One More Second of Summer

Chapter One - He Looks So Perfect

POV Jack Montgomery

"Jack. I don't want you to go. Not yet." Luke grumbled, his fingers were grasping at the air in my direction, like a cat, clawing at the air, perfectly content after its tummy has been rubbed.

"Luke." I shook my head, sighing and ambled back. I squeaked as he pulled me down on top of him and we laughed into a kiss.. I knew this was going to happen. He made me weak.

I wasn't used to this; none of it, actually. I wasn't accustomed to guys falling for me, guys wanting me; being attracted to me.

Summer romances were the stuff of movies and girly romance novels. And the idea of falling in love was pure folly.

I hadn't planned on staying in Kennebunkport. I was working my way up the beach towns of New England. Yankee Magazine had a list of the top 25 beach towns of New England and I was bound and determined to visit as many of them as possible before the end of summer. At least that was the plan at the beginning, but it turned out, Yankee magazine wasn't the hippest source for parties.

I started in Nantucket, hitting there just in time for the Nantucket Wine Festival. I didn't much like wine, but it was a festival and there's something to be said for a bunch of rich guys on the beach drunk on wine and life. I was only 18 and much like the majority of the beach crowd, we weren't able to get into the official parties unless we had access to IDs verifying we were over 21. There were plenty of seedy places to get fake IDs but truth be told, the real parties were on the beach. Impromptu parties sprung up like mushrooms after a spring rain. It was crazy and just what I was hoping for.

After Nantucket I ended up at Bar Harbor for the food festival and then Mystic Seaport for Lobster Days. I didn't like wine, but I did love to eat. I swear I ate my weight in lobster and drank my weight in beer. I worked Memorial weekend on the shy for the Rotary Club and they paid me under the table. Plus it was all the lobster rolls, corn on the cob, and coleslaw I could eat. The beer I fetched on the beach afterwards around huge roaring fires bonfires and blaring music; coolers crammed with ice; the bottlenecks sticking out like frosty thorns.

I said I worked my way, and that was truth of it, in more ways the one. Summer season provided ample opportunity for work. All the parties and festivals, it was easy to find work, paid in cash at the end of the night. The first 5 weeks of summer had been one long party stretching across 6 states. It was wild. I was reckless. Once, I tagged along with a group of kids, racing headlong into the night to the next best party only to wake up on a deserted beach with a hangover and sand in my shorts.

Kennebunkport was supposed to be a one-night thing. Just earn enough money to tide me over until Rockport. Straight shot down highway 1.

I was working at one of the seasonal beach bars. It was sort kitschy, tikki lamps stabbed deep into the sand along with strings of blinking Christmas lights. The wait staff wore Hawaiin shirts and board shorts. The girls were spared the indignity of a Hawaiian shirt but instead wore bikinis that left practically nothing to the imagination. I bartered for a night's work, twenty bucks, whatever tips I could make and two lobster rolls. The owner tossed me the ugliest Hawaii shirt I'd ever seen; and the shorts weren't much better. I was grateful for the lack of mirrors.

"Where you from?" I looked up, surprised by the voice. He had an accent, and just looking at him you wouldn't think he would. His blond hair was a mess. He looked anonymous, like any number of beach bums coming off the beach after of long day of too much sun and probably a little too much drink. His smile was captivating and I had to look away.

"Huh?"

"Where you from?" He stepped closer and I could feel the day's sun rolling off of him in waves of heat.

My response was a smile. I thought it odd that he would be asking. His accent put him from Australia and I was just from a small out of the place town in the middle of Texas. I told him as much and he smiled.

"That far?"

"Not as far as you."

He nodded and took a long draw from his beer. He looked under age, younger than me, but drank brazenly, relishing it.

"What are you doing here?" Another question that would work better were I to have asked him instead of the other way around.

"Vacatiion. This is my official, party summer." He watched me pick up the empty bottles lining the bar, push in empty bar stools and brush a fair amount of peanut shells to the floor. "It's a pay as I go party summer."

He nodded again. His cheeks dimpled as he drank, one more so than the other, and his eyes sparkled. "What're you doin later?"

This time I laughed. Out loud. I didn't think I was that obvious. In Texas, it's best to hide the fact that you're gay, especially in those small out of the way towns.

Instead of answering I said, "You look familiar."

It was his turn to smile. "Really?" It was a knowing smile. I don't know if he'd heard it before, like a come-on. I certainly didn't mean it that way.

I'm from Texas. And while not everybody in Texas listens to country music, I did. So I didn't know. I didn't know if he believed me, at first, which explained that knowing grin. He leaned back against the bar and then looked over my shoulder. I turned, following his gaze. There was a crowd at a makeshift stage starting to chant.

"Have a drink with me after?"

I watched him for another second; to see if he was serious, then nodded slowly. He smiled, biting at his lip ring unconsciously. I wondered if it was a nervous habit, though I doubted he was shot down, very often, if at all.

He downed the last of his beer and stood abruptly, pulled up shorts that hung wondrously on tanned hipbones. I caught a glimpse of his belly button and the hint of abs as his shirt road up. He knocked sand from his flip-flops and headed straight for the boisterous crowd. I wanted to watch him, wanted to turn and follow him with my eyes but I felt him run a finger along my lower back that sent chills running up and down my spine. I nearly dropped everything.

When the music started, the girls went wild, and probably a few guys too, I glanced back and on stage he stood, microphone in hand. He was watching the crowd surging closer and closer to the stage like a tide. There were four on stage, three of them brandished guitars and he threw a curious grin back at the fourth, a drummer who bounced his head to the rhythm of the drums, his blond hair flying wildly. I recognized the music, and had heard the song before, but like I said, I was just a country boy for the most part so I couldn't tell you who sang the song. The surging crowd was apparently very familiar and sang along in a staccato fashion, their voices rising above the instruments blaring from the speakers, but his voice rang clearly.

He glanced over at me and winked, and for a moment I could feel his finger running across my back, just above the waistband of my underwear.