A Surplus of Light Read online

  A Surplus of Light

  By: Chase Connor

  © Copyright 2018

  All characters depicted in sexual situations in this publication are eighteen years of age or older. These stories are about fictional consenting adults. Nobody involved in the creation of this ebook, including authors, editors and models, support immoral or illegal acts in real life. Cover models are not intended to illustrate specific people and the content does not refer to models' actual acts, identity, history, beliefs or behavior. No characters depicted in this ebook are intended to represent real people.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  AUTHORS’ NOTE:

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

  As Always:

  To everyone involved in the creation of this book (you know who you are), there aren’t enough words. Thank you. To all of the readers – this has been quite a journey. Let’s get to the end together.

  Contents

  Chapter 1 – Ian

  Chapter 2 – Mike Summer Before Freshman Year

  Chapter 3 – Mike Later That Summer

  Chapter 4 – Ian

  Chapter 5 – Mike The Beginning of Another Summer

  Chapter 6 – Mike Sophomore Spring Break

  Chapter 7 – Mike Summer Before Junior Year

  Chapter 8 – Ian

  Chapter 9 – Mike Summer Before Senior Year

  Chapter 10 – Ian

  Chapter 11 – Mike 4 Years Later

  A Short Story

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Ian

  When the conditions are right, meaning that it is not too hot outside, and we’ve gotten enough rain, the creek fills all the way up. You can step right off of the bank and fall into the creek. The current is gentle and languid but moves at a quick enough pace to keep the water from becoming stagnant. But the creek is always full enough to at least get wet up to your waist. Crisp and cool, the water in the creek is a respite from the heat of late spring and early summer. A favorite hangout for all of the high school kids. Sometimes middle school kids will partake in the oasis that is the creek, but if the high school kids are around, they know to steer clear. It’s just one of those unspoken rules kids have that no one really enforces, yet no one tries too hard to break.

  Late at night is the best time to go to the creek, regardless of a person’s age group. No one comes out to the creek late at night. Not because they’re scared, but one of the major draws to swimming at the creek is that boys can check out girls and vice versa. You can’t really do that in the dark. Early morning, just as the sun is coming up is a good time to go to the creek as well. Mostly because no one wants to get up at the butt crack of dawn during summer vacation. Even the added bonus of getting the creek all to oneself doesn’t get most people out of bed so early.

  Except for me.

  I’m concerned neither with checking out girls nor am I worried about swimming in the dark of night. As long as I get to float lazily in the surprisingly crystal-clear water, enjoying the creek without the hoots and hollers of other kids, I could really care less about the time of day. When other kids are not around, I’m able to strip down to my swim trunks and wade out into the creek. You never jump in from the creek bed or cliff facings. The crystal-clear water makes it hard to determine the depth of the water in certain areas. And if you’re all alone, you can’t risk a broken appendage. Or worse.

  Further down from where a lot of people usually swim, there’s a wider and deeper stretch that can be leapt into without concern. However, I like the shallower area where I can lazily float and avoid the noise and boisterousness of other kids. Well, I couldn’t really consider myself one of the “kids” anymore. High school was over for me and any friends that I had. Graduation ceremonies had been held a week prior. Everyone who had been seniors was in that strange limbo between where our old lives ended and where our new lives were going to begin.

  We had a summer between phases of our lives, unsure of what we were really supposed to be doing as fresh-faced adults. Unsure if the colleges or jobs we had chosen were really the great escape we had been planning since middle school. For me, I didn’t vacillate between worry and contentment. I was just ready. For what, I wasn’t so sure—but I did know that escaping, no matter how that was achieved, was going to be fine. In a little over two months, Texas would be behind me and I would be heading to New York. Columbia was waiting. What happened after that, I didn’t really care. I just wouldn’t be in Texas anymore.

  That’s why I was floating in the creek at midnight, only the moon for any light, staring up at the stars above. I was dreaming of the life that awaited me after my two-month lull between childhood and adulthood. The smile on my face reinforced my belief that I had made an excellent choice. Whether or not the students who I had gone to school with felt the same, or whether or not they had completely made up their minds about their futures, was of no concern to me. My path was set. First and foremost—wait, then leave. Escape. That’s all that was required for me to begin being happy.

  As I stared up at the stars in the cloudless sky, I mentally mapped out my future, but found that my map ended at arriving at Columbia. After that, I had no solid plan for what my destination might be. It just wouldn’t be the armpit of a town in Texas. When the stars were suddenly blotted out by a shoe, and then the sole of that shoe pressed itself against my forehead, my eyes grew wide in shock. Then I was being pushed under the water, no longer floating peacefully, but doing my best not to inhale water.

  My arms flapped wildly and I pushed my feet down, trying to find footing. My feet finally found purchase and I pushed my feet into the sandy bed of the creek, pushing upwards. The shoe was no longer pushing down on me, so I popped up out of the water with a gasp and a flinging of arms, water arcing wildly away from me as I sputtered and flapped like a floundering seal. I reached up and sluiced water away from my eyes, pushing my hair off of my face as I looked around angrily.

  “You looked so peaceful.” I looked directly in front of me towards the source of the voice.

  Mike was sitting on the edge of the creek bank, his legs dangling beneath him, his feet just inches from the water’s surface. He lit a cigarette dramatically, the orange glow cast by his lighter showing a wide shock of the white teeth that held his cigarette for a split second. He was amused. For a brief moment, I was tempted to send a wave of water towards him, putting out his cigarette and soaking him to the bone. But then I remembered how expensive cigarettes were and refrained.

  “You’re a fucking dick.” I frowned at him.

  Mike exhaled blue smoke into the darkness.

  “You were wet anyway.” The darkness that comprised his shoulders shrugged. “Stop being so dramatic.”

  I could hear the smile in his voice.

  “I hope you choke on a cigarette.” I waved a hand in front of my face, wafting the smoke away.

  “So, what’s up?” He grumbled. “You came out here without me?”

  “Yeah? So?” I grumbled back and bent my knees until I was submerged to my neck so that I wouldn’t get cold. “I always come out here at night.”

  “We always come out here at night,” Mike replied before taking a long drag off of his cigarette.

  His face was cast in
a halo of orange, showing that he was smiling and his eyes were twinkling.

  “We’re here aren’t we?” I rolled my eyes, though I was sure he couldn’t see my expression in the darkness.

  Not until his eyes adjusted to the darkness, anyway.

  “You still should have waited.” He replied before he held out a pack in the dark. “You want one?”

  “You know I don’t want that shit.” I scoffed playfully at the cigarette pack he held in his hand. “Cancer isn’t really my thing, man.”

  He laughed throatily.

  “You should really quit,” I suggested. “I mean, school’s over. Who’s left to impress out here by the creek?”

  “I don’t smoke to impress people.” He snorted.

  “Right.” I gave an upward nod. “I’m sure that you didn’t take up smoking when you spied all of the half-naked bodies out here, man. I’m sure that had absolutely nothing to do with it. You’re your own free-thinking person.”

  “I brought some weed if you prefer.” He said.

  “I’m not smoking that shit either,” I replied. “You know, it’s not fair that you have the ‘All-American Boy’ image and you’re out here smoking and acting like you don’t have the sense your momma and daddy could spare.”

  “And you got stuck with the ‘trouble-maker’ image and you’re out here acting like you got a stick up your ass.”

  “You’re going to end up with a foot in your ass,” I growled.

  “Listen here, Columbia…”

  “Get in the water and talk shit, Steedman.” I stood suddenly, holding my arms out wide, water flying in all directions. “You wanna wrestle or what?”

  Mike took a long drag on his cigarette, eyeing me quietly as I stood there, holding my arms out wide, aggressively. Several moments passed as we stared each other down in the darkness. Then our laughter pealed through the air before I fell back in the water, sending streams of water slicing through the air around us. I laughed loudly up at the sky as I plunged backward into the creek, water gushing up and around me, pulling me into its depths. Finally, I resurfaced and positioned myself so that only my head was sticking out.

  The glow of Mike’s cigarette was faint, signaling that he was almost done with the one and only cigarette he would smoke while he was out at the creek that night. I gave him a hard time—but he wasn’t really a smoker. He had started smoking cigarettes to look cool, but now he just smoked one at night. Probably to calm his nerves. His own personal quiet time to settle his mind and slough off the stress of the day. I gave him shit, but I didn’t really care. We all have our “thing”, right?

  “I’m going to miss this, man.” Mike sighed as he tamped the cigarette out on the ground beside him.

  “Don’t talk like that,” I said.

  “When you’re gone, what the hell am I supposed to do, Ian?” He sighed and tossed the butt over his shoulder into the darkness. “Everyone else around here sucks.”

  The way he drew out “sucks” was comical yet sad.

  I stood and bowed grandly.

  “I’m honored that you hold me in such high esteem.” I laughed.

  As I settled back into the water, Mike stripped his shirt off and laid it on the bank beside him.

  “Serious, though, Ian.” He said as he rose to his feet. “It’s just not going to be the same here without you. Summers are always about us.”

  Mike and I never ran in the same circles in school. He was the All-American Boy, never in trouble, adored by all, the guy all girls wanted and never got, and the guy all other guys wanted to be. I was the smart kid with a penchant for making adults label me a troublemaker. Even though I did absolutely nothing to earn the title—usually—other than the aforementioned smart mouth—and a few fights. We never spent time with each other during the school year. And our social circles never overlapped. Actually, I didn’t have much of a social circle, so overlapping never would have been an issue.

  But during summers, our passions turned to our friendship. Neither of us liked swimming with the other kids in town, and we didn’t care for pretending that we actually liked the friends we had made in school in order to survive. We had become a beacon of hope for each other. If we could just make it through the school year one more year, we could just be ourselves with each other. I didn’t have to keep up my tough guy exterior, and Mike didn’t have to act like he enjoyed being popular and revered.

  We could swim at night in the creek, spend time exploring the woods and the fields. Talk for hours about things that were actually important without others interrupting our flow or judging us. Talk about things that really interested us. Talk about politics and social movements. Discuss faraway places we hoped to travel to someday. Experiences we were dying to have. Foods we wanted to try but could never got in the Podunk town in which we were trapped. And neither of us judged the other. Ever.

  Unlike other teenage guys, neither of us was just about sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. I mean, sex did come up quite a bit. And okay, so maybe Mike smoked weed from time to time, but it was by no means a habit. Honestly, I think he only kept it on himself so that he felt like he wasn’t conforming to the All-American Boy image that had been cultivated and thrust upon him. I’d never actually seen him smoke weed. And, sure, we were teenage guys, so sex was at the forefront of our minds, but it wasn’t the most important thing. Usually. We had more important things to talk about. Music was discussed, but it wasn’t our main drive, either. We just liked talking about anything and everything we couldn’t discuss with anyone else at school or at home.

  “Remember that first summer after eighth grade?” I could hear the smile in Mike’s voice as he kicked off his shoes. “When I was totally convinced that you were as wild as your reputation made me believe?”

  I laughed. “Yeah. Of course, I remember that.”

  Mike stripped off his jeans, leaving him in his swimsuit.

  “You believed everything your dumbass friends told you.” I continued. “I couldn’t believe that I’d met someone my age that naïve.”

  “I couldn’t believe I’d met such a badass.” He countered as he shimmied down the bank into the water.

  Mike sunk down until he was underwater, stayed there for a moment, then rose back up to stand on his feet, the water coming to his waist. His hair was plastered against his skull and laying in a blonde-ish seaweed-like curtain over his eyes as he smiled. Now that he was no longer in the shadows cast by the trees and in the moonlight with me, I could see him better. The joy that was always affixed to his face was apparent in the moonlight, no longer hidden by the darkness that the tree cover provided.

  Reaching over to him, I swiped my hand up his face and his forehead, brushing his hair back on top of his head. His eyes sparkled out at me, not their usual mossy green in the blue moonlight, but almost black. Mike smiled at me, his teeth looking blue from the light provided by the moon, but there was a sadness there as well. I smiled back, glad to have had such a good friend every summer during my high school years. Even if we were destined to go our separate ways in a few short months.

  “Let me kiss you,” Mike whispered.

  “No, Mike.” I used both of my hands to smooth his hair back.

  “Just one.”

  “One leads to two,” I said, moving my hands downwards once his hair was controlled. “Two leads to other things.”

  “I won’t try other things.”

  “Because you’re not going to kiss me.” I ran my thumbs under his eyes, clearing away creek water.

  Mike stared at me, his smile now gone.

  “You know,” he whispered, “I would have loved you if you let me. I would have loved you for four years now.”

  “You already love me.” I let my hands slide from his face, down his neck, to trace his collarbones with my fingers. “There’s nothing about ‘would have’ in there, Mike. And that’s why we shouldn’t kiss.”

  “I would’ve been everything you wanted from me.” He sighed as my fingers traced his ch
est. “I would have done anything. All you had to do was ask me to do it.”

  “I have nothing to give in return.” I shrugged, my hands falling away from him, dipping into the water at my sides. “So, I’d never ask any of that of you, Mike.”

  “Why are you like this?” He leaned forward, his forehead touching mine, but he kept his lips away from mine.

  He breathed out, sweet, soft, and warm against my mouth.

  “It’s just the way I am,” I replied softly. “I’ve never lied to you about that, Mike.”

  Mike’s hands came up to my shoulders and his hands squeezed them gently as he held his forehead against mine. The moonlight shone on the water around us, making the water look black and cold.

  “You kiss me, then.” He said.

  “There are a lot of complications in a kiss,” I replied.

  “I want to be complicated.” He said, his eyes boring into mine. “For once. I want us to be really complicated.”

  “No.”

  “You owe me a kiss. And I gave you four years like I promised.” He smiled slightly. “You promised me that I would get another kiss from you…in the end. This feels like the end.”

  I pushed away from him gently.

  “This isn’t the end, Mike.” I gave him the softest look I could manage. “It’s just the end of me being here. Our friendship isn’t over.”

  “It’s as close to the end as we’ll get while you’re still here.”

  He stared at me for what felt like forever. The only sound being that of the slight breeze through the trees and the lapping of the water against the banks of the creek. Even though it was summer, the air was slightly cool. But I refused to shiver. I wouldn’t show a hint of any type of weakness as I stood there before Mike. Even though he was the only person who I could show my weaknesses to, I refused.

  “Everyone knows I’m bi, Ian.” He said.

  “I know.”

  “No one would care if you’re gay.”