Beauty And The Bookworm Read Free

watching. “ Gotta stretch after a run.”
    “ Don’t I know it,” I said, because, you know, I did attend gym class once upon a time. I eventually got out of it with a hard-won, totally bogus asthma diagnosis that placed me right where I wanted to be – the library. But I did remember the bit about stretching after a run.
    By then the running man had his legs splayed and I looked out over the lake to avoid staring up the leg of his shorts and letting my eyes take a hike to the Promised Land. I wa tched the ducks gliding across the water and pretended physical perfection wasn’t below me with its legs spread wide. The thing was, the guy would not let me ignore him. “What are you reading?”
    I was proud of my quick thinking. “ War and Peace .”
    “Really? Wow, I’m impressed. I don’t think I could get through something like that. Is it good?”
    “It’s great.” I’m a terrible liar and I was desperate to change the subject because I could feel my face getting warm. My mind was flailing for something, anything to talk about, but running man solved the problem for me.
    “You’re hot.”
    What? I’m hot? Did he actually just say that? I don’t get told things like that very often, but I knew the proper response. If someone says you’re hot and you’d like to shred their hunter-green jockstrap with your bare teeth, you say it back. “You’re pretty hot, too.”
    His eyebrows did that question mark thing again. “What?”
    My stomach started to cramp because sometimes your body is slightly ahead of your brain. My stomach knew that something had gone terribly, mortifyingly wrong. My brain, on the other hand, plowed ahead on the path of self-destruction and took my mouth with it. “You said I’m hot. I said you’re hot, too.”
    His eyes grew wide and a little blush of color came to his cheeks. “No. I asked if you were hot because it’s June and you’re wearing a sweater.”
    Please, God, make the death by duck shit quick or, fuck it, make it slow and agonizing, but let’s get started. I opened my mouth to explain that I’d misunderstood him, closed it because he already knew that, and finally spit out, “It’s a cardigan.”
    The running man was merciful. “Yeah, but cardigans are sweaters, right? I’ll let you get back to your book.”
    He stood, walked away, and with the kindness of a saint, did not look back.
    I decided it was time to go home and cut my tongue out with the rustiest pair of scissors I could find.

Chapter 2
    Sassy Best Friend
    I didn’t get much support when I came out of the closet a few days before I turned sixteen. I grew up in a small, conservative town in Easter Oregon and my parents were just not prepared for the changeling that had been left on their doorstep. I didn’t get any of the dramatic “You are not my son!” speeches, I just got the cold shoulder for the next few days. It was okay, but lonely. That all changed when, on my birthday, a woman I’d never met before showed up at my party.
    It was my father’s mother. She, I found out, was not actually dead as I’d been told, but was a hard-core biker lesbian who lived in Portland and called my father once a month to check whether or not he still had a stick up his “pancake of an ass.” She walked into my sparsely attended soiree, looking like John Wayne entering a saloon, and said, “Mason, I’m your grandmother and you’re dad tells me you’re queer. Wanna come and live with me?”
    It wasn’t that simple of course, I didn’t move to Portland right away, but, after a few months of silence at home, I fled to Gran’s beefy, open arms. Things have gotten better between my parents and me since then, but they just don’t measure up to Gran. Let’s get things straight though, the old girl is no picnic. She rides a Harley, drinks like a fish, and is the most homophobic gay person I’ve ever met. I’m not saying she calls me fag or anything, but I’ve gotten pretty used to candy ass , and I will