Make a Decision

The long-anticipated posthumous biography by five-times tennis grand slam finalist Todd Littlepage in which he promised to dish the dirt on his homosexual affairs reached the bookstands today, and it delivers. Of note, it gives Littlepage’s background on the March 1998 automobile accident on the Florida Keys causeway during the ATP Lipton Tournament in Miami Open in which promising young tennis phenom, Sean Steele’s, career ended with—

Sean switched the TV set off and sat there in the dimming light, not concentrating on much of anything. The one-bedroom beach condo on the ocean he’d retreated to a week previously had once seemed compact and cozy. Now it felt claustrophobic and stifling. He stood and shuffled over to the glass door out onto the balcony overlooking Crescent Beach. The sun would be low in the sky behind him. It cast a shadow down onto the beach from the foliage-covered dune between him and the ocean. As far as he could see, there was only one person out on the beach. This was a section of the beach with mostly private vacation homes lining it and didn’t get much foot traffic on the sand.

The young man, slim but muscular, with unruly wavy sunny-blond hair, was flying a kite. He had a surf board out there. He’d been on the beach every day Sean had been here in the second-floor condo in the Fifties-style wooden-sided gated condo complex he’d owned for years but had rarely used. The young man had surfed part of the day and flown his kites when the wind was favorable. Yesterday Sean had even seen him on his surfboard out beyond the wave-break line, flying his kite and letting it pull him on his board parallel to the beach.

Sean had a decision to make. He’d come here to make it. But he wasn’t any closer to making it now than he had been when he’d run away from St. Louis—run away to hide.

He turned, with a sigh, and picked a nearly full bottle of bourbon off the counter between the kitchen and the living-dining room and a blanket out of the closet next to the tiny inset of a foyer between the kitchen and the powder room, and hobbled down to the beach. He spread the blanket on the rise of the dune toward the ocean and sat, thinking over the decision he had to make, watching the reflection of the gathering sunset to the west behind him on the Atlantic Ocean, and watching the young blond man in his skimpy Speedo flying his kite between the dune and the surf.

* * * *

Sean knew it was a dream because everything was out of focus and moving except for the grimacing face of a handsome young blond guy hovering above his face and of a kite floating higher above. They were on sand and pounding surf was surging in Sean’s ears. The young man was saddled on Sean’s hips and was sheathing and riding his cock. They moved in coordinated slow motion with the rest of the scene swirling around them as if they were on a carousel. Sean had a sense of gripping the young man’s waist between his hands, and he was rocking his hips, moving in and out, in and out, of the blond’s passage, the young man raised enough, supported on his knees, for Sean to have clearance to thrust. Someone was moaning. He sensed it was him, but it was detached from his sensations.

This segued into the rocking of a car as it raced, faster than it should, down a narrow roadway between two large bodies of water. For some reason he was angry and hurt and kept yelling at the driver. He knew the driver but he couldn’t give him a name. He was older and laughing. Laughing at Sean. This dream sequence was strangely familiar. Sean had dreamed this before. Something was going to happen and he didn’t want the dream to go there. He usually was able to pull himself awake before he got there. Would he this time?

No. He reached for the wheel of the car and the car swerved and soared out over the low wall between the road and the water. When the car hit the water, Sean exploded . . . again and again. The blond who was riding his cock cried out and went wild, closing his claws on Sean’s shoulders and digging in to hold himself steady. Riding, riding, riding.

* * * *

Sean woke up with a headache, awakened by the young man uncoiling himself from beside Sean in his bed, in his condo, rolling the spent condom off Sean’s cock, moving briefly to a seated position next to Sean in the bed, where he muttered, “Fuckin’ A, that was one big cock,” and then standing, tossing the condom in the trashcan next to the bed, and padding off to the bathroom next to the bed.

Sean lay there for a few more minutes, trying to figure out if moving caused more or less pain in his head, and then, with a grunt, he reached down and extracted his briefs from the pile of T-shirt, shorts, and briefs tossed around at the side of the bed, stood, and pulled them on. He’d come up with a red Speedo too, which wasn’t his. He was by no means fat, but, at forty-one, there was no way his hips were slim enough for this to be his.

The young blond guy who had just flounced out of his bed and into the bathroom—the guy on the beach the last several days. He was blond and slim hipped. And hadn’t he been wearing a red Speedo the last time Sean had seen him? When was that? Just now? Well, not now. Twilight had been falling when Sean last saw that blond guy and went down to the beach. It was light now. So, yesterday? Shit, it hurt to think.

He moved out into the living area. He had to pee bad, but someone was in the bathroom off the bedroom. He’d have to go to the powder room by the foyer. He limped in that direction—the permanent, perpetual limp. The limp that had ended his first career. He passed the counter separating the kitchen from the living area right outside his bedroom door. An empty bourbon bottle lolled on its side on the counter. Hadn’t that been full last night?

That at least explained the throbbing headache.

His feet got entangled in the blanket bunched up on the foyer floor, and he almost went down before he got into the powder room. The blanket didn’t belong there. The last time . . . hadn’t he taken that down to the beach—along with the bottle of bourbon—at twilight?

It was all starting to come back together, even though it didn’t make much sense. What was dream and what was reality? What had he done? Did he enjoy it? Of course he’d enjoyed it—and it hadn’t been that long. It was wrapped up in that decision he came here to make. He wasn’t supposed to be doing this stuff while he made the decision, though. The monsignor had made that clear.

He had to get rid of this headache, and he had to get coffee and some food going. He kept aspirin in the medicine cabinet in the powder room. So, that was a start. What available home remedies were there for a hangover? He certainly had experience with them. Water, Aspirin, ginger tea. In the kitchen, he put them all to work. And something to eat. He didn’t have it bad, but, shit, he’d been wiped out enough not to know what he’d done and where he’d done it. But that wasn’t true. He could figure out what he’d done, where he’d done it, and who he’d done. He just couldn’t remember the pleasure of doing it. Not that he was supposed to get pleasure from that.

“Fuck, you’ve got a big dick, Sean.”

He’d just turned the burner off from under the scrambled eggs and the toast had popped in the toaster. The young guy—the name Pete moved about in his head, and as it did, Sean felt the pain subsiding. He must not have drunk the whole bottle of bourbon himself last night. Pete was standing there in the bedroom door. He’d put his Speedo back on. His body was gorgeous. He couldn’t be much more than nineteen or twenty.

God, make him at least nineteen, Sean thought.

“You take what you get. That’s what I was given,” Sean answered. “Coffee? It’s Pete, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Pete. Coffee, yes.” He reached out to take to take the steaming mug. Their fingers touched and remained touched for a few seconds longer than necessary. Sean was about to speak, but couldn’t at first decide what he wanted to say. Then he blurted it out.

“How old are you, Pete?”

The young man laughed. “I’ll be twenty in November.” It was then late June.

“Thank God,” Sean murmured.

“You always ask guys you fuck how old they are?”

“When they look as young as you, yes.”

“You like fucking young guys?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Unfortunately?”

“It’s complicated.”

“And you ask them how old they are after you’ve fucked them?”

“Usually before. The problem is that I don’t remember the before with you.”

“You were pretty messed up. You’d put down most of this bottle before I got the courage to come to you down on the beach. But it was pretty obvious from the way you were watching me that you wanted me to come to you—that you wanted to fuck me.”

“Sorry. I hadn’t meant to drink that much. And I hadn’t meant—”

“I wanted you to fuck me. You’re one sexy hunk. And you can keep it up. We did it on the beach and then you brought me up here and we did it here on the living room floor and then again in the bedroom.”

“And I enjoyed it—I enjoyed you?”

“You certainly acted like you did. I like older men. I’ve been watching you watch me for nearly a week. I wanted you to fuck me. But I’ve got a question. What are these? Are these what I think they are?”

He held up a black shirt and white collar that had been folded and placed on top of the bureau in the bedroom.

“Those are what I wear for work,” Sean answered. “A clerical collar and a priest’s shirt.”

“You’re a priest?”

“I’m not sure anymore. But, yes, that’s what I have been.”

“I’ve been fucked by a priest?”

“I’m sorry. You know what condition I was in. I don’t really remember—”

“Hot damn, I’ve been fucked by a fuckin’ priest. A new notch for my bedpost. A big-cocked priest who really knows how to fuck. How many priests know how to lay a guy out and fuck them like you did me?” He laughed. “Come to think of it, probably a lot.”

“As I said, I don’t remember—”

“You don’t remember what a good time we had last night?”

“No, sorry.”

Pete put his mug down on the counter and came around into the kitchen, coming up close to Sean. “So, you’re saying you’re sorry you fucked me?”

“Yes. No, no I’m not sorry. But I should be . . . I think . . . I guess.”

“But, you’re not sure?” Pete was in close now. He put a hand on the small of Sean’s back and went up on his toes, offering his lips for a kiss. Sean leaned down and took the offer, at first tentatively and then, as Pete yielded to him, opening his mouth, Sean’s tongue invaded and they were deep kissing. His hand went to Pete’s lower back, and Pete moaned in the kiss, as Sean’s fingers went under waistband of the Speedo. They didn’t have far to go before they were pressing into the crease between Pete’s butt cheeks and then, as Pete raised up on his toes, to the rim of his opening. The middle finger went inside Pete, and the young man groaned.

Pete’s hands were busy moving, first Sean’s, and then his own, waistbands to hook under their balls. He frotted their cocks together and they rocked against each other as the kissing continued.

Pete pulled away from the kiss and whispered, “I want you to fuck me again. Now. I want you to know you’re doing it and to get the pleasure out of me of doing it.”

“I’ve got a breakfast fixed,” Sean murmured.

“Now. Fuck me now. Put that big priest’s cock inside me and fuck me now.”

“Not on the bed. Not in my bedroom. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t take a man to my bed until I decide.”

“You fucked me on your bed.”

“I didn’t do it consciously. It wasn’t a conscious decision.”

Pete asked nothing about the “decide” thing. “Fuck me anywhere you fuckin’ want to. Just do it now”

“Up there. Above here. A loft. The ladder is around there, against the wall.”

“Hurry,” Pete entreated. “Oh, are you hurt? You’re limping. Come to think of it, you were limping last night.”

“It’s not important; it’s just the way it is,” Sean said as he helped push the now-beautifully naked young man up the ladder. It, of course, was important. It was vitally important. It had everything to do with everything. But this wasn’t the time or the place to talk about that.

There was a single bed pushed against the wall in the loft.

“Shit. This bed’s got restraints.”

“Christ. Yes, it does. I forgot.” Todd had given him this condo. They’d spent time here. Todd always wanted to do it in the loft. And he liked being bound.

“Fuckin’ cool. Do me that way.”

“Are you sure? I could do anything I wanted if you were bound.”

“Do anything you want. Take the decisions away from me. Have you done a guy like this before?”

There was Todd—Toddy’s decision. “Yes.”

“Shit, yes. Do me that way.”

Sean did him that way. He raised the young man’s arms over his head, his wrists bound with restraints at the corners of the head of the bed and he fucked Pete slow in the missionary position, his knees pushed under the smaller, younger man’s buttocks and Pete crying out how thick Sean was and how deep he was digging. Then Sean turned him over onto his belly, switching restraints, pulled him up on all fours, mounted and penetrated him from above, and rode his ass hard, reaching even further up inside him.

“Shit, you know how to fuck a guy! Fuckin’ A cock you got on you.” Pete called out after the climax.

When they were done, the breakfast was cold, and Sean had to fix it all over again. The good news was that his headache was gone.

As he worked, Pete, naked, roamed around the compact living and dining area, looking at the knick-knacks and picking up and looking at the photos.

“Hey, this looks like the tennis player, Todd Littlepage, the one who died a few months ago.”

“It is,” Sean answered. “He’s quite a bit before your time, though.”

“I follow tennis. I’m at Flagler College, up the road in St. Augustine. Tennis scholarship. So, I know something about the players. And this other guy. Is this you?”

“Yes.”

“You played tennis professionally? You both look like this one’s taken at a tennis match.”

“Yes, but I had to give it up.”

“The limp?”

“Yes, the limp.”

Pete stood there, in anticipation, as if he thought Sean would give him an explanation. But Sean didn’t. Pete shrugged. “Perhaps some other time.”

“Do you want there to be another time, Pete?”

“Shit, yes. You got a cock and a fuck technique to die for. If you’re not doing anything today, we could go back down to the beach. If the surf’s good, I could go out on the board for a while and then we could come back up here and get it on again—up in the loft. You could tie me up again and do stuff to me.”

“You liked it that way?”

“Shit, yes.”

“Is that what you do every day, Pete? You didn’t have anywhere else to go last night? No one is missing you?”

“No one is missing me. During the school year I have a room at the college. I bring in enough from the scholarship and working here and there to feed myself.”

“But it’s summer. What do you do in the summer? I’ve seen you out there every day. Where do you spend the nights?”

“Are you making an offer?”

“No, sorry, I’m not. I’m here to see if I can avoid that. But I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ve got a tent on the yard of a house down the beach. The guy uses the house for his vacations. I watch out for the house during the summer and he lets me pitch my tent in his yard. It works out fine. I’m on the beach all day because I want to be on the beach all day.”

“And that’s all you have to do for him to be able to pitch your tent in his yard?”

“No, that’s not all I do for him. I do what I want to do. But you don’t gotta worry. He doesn’t have the cock you do. And he don’t tie me up like you did. You asked me if I’d want you again, and I said yes. So—”

“We’ll see. As I said, I’m here to make a decision. And sleeping with young guys like you is part of the decision. Yes, I go one way. No, I go the way I thought I’d chosen. I have to decide whether I can give that up—entirely.”

“You don’t fuck like you’ll be able to give that up. Once you get going—”

“As I said, we’ll see. Now, before this second breakfast goes cold—”

“Thanks, but I’m not hungry now,” Pete said. He reached down, scooped up his Speedo, and deftly pulled it up his legs into place. Then he was at the door.

“Pete,” Sean said.

But the young man had the door open. “Let me know what you decide,” he said, “or don’t. I want the cocking, but I ain’t gonna beg for it.” and then he was gone.

* * * *

When Pete was gone and Sean had eaten his breakfast, he walked out of the kitchen area and over to the small table that served as the dining table. Pete had placed the framed photograph of Todd and him at the Australian Open in January of 1998 on the table. The photo didn’t belong there, exposed, out in the open like that. It needed to be in the back of a bookcase shelf where Pete had taken it from.

Sean turned toward the bookcase to return the photograph to its rightful place in his life—there, somewhere, because it had been part of his life, but in the shadows. But then he sat in a chair at the table and stared at the photograph. He let a finger brush over the face of Todd Littlepage, ten years his senior, at the height of his professional talent in this photo and at the beginning of Sean’s own career, which had had so much promise but that had been so brief. It had only been a couple of months now since Todd had died. Sean hadn’t mourned his passing yet—indeed Todd’s death had brought nothing but pain and exposure to Sean’s life—but now a tear did drop on the photo.

They looked so happy in the photograph, and indeed they were. They were at the height of their affair, when it was all so new and so glorious for Sean and when, unappreciated by Sean, Todd was between lovers. Todd, already a top-ten men’s tennis player was at Nick Bollettieri’s Florida tennis academy over the winter holidays of 1997 to instruct and impress the students, and Sean, twenty, was there to polish his skills to take a run at his first major, The Australian Open, in January of the coming year. Todd’s off-course specialty was deflowering virginal young, male tennis players, the best-looking ones he could get, the better—and he was into bondage. Sean was a handsome young man, susceptible to hero worship.

Todd fucked Sean for the first time on Christmas Eve when Sean had drunk enough to be susceptible to the man he worshipped. He convinced Sean that he’d feel less guilt and reticence if he was powerless to stop it—even if he was consenting to it—if Todd tied him up. Sean had, indeed, felt more open to it with his wrists and ankles bound to the four corners of the bed, and that set a standard for their coupling. It was a reciprocal fetish. Todd was versatile, and he liked to be tied up in sex too. Todd fucked Sean again on Christmas Day, and he fucked him on New Year’s Eve and on New Year’s Day, and they went off to the Australian Open arm in arm, Todd smiling and Sean purring. When Todd’s conquests were fully indoctrinated in taking cock bound, Todd wanted to take them all the way—to teach them in binding him and fucking him and liking that.

Sean shone at the Australian Open, making it into the semifinals in his first grand slam event and becoming the darling of the tennis media as January 1998 began. Exhausted from enjoying his new boy toy, Todd went out in the third round. But Todd enjoyed more than enough glory and he certainly enjoyed fucking Sean and being fucked by Sean, so, as this photo showed, both men were in heaven in Australia.

For Todd, though, it mostly was about the conquest, and by the Lipton ATP tournament in Miami two months later, he was off the peak with Sean while Sean was still soaring in the stratosphere, believing that this could be a lasting relationship. It wasn’t, although in subsequent years even Todd knew there had been more to their coupling than just his usual virgin conquering.

On the off weekend in the middle of the Lipton ATP, Todd rented a car and drove Sean down to Key West to party in high gay style. They did that, driving back on the Florida Keys causeway still half looped. It was during that drive that Sean had wanted to know where their relationship was going and Todd laughed the question off, revealing that he already had cut one of the local players in the Miami tournament out of the herd and relieved him of his virginity. Angry, Sean had grabbed for the steering wheel of the car, sending them off the causeway and into the waters of the Gulf. The water hadn’t been deep, and Todd pulled them out of the car, but Sean had shattered a leg and would never play tennis again.

Consumed with remorse and guilt at having been so casual with the affair and not considering Sean’s perceptions of what they were doing and, probably even more, shocked at how quickly and effectively the career of a promising young American tennis player had been shattered along with his leg, Todd became obsessed with Sean’s well-being. He saw to the young man’s medical care and gave him such lavish presents to set up a new life for him as this Crescent Beach condo. When Sean could walk—or at least limp—again they even resumed having sex occasionally, often here in the condo when Todd was in Florida. To spice it up and lift the arousal over their mixed feelings for each other, they moved into experimenting more deeply with bondage and assorted mild sex toys. It wasn’t committed sex—it was guilt based on Todd’s part and forgiving, with residual feelings of love once lost, on Sean’s part. Todd didn’t stop notching his bedposts with first-time conquests of young tennis players and other male celebrities.

This phase had lasted for eight years—until Todd got married and had children as his tennis career was ending and he needed to settle down and clean up his sports reputation by entering the commercial and media world. Just before then, though, Sean had broken away from the strained and twisted relationship himself in the only definitive way he could think of—he enrolled in a Catholic seminary and started the journey to becoming a Catholic priest.

He broke completely with Todd when he went into the seminary. That didn’t mean that Sean gave up occasional casual homosexual sex, and he moved into a cycle of obsession with sex; relieved by substitution of the bottle, usually to combat pain from his continuing leg issues; followed by periods of sobriety and abstinence before the cycle took another revolution. It had been manageable and as neither homosexual sex nor drunkenness were unfamiliar patterns in the church and because he limited his indulgences and only had sex with willing, legal-age men, mostly other priests and ones with power in the church, the church had supported, hidden, and protected him, as it did the priests he lay with.

All that had come to a head in the past six months, though. From out of the blue, Todd Littlepage had called him.

“I thought you deserved to know, Sean,” he said. “I will have a tell-all book coming out posthumously—in the not-too-distant future.”

“Posthumous?” Sean had asked in shock. “You’re ill?”

“Terminally so, I’m afraid. The point is that it’s very honest and very graphic. It should sell well, because there are celebrities involved who haven’t been outed yet.”

“I don’t know why you are doing this, Todd—or why you needed to tell me.”

“I tell all about 1998—about you and me and the auto accident—about my keeping you as essentially my mistress for years—about the fetish sex, and that you’re a priest now. I didn’t put the bishop’s name in there; I saw no need to go that far. I recognize that it will shatter your life and I’ll be gone, so you can’t make me back down from revealing all. As far as why, the publisher tells me it will make a lot of money. I need a lot of money to leave for the family. I haven’t lied in the book. It’s all true. It’s what we were and what we did—and what you continued doing.”

“What I continued doing?”

“Luigi Capiletto is an archbishop now, Sean.”

Sean didn’t have to ask what could be in the book about Luigi, who was much of the reason why Sean had not been tossed out of the priesthood any time over the last decade. “You wouldn’t, Todd.”

“I had no choice, Sean. But, as I said, Capiletto isn’t identified in the book. It isn’t just the money. When I signed the contract to publish, the researchers for the publisher had already been hard at work. I didn’t have to tell them what I’d done and who I’d done it with. They knew. They knew all there was for me to say about you too. Most of it’s coming out whether there’s a book or not. I did negotiate some of what they knew out of the final book.”

By the time Sean contacted his church superiors, they already knew about it too. The publisher had contacted them for verification. Capiletto was in Rome in a powerful but out-of-the-public-purview position.

“You can be protected too, Brother Charles,” the monsignor had said, using Sean’s church name. “But not here in the States. Luigi can protect you if you go to Rome too. But there can be no more scandal. No more vices. No young men and no drowning in the bottle. It’s your decision. You can leave the church or you can leave the country and go into obscurity.”

“Do I have to decide now?”

“Not right this minute, but soon. The book will publish soon, and it will unleash the hounds of hell. Decide soon. Call me when you have. You will have to become celibate in every sense of the word if you remain in the priesthood—or you’ll have to be placed under Archbishop Capiletto and become his full responsibility.”

And thus the dilemma and the decision to be made. The book was launching tomorrow. It already was in the news. His name—although not the name he’d been using for a decade—and his life were already being dropped into the public media. He didn’t have long to decide. He’d already fallen off both the sex and drinking pedestals. Was the decision being made for him? Could he survive outside the church financially? Yes, he was self-sustaining for those needs. Could he handle it mentally? That was the key question. Did he want to be a prisoner to sex and/or the bottle anymore? Did he?

Sean stood from the table, put the photo back on the bookcase shelf, with a sigh, and walked over to the kitchen counter. This called for a drink, his backup to avoiding sex. But there was nothing to drink. The bourbon bottle was empty and that had been the last of the liquor in the condo. With another sigh, he went into the bedroom, retrieved his wallet and car keys, and headed for the door.

From habit of the last few days rather than turn right to go down the rise his condo building was on and past the swimming pool to his car, a rental Corolla, he turned left toward the ocean and looked down on the beach to see what Pete was doing. Pete was always doing something on the beach—flying his kite or surfing or a combination of the two. He was always there. And in the back of Sean’s mind, he knew that he didn’t want to leave Pete’s abrupt escape from the condo as it was. They needed to reach some sort of accommodation. They were sharing this beach.

Pete wasn’t there—at least not on the part of the beach Sean could see. There was a lot of beach hidden by the curve of the sand dune between the one the condo buildings were on and the one between that and the ocean. There was no kite up, though, and Pete usually had his surfboard upright in the sand near his towels and small beach umbrella within sight of the condo. None of that was there. Without a thought to what he’d come out to get—more bourbon—Sean took the wooden bridge across the dunes that gave the condo complex access to the beach.

Pete wasn’t on the beach. Where had he said the man lived who let Pete pitch a tent in his yard? South, Sean thought. Several properties to the south, but still on the beach. Sean walked down the beach between the dunes and the ocean. Six properties south, all with private houses from various eras on them, Sean saw the nose of Pete’s surfboard buried in the sand and a couple of kites on the beach next to it, their lead strings wound around the surfboard to keep them from being blown away.

He looked up to the sand dunes, a shorter one, covered with desert foliage in front, and a taller one behind that with the house perched on it. A wooden bridge arched from the beach to the yard of the house. There was a terrace with a swimming pool between the edge of the dune and a modern, mostly glass, round tower of a house—not big, but expensive looking. There was an army pup tent erected by the terrace, so this obviously was where Pete was camping out. The driveway came up to the north side of the house and Sean could see the nose of a fire engine red Ford 250 double cab monster truck pulled up beside the house.

He also could see, though, two figures in the shadows between the side of the truck and the house. One guy, big and bulky, had the other guy, smaller, blond, pushed up against the side of the house. The big guy’s shorts were down around his calves, with the belt hanging out and swinging to the rhythm of the fuck. The smaller guy—obviously Pete—was backed against the wall. His knees were hooked on the big guys hips and his arms were slung around the bigger man’s neck. The big guy was cupping Pete’s bare buttocks in his hands and was rocking him against the wall, piston fucking him.

So, that’s why Sean hadn’t found Pete on the beach and was why they couldn’t talk and smooth things out between them right now.

Sean returned to the condo complex and went to his car. The condo complex fronted on the old Route A1A Ocean Highway and, if he drove north on that, he’d be in downtown St. Augustine, the Spanish-style, longest continuously inhabited town in the United States, in less than fifteen minutes. He didn’t have to drive that far for bourbon, though. There was a strip mall not more than a mile up the road from his beach complex that had a liquor store in it.

He parked in front of the store and got out of the Corolla. He noticed that there was a used bookstore next door to it and he remembered that he needed some reading material. He needed anything he could get hold of to soak up time from thinking about sex or drinking—or doing them in obsessive excess. He was feeling that this important decision he had to make was being taken out of his hands—by his own weakness.

He’d check out the books and buy a few to take home with the bourbon—and then have a struggle with himself on putting off opening the bourbon bottle for as long as possible. Flashes of the vision of the burly man fucking Pete against the wall of his house back on the beach ran through Sean’s mind, but he forced that demon out of his brain as well.

There was a good-looking hippie-type, dark-haired, slight and slim guy behind the desk when Sean entered the bookstore. His hair was probably shoulder-length, but it now was pulled up into a pony tail at the back of his head. He had a T-shirt on that showed good chest musculature, and his arms were tattooed up and down, all black and blue ink and in no particular pattern. He smiled at Sean, his silver earrings and eyebrow ring catching the light reflect off the opening door. Sean smiled back.

“Hope you’re here about the ‘help wanted’ sign,” the young man, who couldn’t be more than twenty, said.

“The help wanted sign?” Sean asked.

“Yes. It’s there in the window.”

Sean turned and looked. “So, it is. No, I’m bored and antsy. I thought I’d get some books to read.”

“Pity. We really could use the help. And you look like you could be fun.”

“I do?” Sean laughed.

“Yes, you do. What sort of books were you looking for? Novels? Biographies? Exercise books?—although you don’t look like you need anything like that.”

He was giving Sean “the look.” Sean knew about the look, and the young guy looked good to him. He smiled back. “Novels I guess are the best.”

“Straight or gay?” the young guy asked. “My name is Chet.”

There was a pause before Sean asked, “You have gay novels in here?”

“Lots of them. One of our specialties. If you want those, go on through to the back, third room back. We’ve got plenty.”

He gave Sean a level, appraising look to see if that’s where Sean would go. He did. He came back with four paperbacks.

“Ah, some of the better ones,” Chet said.

“You’ve read them?”

“Sure. I’m gay. I don’t think you said what your name is.”

“Sean. I’m Sean Steele.”

“Sounds familiar. Have I seen you around? You go to Paddie’s Bar at the end of Mickler’s Road on the Matanzas River side of the island?”

“No, I haven’t heard of it. I have a condo here at Quail Hollow down the AIA, but I don’t get to the beach much. Is there a reason I might want to go to Paddie’s Bar?”

“There is if you’re gay. And, judging by what you chose to read . . . I mean these are pretty graphically. Three of these include bondage sex.”

“Yes, they do.” Chet gave his customer a long look, and Sean spoke before the bookseller could. “I’ll have to try Paddie’s out then.”

“I could take you there sometime.”

“Sure. That would be great,” Sean said. He almost added, and I could try you out then, but it was really too soon and too forward for that as yet.

“Four books? You must have a lot of time on your hands.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Are you sure then, that you might not be interested in working here part time? We certainly could use the help, and I’d like the company from time to time.”

Now there was a way to pin his time down, Sean thought. He didn’t need the money. He’d made a wad during his short professional tennis career and had banked most of that—and his family was wealthy. He’d inherited enough to live on and had banked that too, as he’d been living on the Catholic Church. But he did need some structure in his life as long as he was here. The siren songs of his weaknesses were blaring just too loud. He needed to settle down and do some serious decision making—and soon.

“Maybe,” he said. “You got some application paperwork I could look over?”

“Sure thing,” Chet said, with a big grin. When he handed the paper over, he held Sean’s fingers longer than necessary, quite pointedly wrapping a finger around Sean’s thumb loosely and stroking the thumb inside the sheath he’d created. This was a widely recognized signal of a submissive offering himself, and the signal wasn’t lost on Sean.

He nodded and said, “See you around sometime. I’d like to try that bar out even if I don’t take a job working here. And maybe you’d like to see my condo. It’s right on the beach and has some special features.”

“Yeah, I think I’d like that,” Chet said, with a smile.

Sean was all the way back to his parking space at the condo complex before he realized he hadn’t gone to the liquor store from the used bookstore. Maybe that was a good sign. Maybe working somewhere part time was a good idea for keeping away from his vices.

Well, at least one. That store clerk, Chet, was sex on a stick. He’d be a beauty with his hair let down. Sean thought he’d be fucking Chet—and he also thought that Chet would let him. In fact, the guy had signaled hard, even on the bondage angle. Sean hadn’t been shopping for sex when he went into the store, but he had to admit that his book choice was made to see if he could sound the guy out on his interests and what he was willing to do, and that had worked a charm. Sean hadn’t been shopping, at least consciously so.

* * * *

Chet worked the morning shift with Sean later that week when Sean’s paperwork went through. Sean would work just four-hour shifts three times a week. That’s all they really needed someone for. They had been willing to take someone on for longer hours to make the work worthwhile for them, but Sean made clear it was more having something regularly scheduled to do that interested him, not the money. Of course, he also was interested in Chet.

“Let’s celebrate your coming aboard,” Chet said at the end of the shift. “I could show you where Paddie’s Bar is and we could lift a few.”

“It’s a bit early for lifting, I think. And I can’t lift a few and remain on track.”

“It’s like that with you, then?” Chet said. “You have trouble with that vice.”

“Among other vices,” Sean answered.

“Some vices are more fun than others. One tip of the mug won’t hurt you, I don’t think.”

“I’ll drive,” Sean said.

“That’s good, because all I’ve got is a bicycle.” Chet laughed.

While the bartender at Paddie’s was setting up their third drink, Chet went off to the can. They’d been talking with another guy, older than Sean’s forty-one, as they lined up at the bar on stools. It was early in the day and business was light. The guy’s name was Tom and he said he owned a gas station nearby on the AIA. He seemed to know Chet real well.

“So, are you and Chet going to do it?” Tom asked Sean after Chet had walked away.

“Maybe. Do you recommend him?”

“He’s pretty kinky. You’d best prepare yourself for that.”

“Good to know.”

“You said ‘maybe.’ He’s not at all reluctant. You’re home free if you want to be. I can tell he wants it from you.”

“I got that message too,” Sean answered, as he lifted his third beer.

“But you’re reluctant?”

“Let’s just say, I should limit myself, taper off to nothing, like I should be doing with this drink.”

“But you’re not.”

“No, I’m not. I guess I’m just weak.”

“Maybe just getting on with the life you’re meant to do rather than being weak. Maybe there’s nothing more important than getting pleasure out of life. You’re not an emergency room doctor or anything, are you? No wife and kids at home? You being measured for a Superman suit, or is it good enough for you to ease through life and take your pleasures while you’re alive? You’re a good-looking man. I’d say you don’t have much trouble finding your pleasures. Is what you think you should be saving yourself for worth it?”

“That is the question, isn’t it?” Sean asked as they watched Chet strutting back from the men’s room.

“Me, I gotta get back to the gas pumps,” Tom said, rising from his stool. He leaned over and winked at Sean. “Whatever, you could hold the ‘save the world’ campaign for tomorrow you know—and enjoy Chet today. He’s a real honey.”

Sean looked at his beer glass and saw that it was empty. He signaled the bartender for another. The man was right. There always was tomorrow to start—if that’s what he was going to decide to do.

Neither one of them had eaten since breakfast. “I’ve got a hamper and blanket in the trunk of the car,” Sean offered. “We could stop at the supermarket and collect things for a lunch, put them in the hamper, and eat out on the beach at my place.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Chet said. “And maybe you’ll show me your condo you’ve been telling me about.”

“Maybe,” Sean said. Both of them knew it would take a real blowup of some sort for that not to happen now.

Sean was weaving a bit as they went out to the car and that accentuated that he had a limp. Chet didn’t ask about the limp, though, although the limp tugged at the name Sean had given him. There was something about a Sean Steele and a limp that Chet remembered hearing about at some point, but, for now, he was more worried that Sean didn’t seem to be in complete control with four beers under his belt. Chet had only had two.

“Maybe you should let me drive,” Chet said.

“That’s OK by me,” Sean answered.

They rolled the blanket out just in the lee of the first sand dune from the ocean below Sean’s condo complex. They both took their shirts off to take in the sun while they ate their sandwiches and drank their drinks. Sean was having another beer. Chet was drinking designer water. Some guys had a volleyball net up down the beach to the south. There were four of them playing a desultory game. Pete’s surfboard was stuck in the sand near them. Sean could tell that one of the players was Pete, and he watched them play with detached interest, because he also was interested in Chet. Chet’s tattoos were a real display. He didn’t tell Chet, though, that he knew one of the guys down the beach—certainly not that he’d known him biblically.