Despite the sometimes excessively macho exterior, the bike and helmet and rippling six pack, the fact that he was one of the most sought after (and inaccessible) guys in the school if only on looks alone, Pogue was actually a hopeless romantic at heart ( Read more... )

It was a thing he'd done with at least a few girls before, but none of his boyfriends had ever been the type to do anything but give him funny looks. Nonetheless, on Valentine's Day, every class Caleb went to found some bemused student handing him one carefully de-thorned red rose ( Read more... )

Pogue walked without a jacket, with his hands in his pockets and his hair falling thick and darkened over his face. He had to go back to school. Caleb had to go back to school, too, was in the Provost's office now talking about early admissions and making up lost work and he just hoped his friend could handle it. Right now he wasn't sure he could ( Read more... )

Pogue made it to school. Caleb didn't. That made... he didn't know what number he was up to on the list of unprecedented events from his best friend, but it wasn't a good number. The drinking. The flinching. The blowing off school. The roof. The fight with Aaron. The things he'd said ( Read more... )

Pogue was mellowing out on the porch to Enya, something he rarely admitted to doing even when all the boys knew about it. Hadn't been expecting anyone; everyone was off at classes except Tyler, who was at the garage getting his monster of a truck looked at. Pogue had dropped him off earlier, or he wouldn't even have been at the townhouse. Right now ( Read more... )

Pogue had first figured it out when he was just starting his teens, and just starting to figure out what girls were for. He was still figuring out what to do about that when he realized that boys could be for the same thing, and boys were so much easier to understand.

( Cut for adult matter and a couple naughty words )

One of the advantages of having more space in the house than three people could reasonably use, Pogue decided, was being able to get away from everyone else when he needed to. Christmas holidays were fun and all, but, God. If anyone else had any more family drama they had better get it out and get it over with or he was going to go apeshit ( Read more... )

It was at the funeral, standing around with his hands in his pockets and a leather jacket he'd have to grow into covering his bony wrists, that he first realized it. The funeral wasn't even real and Caleb was standing there looking stunned. As though he was the one who had 'died' and not his father ( Read more... )

Pogue went home to get dressed for Homecoming, partly because it was easier, but mostly because he'd forgotten to bring his tux on campus. Besides, maybe his Mom could come to his defense if Kate started glaring again for springing Homecoming on her at the last minute ( Read more... )

He was over at Caleb's house and sprawled out on the couch watching TV when it hit again. Some odd memory, vivid with the recentness of it, of his father's face when he'd said that Caleb wasn't the only one who'd lost someone ( Read more... )