Read Clay's Way for Free Online Page B

on it.  “Come on.”
                    He follows me out the back door, toward the neighbor’s tool shed.
                    I leave a trail of pheromones behind me.  I hope they’re influencing him, secretly influencing him to kiss me in the shed.  I check the neighbor’s driveway   to see if they’re home.    One car with its trunk open.  I can’t tell him we can’t go back there just because I’m afraid they’ll catch us.  He’ll think I’m a wimp with no sense of adventure.  He surfs 15-foot waves. 
                    We sneak up to the door.  The dog behind my house sees us and starts barking, shoving its nose under the fence.  I open the plywood door and jump in.
                    Clay crouches down, sneaks in behind me, and closes the door. 
                    The shed still feels like desperate sexuality. I move the tools around on the workbench to lighten the vibe a little.  I hide a wrench that I came on the other day below some sandpaper.
                    He hands me a saw.  “This is perfect,” he whispers.  I think he’s impressed that I can get my hands on all these tools.  It’s totally masculine.
                    Clay rests his arm on the wooden workbench.  “OK, cut away, little   brah.”
                    I grab his upper arm, over his tattoo, to steady it for cutting, and hold the blade over his cast.  My boner pokes at the workbench.  It’s beginning to hurt.  If it touches him, even by accident, through two layers of fabric--my shorts and his--I think I’ll come.  Sweat drips down my armpit and down the side of my torso.  The blade looks dangerous against his cast.
                    He grasps the back of my neck with his free hand.  His palm feels like it’s burning through my skin, revealing the innermost parts of me.  “It’s OK, dude.  You won’t hurt me.  I’m invincible.”  He winks and makes a sort of super-hero smile and cocks his head.
                    I saw back and forth, quickly.  The blade gets close to his skin, where the plaster stops and cotton bandages start.
                    “Ah!    Stop!”  He yanks his arm up and it breaks the bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling.  The shed goes dim and slivers of glass rain down on us. The vibe is romantic and moody, with just a little spurt of yellow filtering through the canvas covering the small window. 
    “Sorry.  Did I cut you?”  My words sound too intimate in the darkness, like couples in movies lying in bed together late at night after sex, next to a crackling fire in the fireplace, so I add, “dude.”
                    “No, but you looked insane, little man.  I didn’t think you were   gonna   stop.”
                    “I wouldn’t hurt you.”    Oh, God. That was so obvious.   I open the shed door and light pours in. Clay pulls and rips through the rest of the layers of his cast and throws it into the trashcan, which I have to remember to get out later.  He rubs his white, newly exposed skin over his mouth and nose.  “Fuck, it smells like a moldy dog.”
                    It smells strong and   rank, but kind of turns me on.  It’s a strong variation of what he smells like, like what would happen if he didn’t take a bath for months.  I inhale as much as I can.  The molecules that carry the scent are part of him.  I’ll never be the same.  This base-level information will take my brain weeks to analyze.  “Don’t you   wanna   keep it?”
                    “Nah.”
                    I look down at the cast and examine the pen-and-ink drawings of sharks and Hawaiian   tikis.  “Those drawings are cool.”
                    “My friend drew those.  I’ve got lots of his work.”
                    I’m