Graham's Gift

Excerpt From: Grahamn's Gift

Stupid, stupid holidays.

Graham Wolsken slammed the refrigerator door shut, the sound loud in his empty cabin. He almost dropped the can of Coke he was holding under his arm, but managed to get the bologna and provolone cheese to the counter before he sacrificed his last pop.

He slid open the bread bin for his standard has-no-nutrients white bread and pulled out two slices for his sandwich. No doubt Victor and Alex would be all over his ass about it if they saw. Trent too.

Clenching his teeth, Graham flicked the wooden bin door closed. Another loud bang in the emptiness. He sucked in a deep breath. Idiotic thoughts like that caught him off guard. Exhaling slowly, he let the old hurt go along with the air from his lungs. "Trent’s not here anymore, Graham. Get over it already."

And talking to himself never helped, either, though that was a far shade better than hanging out in his head with useless thoughts of a dead lover.

He brushed his hair out of his face, blowing at it when it fell back again. Graham added a mental note to stop at the barber shop in town next time he went for groceries.

He slapped together the sandwich in quick, practised movements, cracked the top of his Coke and carried the duo into the living room where he’d set up a small table by the fireplace. The place was barren even by his standards, but he never seemed to find the right style to fit when he stopped in the furniture store in Newberry.

That was one thing about the Michigan Upper Peninsula. ‘Retail America’ automatically assumed any furniture had to be...what had that sales clerk called it? Rustic. Yeah. Hell, he’d get a splinter in his foot the first time he propped his feet up on one of those tables to relax.

So he made do with his lone suede couch and the mission-style coffee table he’d made from an oak tree that lightning had struck down in his back forty last summer. He liked his stuff smooth, soft, comfortable...just the way he liked his men.

Graham sat his drink down a little too hard, splashing Coke on the small pine folding table he’d arranged for his meal. He cursed under his breath and headed back into the kitchen for a napkin. What the hell was it about Christmas that made him wish for what he didn’t deserve?

Cripes.

Even if there had been no Trent, he held no delusions about his ability to get a man. He’d been lucky that Trent had wanted him. Graham hated that his hair was always unruly, not to mention stick straight and shit brown. His eyes didn’t even have the decency to be something amazing like blue or green, though his parents both had blue eyes. Nope. Again...shit brown. And he was built wrong, too. His mom called him lithe, but that was just a fancy word for too damn skinny.

Nothing any of the pretties wanted to look at, that’s for sure.