Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover

Published by

Harmony Ink Press

382 NE 191st Street #88329

Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover
Copyright © 2012 by Robbie Michaels

Cover Art by Anne Cain   
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Cover Design by Mara McKennen

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Harmony Ink Press, 382 NE 191st Street #88329, Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA
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ISBN: 978-1-61372-713-3

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

July 2012

eBook edition available

eBook ISBN: 978-1-61372-714-0

For my mother, who taught me to always be ready to reach out a hand to help someone in need.

There really was a “Bill,” although that’s not necessarily his name. There really was a Mark (that’s me). There really was a truck full of chocolate and only four of us to unload the whole thing. Bill really did sit beside me and talk to me that morning. He really was as hot as I’ve described, and I was immediately in love.

As we talked, I learned something else that made me believe we were destined to be together forever. Somehow we got to talking about birthdays, and as we talked, I learned that we had been born thirty-six hours apart. In all my years, I had never had anyone who shared a birthday with me or even came close, so to hear that this man who sat beside me was one of the first humans I ever met seventeen years earlier just made me absolutely convinced our paths were destined to cross in a tremendously romantic way.

Most of this story is real, but it didn’t all happen in the order I’ve told it here. I’ve woven together dozens of threads, dozens of experiences that really did happen, to make the story that you are about to read. So this is my story—my stories, actually, all woven together into what I hope you will find to be a good read.

—Robbie Michaels

M
Y
WEEKEND
days were too precious to be wasting them like this! I was not happy. My father had gotten me into this, and I was not happy. No.
He
wasn’t here giving up some of the only free time he had during the week—
I was.

Every year the senior class took a big trip during spring of senior year. For the first few years the trip had been to a beach in Florida with a couple of days at Disney World. Thankfully, though, over the years the options list had grown bigger. My class was planning five days in Washington, DC. I wanted to go but had my doubts about spending so much time constantly with my classmates. I debated not going, but my mother thought it would be something approaching a high crime for me not to participate in my senior class trip.

Paying for those trips took a variety of fund-raising efforts, all of which I hated since they all involved selling stuff to raise money, and I hated going door to door to sell things. I felt like a young telemarketer, and it was not a good feeling. Plus, I was lousy at it.

Our latest and greatest was candy, chocolate in particular. There was some local (more or less) candy factory that made chocolate that was popular. I didn’t eat much chocolate, so I didn’t care—I had just gotten done with acne, and chocolate was rumored to be a cause, so I had sworn off the stuff with a vengeance. No chocolate had passed my lips in a couple of years.

I was such a horrible salesman—hey, I only had so many relatives I could hit up for magazines and oranges and stationery and stuff. Chocolate was the latest thing in a long line, and quite honestly, everyone was totally tapped out. So my mom got a letter from our class advisor telling her that students who hadn’t met their quota (really, a quota) could earn extra points by showing up at the school on Saturday at eight o’clock (yes, a.m.) to help unload the chocolate truck.

So there I was standing outside the front doors of the school at seven thirty on Saturday. My mother believed in punctuality times ten. If she was due somewhere at eight, then getting there at seven was better, and seven thirty was really pushing it. So she had dropped me off before anyone else was there. What if I had the date wrong? What if nobody else showed up? How was I supposed to get home, anyway?

Every conceivable horror scenario played out in my mind. Really, what else did I have to do except stand there on a cold fall morning freezing my nuts off waiting for anyone else to show up? Finally, after twenty minutes in the cold, a door was opened from inside the school. I spotted my senior class advisor, Mr. Davis. I knew the man’s name, and while he was really popular with a lot of the kids, I didn’t know him as well as others did. A lot of others had had him for some class or another, but I hadn’t, so we didn’t really know each other.

My dad had apparently gone to school with the guy, so when the letter came home, my dad was extra gung-ho that if this guy asked, I was going to deliver. In this case, I was not going to deliver but unload. So at 7:50 a.m. on Saturday morning there we stood, and I didn’t have a clue what to say to the guy. I didn’t know him. How should I know what to talk with him about? My life sucked some days. Well, most days lately, but that’s another story.

I endured an interminable five minutes while the man continued to babble, followed by another five minutes, and then another five minutes of the same, and another five minutes of the same. I didn’t know what to say to the guy, but he didn’t seem to have the same problem—the man hadn’t shut up since he’d let me into the school. I didn’t need to pee, but I was tempted to tell him I did just to have a couple of minutes of peace and quiet. But I was a good boy and stood there listening, paying what I hoped looked like rapt attention to his every word.

I had learned early in life that adults really liked it when people listened to them, so all I had to do was look like I was paying close attention to what they were saying and they usually would just babble on endlessly. So by that point I’d had years of practice and had perfected my skill to a fine art.

Just when the old man and I thought that we were going to have to unload the truck all by ourselves—could this day get any better?—at 8:10 another car appeared and dropped off two girls. Oh great. Just who I needed, I thought as I saw who they were. One of the girls was this incredibly popular cheerleader who gave every impression of being the perfect person—golden hair, perfect skin, perfect build, not an ounce of fat, athletic, smart. And because she had all that going for her she had just about every heterosexual male within twenty miles sniffing around wherever she went. And in case you couldn’t tell, I didn’t like her. But I think the feeling was mutual. Actually, I’m convinced that she didn’t like me first and that my not liking her was just a reaction to her not liking me. Yeah, that’s it! Are you buying any of this? I hope not, since I’m not even buying it. I don’t know why I didn’t like her. Possibly it was because I didn’t like myself and felt that nobody liked me.

I wasn’t one of the jocks—no! Not a jock!
Definitely
not a jock! Not by a very, very long stretch. I was about as useless at sports as they come. There was nothing wrong with me—don’t get me wrong. I had all the requisite limbs and everything worked, but I just didn’t seem to be very good at sports, the all-important admission card to the inner sanctuary of teenage male heterosexuality.

I was good at math. But that didn’t seem to count for squat. I couldn’t hit a baseball to save my life—and that counted big time with my classmates. I couldn’t dribble a basketball, I couldn’t catch a baseball, and I couldn’t climb a rope. They all made fun of my lack of athletic ability. I hated it. Whenever we played any kind of organized team sport, I was always without fail the last person picked—the one that neither team wanted. No, the one that both teams dreaded having, because they knew I was a weakness to be exploited by the other team. Teenagers could be such vicious assholes.

So, the cheerleader and I had little in common. No, correction—we had nothing in common. Well, actually, I take that back—we had something in common in that we both liked dick. The town I had grown up in was small—too freaking small. Everybody knew everybody and was probably related to half of the town—sometimes in ways you couldn’t discuss in polite company. So, popular cheerleader and I had known of one another for years. Well, at least I knew who she was. How could you not know the girl with the golden hair and the smile who was class president?

And in her wake came another girl I really didn’t know. Perfect cheerleader always had some girl or girls-in-waiting. I guess this one was the latest cheerleader-friend wannabe. I didn’t know, and I really didn’t care. It was 8:10 a.m., and there were still only three of us to unload a whole freaking tractor-trailer that was due to arrive at any minute. Oh, could this day get any better?

When the two girls got inside the school doors they made a big show of complaining about how cold the morning was. Really, they had had to walk twenty-five feet from where someone had dropped them off to the door of the building. Get over it! I had had to stand out there for twenty minutes freezing my nuts off! They didn’t even have nuts! If they had I might have been more interested. A lot more interested. But they didn’t so I wasn’t.

If I had thought it was difficult to talk to the class advisor, that had nothing on the next ten minutes. Perfect cheerleader sucked up to the class advisor like none I have ever seen, and he was lapping it up like you wouldn’t believe. I thought the old goat might have a coronary when she batted her eyelashes at him for about the twentieth time in two minutes. And her girlish little giggle and the light touches of her hand on his arm. Jesus! Don’t tell me she was doing the guy! My God! He was… he was… well, he was my dad’s age, and he was ancient!

At 8:20, after nearly losing my breakfast from watching the cheerleader nearly hump the old man’s leg, another person arrived. Oh, great. Bill Cromwell. Now, don’t get me wrong. Bill was drop-dead stunning gorgeous. The man could stop traffic with his good looks. He had it all—body by God, athletic ability, brains. I hated to think of it this way, but in some ways he was the male version of the cheerleader who was nauseating me at the moment.

I, of course, had never been allowed into the inner sanctum of heterosexual teenage male jocks, so all I had been able to do was look at the guy (discreetly, of course) from a distance. I didn’t know him at all. And I was sure he didn’t know me. Why would he? We’d only grown up together and been in classes together most of our lives.