flag, didn’t seem to possess the
pride the T-shirt proclaimed. At Summitville High School, even though it was
2015, one did not shout out one’s sexual orientation, not in word, not in
fashion, and certainly not in deed.
Who knew what caused Truman to break
with convention that morning when he made up his mind to wear that T-shirt on
the first day of school? It wasn’t like he needed to proclaim anything—after
all, the slight, effeminate boy had been the object of bullies and torturers
since, oh, about second grade. Truman could never “pass.”
He was a big sissy. It was a fact and
one Truman had no choice but to accept.
His shoulders, perpetually hunched,
hunched farther during his grade school and junior high years, when such
epithets as “sissy,” “fag,” “pansy,” and “queer” were hurled at him in school
corridors and playgrounds on a daily basis. Truman knew the old schoolyard
chant wasn’t true at all—words could and did hurt. And so, occasionally, did
fists and hands.
And yet, despite the teasing—or maybe
it’s more apt to say because of it—Truman was not ashamed of who and what he
was. His single mom, Patsy, his most vocal supporter and defender, often told
him the same thing. “God made you just the way you are, honey. Beautiful. And
if you’re one of his creations, there’s nothing wrong in who you are. You just
hold your head up and be proud.” The sad truth was, Patsy would often tell her
boy stuff like this as she brushed tears away from his face.
It wasn’t only tears she brushed away,
though. Her unconditional love also brushed away any doubt Truman might have had
that he was anything other than a normal boy, even though he was not like most
of the boys his age in Summitville, Ohio, that backward little burg situated on
the Ohio River and in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. In spite of
the teasing and the bullying—and the pain they caused—Truman wasn’t ashamed of
who he was, which was what led him to wearing the fated T-shirt that got him in
so much trouble his first day as a freshman at Summitville High School.
The incident occurred near the end of the
day, when everyone was filing into the school gymnasium for an orientation
assembly and a speech from the school’s principal, Doug Calhoun, on what the
returning students and incoming freshmen could expect that year.
Truman was in the crush of kids making
their way toward the bleachers. High school was no different than grade school
or junior high in that Truman was alone. And even though this was the first day
of school, Truman already had a large three-ring binder tucked under his arm,
along with English Composition, Biology, and Algebra I textbooks. Tucked into
the notebook and books were papers—class schedules of assignments and the
copious notes the studious Truman had already taken.
Kirk Samson, a senior and starting
quarterback on the football team, knew the laughs he could get if he tripped
this little fag in his pride-parade T-shirt, so he held back a little in the
crowd, waiting for just the right moment to thrust out a leg in front of the
unsuspecting Truman, whose eyes were cast down to the polished gymnasium floor.
Truman didn’t see the quarterback’s leg
until it was too late, and he stumbled, going down hard on one knee. That sight
was not the funniest thing the crowd had seen, although the pratfall garnered a
roar of appreciative laughter at Truman’s expense. But what was funnier was
when Truman’s notebook, books, and papers all flew out from under his arm,
landing in a mess on the floor.
Kirk, watching from nearby with a smirk
on his face, whispered two words to the kids passing by: “Kick ’em. Kick ’em.”
And the kids complied, sending Truman’s
notes, schedules, and texts across the gym floor, as Truman, on his knees,
struggled to gather everything up, even as more and more students got in on the
fun of sending them farther and farther out of his reach.
Now, that was the funniest thing the
crowd had seen.
Who knows how long the hilarity would
have gone on if an authority figure had not intervened?
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Meet the Author
Real Men. True Love. Rick R. Reed is an award-winning and bestselling author of more than fifty works of published fiction. He is a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Entertainment Weekly has described his work as “heartrending and sensitive.” Lambda Literary has called him: “A writer that doesn’t disappoint…” Find him at www.rickrreedreality.blogspot.com. Rick lives in Palm Springs, CA, with his husband, Bruce, and their fierce Chihuahua/Shiba Inu mix, Kodi.Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
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