I survived Jury Duty ya'll! AND finished this chapter!
212,315 words. Essentially that is two full length novels (or one Gone With The Wind. :) ) in 16 months. That's how long I have lived with these characters in my heart and mind. And I've loved every minute of it. I hope you have as well. Your support has meant the world to me.
So here it is! Here is the final chapter of this series. There are two smaller series planned for sometime in the future. One on Ian and Justin (a spin off series if you will) and one on David and Daniel in college and post college. They will be smaller stories, shorter chapters.
I am going on hiatus from these characters for a few weeks so I can keep focusing for a bit on my Epic Fantasy series for a bit (those are 13-17 full length novels in a High Fantasy / Historical Fiction / MM Romance Erotica vein, while I plan the other David and Daniel epics. I will then be expanding these stories and editing and rewriting a bit for publication. Send me an email or meet me on my authors page to get more information!
I would like to thank each and every one of you who have helped me find my voice as a new author and sent me words of encouragement and thanks over the months. You have helped me find my path in this and kindled in me a true desire and passion to make writing less of a hobby and more of a career aspiration. I will never be able to express how much that means to me. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.
- DAMackey
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DISCLAIMER: The following fictional story deals with sex among males. If you are offended by such material, are too young, or reside in an area where it is not allowed, depart. Though not observed in this story, care enough about yourself and humankind to practice safe sex.
The author retains all rights. No reproductions or links to other sites are allowed without the author's consent.
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Gifts, Goodbyes, Fairy Nights and Dorm Rooms: The Final Chapter
by D A Mackey
Though I had spent most of my time alone, wrapped in my own little nerd world for the past several years, (read: my entire life up to 5 months ago) even I had sometimes indulged in a few of the rituals inherent in a teenaged Summer. I had seen the summer blockbuster movies marketed to folks of my age group. You know the ones I'm talking about; where the overly attractive white boy "finds himself" with the help of the "alternative" girl and they have a series of adventures and missteps together. The popular boy stands up to his hateful clique of popular friends when they make fun of him for hanging out with the "weird chick," and it all leads up to one terribly romantic kiss by a bonfire on a beach somewhere on a clear night with the full moon shining down on the two lovers sharing a blanket wrapped around their shoulders as the girl lays her head on his shoulder. They often star current Pop Princesses branching out from auto-tune into "acting," or whichever Hollywood starlet is en vogue that month.
Disregarding the obvious flaws with such films (it takes weeks to get permits for bonfires on public beaches, not to mention it's 90 degrees at night, even with a beachy breeze, so a blanket next to a roaring fire in July is just unthinkable; the people cast as the teenagers are usually in the range of early to mid twenties with zero acne and the shiniest hair imaginable) I hadn't expected there to be as much truth to those plot lines as I found there to be during my summer before college with Daniel.
The morning after graduation and onwards will always be one of the most special times in my life. Just the contrast to my previous Summers alone was enough to make this one more than memorable. I didn't even keep a list of the 50 novels and classics that I challenged myself to complete before each new school year, as I'd done since the summer before 6th grade! The list was growing pretty short at that point, anyhow; I'd read pretty much everything any reputable "Top 100" list could put out there. I did, however, challenge Daniel to read five novels that I thought he would enjoy given his affection for Jane Austen.
Daniel was perfection that Summer. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that he was doing everything in his power to keep us both occupied and busy so that I wouldn't focus on the timeline that counted down the days to my departure for University. He refused to let me keep a calendar with the numbered days. He even confiscated all of my red sharpies and did a security check for anything that I might have tried to use to track the hours and days as they ticked by.
In all honesty, the schedule he planned for us allowed me little to no actual down time with which to obsess or worry about the future. Every day was something new to do, every night something equally spectacular. Even the days spent inside watching TV or bingeing on movies were packed to the point of excess.
(I made sure that he became well acquainted with the glory and fantasy that is the inestimable Katharine Hepburn. Can you believe he'd never seen any of her movies? We started with "Bringing up Baby," and worked our way from there.)
We went camping, hiking, swimming in rivers and lakes and private pools, spent free hours and long weekends at Ian's lake house, went to the beach four different times, each time to a different beach. Daniel racked up a lot of miles on his old Jeep for sure.
The jocks even took me and Justin to a batting cage and tried to teach us how to hit a baseball. Now, I say "tried" because neither of us could boast any real talent for hand eye coordination. But we both managed to hit a few pitches...when we weren't flinching at the balls flying 95MPH towards our faces.
Daniel also took me shopping for new clothes a few times. He'd re-started our work out routine once school ended and finals were behind us; I had to admit I was noticing some changes to my body. I had broader shoulders now and the lines and grooves on my hips had deepened. Even my chest was beginning to morph from birdlike to some semblance of tone. Daniel insisted that a new body deserved new clothes and he was more than willing to provide them.
He helped me pick my courses for my first semester at school. I reveled in the freedom of choice and the sheer number of options. Our High School had a decent course catalogue, but there were only so many AP courses one could take. Daniel stoked that excitement when we were choosing my schedule, knowing that if he could get me riled up enough about the new things I would be learning in the Fall that I wouldn't remember that I was picking the things that would eventually replace my time with him.
I wonder if it pained him to do so? I wonder if as he excitedly mentioned things he thought I would enjoy studying, he knew that he was offering his assistance at driving a wedge between us.
Sometimes, Daniel would wake me up in the middle of the night when we were staying at my house or his, bundle me into the Jeep in my pajamas or just a pair of undies. We would drive all night long with the windows down, just watching the landscape pass us by in a blur, staring at the stars and feeling the humid summer air on our skins.
Everything he did with me and for me just made me love him all the more.
I didn't think it possible, but he anticipated my every mood, watched and listened and made that Summer all about me, him, and us. I didn't even have the energy to worry about my parents increasingly bitter divorce or the fact that my father had started dating a lady who was closer to my age than his by at least a good two decades.
The one dark time in that Summer was the four days I had been forced to spend at freshman orientation. My University was out of state, still only 4 hours away (three if Ian was the one who drove,) but it seemed light years.
Daniel drove me up. Those four days were literal torture. I had already read all the information they drilled into us. I am not one for "team building" exercises and trust falls. If that wasn't painfully obvious. I did my best to slip away and call Daniel whenever I could. I spent the nights tossing and turning on the ridiculously small dorm beds, unable to sleep without him near me.
If this was a glimpse of what school life would be like without him, I was seriously considering going the Bill Gates route and just dropping out before I even started. Every moment made my soul ache. I knew it would get better as I got used to it. But, dammit, I didn't want to get used to it. I had spent years in hellish loneliness already. It seemed cruel that I would be tossed back into bottomless pit that so soon after Daniel rescued me from it.
As the dreaded move approached, I came home one afternoon to a note on the kitchen counter from my mother. In no uncertain terms, she threatened my life if I didn't start going through my room and packing the things I would need to take with me and what I could part with or donate.
After two hours of procrastination, Daniel finally convinced me to get started. I plodded up the stairs like I was on a death march, Daniel behind me, literally pushing me up the stairs as I whined the entire way.
Daniel settled himself onto the foot of my bed, legs crossed easily beneath him.
"Three piles, babe. Keep and Pack over here, Donate in the middle, and trash over there," he said, sectioning out my room for me.
