Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
Cannon
For a second, I don’t realize the axe cut me.
Not until I go to adjust the log I’m splitting and see a smear of blood, almost invisible in the dim light from my friend’s back porch.
It doesn't hurt at all. “Shit.” I squint at the thin gash across the side of my palm. It’s not even deep, but the sight of it brings my temper tantrum to an undignified end.
“Fuck this.” I throw the axe down and kick it into the tall grass.
I’m breaking several of the safety rules Grandpa taught me when I was a kid, but it’s nowhere near as bad as the fact that I’m splitting logs drunk.
He’d tan my hide if he was still around.
It’s just that my life is so ruined already that accidentally cutting my leg off doesn’t feel like it would make things much worse.
Or maybe that’s the four cans of Steel Reserve I’ve downed in the last hour talking.
Holding my hand out in front of me so I don’t get blood on my good Carhartt jacket, I stumble toward the back porch.
My oldest buddy Kyle and his sister Cassie are sitting wreathed in cigarette smoke and surrounded by empty beer cans, arguing about whether they’d rather fight a horse-sized duck or a hundred duck-sized horses.
When you’ve spent your entire life stuck in a town with twenty buildings and sixty-six residents, there isn’t anything better to do.
“Seriously, Cannon?” Kyle shakes his head at my predicament and goes back to his phone. “Can you mourn the loss of everything you cared about without maiming yourself?”
Cassie, a cheerful redhead a couple of years younger than us, makes a sympathetic noise and runs inside to grab the first aid kit.
“Quit talking about it.” The haze of alcohol isn’t doing anything to soothe the ache in my chest. One minute I’m the top employee in the fabrication shop, walking into my boss’s office to get my promotion.
The next he tells me he’s giving it to some guy who doesn’t even know a belt sander from an arc welder.
When I dared to protest, he told me to get out and never come back.
It took one second to lose the ten years of work I put into becoming something more than this shitty little town. The more I drink, the more I’m convinced I deserve it. But if I keep going, maybe I’ll find the point where it stops hurting.
By the time I finish the beer I left on the arm of my chair, Cassie comes back and plops herself cross-legged on the ground next to me. “Let me see, Cann. Quit being all macho.”
I stretch out my palm across my leg and let her poke and prod and smear on some stingy clear goo. My cracked plastic chair wobbles as I tilt my head so I can watch Kyle flip through six dozen identical photos of himself shirtless on the riverbank last weekend. “New dating app profile pic?”
“It’s fucking pointless,” he grumbles, tapping his cigarette into a full ashtray and adding glowy filters like they’ll magically create the abs he doesn’t have.
“He’s trying this new app,” Cassie explains as she wraps gauze around my palm tight enough to make me hiss. “He hates it because it asks him about feelings and compatibility and shit.”
Kyle instantly rises to her bait. She winks at me as he starts waving his phone around and ranting.
“Seriously, look at this!” All I can make out is a rainbow splash screen with H2H in minimalist white letters.
“The app has this event going on called ‘Plus One’. So people are asking for shit like be my plus one to my cousin’s Disney princess birthday party, or be my plus one to walk my annoying-ass dog and pick up his shit.
How is a man supposed to find a good old-fashioned plus one on the train to pussy town? ”
“Thank you for confirming why you’re still single,” I snark, flexing my hand tenderly. Kyle is an absolute moron, but we’ve spent pretty much every single day together since third grade and he’s the only man in this backwater Wisconsin lumber town who always accepted me for being gay.
“I’m serious, dude.” Kyle flicks through posts, pulls up a random profile, and throws the phone in my lap. “Read this and tell me the app isn’t weird as fuck.”
When I flip the phone over, my mouth instantly goes dry. Not fuzzy-dry from drinking too much alcohol, but the kind where your body straight up stops functioning.
The profile picture is just a bad mirror selfie—the guy is looking in the wrong direction and half his body is blocked by a mess of toothbrushes and razors and bottles of antacids.
But god.
Wide brown eyes peek out from under a tousle of dark, silky-soft curls as he tilts his head nervously, squeezing a handful of his gray knit sweater.
His high cheekbones and dusting of facial hair can’t hide the thin angles of his face or the worry lines between his eyebrows.
Underneath the concentration in his stare, he looks strangely, overwhelmingly sad.
When Kyle clears his throat, I realize I’ve been staring with my mouth open for lord knows how long.
“Uh, sorry.” As I scroll down to the part I’m supposed to be reading, I chuckle at the guy’s username: sorryheregoesnothing.
He’s listed as a gay man, thirty-six. A whole ten years older than me.
Now I’m even more fucked; that’s my kryptonite.
And when he fucking looks like that? This day just got a hundred times worse because this guy exists and he’s not here with me.
To be fair to Kyle, the post really is…strange.
Looking for a plus one to sit in the waiting room while I attend a doctor’s appointment and make sure I don’t run away. But wait, there’s more.
I want to find someone who’s interested in spending the whole day together beforehand and doing, I guess you’d call it roleplay?
Not medical roleplay. The medical part is real.
Not ‘spank me, daddy’ roleplay either.
Dating roleplay, like pretending we’re in a relationship. Which is not the same thing as going on a date. I’m not good at explaining this. If you’re still reading, you’re a trooper.
Only contact me if you’re interested in every part of what I’m looking for. Please include the word “aqueduct” in your message to show me you read all the way through. Thank you.
I crack up for real, despite the headache pounding behind my eyes. “What the hell?”
“Right?” Kyle gestures hopelessly. “How am I supposed to sort through all this? Some of us are just trying to get our freak on.”
“Drive the fuck over to Milwaukee and visit some bars like a normal cis-het redneck,” I tell him, flicking the app closed and returning his phone. “I’m going to bed before I ruin any more of my life.”
The beer must have hit me while I was sitting down, because I almost fall face-first off the porch steps when I try to leave.
After a few deep breaths, I try again and manage to stagger down and across the yard.
“Let us know if your hand falls off in the night,” Cassie hollers after me as I stumble and weave off into the dark, laughing when I flip her off over my shoulder.
Halfway through the eight-minute walk back to my apartment over Old Man Robin’s garage, a beat-up sedan with an Uber logo in the window whizzes past in the direction of the highway.
Kyle must have taken my suggestion very literally.
For a second, I almost wave them down and ask if I can come along.
I hate one night stands. Whether it’s a person or a job or this stupid town, my heart clings to things too hard.
But at least I’d have someone to talk to.
Either way, they’re long gone before my beer-soaked brain can make a decision.
Robin’s overweight golden retriever, Gary, pops his head around the corner when I limp up the driveway.
As soon as he hears me call his name, he comes running for ear scratches, flapping his tail eagerly.
Ever since I let him sleep with me one damn time, the little shit chases me up the rickety garage stairs every night.
He doesn’t seem to get that if he trips me and I die, there won’t be any more cuddles.
Tonight I’m so depressed I just hold the door open for him and let him rampage around my studio apartment. If I have to move up to Madison to look for some shitty maintenance or factory job, I’ll wish I had spent more time with him.
Despite the filthy garage exterior with its peeling paint and rusting door, I couldn’t be prouder of the upstairs room I’ve rented for four years.
I painted the walls a pale cream and re-tiled the bathroom and kitchen, filled the dining area with cool plants, and decorated with macrame tapestries and wood-and-iron art pieces I made myself.
All the furniture is either handmade by me or secondhand pieces I hunted down from thrift stores and refinished.
I even read a book about feng shui to make the layout feel good.
The thought of leaving this place behind hurts worse than if the axe had gone all the way through my hand.
I should drink water, take a quick shower, and go to sleep. Gary is already draped all over my pillow. But I can feel ghosts waiting in the shadows to smother me with everything I lost today, all the pain waiting for me tomorrow when I’m sober.
Flopping down without even taking my coat off, I open the app store on my phone and search “H2H”.
Heart2Heart is the top result. It has thousands of five-star reviews from people finding lovers and spouses and best friends.
That’s great, I guess. Now that I’m an unemployed washout I’ll probably need all the help I can get.
I grunt in frustration when the app forces me to make a full profile before I can even browse.
Barely reading the form, I type in my middle school Xbox gamertag, ilovetacos6969 and upload a picture of Gary and I lying in the grass.
I put goofy, bossy, and good with my hands in the information field, then finally make my way into the app.
My fingers start shaking a little as I search sorryheregoesnothing.
I just want to look at him one more time, maybe jerk off to that earnest, shy face really quick before moving on with my sorry life.
When his photo pops up, I groan and cover my eyes with my hand.
He’s even cuter than I remembered. Torturing myself like this was a mistake.
And because I’m a disaster, I screenshot the picture so I can repeat my mistakes over and over again.
I open my eyes to a blaze of late-morning sun streaming through my kitchen window. My hand is stuffed down my jeans, cradling my soft, un-jerked dick, while Gary whines and scratches by the door to go out.
“Sorry, boy,” I mumble around my thick tongue, staggering across the room to set him free.
I’m tangled up in yesterday’s wrinkled, sweaty clothes, and my body can’t decide if I deserve a hangover migraine or a hangover toilet-puking session.
I remember sitting in the dark, completely miserable, ogling some weird stranger on a dating app. After that? Nothing.
I grab my phone and squint at the screen to see if anyone at my old job called me. Maybe it was all a big misunderstanding. But there’s only one real notification tucked between the spam emails and fast food app ads.
All it says is: See you then.
“Huh?” I mumble, balancing the phone in my bandaged hand and trying to start the coffee pot with the other. My queasy stomach drops when the H2H logo springs up. The screen fills with an entire private chat I have absolutely no memory of making. “Oh shit, oh fuck.”
When I see the name—sorryheregoesnothing—I almost fling my phone across the room in my frantic attempts to scroll to the top.
ilovetacos6969: Aqueducts are too mainstream. Give me a qanat any day.
sorryheregoesnothing: …Okay, hot take. Let me guess, did you get a B- on a high school history paper about those?
ilovetacos6969: It was a C+, actually. Hey, someone’s probably taken your plus one request by now, right?
sorryheregoesnothing: lol
ilovetacos6969: ??
sorryheregoesnothing: No. No one is lining up to message the most pathetic date request on the entire app.
ilovetacos6969: Okay!
sorryheregoesnothing: Okay?
I cringe at the string of hand-raising emojis I sent, followed by a party popper and a saluting face. I was so fucking drunk. I’m amazed he didn’t block me.
sorryheregoesnothing: I just checked your profile. Sorry, but I can’t.
ilovetacos6969: Oh… Do you not like bossy? Or is it the username? I can explain that.
sorryheregoesnothing: You’re a young gay stud in the prime of your life. I’m an almost-middle-aged high school history teacher. Did you actually look at me?
ilovetacos6969: Most definitely. An inappropriate amount. Sue me, I have a thing for bossing around repressed older guys.
The timestamp between that message and the next suggests he didn’t answer for a full five minutes.
sorryheregoesnothing: Are you busy this Friday? My name is Reed, by the way.
“Oh god,” I breathe, collapsing back against the fridge as I scan the rest of the messages at top speed.
Reed summarized his request again—he wants to roleplay a romantic day with a stranger, then have them sit in the waiting room with him for some appointment at the local hospital.
I enthusiastically agreed with every word out of his mouth.
My wasted ass would have promised to stand in line with him at the DMV for ten hours if he’d asked.
Ultimately I said I’d meet him bright and early in three days’ time outside the school he teaches at.
I forgot in my booze haze that I don’t have a car, but luckily it’s only an hour bike ride from here.
Nursing a huge mug of black coffee, I slide down to the floor and re-read everything one more time.
I want to be pissed at myself. I want to message him back and tell him I didn’t mean to throw myself on him like a history-trivia-spouting slut.
But when I pull up his photo again, I’m fucking gone.
I couldn’t take this back if my life depended on it.