Fox McHardy leads a charmed life. Puget Sound penthouse, gorgeous boyfriend, jet-setting job -- everything he’s ever wanted, he’s gotten, including the heck out of the small Iowa town he grew up in. Even the trip he takes to Miami to surprise his boyfriend Jeremy is something of a long-shot wish fulfilled. Until he arrives in South Florida. Once things start to unravel, they do so with alarming speed, and he finds himself riding shotgun in a rented convertible with his new sworn enemy faster than he can say, “I want my old life back.” During an unscheduled stop on the cross-country road trip From Hell, Fox passes up a perfectly good opportunity to keep his mouth shut and finds himself planning the town’s first legal gay wedding -- his own, to a man he’s pretty sure he should hate. But someone needs to set a positive example for the queer and questioning youth in this corner of Middle America and, after creatively arranging certain of the facts of his life more attractively, he is proud to offer himself up as a role model. Small Town, USA, steps up; the grooms are widely celebrated, and generous offers of food, flowers, and picture-perfect venues pour in. The only real challenge will be keeping the lies straight and the truth under wraps until they can get out of town.

Crazy Like Fox

I started to correct him, to steer everything back towards everything that was bad about my life at the moment. Poor me, I was on the verge of reminding him. Stuck in my old home town, broke-ass and unemployed, I was dazzling no one. My mouth was even open, but suddenly I felt churlish pressing the point. I had been all of those places, I still loved all of those foods, and really, while I found him vastly more physically delectable than Thumper, even at the top of his game Jeremy was always kind of an asshole. Especially when he felt like he had the right to look down on you, which was most of the time. He would have opened his mouth in McHardy and impressed precisely no one, and Thumper had them gathering ‘round. Well, one of them anyway, and it was one who’d get a lot more out of life using Thumper as a role model than Jeremy. The sky was jewel-tone blue, the breeze was light and friendly, and the thick summer air smelled of soap and breakfast. What exactlywas I complaining about?


Chapter 48