Rough Trade Pre-Release Peek #3

And here we are again, folks. Two and a half weeks until Rough Trade comes out. Ready for the next sneak peek? Take a look below and get a glimpse of Rook being characteristically mature and on top of things and Ghost being characteristically…well, Ghost.

***

Rook went from pink to red. His jaw clenched once and then relaxed. “Look. You don’t have to decide right now. But if you’ll trust me to—”

“Nope. I’m deciding right now. I’m deciding to live. I’m going to fucking Alaska. You can come with me if you want to, lover boy. Can you swim? You’d be good on one of those Deadliest Fishing Crabs shows. I’ll keep the locals warm in the night. We’ll have a little cabin together, and I’ll whittle in the evenings and you can read your judgy books and the young’uns will play by the fire. Eventually one day you’ll say something so naïve that the universe can’t take it and all existence will end in a galaxy-wide implosion.” He sighed lustily. “Sounds dreamboat.”

Rook was, predictably, unamused. “Are you through?”

“I suppose.”

“Think about it.”

“I’ll think about what to whittle first, yes, absolutely.”

Rook got up and went into the bathroom, shutting the door a little too hard behind him.

“Do you like bears or badgers more?” Ghost called, and then immediately winced and recentered the ice pack. You paid for everything fun sooner or later.

—Excerpt from Rough Trade, by Sidney Bell, copyright 2018