Flesh and Kisses

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

No matter how many times Jett Walker refreshed the window, the information page for the Jefferson High School Class of ‘84’s 30th Reunion stayed the same. It wasn’t the RSVP list that scrolled below the date and location information that captured his attention. It was the announcement that flashed across the top of the screen.

Special performance by our very own Trev Chambers as he reunites Godless Crisis for this one amazing night!

Trev Chambers. Jett hadn’t thought of that name in, well, thirty years. Okay, not quite thirty, since Trev’s band had hit the billboards and achieved their one-hit wonder status two years after they’d graduated. A long time, nonetheless. In high school, the only thing they’d had in common were their honors classes. They sat in different parts of the room, had different sets of friends, did different activities after school.

Meaning Jett hit the field while Trev flipped off anything institution-related and disappeared until the first bell the following day.

Jett didn’t give a f**k about the reunion. He’d been deleting the notifications for the past six months, ever since Megan Cahill-Lau started sending out the invitations and poking people on f*******: to look for those faces that seemed to have dropped off the grid. He hadn’t even been back to Louisville in over a decade, not since his ex-wife Aubrey had relocated to Dallas with her new husband. There was no point. After the divorce, he’d moved to New York for a reason, the same reason he had no desire to see ninety percent of the people he’d gone to high school with.

They knew him as Jett Walker, football star.

None of them knew he’d been a world-class liar, pretending to be straight because the alternative scared the living s**t out of him. It wasn’t until he’d tried being married for a decade that he realized he was more terrified of spending the rest of his life as a phony.

The only reason he’d logged into the reunion site at all was because Megan had emailed everyone she had contact information for, regardless of whether they were attending or not, bragging about an unprecedented surprise.

Trev showing up at the reunion and singing with the band that had made him a national name for at least a couple months in 1986, definitely counted as both.

With a sigh, Jett leaned back in his chair and scrubbed his hand over his head. What the hell was he going to do? He had zero desire to fake socializing with any of those people, because while he might be out now, nobody back in Kentucky knew.

But Trev Chambers. s**t. If ever there was an example of someone living his truth, it was Trev. He had been out in high school, the first gay person Jett had ever been aware of. He was also the first in their conservative corner of Louisville to embrace the punk movement, shaving most of his black hair except for one long shock in front he dyed a neon pink, wearing eyeliner that brightened his blue eyes even more, piercing his ears. Jett had looked at him more than once and wondered if he’d pierced anything else hidden out of sight, which didn’t help his fantasies when Trev would strut down the aisle wearing Levi’s so frayed in the ass they revealed the bright red underwear he wore beneath them.

Jett had admired him, envied him, wanted him more than anyone else then and every day since.

And now Trev was going to be in Louisville. Jett had a time and a place he could see the man one more time.

The question was…What was he going to do about it?

His ringing phone put a halt to his mental debate. Especially when he saw the caller ID and realized that once again, Trev Chambers had completely thrown him off his game.

“Don’t tell me,” he said, rising and grabbing his jacket. “I know I’m late.”

“Then why are you there and not here?” Tatum hissed. Glasses clinked in the background, which meant she was at the restaurant. “Dad’s already on his second beer.”

“I’m sorry.” And he was. Tatum rarely asked for favors. When she’d asked him to convince her father not to throw his money away in some new scheme, he’d agreed without hesitating. “Give me five minutes.”

“If he starts nagging me again about my biological clock winding down—”

“He won’t have the chance,” Jett promised. “I’m going to be right there.”

Though he knew his knees would hate him in the morning, he opted for the stairs instead of waiting around for one of the elevators, jogging down them in record time and hitting the street with two minutes to spare. He’d deliberately told Tatum to make the lunch reservation for the steakhouse across from his office to save having to navigate Manhattan traffic. All he had to do was dart between a line of cars waiting at the red.

The hostess pointed him toward Tatum’s table with a minute left. Jett locked away thoughts of high school crushes to smile and shake Mr. Steen’s hand as if he had nothing else in the world to think about but Mr. Steen’s financial future.

* * * *

Lunch went great once Jett showed up. For all of Tatum’s warnings, her father was more conservative than Jett had planned for, capitulating on his rational argument before he finished the second beer she’d bitched about. The rest of the meal was spent talking about other investment opportunities Jett could recommend.

Tatum was so glad her reproductive organs never got mentioned, she picked up the check.

“Do I get to find out why you were late?” she asked after they put Mr. Steen in a cab.

“You have a few minutes?”

She blinked. “Is it good news or bad news? Because I’m not sure I have the stomach for bad right now. I want to keep this high that the world is a fair place and people I love get treated the way they should be as long as possible.”

Jett chuckled. “Nothing like that. But I’m curious what your opinion is on something.” Just like she valued his expertise, he trusted her gut reactions. “Come on up.”

Jett worked for a small financial firm on the west side, just him and three other guys, but Tatum was a common fixture amongst his coworkers. Every time they hired someone new, the fresh-faced employee mistook Tatum for his wife before Jett made it clear he was gay and they were only friends. She followed him back to the office, though this time, his knees thanked him for taking the elevator. They had to make a small detour at reception so she could take a look at Miranda’s new engagement ring, but once the niceties were over and they were safely closeted away in his office, he took a deep breath and launched into his story.

“How’s your eighties music trivia?” he asked, settling at his desk. When she started to sit across from him, he waved her around so she could stand at his shoulder and see his monitor.

“Are we talking early or late?”

“Middle; 1986.”

“Meh. I was still in junior high, and my dad didn’t let us get cable so I could get drunk on MTV until I hit high school.”

“What about this song?” His fingers flew over the keyboard as he typed the name of Trev’s single into the search window. He selected the first link that came up and turned the volume up with a quick glance at the office door to ensure it was shut.

The first notes were an odd discord, more noise than music, then segued into a low throb punctuated by what he was pretty sure were actual moans, synthesized through who knew what kind of machine was popular at the time. Before the first lyric came out, Tatum brightened.

“This was that s*x song,” she said. “The one about the guy who wanted to eat up his girlfriend.”

“‘Flesh and Kisses’,” Jett clarified. “And I can guarantee you that the guy singing the song is not thinking about any girl.”

Perching on the edge of the desk, Tatum ignored the computer to focus on Jett. To the casual observer, she was the epitome of the zaftig New Ager, long brown hair hanging in a thick braid down her back, clear skin devoid of makeup so that her dark eyes shone through, sandals and long skirts completing the picture even in the dead of winter. But Jett knew the facade for what it was, a clever mask to hide the cutthroat attorney that was her true self. She would’ve been a killer in the corporate market, but instead settled for civil rights cases, with the occasional appearance on the part of Jett’s firm when the need arose.

He liked it better when she turned her laser gaze to strangers and opposing counsel. Much better.

“How do you know that?” Her offhand tone was a ruse. An unnecessary one since he had every intention of sharing.

“I went to high school with the lead singer.” He clicked over to the reunion page for her to read. “His name’s Trev Chambers.”

She scanned it quickly, then shrugged. “You’ve been bitching about these stupid reunion announcements for months. Why did this make you late?”

“Because Trev was s*x on a stick in high school. And out of the closet before it became the latest fashion to flaunt it.”

“And repressed football player Jett wanted to ride that stick?”

Thank God she knew all about his history before he’d come out. The fact that she stuck around after learning what a head case he’d been said a lot for her. “Pretty much.”

“And now you don’t know what to do.”

“The last thing I want is to go to this reunion, but…” His voice trailed off, the chorus of the song swelling to fill the silence. When it had come out, he’d played it all the time, driving his girlfriend at the time crazy. She’d threatened to cut off his d**k if he dared to punk out like the freaks in the band. The only reason he hadn’t—it seemed like the perfect chance to get rid of her when she made him fairly miserable—was because he was half-convinced she would follow through on her threat.

In his reverie, he missed Tatum pulling out her phone until she whistled under her breath. “s*x on a stick is right.”

Jett strained to see what she’d found. Trev’s blue eyes bored into him, even from such a tiny screen, his lean, muscled chest visible through his ripped leather shirt. Blood and heat surged south, and he shifted slightly to ease the sudden strain of his c**k against his pants where it was now trapped against his thigh.

“He was everything I wanted to be,” he mused. “But didn’t have the guts to do.”

“What does he look like now?”

“I have no idea.”

“Was this his only hit?”

“Again, I have no idea. It was the only hit Godless Crisis had, I know that. But what he did when the band broke up—what are you doing?”

“Checking him out now. You know you’re curious.”

He hadn’t made the conscious acknowledgment, but he wouldn’t deny Tatum’s claim. He’d get a better resolution on his computer than her phone, but somehow, letting her do the looking made him feel less like a stalker.

“You need to go,” she announced without glancing up.

Electricity surged through him. “Why? What did you find?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?” Abandoning any pretense that he was disconnected from this, he stood and twisted so they were shoulder to shoulder, his view the same as hers. She hadn’t opened a window yet, still scrolling through the links her search had produced. “Of course, it matters.”

“Why? You want to see this guy again, not because of who he is now but who he was then. I don’t see the harm in going for the concert and skipping all the rest of the reunion crap you have no interest in. It’s a lot cheaper midlife crisis than buying a sports car.”

“Ha ha.” But it lacked enthusiasm, his thoughts too much in turmoil at Tatum’s argument. “Not happening.”

“Tell me why.”

“Because nobody in Louisville knows I’m gay.”

“So?”

“So it’s not New York.”

“And you never have to see them again once you leave.”

“But they’ll know. They’ll talk.”

With an exasperated sigh, she lowered her phone. “Since when do you care about any of that s**t? You’ve had a life here for years. When was the last time you apologized for who you are to anybody?”

“The day I left Louisville.” If she wasn’t going to look, he was. He took the phone from her grasp and clicked the first link that looked promising. “It’s too hard to explain. I spent years being afraid of what people might say if they found out. It’s like they have some sort of weird hold over me, where I’m sixteen all over again and nothing I’ve done for the last thirty years matters.”

“This isn’t high school. People get over that crap.”

“Maybe. I’m not sure it’s worth trying to find out, though…” He trailed off. One of the links she’d found hit the jackpot.

The article was in conjunction with a music festival in Pennsylvania from two years earlier. A music store was hosting local bands as a precursor to the festival’s start date, and along with promo shots of the groups, the reporter had included a picture of the store’s owner. Trevor Chambers.

The name wasn’t that uncommon. It could’ve been anyone, especially since the store was nowhere near Kentucky. Jett had picked the link because of the music connection, grasping at straws, really, but the photo proved his instincts to hone in on Trev were still solid.

He was dressed casually, in faded jeans that clung to his long legs, a plaid shirt hanging open over a plain white T-shirt. With his arms folded across his chest, he leaned against the plate glass window of the store behind him. The name, The Music Room, was painted in white and black on easy display. Nothing about his clothing or demeanor suggested the hungry lead singer from Godless Crisis.

It was the eyes that did the trick. The intense blue, even without the liner, cut through the fourth wall to bore into those on the other side. Pure Trev.

His dark hair had gone gray in the decades since high school, cut short and neat to highlight his square jaw. The heartbroken mouth that had seduced an MTV generation was set in a firm line, though Jett imagined that was more habit than personal malice. Still slim, chiseled in a way that only time could achieve. Beneath those unassuming clothes would be a body of fantasies, whether man or woman, young or old.

Jett couldn’t breathe. How was it possible Trev was more enticing now than he’d been when Jett was a walking hormone?

All he knew was that there was no way he wasn’t seeing this once in a lifetime concert.

“You’re coming with me,” he said.

“Oh, no,” Tatum said. “I am not being your beard.”

“I’ll tell everybody we’re just friends.”

“Only because you know they’ll all assume we’re dating anyway.” She snatched back her phone, though she hesitated to close the window on Trev’s picture. “Gay, huh? Figures.”

“I’ll do it just like you said,” Jett coaxed. “I’ll pay for everything, we’ll just go to the concert, and then we’ll fly home. One weekend of your life. That’s it.” When she didn’t respond, he went around to face her more directly, grabbing onto her hands to get her full attention. “I can’t do this without my best friend there. I’m going to embarrass myself otherwise.”

Her gaze softened. “You won’t. You’re not capable.”

“I don’t trust myself around this guy. It’s like…look, I know he’s probably an asshole. He’s probably been through rehab a few times, broken a few thousand hearts. And now he’s put his life back together, so maybe he’s testing the waters for a comeback. He could be anybody right now, but none of that matters because in my head, in the dreams I still have when I least expect them, he’s the epitome of everything I idealized. He was sexy and smart and rebellious, and God, I wanted him. I still do.”

“And all you see when you look at him is the boy you loved,” she said softly.

Jett frowned. “I didn’t love him. I barely said a dozen words to him in four years of high school.”

“Call it a crush, then.”

“Obsession.”

“Whatever. My point is, you need closure. You’re coming around full circle. He’s the boy who first made you fully aware that you were gay, and that’s the place you had to run away from to live the life you were always meant to.”

He never would’ve seen her astute observation. Trev got him too rattled to think straight. There were a whole host of superficial reasons he wanted to see Trev perform that song, too, but she hit the emotional truth right on the head.

“Does that mean you’ll go with me?”

“I’ll go with you.” She laughed when he threw his arms around her in gratitude. “But I’m still not going to be your beard.”