Best Gay Romance 2014

by R. D. Cochrane

  I jumped into the water, pulled him to me and gave him a kiss. I didn’t have an answer, but I believed there was room for one wish more.

  SHEP: A DOG

  Alex Jeffers

  Black crows on a floating branch. No, that was dumb, crows weren’t seabirds. Cormorants? Isaac needed the right line, the right words. The right birds. Poetry sucked.

  He looked out over the water again. A gray wall of fog loomed just outside the bay. The waves were pathetic; even he, who had never seriously contemplated mounting a surfboard, could tell. But what he was looking for was Jackson. Jackson, who was out there beyond the lackluster surf line, one of seven figures bobbing on the swell, unfairly identical in black neoprene, waiting for something to happen. Jackson probably had no use for poetry because Jackson was pretty nearly perfect and poetry was for losers like Isaac.

  Isaac capped his pen and closed the bound notebook over seventeen failed attempts to write something to make Jackson notice him. The submissions deadline for The Sand Dollar was a week away. Not that Jackson would read The Sand Dollar. Nobody but proud parents actually read The Sand Dollar.

  Jackson would read edgy blogs and the surf report. Because Jackson was perfect. Except for barely knowing that Isaac drew breath and for already having a boyfriend.

  Who was probably off doing political advocacy or building sets for the spring musical instead of sitting on the beach mooning after somebody else’s sweetheart, because Hank was irritatingly perfect, too. He even had the perfect name and most everybody (except Isaac) thought he was marginally cuter than Jackson. They were the perfect couple. Last year’s yearbook featured more candid-couple photos of Hankson than Carmel High’s (admittedly weak) starting quarterback and his science-fair-winning girlfriend. Isaac’s girlfriends sighed over how lovely Hankson were, separately and together. It was sick and twisted of Isaac to want to break them up, kick Hank to the curb and fly off over the rainbow with Jackson.

  Who probably had appalling taste in music. All surfers did: reggae, white hip-hop. Maybe even the Beach Boys. Jackson probably wasn’t as smart as Isaac wanted him to be, his appearances on the honor roll due to teachers taken in by his beauty and amiability—Hank probably rewrote all his papers for him. He probably never read any book that wasn’t assigned. He probably watched only reality TV. He was probably dull and would spend any date they ever went on—an unlikelihood—exchanging texts with his bros. Until they got to the sex part, when he would prove to have a disappointing dick.

  Which he would know exactly what to do with to bring Isaac to unspeakable ecstasy, because running Jackson down wasn’t working. Isaac adjusted himself in his shorts. He was doomed to a loveless, sexless, Jacksonless future, no companion but a trusty right hand, no matter how many times Meg assured him he was cute as pie and only needed to get out of town to meet boys who’d appreciate him.

  “This is stupid,” he said aloud. “And humiliating.”

  “Yes. Precisely.”

  Isaac’s heart banged and his stomach tried to jump up his throat. “Where did you come from?” he yelped.

  Looming over Isaac, Meg gave him a witchy smile. “Oh, you know me,” she said airily. “Always popping up where I’m least wanted and most needed.” Her floaty black skirt, lace-up boots, and biker jacket looked even more out of place on the beach than they did at school. Fiddling with the antique seals and amulets strung on chains around her neck, she gazed at the inhumanly patient surfers on the bay. “You weren’t answering my texts so I took a wild guess.”

  Isaac’s heart was still going double time. He didn’t believe Meg ever guessed at anything. “Phone’s safer locked in the car.”

  “So would you be.”

  “What do you want, Meg?”

  “Besides a breath of fresh sea air and another chance to watch my bestie act like a lovelorn idiot?”

  She pushed bushy hair out of her eyes and sunlight glanced off her big silver and amethyst pentacle ring right into Isaac’s eyes so that he had to blink. For an instant, distorted by tears, Meg looked very strange, kind of scary, not like a high school senior with a halfhearted case of the goths. Isaac rubbed his eyes. When he could see again, Meg was sitting on the sand beside him and didn’t look any weirder than usual.

  “What do you want, Ike?” she asked.

  His voice too loud, Isaac said, “Don’t call me Ike.”

  “I mean, obviously, I know what you want that you can’t have, and you know I don’t approve.”

  Taking a deep breath, Isaac looked away and counted to five instead of strangling his best friend. The swell didn’t appear any more promising. Straddling their boards, the seven surfers were still just sitting there and he still couldn’t pick out which one was Jackson.

  Meg cleared her throat. “You know, Isaac, there are several other high schools within twenty-five minutes’ drive of here. I bet they all have boys. Possibly even gay boys. Maybe, just maybe, cute gay boys who like poetry. Single boys.”

  “Whether you approve or not doesn’t enter the equation, Margaret.”

  “How’s that poem coming?” Meg said sweetly. “I’ve got pages to fill.”

  “How ’bout you ask Hank.”

  “Hank already submitted. A sonnet.”

  Appalled, Isaac just stared at The Sand Dollar’s literary editor.

  Meg smiled. “Technically proficient—scans right, rhymes in the right places. Too goopy for my taste, but I haven’t turned it down yet. I bet his boyfriend loved it.”

  Isaac’s tongue swelled and tasted like poison. Instead of spitting, he said, “That’s a deeply unkind thing to say.”

  Unconcerned, Meg said, “You know, Pre-Raphaelite longing for an inappropriate, inaccessible beloved is out of date and clichéd. Poets don’t have to be tortured.” Another flash of light from one of her jewels blinded Isaac again. “There’s a whole world of boys out there who’d just eat you up. It’s unkind of you to fixate on the one who doesn’t want you, Ike.”

  “Don’t call me Ike.”

  “What a pretty dog. Is that a wave?”

  Scowling, Isaac looked up. The black and white dog had appeared out of nowhere, racing south along the foaming edge of a retreating wave, chasing a yellow tennis ball that threw up spray in its wake without ever slowing. Isaac thought that might violate the laws of physics but he didn’t care about dogs—Lily, his cat back at home, made sure of that.

  Rushing out, the wash collided with a low-breaking comber, another behind it slightly higher. Amusing for little kids with Styrofoam boogie boards, maybe. Farther out, a tall hump of swell bellied over the kelp beds toward land. Isaac had watched Jackson surf often enough to believe it had potential, but where was Jackson? Where were the other six surfers? Isaac shot to his feet.

  The hump rose, took on definition, towered. Just as froth began to boil along the crest, one and then another sharp-beaked cormorant broke the glassy blue-green wall, black wings frantic. A moment later, four more followed in a rush, clearing the tube as it formed and began to topple.

  “What?” shouted Isaac. “Where’s Jackson?”

  As if its name were called, a final cormorant burst through the foaming crest. A silver fish too big to swallow all at once wriggled in its beak as it swooped toward shore, the wave collapsing mightily behind it.

  “Jackson?”

  Delighted, the dog Isaac had forgotten veered away from the yellow ball, yapping, galloping after the skimming black bird into hock-deep wash, oblivious of the crashing confusion of a broken comber rushing at it and the taller wave following. A scornful cormorant lured the dog deeper and then darted into the air as tumbling waters knocked the dog’s feet from under it and the larger wave fell.

  Isaac ran unthinking. Before he leapt the flotsam-jetsam tide line onto damp sand, the dog got its head above water for a moment but couldn’t seem to find its feet in the battling currents. Another wave broke on its head. Isaac was knee-deep in the chilly surf—then crotch deep when the next collapsing swell caught hi
m, nearly taking his feet with it. He found the struggling dog, muzzle high, trying to float, trying to paddle, and managed to get one arm under its chest, lifting it against his own chest.

  The dog went limp. Adjusting his hold to support the hindquarters, Isaac turned to carry it back to dry land. A last malicious wave smacked his ass and then he was free, staggering through shin-high retreating wash. At least the dog wasn’t as heavy as he’d expected.

  He glanced back over his shoulder. The bay had resumed its near calm, troubled only by a low swell that barely broke before it hit sand and hissed a few yards inland. The fog bank had advanced. No sign of bobbing surfers straddling their boards—or bobbing surferless boards. That was somehow a relief.

  Isaac waited till the sand clogging his feet was dry, beyond the fringe of stinking kelp, before he set his soggy burden down on its own feet. He was soggy, too: squelchy sneakers, wet jeans, wet halfway up his sweater and the Red Caps T-shirt underneath. The dog just stood there, head low, its panting mixed with coughs, but at least it didn’t fall over.

  “Doggy?” said Isaac. “Are you all right?”

  After a moment, the dog turned its head toward him.

  “Where’s your owner, doggy?”

  The dog sneezed and looked up again with a panting grin.

  “It’s technically illegal for you to be on the beach off leash.”

  Lowering its head again, the dog shook enthusiastically. Dog-scented spray showered Isaac, soaking him where he wasn’t already wet. Long, thick fur held a lot of seawater.

  “Of course you would, doggy,” Isaac said, resigned. “Of course I didn’t bring a towel because nobody but crazed surfers in wetsuits ever go into Carmel Bay, because it’s really freaking cold. Are you feeling better? Where’s your owner? Find your owner, boy. Girl. Whatever you are.”

  The dog just stared doggily into his eyes.

  “I’m not a dog person. I mean, I don’t dislike dogs but I don’t have a lot of experience. I rescued you, isn’t that enough? Go find your owner.”

  The dog’s wet tail waved. Black feathers clumped by damp reminded Isaac irresistibly of long eyelashes, tear clumped—a boy’s thick lashes, if any boy ever came close enough, if Isaac were worth crying over. Taking two steps toward him, the dog sat, tail brushing the sand. Adoring eyes the color of fresh caramel tried to melt Isaac.

  “That’s not fair, doggy. I don’t know you. Where’s your owner?” Although Isaac knew almost nothing about dogs, he’d seen Babe at an impressionable age so he was pretty sure this one, with its white muzzle and forehead blaze, white chest and front legs, was a border collie. “You’re supposed to be so smart—find your owner.”

  Looking up and down the length of the beach, Isaac was peculiarly unsurprised to see no people at all. Even Meg had vanished from beside his knapsack up the sandy slope. The abandonment smarted: Meg had pointed out the dog. Isaac turned to check the water. Still no surfers on the rocking bay about to be consumed by fog. No other dogs on the sand or frolicking at the Pacific’s fringes—no physics-defying neon tennis ball. Gulls in the air, and prancing about at the waterline, seven cormorants bobbing on the swell beyond the low, tireless surf. The breeze off the bay chilled him where he was wet. Almost all of him. He started to shiver.

  “I have to—” Isaac looked at the dog. Head cocked to the side, it looked back at him, floppy leaf-shaped black ears half pricked, eyes friendly. “I rescued you and I’m not sorry, but my responsibility ended there. Find your owner. I have to get home, get dry and warm.” He strode right past the dog onto drier, deeper sand that tested his ankles.

  His notebook lay half buried beside the knapsack. Shaking sand from the pages, Isaac reflected that at least the dog had gotten his mind off mooning after Jackson. Maybe he could write a sonnet about saving a dog lost in the surf? No. A lost and struggling boy. And not a sonnet, not if Hank had written one for The Sand Dollar. Something tougher. A sestina? As he scanned about for his pen, he noticed with a mild thrill of unease that there was no evidence of Meg—no depression in the sand where she’d been sitting, no prints from her Doc Martens coming or going.

  The pen was not to be found either. Cheap Pilot; didn’t matter. He stuffed the book into the knapsack’s open pocket. Appearing from nowhere, the dog nosed at the pack, barked questioningly when Isaac lifted it out of reach.

  “No! Bad dog.”

  Sitting, alert, the dog barked again.

  “I don’t know you,” Isaac said, irritated. “Go away. Find your owner.” Irritated with the dog, with its negligent owner, with himself for being irritated. The animal didn’t understand English. Throwing the knapsack onto his shoulder, Isaac started up the hill toward the Eighth Avenue stairs.

  The dog followed him, of course. Followed halfway to the stairs, then loped around and ahead. At one of the sandstone boulders concreted into the stairs’ foundation below the ice-plant-burdened retaining wall, it paused, grinned back at him, and lifted its leg. A boy dog, then. His leg.

  Giving up, Isaac sighed and sat on the lowest redwood step. “Why won’t you leave me alone, doggy?” The dog pushed between his thighs, absurdly happy to be acknowledged. “Why won’t you go back to your owner? Or your house—do you belong nearby? Did you get loose and run away to the beach?” Gingerly, Isaac scratched at the soft, damply sticky fur between its ears. The dog wriggled with joy.

  “Do you even have an owner? Do you have a collar, boy? Tags?”

  Probing the thick ruff, he found slimy leather, rotated it through his fingers past the buckle to the leash loop. One tag. As Isaac leaned to inspect it, the dog licked his cheek, panted wetly in his ear. “Stop that.” One tag that wasn’t a county dog license. “So you’re not just illegally off leash on the beach, you’re illegal in general. Bad dog.” Isaac’s heart wasn’t in it. The dog licked him again.

  The name SHEP was engraved on the brass tag. But no phone number, just a street address in Pacific Grove. Six-plus miles over the hill via 68, the shortest driving route—a whole lot farther around the Peninsula, whether by road or cove to cove and trespassing across all the golf courses. “How’d you get all the way to Carmel, Shep boy? Bad dog.”

  Hearing his name, Shep yapped right in Isaac’s ear. Isaac pushed him away. “Hey, now. There are standards in polite society. No deafening the person who saved your life.”

  Shep lowered his head as if ashamed, then crowded back against Isaac’s leg.

  “Okay, I’m sorry.” Isaac scratched behind Shep’s ear. “We have to think now. I don’t have a clue where Lobos Ave is in PG but I guess that’s what GPS is for.”

  Pounding inland without warning, a gust of chilly wind made him shiver again. Unthinking, he buried his face in the ruff of Shep’s neck. Damp, sticky, salty, it wasn’t much comfort.

  “I’m sorry, Shep,” Isaac muttered. “I need a hot shower and dry clothes before anything else. Your careless owners will just have to wait another hour.”

  Pulling himself to his feet, Isaac started up the steps. Scampering claws on redwood didn’t follow him. He looked back. At the foot of the stairs, Shep stared up at him sadly. “Oh, come on. I’m taking responsibility for you, all right? I’ll make sure you get home to Lobos Avenue.”

  The dog shook his head as if Isaac was talking nonsense.

  “Shep!”

  The dog’s ears rose.

  “Here, boy. No more shenanigans.”

  With a bark of joy, Shep catapulted up the stairs, right past Isaac, who shook his head in sorrow and yelled, “I said no shenanigans! Watch for traffic!”

  Shep danced on the tarmac for Isaac when he reached the lay-by at the foot of Eighth. It relieved Isaac to see all the cars parked under the cypresses along the ocean side of Scenic, if still no people, and no cars creeping up behind him from downtown. Just as well with Shep off leash. Still, on impulse, Isaac said, “Shep, heel!” and the good dog fell into step behind him as he started along the street to his own car.

  A battered seven-year-old
Nissan, it looked forlorn under the glowering windows of multimillion-dollar Scenic Road houses. Isaac peered in the rear window before opening the door: his old saffron-yellow hoodie, the color of which now made him cringe—nothing to be ruined by having a wet, sandy dog sit on it except the seat itself. “In you get, Shep boy.”

  Hopping in agreeably, Shep scrambled to the back and sat up neatly, panting and grinning.

  Isaac got in the front. When he turned the key, the Red Caps album in the CD player started up mid-song, but it didn’t seem to bother Shep so Isaac left it running while he fiddled with the heat. No fan till it warmed up. Waiting, he unlocked the glove box, pulled out his phone. Messages—texts: Meg. Meg. Meg. One of them had better be an apology for vanishing on him while he was being heroic. Whatever. She could wait till Isaac completed his errand of mercy. Tossing the phone on the passenger seat, he strapped himself in, checked on Shep in the rearview mirror and thought to power the dog’s window down six inches. Dogs liked wind in their faces. Not Isaac, whose shivers had barely abated. “Off we go,” he said.

  At Thirteenth, a car clearly from out of town waited too long at the stop sign, confused by the principle of right of way. After the appropriate moments, Isaac drove through his own stop sign with a wave, obscurely relieved by evidence that everybody everywhere hadn’t been Raptured while he was busy with Shep.

  More cars on Santa Lucia. Up and over the hill, down past the Mission, into the Fields. Isaac turned left, left again onto his street. No cars in the drive. His mom and dad wouldn’t be back from the gallery for hours and big sister Caro was probably doing something extracurricularly creditable for her transfer application from community college to Berkeley. When Isaac pulled in, Shep yapped questioningly.

  “No, it’s not your house. It’s my house. I told you, I need a shower and dry clothes.”

  Shep was curious when he got out of the car, nosing along the edge of the lawn, but followed Isaac around the side of the house to the back gate. On the deck, Isaac looked at the dog wagging his tail, at the door, around the yard. As far as he knew, there hadn’t been another dog in his yard in the twenty years since his parents bought the house: it would be criminally boring for Shep. Who was still damp, and sticky with salt.