Between County Lines: Chapter 1
Chapter 1 - The Man Off Myspace - The man who showed me what possibility felt like in the dark.
I was 17 when the first door cracked open.
Eighteen in a rural North Carolina town where everyone knew everyone’s people, where gossip traveled faster than pickup trucks, and where any hint of queerness stuck like humidity. You learned early how to hide a stare, how to make interest look accidental.
Myspace, Adam4Adam, and BlackGayChat were the only ways to find men—half lifeline, half danger. My profile looked harmless, but my searches weren’t. Most nights I talked to men two counties away, too far to risk being seen.
Then I found him.
Twenty-one. Close enough to drive. A blurry mirror selfie in a trailer bathroom with a shower curtain printed in palm trees. Everything about him hinted a little rougher, a little older, a little more dangerous than any boy I’d grown up around. We talked online for weeks…coded messages, careful words, both of us acting like we weren’t circling something we already knew we wanted.
He asked if I was “clean”. If I could host. I couldn’t. Mama was home. Her boyfriend stayed on the recliner until he fell asleep with the TV too loud. Half my cousins lived within a mile radius. Hosting wasn’t an option for anyone in that town, not unless you were reckless or stupid.
So he offered to come pick me up.
I remember slipping downstairs that night. The house was dark except for the TV glow on Mama’s boyfriend’s face. I held my shoes in one hand, easing the side door shut behind me. The August air was thick enough to drink, frogs screaming so loud they almost covered the sound of my heartbeat.
His car sat at the end of the driveway, engine off, lights dimmed. When I opened the passenger door, the warm air smelled like cologne and weed. He didn’t say hi. Just looked me over—slow, steady, like he was taking inventory.
“You nervous?” he asked.
“No,” I said, even though it felt like my pulse was going to crack my ribs.
He laughed under his breath, the kind of laugh that said he knew better.
We drove toward the county line, where the roads stretched long between soybean fields and half-lit churches. The windows were cracked, the night air rushing in, and for the first time in my life I felt the pull of something that wasn’t shame…something closer to hunger.
He parked behind an abandoned farm supply store, out of sight from the highway. The building was nothing but rusted siding and peeling paint, but in that moment it felt like the safest place in the world. No neighbors. No headlights. No way for rumors to grow legs.
He leaned back in his seat, legs spread, watching me like he was waiting to see if I’d hesitate.
“Come here,” he said.
My body moved before my mind caught up. I climbed across the console, straddling his thigh. His hands settled on my waist—big, warm, confident—holding me in place while his eyes traveled over my face like he was deciding what to do with me.
“You ever done this before?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Good,” he said, his voice dropping low. “I like being the first.”
Then he kissed me—hard, hungry, messy in the way you only kiss someone when you’ve been thinking about it for weeks. His tongue pushed into my mouth, claiming space I didn’t even know I had. I gasped, and he grabbed the back of my neck, deepening it until I melted into him completely.
His hands moved under my shirt. Rough and calloused palms. He touched like someone older, someone who knew exactly what they wanted and exactly how to take it. When he slid his hand down my waistband, my whole body jerked, breath catching in my throat.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “Let me.”
I let him.
He shifted me gently, guiding me down between his legs, the console digging into my ribs as I slid lower. He didn’t force anything, just held my jaw, steady, patient, letting me take him into my mouth at my own pace. He tasted warm, faintly sweet, the kind of taste that stays with you long after. I was clumsy, unsure, but he kept one hand in my hair and the other on my shoulder, grounding me. Each time I tried again, he breathed out slow, showing me I was doing it right. The windows fogged harder, the air thick with heat and nerves, and for the first time in my life I felt wanted, chosen, guided instead of guessing in the dark.
Every step was new, electric, terrifying. The windows fogged. The car rocked. The night swallowed every sound we made except the ones too sharp to hide.
He didn’t fuck me that first night. He wanted to—but I wasn’t ready, and he didn’t push. Instead, he touched me slow and deep, kissed me until my lips hurt, guided my hand over him, whispered things I’d never heard from another man.
“You feel good.”
“I knew you’d be sweet.”
“Bet you’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”
When he came, he caught his breath against my neck, hand squeezing my hip like he was claiming it.
Afterward, we sat there in the dark, windows open, my head on his shoulder, the night alive around us. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to go back home, back to the silence of pretending.
He brushed his thumb along my jaw.
“You’re trouble,” he murmured. “But the good kind.”
I smiled, because no one had ever said that to me before.
When he dropped me off, he told me to wait until he drove away before going inside. “Town’s too small,” he said. “Someone’ll talk.”
He wasn’t wrong.
As the taillights disappeared down the road, I stood in the quiet Carolina dark, heart still pounding, body still buzzing from everything he’d done to me and everything he’d awakened. The crickets were screaming, the air thick with summer, and for the first time I felt the shape of a secret I wouldn’t be able to unlearn.
It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even romance. It was possibility…raw, unsteady, thrilling. A door cracked open in a town where most doors stayed locked tight.
I didn’t know where it would lead. I just knew I wanted more.