Ned was seventeen when he met Jake. He was a
stock associate at Roses, a local discount department store where
Ned worked as a cashier part-time after school. On Ned’s first day
at work, Jake came through his line pushing a loaded hand truck for
a customer, and he stared at Ned silently with those pale green
eyes of his as if trying to figure him out. Freckles dotted his
body, so heavy in places they made the skin look dark. Smattered
across his nose and cheeks, up and down both arms, across his
back…he had freckles between his ass cheeks even, and in the tender
skin below his balls, as Ned later discovered. A fine dusting of
light red hair covered his body like peach fuzz. The hair on his
head was kept short, an auburn Brillo pad, while the bush at his
crotch grew like wildfir
