Luke Lafontaine survived the past year by not thinking about the father he lost, the dairy farm he couldn’t save from bankruptcy, or his way of life that vanished with the rap of an auctioneer’s hammer. Cleaning up city folks’ trash at the Minnesota State Fair is just another dead-end job. But at the Fair, surrounded by a celebration of farm life, ambitions he’d given up on and buried deep start to revive. And seeing Mason Bell in the parade—gorgeous, gay, out-of-his-league Mason—stirs other buried dreams.Mason left his hometown for college in Minneapolis without looking back. Student life is fun, classes are great, gay guys are easy to find, but it’s all a bit superficial. He’s at the State Fair parade route with his band when he realizes a scruffy maintenance worker is Luke, his secret high school crush. Luke should be safely home working on his dad’s farm, not picking up litter. Mason wishes he hadn’t fallen out of touch. He’s an optimist, though, and it’s never too late for second chances. Now he just has to convince Luke.
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Cat gives this one 4 Meows with a 4 Purr heat index...
This is one of the States of Love lines. I love reading about the different states.
Luke lost his father and their farm due to high medical bills. he tried his best but things were just too far gone to make it with a small dairy farm so much in debt. When the auctioneers came he bailed into the city got a job as janitor, then working the State fair where he ran into his old tutor Mason.
Mason had had a crush on Luke but always thought he was straight. seeing him picking up trash at the State Fair surprised him but he was happy to see him and went after him to see if they cold pick up as friends.
Fair isn't life is a sweet, sexy second chance story about two young men that had secret crushes on each other in high school but went their seperate ways. They meet up and become friends again, and Mason hopes for more when he finds out Luke is gay.
I did like both characters a lot. Mason is out and proud and very out there. Luke seems to be a boy next door, farm boy but isn't hiding either, he just never had a chance to act on his desires with all going on in his life so your heart really goes out to him.
The story line is sweet and there is so much emotion and feels in this book.
If you like second chances, friends to lovers, new adults, sweet romance with lots of heat and lots of feels in a story you will like this one.
Excerpt...
MASON BELL hadn’t thought of himself as stupid until three microseconds after he said, “Hey, isn’t that Luke Lafontaine?” Because yeah, it definitely was, but in that flash of time, he realized that Luke was picking up trash along the State Fair sidewalk with a long-handled stick, and that he’d said those words to Arnie Green. Arnie was a great horn player, and a funny guy on the baseball field, but he’d also been one of Luke’s casual tormentors through their four years of high school.
Arnie leaned forward to look past him from where they sat on the curb. “It is! Luke the Puke. And look at his great summer job. State Fair garbage guy.” He raised his voice. “Hey! Luke!”
Luke hunched but didn’t turn their way, just picked up another cup that had missed the trash and deposited it in the barrel.
“Hey! Talking to you, Fountain,” Arnie called.
Mason grabbed his arm. “Forget him. We’re heading out soon.” He hoped. They were twenty-third in the parade, and the sun was melting his brain. Why he’d signed up for marching band in the furnace of a Minnesota August, he’d never know.
Because you love to show off for a big crowd with your bandmates. Don’t front.
Arnie shook him off and waved at the staging area. “The hell we are. Look at them all. Fifteen minutes, at least. Let’s say hi to our old friend.” He pushed up off the curb and turned toward Luke.
Shit, shit, shit. Mason scrambled to his feet too, clarinet in hand.
Arnie walked around Luke, forcing the guy to look at him. “Hey, Fountain, it’s been years. Whatcha doin’?”
“Working.” Luke’s answer was barely audible over the noise of performers warming up.
“Working? Picking up other people’s trash?”
Luke shrugged one big shoulder, his dangling ID badge sliding over the faded blue of his T-shirt. Mason suddenly had a flash memory of Luke’s eyes, that same gentle blue, staring into his. Damn it, Arnie. Calling Arnie off when he was on the hunt for fun wouldn’t work, but he might intercept. “Hey, Luke. Can you show me the nearest portapotty? I think I’m gonna puke.”
Luke darted a look at him. “Sure.”
“Lead the way?” He hurried away from Arnie, dodging a tall woman in heels and kid in a Twins hat, relieved when Luke followed him.
“Jeeze, Mason,” Arnie called after them. “Gonna let Fountain take you to the bathroom?”
Mason gave him a middle finger behind his back as he led the way deeper into the crowd. When they were screened from view, he paused and turned. Luke was right behind him and had to put a hand on his chest to keep from running into him. Mason felt the warmth of Luke’s palm through the polyester of his band uniform. “Sorry about Arnie. He hasn’t grown up since eighth grade.”
“It’s okay.” Luke lowered his hand. “Do you need the portapotty?”
“No. It was all I could think of, y’know?”
Luke shook his head, a frown creasing his forehead beneath the brim of his John Deere cap. He looked as uncertain as he had when Mason had tutored him in algebra. A tiny pang tugged inside Mason’s chest. That lost look had always made him feel protective, like Luke was some kind of little brother instead of a year older. “I’m sorry I pointed you out to Arnie.” What else to say? “It’s good to see you. How’ve you been?”
That got him another lopsided shrug and an “Okay.” But he’d tutored Luke in math for a whole year, and he recognized the okay that meant Luke was about to go under water.
Are you in college? He managed not to say that, even though it’d explain why Luke wasn’t an hour away, back home in Buffalo. Luke hadn’t been much of a student, and there’d never been money for college. His dad barely scraped by on their farm. Luke wore a lot of secondhand-looking clothes with holes that weren’t fashionably distressed by some sweatshop worker in China. “How’s the farm?”
Luke’s full lips pressed into a straight line as he glanced past Mason. They were blocking traffic on the sidewalk. People streamed around them, heading for the parade route. “Don’t you have to get back? To march?”
“Eventually, yeah. I’ve got time.”
“Well, I don’t. I’m on the clock.”
“Summer job?” Why? Summer should be the busy time on the farm. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know why Luke was here instead.
“Yep.” Luke moved off down the sidewalk, deftly snatching litter without tripping anyone up. Also without looking back. Mason followed him.
“Does it pay well?”
That got him a sideways glance. “What d’you think?”
“Okay, probably not.” He had to jog a couple of steps to keep up. He was short, and Luke looked like he’d kept growing past the towering six-foot-something that Mason remembered from graduation. “Some State Fair jobs do pay. I know guys who make a mint working the two weeks of Fair.”
“Good for them.” Luke closed his grabbers on a cup, hard enough to pop off the lid and spray bright blue Freezie-melt out the top.
A passing man did a quick jump to avoid soaked sneakers and grunted, “Shit! Watch what you’re doing.”
“Sorry, sir.” Luke transferred the cup to the nearby barrel, then deftly bagged the lid as well, and strode on.
“Come on, dude.” Mason grabbed at Luke’s arm. “Hold up a sec. I just want to talk.”
Luke turned. “About what?”
“How you’ve been. What’s new. It’s been two years.”
“Yep. And you’re still hanging out with Arnie.”
Ouch. “We’re in the band together. I don’t spend much time around him, normally.” That was true, although with rehearsing for the Fair, they’d somehow drifted closer together again. He’d felt strangely rootless this summer, and Arnie was a face from home. Though not a good one. “When classes start, I’ll see him for maybe three hours of rehearsal a week.”
“What kind of classes? Math?”
“Psychology. College math isn’t my thing.”
“You did great in math.”
“For high school, sure.” He’d managed a 790 on the SAT, and he was proud of that. Didn’t make him a math geek, though. “I don’t love it. Now psych? That shit’s interesting.”
“Like what?”
He groped for something Luke might appreciate. “Like taste-aversion learning. Rats have it. They can’t barf anything up, so if a rat eats something poisonous, they’re gonna die. So if something they eat makes them even a little sick, they’ll never, ever eat that again. One trial, and they hate it for life. Keeps ’em safe.”
Luke nodded slowly. “Good thing people aren’t like that. Beer sellers would go out of business.”
“Fuck, yeah.” He grinned.
Luke pulled off his cap and wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist. “Hot one today. You should drink lots, when you’re marching. Don’t keel over.” He put the cap back on, tugged it down, and hefted his stick.
“Wait!”
“What? You’ll be up soon. You should get back to Arnie.” That might’ve been disinterest, except for the hint of emotion that sharpened Arnie’s name.
“I’d rather hang out with you.”
“The band might miss your flute.” Luke waved at his clarinet.
“It’s not”—they both said together—“a flute.” For a second, Mason was transported back to eleventh grade and a school hallway. Our stupid routine. Luke repeating, “Well, what is it, then?” and me inventing things like “music-teacher torture device” and “blowpipe.” Behind them, a new band launched into their first number. Mason blinked. “I guess I should get back. Hey, can I call you sometime? Catch up?”
The light dimmed in Luke’s blue eyes, like shutters closing. “Not much to tell. Good luck with school. No heatstroke, now, y’hear?” This time when he strode off, there was no way Mason would keep up short of running. And how stupid would he look, running after a guy who clearly didn’t want to see him again? He watched Luke vanish into the crowd, his green cap bobbing above other heads for a while, and then gone.
He made his way back to where the band was waiting. They were on their feet, rolling out their shoulders, adjusting instruments, and tugging hats straighter on sweaty foreheads. Arnie hurried up and shoved Mason’s hat at him. “You almost missed it. Are you really sick?”
He tightened the binder on his ponytail, then crammed the hat on his head. “Nah. Just the heat, y’know.”
“Yep. Whose idea was it to do this in full uniform?”
“That would’ve been Dr. Tristan’s. You want to complain to him?”
Arnie shuddered. “Nope. I prefer heatstroke.” He led the way to where they were forming up. “We need some band groupies. Like, that high school band that went off had a dozen moms running alongside spritzing them with water. I want pretty girls in shorts with water pistols.”
“Or pretty boys,” Mason agreed.
“You are so gay.”
“Well, duh.” He usually dialed it back around Arnie, but it wasn’t as if he hadn’t come out years ago. Arnie knew he was fucking gay. Or currently nonfucking gay. “Maybe leather guys, with naked chests and—”
Arnie elbowed him harder than usual. “Shut your trap. The doc’s about to give us our orders.”
Mason listened with half his attention to Dr. Tristan’s clear voice. They’d practiced for so long, he could practically quote the pep talk. So he stood in the brilliant August sunshine with sweat trickling down his back and wondered if Luke might turn back to watch them go. Wondered why Luke hadn’t said one word more than necessary about his last two years or the farm. Wondered if the big guy was so desperate for money that picking trash sounded good. Wondered—a toot into his ear from Arnie’s horn woke him to the fact that they were poised and ready. He raised his clarinet, hoping his reed was holding up in the heat. Then he had no room in his head for anything but the doc’s tricky arrangements and following his field commander.
Kaje Harper’s first name may look exotic, but it’s pronounced just like “cage.” If she’s lost to the world reading a good book, you may have to say it a few times to get her attention. Her lifetime love affair with stories led to writing for fun at an early age, and after thirty-five years of solo scribbling, her husband convinced her it was time to try publishing. Since 2011 she has released over thirty M/M stories, including an Amazon best-selling contemporary romance and Rainbow Award novels in mystery, fantasy, and more.
Kaje loves telling stories of real, imperfect men finding love together amid all the challenges of life, but she’s also passionate about the value of Young Adult LGBTQ books for today’s teens. If she’s not reading or writing, you’ll find her moderating the Goodreads YA LGBT Books group, trying to connect readers of all ages with books that speak to them.
You can also find Kaje on Facebook (www.facebook.com/KajeHarper) or her website (kajeharper.wordpress.com) where she may be recommending her favorite M/M books, sharing stories about LGBTQ rights and information, or perhaps showing off pictures of her absurdly sweet little white dog.
great excerpt
ReplyDeleteThanks for the excerpt.
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