"Children Of Sunset" BoyxBoy

Children Of Sunset 8

"GFD: Children Of Sunset 8"

Walking through town, I almost felt as though I was lost in a daze of some sorts. I just didn't feel like 'me' anymore, if that makes much sense. I felt like half of me was missing...and I found myself wandering around in the road, hoping to find it again and reattach it before the absence of Colby's presence swallowed me whole.

It don't seem right to think it...but I feel like I've fallen in love. Not like...that kind of playground feeling of being sweet on some gal and blushing whenever she walks by. It was more than that. This was more like...wanting to do things for him that I couldn't do for myself. This was like going beyond my rapid heartbeat and my desire to kiss his lips over and over again until I nearly fell ut from the overload of joy that it brought to me. This was different. Selfless. A feeling that didn't really mean two bits of nothin' if I couldn't share it with him, and make him understand that all I wanted was for him to feel it too.

I know he's another boy, just like me. And I know it ain't right for me to entertain thoughts like this. But it ain't like I can do much to help it. He's 'pretty' to me, you understand. My heart just knows it. My eyes don't lie. A part of me really wishes that he could be a girl so I wouldn't have any conflicts about thinking about him the way I do...but that's just not how things worked out. He's a boy. Loved by another boy. And if that's how the good Lord scheduled things to play out...then so be it. Because I can't quit on him. I just can't.

I doubt I'd ever be able to live with myself without at least going out there to tell Colby how I really feel. It makes me nervous, sure...but looking him over makes me feel good inside. I just...I want him to feel good inside about looking me over too.

I was heading home through the town square, trying to figure out how I was going to get my daddy distracted long enough to saddle up one of our horses after sunset and ride out to the outskirts of town to find Colby and warn him about what might be coming his way once that Gideon Priest fella and his outlaws go hunting for monsters out in his neck of the woods. It's best that Colby and his friends just move over to the side and stay out of their way. I don't want him and his friends to get hurt while he goes hunting for devils out that way. Best he steer clear of that kind of nonsense, that's for sure.

But as I was walking through town, I happened to notice a few older boys circling up around that kid that came along with Priest and his squad of cowboys when they came rolling into town. I can't imagine what he might have done to anybody, outside of simply looking and dressing different than the rest of us. I don't even think he knew how to talk like we talk. His language sounded a bit sideways, but I reckon it made more than enough sense to him and to anybody who understood him.

They kept fussing with him, pushing him around and calling him names while he simply tried to avoid the situation. He started to just walk away from them and keep his head down so as not to draw any more attention to himself. I suppose his father was busy inside with his crew of 'hunters' at the moment, and he looked like he just didn't want any trouble from the likes of a few bullies.

I recognized some of them older boys from the schoolhouse, and I can tell you that I didn't much like them neither. Not even smart enough to learn at the level as the rest of us. They were just there to cause problems and kick up dust, really. It didn't take much more than a few growth spurts for them to start feeling proud of themselves. Shoving the younger kids around like walking these roads was some sort of birthright. Had I been a little bit bigger and a bit tougher, I definitely would have hauled off and bloodied their noses myself. Bunch of jackasses.

As they pushed him backwards, the little boy worked up enough energy to say, "No trouble. No trouble!" I had never heard a 'China boy' talk straight English before. This was a first for me, and I stopped walking to see what would happen next. I was thinking that maybe I should step in and keep them other boys from picking on him they way they were. Way I see it, he wasn't bothering nobody. What was they pushing him around for? "NO TROUBLE!!!" He said again, and one of the older boys pushed him down on his back, right there in the dirt.