Chapter 1

1

While lounging in my studio apartment, I published a new blog post on my WordPress author site using my old laptop. It was the latest of my ongoing gay romance series titled “Something Like Fate.” I smiled with pride because of how well it’d been doing for its over-the-top romance and tasteful erotic scenes. I hadn’t expected it to be as big as it was, especially when it was silly enough that I’d named the main character and his love interest Mario and Luigi, respectively (not brothers in my story, of course). It was a weekly series of flash fiction installments to be read in order, like a telenovela, so to speak, and I posted a new every Saturday. I’d started it in early June, and it was mid-August, not a single week missed. I’d gained hundreds of followers over the summer, but nothing to rave about. After all, I was still a nobody author from Detroit, Michigan. I did get a few nice compliments on my author photo, though, so there was that.

I’d done nothing else that day but hung out in my tank top and boxer briefs, and I tried my hardest not to think about the possibility of a dark road ahead of me after refusing to take my meds for weeks. I was about to read from the Bible app on my phone and get ready for bed because of the time, until a notification popped up, telling me of a new like and comment. That was fast. Normally, I’d just check my notifications later, but something kind of spoke to me and told me to check them at that moment.

Hmm, a gay reviewer who’d instantly become a fan after binge-reading my series in one sitting. There was so much praise and enthusiasm in his comment, and it was actually much longer than any other comment I’d ever gotten, several lengthy paragraphs. His kindness especially put a warm smile on my face while tickling my heart a bit. His account name was “Got Gay? Reviews,” which made me chuckle.

Curious, I clicked on his profile picture to go to his WordPress blogsite. Wow, thousands of followers and so many likes and comments on each post I skimmed through. Was he thatpopular? He seemed to be, by the looks of it. The site design was also nice and clean, and easy to navigate. The more I scrolled through the main page, the more I realized there were tons of reviews in the span of many months, maybe a year. His reviews were largely oversexed and disgustingly vulgar, which made me roll my eyes, but I supposed it came with the territory of reviewing hardcore gay erotica as a way to entice potential readers, especially since many of the books he reviewed consisted of taboo themes that made me blush. I’d certainly go to hell for reading that trash.

I clicked on the Twitter icon to visit his profile, and my eyes widened at the thousands upon thousands of tweets he’d posted, as well as more thousands of followers. Given that his follower count and the number of profiles he followed were similar in amount, he was clearly the follow-back type. He had no pictures of himself anywhere that I could find, just a shot of two burly men making out, which was the same profile picture as the one on WordPress.

His bio stated that he was a twenty-five-year-old gay man, only four years older than me, and that he was a bookworm with a passion for reviewing all kinds of books, especially “gay erotica with kinks,” as he so put it. I wasn’t surprised by his interest in dirty erotica after scrolling through a lot of his porny retweets. He was clearly an oversexed horndog who probably had lots of dirty DMs, given that his bio ended with “DM open.” Penis pics, butt shots, sex chats? Who knew with him?

Still, I decided to follow him on Twitter, WordPress, and Goodreads, if just to be nice. I never ever followed people like him, much less associated with them, but the kindness in his deep comment had won me over in a way I couldn’t ignore. I’d just turn off his retweets to prevent my feed from being spammed with porn. I finally replied to his comment, thanking him for such kind words and for his interest in my series. I called him GGR since he didn’t have an actual name mentioned anywhere.

He wrote back fairly quickly, but it was more of a conversation starter, unlike most second replies I received. He thanked me for the “follow” and was modest enough to insist it wasn’t necessary. He called me SLF, probably as a joke because he knew what my name was.