Best Gay Romance 2013 by Richard Labonte

my eyes. Snot crowded my nose and my lips quivered. I felt completely overwhelmed.
    This is all you’ve ever needed: Cody’s love. Screw Oleander
Park and screw the kids who bullied us at school. Screw Cody’s parents, too. They never deserved him, but I do.
    I’ve earned Cody’s love by being his friend .
    My mother called to me from beyond the bedroom door.
    â€œZach, are you and Cody okay?”
    I wiped my eyes and sniffled. Then I cleared my throat.
    â€œYeah, Mom,” I said.
    â€œWe’re both fine.”

ONE
    T. Hitman
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Lyle was already feeling like a pariah when Mike leaned over him to grab another stack of corrugated boxes off the shelf. He tried his best not to gawk or react, difficult feats to pull off given the closeness of the other man’s bare legs, so solid and furry; the hypnotic scent of him, a trace of fresh, masculine sweat mixed with the deodorant Mike had slapped on earlier that morning; the meaty fullness packed into the front of his camouflage cutoffs—all tempting Lyle to steal a glance.
    The atmosphere in the warehouse was tense enough and growing worse with every day that passed since Kevin Collins had pointed out the bear paw-print sticker on the back bumper of Lyle’s truck. It wasn’t a rainbow flag, but it hadn’t taken much after that to polarize the men. Even Mike had been less of a buddy in recent weeks. The handsome, late-thirtysomething go-to guy that Lyle had fallen in crush with on Day One had gotten colder and quieter since Collins spilled the news about what the sticker meant to the rest of the warehouse crew.

    â€œHelp me a sec?” Mike’s deep, powerful voice shattered the spell Lyle had fallen under—but not the temptation to look, to draw in a deep breath of the Mike-flavored air, thus taking at least a part of the other man inside him. Penetration by proxy, Lyle thought.
    â€œSure.”
    Together they lugged two more stacks of unassembled corrugated cardboard boxes onto the pallet, filling the first of the morning’s orders.
    Unable to resist, Lyle let his eyes wander for a few dangerous seconds, just enough time to drink in Mike’s unrivaled magnificence. His dark hair, in a neat athlete’s haircut, was going silver around the edges, right above his ears. An old T-shirt bearing the logo of the local pro baseball team showcased the muscles of his chest and arms to perfection, the pits damp with sweat, the collar near his throat prickly with a thatch of dark hair that trailed up into the days-old scruff coating the lower half of his handsome face.
    Mike’s ass was high and square, a leftover from his years in the army that he’d maintained by playing all of the Big Four sports—baseball in the summer, ice hockey in the winter, pigskin and hoops in the seasons between. His old construction boots flashed a hint of clean white sock at the top. When you factored in Mike’s blue eyes, which looked wounded even when he smiled, the dimple on his right cheek, and his no-bullshit, easygoing blue-collar work ethic, the end result was almost blinding to behold.
    And impossible to ignore.
    Lyle picked up the work order. “Anything else I can help you with?”
    â€œNope,” Mike said.
    Lyle forced himself to look away as the other man grabbed
the pallet jack’s hydraulic handle and gave it a few firm pumps, ignoring the ache in his stomach signaling that Kevin Collins and the other straight, intolerant yahoos who toiled in the aisles of the cavernous State Street Warehouse had turned Mike against him. He was alone now. One.
    Despite the endless succession of jerk-off fantasies that had sustained Lyle over the past few months, he had no illusions about the truth of the situation. He was twenty-eight, living by himself in a one-bedroom apartment a few miles and a pair of right turns up the road from State Street. Mike was straight, ten years older, a