You Belong With Me

Table of Contents

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

About the Author

Also from JEFF ERNO

Also from HARMONY INK PRESS

Harmony Ink Press

Copyright

Published by

Harmony Ink Press

5032 Capital Circle SW

Ste 2, PMB# 279

Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886

USA

publisher@harmonyinkpress.com

http://harmonyinkpress.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

You Belong With Me

Copyright © 2013 by Jeff Erno

Cover Art by Aaron Anderson

aaronbydesign55@gmail.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Harmony Ink Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Ste 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA.

publisher@harmonyinkpress.com

ISBN: 978-1-62380-533-3

Library ISBN: 978-1-62380-922-5

Digital ISBN: 978-1-62380-534-0

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

February 2013

Dedication

MY VERY first novel, Dumb Jock, was completed in 2002. At the time of its writing, I had little hope of becoming a published author. Writing a novel had always been a dream of mine—an item on my bucket list—and I was grateful for the opportunity to fulfill that dream and complete a goal. It wasn’t until 2009 that the book was published, and since then, fifteen other works have made their way to print.

Over the years, I’ve received hundreds of letters from readers, many of them young people, who’ve read my stories, and to this day, they still touch my heart. I’m amazed, not only by the positive feedback, but by the kindness and empathy expressed in these heartfelt letters. To me, my fictional characters are real. They take on an identity apart from me, but it is when a reader recognizes this that the experience is most rewarding.

I’d like to dedicate this work to the many fans who’ve expressed their love and support over the years. I hope as you read this story you’ll feel as connected to Wesley and Brad as I’ve become.

Chapter 1

I WAS concentrating so hard on my T-shirt design that the knock on my bedroom door startled me. Dang it! The bleach pen I was holding slid across the fabric, sketching a squiggly white line across the front of my shirt. My pattern was ruined.

Wes, dinner’s ready. It was my mother’s voice.

I released a sigh of exasperation. Not hungry!

The door opened and she peered in, a frustrated look on her face. Honey, come and eat, she said.

I just want to get this shirt done, I whined. I hated the nasally, effeminate quality in my voice. I really didn’t mean to sound that way, and I loathed the fact that I didn’t know how to change it. Look, you made me screw up my design.

She stepped over to my bed, upon which I had a dry-erase board I was using like a tabletop. It looks cool, she said, cocking her head slightly as she examined the multicolored pattern I’d just spent the previous hour crafting. I like how you did that squiggly line.

I rolled my eyes. "That’s the part that got screwed up," I explained.

Why don’t you come down and eat? You can use the dining room table to finish your project when we’re done with dinner. I can even help you if you want. She placed her hand against my back, softly raking her fingernails back and forth between my shoulder blades. I didn’t want it to work. I didn’t want her to use her sweet talk to manipulate me. She was right, though. I did need to eat. I hadn’t had a bite all day, and it was after five o’clock.

Okay, I finally conceded. I’ll be down in a sec.

Two minutes, she said in her sternest voice and then stepped out, pulling the door closed behind her.

Still lying on my belly, I pushed myself up into a kneeling position in the middle of my mattress. As I did so, I glanced out the window. I really didn’t have much of a view, and the only reason I kept the blinds open was to let in light. There was another building right next to our house. In fact, it was a house that looked almost exactly like ours. All the houses on our block were like that, and they were all built close to each other. The only yards we had to speak of were in the back. Suburban living. For the previous eight months, the house next door had been empty. Someone bought it recently, but I had yet to encounter our new neighbors.

As I peered out my window, I realized I could see directly into one of the rooms in the neighbor’s house. There was someone standing there with his back to me. I stepped over to my own window to close my blinds. Lord knew I didn’t want some Peeping Tom looking in on me during my private, teenage-boy moments.

When I got a better look at the man, I realized he was not wearing a shirt. His broad, tanned shoulders looked fine, very fine. Maybe I didn’t want to close the blinds after all. I stood there staring at him, taking in his dark hair and smooth skin. Then suddenly he turned around, and I about crapped myself. Holy shit, it’s Brad Johnson!

Of course I did what any self-respecting homosexual teen would do—lifted up my hand with my arm bent at the elbow and waved to him, wiggling my fingers back and forth like a six-year-old girl. Brad stood there a second, staring at me, then raised his own hand to counter my gesture with his own, far more masculine greeting. He grinned as he did so. My heart melted. Literally. All over the floor. It melted right in my chest and ran down my leg into a puddle on the floor in front of me.

Seriously, I thought I was going to die. Brad was not just some random high school acquaintance. Well, I guess he probably thought of me in those terms, but to me he was a lot more than that. He was the object of my every waking (and non-waking) fantasy. I couldn’t believe he was now my neighbor, and what was more, that he was standing there naked from the waist up, smiling at me.

He must have thought I was mentally handicapped, the way I stood there with my mouth hanging open, staring. In an attempt to compose myself, I squared my shoulders and straightened my posture, then reached up to push my glasses back on my nose only to realize they were already back as far as they could go. Nervous habit.

Slowly, I backed up until my calves were against the bedframe. For some reason I couldn’t take my eyes off him, and he kept looking at me. I tried to slide to the left, shuffling my feet in an attempt to maneuver around the bed. My feet got tangled, and I tripped. Crap! I’m such a loser.

When I pulled myself up, I didn’t want to even look back out the window to see if he was still watching. I did though, and he was holding up a notepad for me to see. His face registered concern, and on the pad, written in bold black marker, was the question: YOU OK?

I felt my face getting extremely hot and nodded profusely. I finished standing up and shrugged. I pointed to my bedroom door, indicating I had to go.

Confused, he wrinkled his brow, as if attempting to decipher what I was ineffectively trying to communicate.

I glanced behind me and saw the whiteboard on my bed. I slid the T-shirt off the board and picked up one of my dry-erase markers. DINNER TIME. GOT TO GO. I held the board up to the window. Brad responded with a thumbs-up.

Wesley James! This time Mom was shouting from the base of the stairs and using my middle name.

Coming! I said and turned to Brad one last time, offering a good-bye toodle-oo wave.

"YOU so could sell these, Chrissy gushed. This one here is wicked cool with the rainbow colors."

My favorite, I said proudly, puffing out my chest a bit.

That is so gay, Tristan said, a disdainful look on his face. Everyone knows what the rainbow stands for.

You mean like the fact that it stopped raining? Chrissy countered. Tristan, shut up. You’re such a loser sometimes.

What? he asked, a defensive edge to his tone.

It’s totally cool to be gay, Chrissy said. So if you’re gonna say shit like that, go hang out somewhere else, and try not to drag your knuckles on your way there.

I cracked up. Sorry, I said sheepishly when I saw Tristan wasn’t laughing. Dude, if you don’t like that one, pick out a different one.

I don’t like any of them, he said sourly.

Whatever, Chrissy replied, unwilling to allow him to rain on our parade. I love all the designs, and I think we’re gonna look boss in any one of them. Wesley, you did an awesome job.

The three of us were assigned as partners in our interpersonal communications class. That’s the new name for what used to be called speech class, at least according to my mom. Chrissy, who was my closest friend, was thrilled to be paired up with me, but we’d also gotten stuck with Tristan. In a way, I felt bad for him. He was one of the leftovers who didn’t have a group, so we let him join ours. Chrissy, being fully aware of my talent with crafts, immediately suggested that we wear matching shirts for our presentation.

Wes, you can design something special. I have to admit I was excited about the idea, and when I got home that evening, I tore into the project.

Here we were, the next day, trying to confer on which of the four patterns we’d go with.

Like, why are we even wasting our time with this? Tristan complained. "I mean, aren’t we supposed to decide on what our presentation is even going to be about before we worry about our uniform?"

He had a point. That’s true, I said. We should have thought of that before I spent all this time making these shirts.

No, Chrissy said, shaking her head. This is perfect. We can choose one of the shirts and use that as our inspiration for a topic.

Tristan scowled.

"And Tristan’s right about the rainbow. It actually is a symbol of gay pride, she went on. That’s what we should talk about."

No way! Tristan protested. We’ll be laughed right out of school. There is no way in hell I’m doing a speech about that.

Not a speech, Chrissy said. We can do, like, a scene. A role-play. Wesley can be the gay guy, I’ll be his friend, and you can be the bigot. We’ll argue our case for marriage equality, and you can try to refute us.

I have a better idea, I said. Let’s go with the earth emblem and do a presentation on global warming. Get it? The globe. Global warming.

In spite of Tristan’s obvious narrow-mindedness, I was with him on this decision. There was no way I wanted to get up in front of the whole class and talk about gay rights. Sure, pretty much everyone knew or at least assumed I was queer, but why make myself a target?

Oh whatever, Chrissy moaned. Both of you should just grow a pair.

With that, it was decided. We’d do a role-play about global warming. Our presentation had to be between seven and ten minutes, so we agreed to divvy the dialogue up evenly, three minutes apiece. For the remainder of the hour, we worked out what we’d say. Our presentation was due Friday, so I still had two days to get two more shirts crafted.

THE worst thing about school was passing classes. Those five-minute periods in between could be torture. For some reason, it seemed there was always someone—usually more than one person—who could not resist bullying the school’s resident fag. Namely, me. I’d get shoved into lockers, tripped, called names. Kids would knock my books out of my hands, or if I was carrying my backpack, they’d snatch it from me and toss it back and forth over my head. It got very tiresome after a while, and I most often tried using evasive tactics as a strategy to outwit them. I’d hang around in the classroom until about a minute or two before the bell, and then I’d run like mad. By that time, everyone was scurrying to get to class and didn’t have time to pick on me.

As I left interpersonal communications, finally dashing