Why We Fight Read online

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Epigraph

  Prologue: Day Spas and Murder-For-Hire Plots

  Chapter 1: True Love is a Finger in the Ass

  Chapter 2: Teenagers are Terrifying Creatures Who Exist to Cause Chaos

  Chapter 3: I Am So Fucking Screwed (The Non-Porn Edition)

  Chapter 4: Code Orange Banana

  Chapter 5: How to Be Creepy With Fruit—A Tragedy by Corey Ellis

  Chapter 6: The Obligatory Info Dump

  Chapter 7: Cheesy Tots and Accidental Double Dates

  Chapter 8: Well, That Certainly Changes Everything (Goddammit)

  Chapter 9: That Time I Went to a Leather Bar

  Chapter 10: Men and Their Meat

  Chapter 11: Armageddon

  Chapter 12: Mess With the Bull, You Get the Sledgehammer

  Chapter 13: I’m So Fucking Screwed (Semi-Porn Edition)

  Chapter 14: Wicked Games

  Chapter 15: I Hate Everything About Jeremy Olsen

  Chapter 16: Why We Fight

  Chapter 17: Bigots Can Suck My Dick

  Epilogue: So Long, My Old Friends

  More from TJ Klune

  Readers love the At First Sight series by TJ Klune

  About the Author

  By TJ Klune

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  Why We Fight

  By TJ Klune

  Sequel to Until You

  Do you believe in love at first sight?

  Corey Ellis sure doesn’t. Oh, everyone around him seems to have found their happy ending, but he’s far too busy to worry about such things. He’ll have plenty of time for romance after he survives his last summer before graduation. So what if he can’t get his former professor, Jeremy Olsen, out of his head? It’s just hero worship. And that’s the way it should stay.

  Except that this summer, bigender Corey—aka Kori—is interning at Phoenix House, a LGBTQI youth center. A center that recently hired an interim director. And because life is extraordinarily unfair, the director just so happens to be a certain former professor, now current boss.

  Desperate to keep things professional as he and Jeremy grow closer, Corey makes a major mistake: he turns to his friends, Paul Auster and Sanford Stewart, for help.

  But Paul and Sandy have some ideas of their own.

  Set in the summer of 2016, Why We Fight is a celebration of queer life and being true to oneself… no matter the cost.

  We’re here.

  We’re queer.

  Get fucking used to it.

  Prologue: Day Spas and Murder-For-Hire Plots

  THERE ARE moments in this life that stick with us for the rest of our days. They are profound and sharp, both good and bad. It’s the people we meet, the experiences we have. Finding out that your parents gave you up because they couldn’t deal is one. Staring in a mirror and realizing it was fractured though no one else could see it is another. Meeting a drag queen who could both threaten and love in a single breath is a third.

  I saw a boy on a college campus who looked like he couldn’t breathe, and I sat with him until he realized I would always be by his side.

  I made the decision to leave a place where I’d made something of myself to return to a desert that had caused me so much hurt.

  I watched as a Queen found her Homo Jock King, even though they were both fucking idiots about it and went about it in a way that should have blown up in their faces.

  I stood witness as two men vowed to love each other for the rest of their days, and then one of them tackled the other one and they started macking in front of everyone with an amount of tongues and teeth that was both hot and disgusting. Seriously. I was very confused at my partial erection.

  And now, here, was another moment.

  So sharp. So profound.

  So confusing.

  Paul Auster’s grandmother was a groaner when she got massages.

  “Ohhhhhh my god,” Nana moaned loudly. “That’s it. That’s the ticket. Sven. Sven. Your fingers. They are magic. Do all Swedish people know this secret art?”

  “Um,” Sven said. “My name is Alex? I’ve told you that repeatedly. And I’m from Michigan.”

  “Whatever your name is, don’t stop. This is your calling, and I am calling you.”

  “What the hell,” I muttered as I lay on my stomach with my face through a rubber hole. I still hadn’t quite figured out how I agreed to this. There might have been a coupon involved. Seeing as how I was a broke college student, I was a whore for coupons. Nana had said it was a gift for finishing yet another year of school (it never ended! Ever! Thank god for student loans, ha, ha, ha), and since I had nothing else going on, I’d graciously accepted.

  I hadn’t known it was for a couple’s massage until we arrived at the resort. I’d been brought up to speed when Nana grabbed my hand as we approached the front desk and announced that she and her “young lover” were here to redeem the coupon. The two women behind the desk stared at us. Nana smiled at them. They had no choice but to believe her.

  It was too late for me to back out.

  (Well, to be fair, it probably wasn’t, but Nana’s grip was stronger than I gave her credit for.)

  I was uncomfortable. Not only was someone I didn’t know touching me, Nana sounded as if she was getting to third base with Sven, ah, Alex, even though he’d only started three minutes before. Enya was shrieking through the speakers overhead. The lit candles smelled like lemon-flavored ass. It couldn’t get worse.

  “Yes! Yes! That’s it!”

  Scratch that. Now it was worse.

  Tanya, the poor woman currently pushing against my back with oil-slicked hands, coughed as if she was choking.

  “Sorry about that,” I muttered to her.

  Tanya was ever the professional. “It happens. Though I don’t know that I’ve ever heard someone so… exuberant.”

  That was an understatement. “You have no idea.”

  “You carry a lot of stress in your upper shoulders.”

  That was probably bullshit, but she sounded earnest, so I didn’t call her on it. “Oh. That’s… a thing.”

  “Do you do yoga?”

  No. Yoga was for white hipsters who had disposable income. My last meal consisted of four-day-old leftovers Sandy had brought home from a date with the Homo Jock King. “Never thought about it.”

  “You should. It can do wonders for the body.”

  I doubted that immensely. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  She pressed down against my right shoulder until I thought it would pop out of the socket. I closed my eyes as Nana wailed in ecstasy. “Have you two been together long?”

  Nana had hissed a warning at me as we’d been led to a room. She said that if anyone suspected we weren’t actually a couple, the coupon would be revoked and we could get arrested and thrown in jail. That wasn’t true, but she believed it so much that I almost believed it. “Not long.”

  “You’re certainly an unusual couple.”

  Tanya suspected. Damn her and her nosiness. She probably made it her mission in life to ferret out people who tried to use coupons illegally. Images of me in prison orange flashed through my mind. I looked good. To be fair, I looked good in almost everything, so it wasn’t surprising. But still, I’d rather avoid jail. I would be a snack. A delicious, wonderful snack for much larger men. And that… didn’t sound so bad, now that I thought about it. Easier than Grindr, at least. “Our love knows no bounds.”

  Sven sighed in despair as Nana instructed him that her thighs weren’t going to work themselves.

  “Maybe a few bounds,” I amended.

  “She’s a firecracker,” Tanya murmured as Enya screamed incoherently over a flurry of synthesized strings. “How do
you keep up with her?”

  Wow. I didn’t know massage therapists were also journalists. “Tanya. Can I call you Tanya?”

  “Of course. Anything for you, Mr. Ellis.” She started working the muscles in my lower back.

  “I’m in it for the money.”

  Her hands paused. “Come again?”

  Not likely. My balls had shriveled up into my body. “The old broad’s loaded. I have expensive tastes. She keeps me funded. I keep her satisfied. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

  “Oh dear,” Tanya breathed.

  “She’s my sugar momma,” I said, wincing as Tanya resumed her ministrations. “And I’m her baby boy.”

  “That’s… how nice for you.” She didn’t sound like she meant that at all.

  Massages were boring; it was time to up my game. “But….”

  “But?”

  I turned my head to the side to look up at her with one eye. “Can you keep a secret?”

  She nodded furiously. “I’m a masseuse. I keep all the secrets. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve heard.”

  “Because you’re just like a doctor, right? And I’m your patient. You have to keep my confidence. Anything I tell you can’t leave this room.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Good.” I took a deep breath, showing just how conflicted I was, but still determined. “I’ve hired someone.”

  Tanya frowned. “Hired someone. For what?”

  “You know.” I screwed up my face, letting my tongue hang out as I mimicked a painful and terrible death. Either by poison or strangulation, I would leave it up to Tanya’s imagination. “To… take care of the problem.”

  Tanya looked as if she was having trouble breathing. “You mean….”

  “Yes. I mean.”

  “Mr. Ellis, that’s illegal.”

  I turned my face back down into the hole. “I know. But it’s the only way. And if I can pull it off, I’ll be rich. I’ve managed to convince her to cut her children out of the will, leaving me as the only beneficiary to her estate.”

  “You hired a hit man?” Tanya whispered fervently. “Where does one even find a hit man?”

  “Craigslist. There’s an entire section on there. But it’s disguised under people selling patio furniture. You just have to know the lingo.”

  Tanya hesitated, her hands getting a little too close to my ass. “Lingo. Is that… is that like an… urban… thing?”

  Oh, Tanya. My poor, sweet Tanya. “Exactly. An urban thing. Only people of color know about it. And seeing as how I’m biracial, I know all the words. You have to know what specific things to look for. Like frizzle d’nizzle. And hibbity bip. For instance, the ad I found said Two Deck Chairs for sale for cool cat mcgats. That’s how you know.”

  She leaned over me, her mouth near my ear. “Could you… do you think they could help me with a problem I have?”

  Uh-oh. “Um. What?”

  She spoke in a quiet rush. “My boyfriend broke up with me last year. I don’t know why. All I said was that I wanted to get married and have three babies. He said it was too soon to talk about such things on a first date.”

  Yikes. I might not have thought this through. “Oh. Well. He… might have had a point?”

  Her fingernails dug into the small of my back. “He didn’t. He just couldn’t see that we were meant to be together. Do you know what he did next?”

  “Filed for a restraining order?”

  “That too, but this was before that. He said he didn’t think this was going to work for him and paid the check and left. We hadn’t even had dessert! Or sex!”

  “That’s too bad,” I managed to say, wondering if I still had to tip her when we were done.

  Her breath smelled like mints. It was very pleasant. “And now he has a new girlfriend, and he posts pictures of them going on trips on Instagram, and he doesn’t even need to use filters! They’re that good.”

  “I don’t use filters either because my skin is pretty much flawless—ow, Tanya! That’s too hard!”

  “Sorry,” she said, and she actually sounded apologetic. “So if you know someone who could… take care of her, that would really help me out. You know. Hibbity bip.”

  When I’d woken up this morning, I hadn’t realized I’d be negotiating with an emotional terrorist. “Maybe. But don’t you think he deserves his happiness? I’m sure there are plenty of men out there who would want to marry and impregnate you.”

  “But they’re not him. He smells like spice and sleeps in the nude!”

  I frowned into the hole. My life was so weird. “I thought you said you only went on the one date and he left you there. How do you know what he wears when he—you know what? In the interest of not being called to testify in what I’m sure is going to be a spectacle of a trial, I’m not going to ask that question. Look, Tanya. He wasn’t the one for you. You gotta let him go.” I paused, considering. “Also, no murder. Murder is bad.”

  “But you said you were going to—”

  “I never said anything, Tanya. I made implications that you inferred incorrectly. What the hell! All I meant was that I’m here with the love of my life after shopping for patio furniture online, and you started casting aspersions on my character. I expect an apology! Nay, I demand it.”

  She sputtered. “But—there’s—you said—”

  I pushed myself up on the massage table, reaching down to make sure the towel stayed in place so as to not show Tanya what I was packing in case she decided I would be a good sperm donor. If only real life was more like porn and she’d been a hot dude who put his face in my ass after coating me with oil. One of the great travesties of life is finding out porn is unrealistic. “Massage over,” I announced, glaring at Tanya as I sat on the edge of the table.

  Sven looked over at me gratefully. “Oh, darn. Are you sure? I mean, you look sure, so I should probably go. Thank you for coming to the Oasis in the Desert resort. Namaste.” He bowed.

  And then practically ran from the room.

  “I’ll miss you!” Nana yelled after him.

  Tanya stared at me.

  I glared back. “Please leave. My sugar momma and I need to discuss the depths of our love for each other.”

  She turned and left.

  “And murder is wrong!” I called after her as the door closed.

  “What happened?” Nana asked as she turned her head to look at me. She was wearing one of Helena’s wigs, a bouffant most recently used for the glory that was Agnes Beaverton. It suited her, even if it was listing lazily on the side of her head. “I was just getting going.”

  I sighed. “Murder-for-hire plot that came out of nowhere. You know. The usual. Heterosexuality is so exhausting. I don’t even know.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, the straights tend to do that. I was involved in a murder-for-hire by no fault of my own in 1967. Three people died, and I can never go back to the state of Kentucky.” Her eyes shifted side to side. “I mean, I have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m old and feeble and senile.”

  “Riiiiight.” I didn’t know how much of what Nana said was bullshit, but I didn’t think it was much. “Old and feeble and senile.”

  She grinned at me. “Exactly. Sugar momma, huh?”

  I shrugged. “You got it going on. I’d be so lucky.”

  She sat up, the towel falling off her, leaving her everything just… out there for the world to see. “I do, don’t I? I’m a hot bitch. You should see all the men sniffing after me at bingo. I have to beat them off with a stick.”

  I looked up at the ceiling and wondered how this had become my life. Definitely through no fault of my own.

  LATER, AS we were wrapped in thick, fuzzy robes and getting pedicures, Nana asked a question I didn’t see coming. I should have known she had ulterior motives. She was a devious woman. “How’s your love life?”

  I groaned, and not because the woman at my feet was a master with a loofah. “I don’t believe I need to answer that question.”

&
nbsp; She scoffed before sipping on her mimosa. “Of course you do. It’s the reason I brought you here.”

  If looks could kill, she’d… well, she’d probably survive that too. Nana was going to outlive us all. Thankfully. “The truth has finally been revealed. You minx.”

  She laughed. It was a thin, rusty sound that I adored. “You’re cute, Corey, but I don’t need to get a couple’s massage with you. I have plenty of gentlemen callers more than willing to rub me if I need it in the privacy of my daughter’s home.”

  As if today could get any worse. “There are things we don’t need to say out loud. Less is more.”

  She waved a hand at me derisively. “Honey, if we don’t say what’s on our minds, nothing will ever get done. Tell him, Larry.”

  Larry Auster leaned forward from his chair on the other side of her. He was wearing a pink robe (by choice, god love him) and drinking a fruity cocktail with an umbrella in it. It was his third. His face was a little flushed. “She’s got a point.”

  “Sometimes she has a point,” Matty Auster said from her chair next to me. Her robe had flowers on it, and she had white wine. Her eyes had cucumbers on them, which reminded me that I was hungry. “It just so happens that this happens to be one of those times.”

  “Traitors,” I muttered. “You planned this, didn’t you? This is entrapment. I know my rights.”

  “Of course not,” Matty said. “This was a gift for you for finishing your second-to-last year of school.”

  “And also entrapment,” Nana said.

  “You’re very good at this,” Larry told the woman who lifted his feet from the soaker. “I think I’d like another one of these whatever-they-are. Would that be possible?” He looked down at his glass. “I don’t know how I keep drinking them so fast.”

  “Your husband is a lush,” I told Matty.

  She smiled. “I know. He’s so silly when he’s toasted. It’s one of the things I love about him.”

  “We just want to make sure you’re happy,” Nana said. “We know it can be tough. Paul and Vince have found love in a hopeless place—”

  “Jesus Christ,” I muttered. “I am never downloading music for you again.”