Golden Boy Two-Volume Set Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Golden Boy - Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Golden Man - Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  The Contract - Chapter 1

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  Golden Boy - Chapter 1

  Johnny Wilson smiled as the young woman caught his eye. He knew exactly the right expression to assume—part cocky, part interested, part yearning with a dash of self-deprecating humor. The girl began to move toward him, weaving her way through a crowd of happy-hour revelers, her wine glass held high.

  She was a pretty girl with large brown eyes. Her lips were painted a shiny red, making him think of an apple waiting to be bitten. Her heavy breasts were too large for her slender frame.

  Johnny turned away to take a swig of his beer. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He knew he looked good in his black cotton T-shirt and faded jeans. He didn’t need to work out at the gym—his whole life had been spent “working out”—playing football and baseball and running track as a kid, and now working with his hands and his back as a mechanic at his father’s garage.

  “Wilson & Sons” was proudly painted in bold black letters against a silver background on a large sign over the center bay of the three-bay garage. Johnny had painted it himself, having always had an eye for design and a secret love of art. Secret because his family would have laughed him out of the house if he’d come home from school having signed up for art instead of shop or tech. Art was women’s stuff, lightweight pansy stuff, as his father liked to say about anything that didn’t drip testosterone.

  All three sons, like their dad, made their living with their hands, tearing down and building back cars with as much love and skill as any surgeon applied to his patient. At least Billy and Hank loved it. Johnny was a good mechanic, make no mistake about it, but, if pressed, he would have admitted he’d rather have gone on to college. He’d rather have studied art or history, and perhaps become a teacher.

  This wasn’t an option however, at least not in his household, and he’d never seriously entertained it. It was more of a passing dream, as fleeting and unattainable as becoming an astronaut or winning the lottery. Those things didn’t happen to guys like Johnny. Guys like Johnny did as they were told and liked it, or paid the price.

  Before he’d learned to control his own impulses better, Johnny had often been the target of his father’s anger, manifested by a leather belt across the ass or back, or, when his dad had had too much to drink, sometimes a closed fist in the stomach or across the jaw. Johnny never fought back—none of the boys did. Though as adults they were all three taller and stronger than Frank Wilson, none would have dared to challenge him.

  Even now, living in his own apartment these last three years, twenty-four-year-old Johnny wouldn’t have dared to defy his father. Hank, his oldest brother at age twenty-nine, was married with three children of his own—all girls, much to Frank’s dismay.

  Billy, the middle child, had married at nineteen when he’d impregnated his girlfriend Sandy, then only seventeen. It had been a typical shotgun wedding, though the couple had seemed happy enough to get hitched. At least it was a quick way out of the house for Billy, though he’d only moved down the block and into his new wife’s parents’ house.

  Sandy had miscarried in her fifth month of pregnancy and everyone had expected Billy and her to divorce, but they’d stayed married and had two healthy children, a boy and girl. Billy, now twenty-six, was a devoted dad and husband, and Johnny spent many weekends with his favorite brother and sister-in-law, barbequing and playing with the kids.

  Johnny was less close with Hank, who seemed to side with his father on every issue, usually against Johnny, or so it seemed to him. When he’d wanted to automate the billing and inventory system at the garage, for example, he’d been shouted down by them both as a lazy bum who wanted some pencil-pushing geek to install an expensive claptrap computer that would end up controlling their lives.

  “Nothing wrong with the old way of doing things,” his dad had intoned, folding his thick arms over his ample beer belly, legs spread to take up as much room as possible. And Hank had loudly agreed, standing in the same aggressive posture, moving his head up and down like some kind of bobble-head dog in the rear window of a car.

  Johnny could have left. He didn’t have to rent an apartment in the same Brooklyn neighborhood where his brothers and parents still lived. He didn’t have to work in his father’s shop, or even be a mechanic. He was a grown man who could do as he liked.

  Wasn’t he?

  Yet he stayed, perhaps because of his mother, who he loved and who seemed to need him around. Or perhaps he stayed because this life was the only life he knew. It was comfortable. It was secure. He didn’t have to think or wonder what if… What if?

  He felt the woman sidle up behind him. Her breasts pressed against his back as she leaned around him, pretending to try and get the attention of the bartender. He turned around and, instead of moving back, she pressed in closer, her body making full contact with his from breast to groin. “You look good enough to eat, baby,” she whispered throatily in his ear. He could smell her sweat and her perfume.

  Why did he do that? Why did he lead women on when he wasn’t really interested? Was it just to see if he could? And were they attracted precisely because he didn’t really care? He knew women were put off when they sensed a man’s over eagerness, interpreting it as desperation. Perhaps his near indifference made him that much more attractive to them. Whatever the reason, women seemed drawn to him in some primal way—at least as long as they were across the room.

  Once they got up close, it was usually a different story. For some reason he couldn’t sustain the heat once they’d fallen for the “look”. Maybe it was his fault. No, he knew it was his fault. Perhaps for him the thrill was in the hunt. Once he’d lured in his prey, as his friend Amanda liked to say, the game was over and he lost interest.

  He would deny this, protesting that most women were simply boring. He needed more than tits and ass to get excited. He was too old for a quick fuck, he’d say, and Amanda would always laugh, retorting that no one was too old for a quick fuck.

  Amanda wasn’t like the other women Johnny knew. She was easy to be around, at least for Johnny. She wasn’t the kind of girl one brought home to the parents, that was for sure. In fact, his parents would have had joint heart attacks if he’d come over for Sunday dinner with Amanda Forrestal on his arm.

  They’d have taken one look at her pierced eyebrow, pierced lip, multiple tattoos and short, pink spiked hair and he’d have had to make dual funeral arrangements. Her funky clothing and refusal to wear a bra would have kept them turning in their newly dug graves.

  He’d first met Amanda that summer at the public library, of all places. Sometimes he liked to go to libraries, just to sit quietly and read. There hadn’t been books in his house growing up. Why read when you could watch TV? For Johnny, libraries were like free candy stores for his brain—food for his so
ul. He loved the feel and smell of all those books around him, each one like a gift waiting to be opened.

  One day she’d just appeared next to him, flopping down with a stack of books in her arms. “Hey, I see you here all the time.” She’d looked him up and down appraisingly and he’d done the same to her, deciding she was a nutcase best not encouraged. She was a pretty girl in her early twenties, but her decked-out, punk, Goth getup was more than he could handle.

  She’d persisted however, unaware he was trying to ignore her. “I love this place, don’t you? I love the tin ceilings—they’re the originals, did you know that? And all these books!” She’d waved her arms dramatically in front of her, her face rapt with pleasure. After a polite assent, he’d gone back to his book, hoping she’d get the message he wasn’t there to socialize. “But it’s the people I like best. You just never know who you’re going to see in this place. John Lennon used to come in here, did you know that? He’d be all disguised of course, but it was him. It’s a well-known fact. I swear.”

  Johnny smiled a little. He doubted this girl had even been born before John Lennon had been murdered, but he didn’t take the bait, instead turning a page of the book he was no longer reading. But she’d kept whispering to him, remarking on people who walked by, making very funny and sometimes scathing remarks as she summed up her guess of the personality of each person passing by in broad, devastating strokes.

  She didn’t seem in the least impressed by Johnny’s good looks—the sunny blond hair, the green eyes flecked with gold, the strong jaw, the long, muscular lines of his body leaning back easily in his chair. After the initial appraisal, she’d barely glanced at him, instead keeping up a whispered running commentary that soon had him laughing out loud despite himself.

  When she’d asked him if he wanted to “blow this Popsicle stand and get some coffee”, he’d surprised himself by agreeing. Why not?

  Johnny appreciated the way Amanda didn’t come on to him, didn’t try to act sexy or play the little games girls always seemed to play around him that usually left him more confused than excited. She hadn’t succumbed to his “look” even when he’d tried it on her, teasing him she was impervious to his smoldering stare.

  He’d laughed then, feeling that undefined something that always tensed inside of him somehow relax. He felt truly at ease with this strange young woman who wore heavy black boots with her Indian batik dress, four earrings sparkling from each lobe, a snake’s head curving down her arm in an elaborate tattoo.

  He hadn’t realized until several weeks into their friendship that Amanda was gay, and when he’d figured it out, it hadn’t bothered him in the least. But he’d kept her a secret from his family. Not only because they would disapprove of everything about her but because she was “his”—someone unique who had nothing to do with his mundane, dreary life. Someone who thought he was funny and smart, and didn’t care if he was “too good-looking for his own good”, as his father often remarked.

  They shared secrets and Amanda never made fun of him the way his brothers and the guys he hung out with did if he expressed a true emotion. One Sunday afternoon over chocolate milkshakes at her place Amanda said, “Tell me about your first time. Your first sexual experience.”

  “Oh god, why? I’ve spent the last seven years trying to forget it!” Johnny had laughed.

  “Okay, okay, I should have known better. You are such a prude, Johnny Wilson,” Amanda had teased. “Tell you what, I’ll show you mine if you show me yours!” She laughed again as Johnny made a face. “Just kidding, you idiot. I mean I’ll tell you first about my experience and then you tell me about yours. Deal?”

  “Okay, I guess,” Johnny said reluctantly.

  “I was seventeen. We both played trumpet in the school band. His name was Tom Dixon.”

  “What! I thought you were gay!”

  “I am gay, you dope. That doesn’t mean I knew it when I was seventeen. Or let me take that back. I kind of knew it, but I didn’t have words for it exactly.” She leaned forward, speaking earnestly as she always did when talking about sex and love. “See, I’ve always had crushes on girls, but it’s different for us. We’re allowed to have feelings for other girls and it’s okay. We can hug and kiss, and tell each other we love each other and nobody bats an eye. It’s cute, it’s even expected, to a degree.”

  Johnny nodded, his expression clouding. “A guy did that, he’d get his face punched in. Especially in my neighborhood.”

  “I know,” Amanda said gently, briefly touching Johnny’s knee. He looked away, confused by the sudden tenderness in her expression. She went on. “Anyway, it was twelfth grade, and Tom and I were buddies. Geek buddies. Pals because no one else would have us.” She grinned and added, “Not that you could possibly believe I might be a misfit in a Catholic school run by a bunch of nuns!”

  Johnny eyed her spiky hair, piercings and combat boots, and grinned back. “You mean you weren’t on the cheerleading squad? Not student council class president?”

  “Yeah, right! That was me.” Laughing, she continued. “Anyway, it seemed like everyone around us was part of a couple. They were all going out and having sex and talking about it ad nauseam in notes passed during math and at lunchtime. I guess we both felt, you know, kind of left out.

  “So anyway, long story short—too late, ha-ha—we talked it over and decided we should have sex to see what it was like.”

  “You what? That seems awfully clinical. I mean, not very romantic.”

  “To paraphrase that old song, what’s romance got to do with it?”

  “Well, did you even like him? I mean, in that way?”

  “You mean was I sexually attracted to him?” As Johnny nodded, Amanda admitted, “No, not especially. I don’t think he was really into me either, to tell you the truth. But we were both curious, and it seemed like the thing to do, I guess.”

  “Gee, a real love story.”

  “Shut up, Johnny. Just ‘because we didn’t gush and slobber and spend all night on the phone saying, ‘I love you more, no, I love you more,’ doesn’t mean we weren’t friends. We were pals. It was an experiment.”

  “Was he gay too?”

  “No, I don’t think so. He was just completely unsure of himself and had never had a girlfriend, and I seemed safe, I guess.”

  “Okay, so get to the juicy part.”

  Amanda grinned. “Oh, so now you’re interested.” She laughed. “Well, we didn’t have anywhere to go, but Tom had a car. His dad’s old station wagon, and we could put the backseat down.

  “We met after band practice one Thursday evening. I’d told my parents I was going to meet a few girls at the library to study. Instead we drove to a secluded road, pulled over and did the deed.”

  Johnny waited a moment, and when she didn’t elaborate, he laughed and said, “Come on! That’s not a story. Details, girl, I want details!”

  “Oh you do, huh? What a pervert! Spying on a couple of geeky teenagers. Okay, okay!” Amanda laughed as Johnny pretended to reach over and throttle her. “Details. Well, one detail that stuck out for me was we both had braces and they got interlocked somehow when we were kissing. We had to get the pliers to get loose.” Amanda’s expression was deadpan for about three seconds before she burst out laughing.

  “Man, can you ever be serious?” Johnny groaned.

  “Well, we did both have braces, but no, they didn’t get stuck. What happened was he felt me up for a while, and then I pulled down my jeans and he touched me. You know, he used his fingers to, uh, get me ready. And he took down his pants, and I touched him for like three seconds and then he told me stop or it was going to be all over. And then, he pulled one of those nasty plastic things over his cock—”

  “They’re called condoms,” Johnny interjected, grinning.

  “Yeah, whatever, one of those contraceptive devices straight folk have to worry about, and we kind of wiggled around a while until he, uh, got situated. He moved around some more for like two minutes and that was all
she wrote.”

  “That was it? Did it hurt? Did you like it? Was it erotic?”

  “Yes, a little, not much and no.” Amanda laughed. “He kept apologizing for it being over so fast, but I didn’t mind. Now I’d seen what all the fuss was about, I was like, okay, let’s go get a burger now at the Burger Box. So that’s what we did.”

  “I think you’re making this whole thing up,” Johnny asserted.

  “I am not! That’s just how it was. You can ask Marlon, she’ll tell you!” Marlon was Amanda’s partner, a lesbian who left one in no doubt of her sexual orientation with her short, mannish haircut, her uniform of jeans and denim work shirt and her tough-guy attitude. Her given name was Mary but she preferred Marlon, styling herself after the young Marlon Brando, her hero.

  Marlon worked nights as a bartender in a gay bar, while Amanda worked days in a clothing boutique. They spent their quality time together in the morning before Amanda went to work and Marlon went back to sleep for a few hours. Johnny had met Marlon before, and apparently he’d met with her approval because Amanda said Marlon liked knowing Johnny was over, keeping her lover company but keeping his pants on in the process.

  “She knows I’m safe with you. She’s the jealous type, you know. She thinks everyone, male or female, is out to jump my bones.” Amanda grinned, clearly pleased at her lover’s possessive assessment.

  “So what am I, chopped liver? What makes you so safe with me?”

  “Well, because you—” Amanda stopped and bit her lip. “I mean, you know, because we’re, like, just friends and all.”

  Johnny stared at Amanda a moment. He was sure she had been going to say something else, but he decided not to press her. Her eyes sparkled as she said, “Okay, J. Turnabout is fair play. Your turn.”

  Chapter 2

  Johnny looked at his watch. “Gee, I didn’t realize it was so late. Mom’s expecting me for Sunday dinner.” He started to stand up from the couch, but Amanda was too quick for him. Using both hands she shoved him hard against the chest, making him fall back to the couch.