Lost Boys

I'm a gay preacher with more tattoos than sense and more notches on my bedpost than years in the ministry. You've heard of those romances where the priest is seduced by the worldly outsider? Yeah, this isn't that. I'm also not totally settled on the existence of God. Call me a skeptic, but when you work with abandoned and abused teenagers, you tend to have a few questions for anyone calling themselves divine.

Augustus Walker, Jr. is a problem. Every queer person I know has had a tragic crush on a straight person at some point in their lives, and for the last year, Walker has been mine. Not that my crush on him is serious—I'm just appreciating a sweet, sexy guy who happens to be a big fat goose egg on the Kinsey scale. Le sigh and all that.

I've loved Hendrix Cavanaugh since his high school mascot days, and seeing him grind himself down like this has been driving me up a wall. Now that he's collapsed on stage, I can't watch from the sidelines for a second longer. I know I'm not his type—I'm a network security specialist who wears expensive suits and alphabetizes his spice drawer. In contrast, Hendrix wears all black, including his eyeliner and nail polish, and I doubt he's so much as alphabetized his contacts list.

Hot for teacher? No. Hot for teacher's widower? Maybe a little more than I should be.