Page 1 of Boyfriend on Parole: The Care of Broken Things Extended Epilogue

Chapter One

Broken Plumbing

There were only about ten minutes before the prison’s lights out before Samuel finally got around to opening the day’s letters. He blamed Roach for the trouble. The man had gone and shit himself out in the hall, and they’d closed off the wall with all the phone booths for hours. He hadn’t known it would be hours though, and so he had waited, and waited, staying in the library to work on illustrations for Mr. Quack’s Asthma Attack under the assumption that any minute now he’d get the okay to go and make his daily goodnight call. In the end, he’d had only about thirty seconds for his call, getting only Hailey before he was forced to hang up because of what seemed like every inmate in the prison at his back waiting to make a call. The old Ice Queen would have snarled at anyone who dared to interrupt him, but when he considered he had a beautiful sister, a best friend, and two adoring boyfriends waiting for him on the other side, it seemed obnoxious to be a brat about it. He was the luckiest idiot ever to wear an orange jumpsuit, and the letter proved that. He didn’t get far into it though. The first line jumped out at him with:

Go to the closet. I’m going to suck your cock.

He slapped the letter down, clamping it there in his lap, heart racing, as he jerked his eyes over the dorm to check who might have seen. He needn’t have bothered. With only a few minutes before lights out, all his fellow prisoners who rushing about getting ready for bed—something he ought to have been doing himself, but pajamas were the last thing on his mind. He had to remind himself to breathe, blood still roaring in his ears as he dared to peek at the letter again.

I just got done giving a similar treatment to your husband, and since I can’t draw the way you can, you’re going to have to settle for words—imprecise ones at that since your prude of a husband couldn’t even manage a proper description of what your cock looks like. Honestly, five months of showers together and he can’t even point you out on a color wheel. Pink, he tells me, as if that narrows it down. Amateur. But you’ll draw me a picture of your cock, darling, won’t you? A picture and some measurements, please. Length and circumference would work. Make sure to get numbers for both the base and the head. I was thinking of getting us matching—

“You’re breathing weird,” said his bunkmate. Th sudden intrusion elicited a sharp clang! as his surprise had Samuel whacking his hand against the bed frame.

“Christ, Rat!”

“Christ yourself. Why’s your face so red? Either they finally have the flaming hot Cheetos back in commissary, or you’ve got a nice secret there.”

He jerked his blanket over the letter. “None of your business!”

Rat snorted. “You know they’re not supposed to send porn, right? You could lose your letter privileges.”

“They don’t read my letters.”

“They have to read them. It just means Cruces is showing favoritism as always. You know, if she’s any nicer, she’ll have to adopt you. You’ll finally have a mom.”

He was dying to get back to the letter but didn’t quite have the gumption to read his porn with an audience. It made him both irritated and cripplingly shy. “I already have a mom.”

“Is she hot?”

“You want to fight Jethro for her?”

“Not if he’s as prickly as you. Besides, I have Maria. Did I ever tell you—”

“Only a trillion times.”

“I remember it like yesterday. She was wearing—”

“Rat!”

He laughed. “The Doc would have listened.”

“Yeah, well, he’s not here.”

“I heard about the phone hold-up. Did you get to speak to him?”

“No.”

“Ah. Tomorrow, yeah?”

So far as he knew, Rat’s own family rarely called, but the man showed no animosity, reaching up to pat at his leg. “Good job getting through the day, bud.”

That had him feeling embarrassed about being prickly, but not so much that he wasn’t dying to get back to his letter. Rat knew that though and left him alone. “Tell him hi from me when you have the chance,” he said as he climbed back down to his bunk. “I miss that guy.”

They all missed him. There was an unspoken rule that no one could claim Eli’s old bunk, so it sat unused mostly, except for the nights he slept in it, the only one allowed to break the rule.

He pulled the blanket down and lifted the letter back up to his eyes. The moment he did, the lights were shut off—the universe’s great cosmic joke. He sighed.

“Hey, Rat.”