The
Glass House: Blurb
At seventeen, Sasha is a little lost and a lot lonely. He craves friendship and love, but although he’s outwardly confident, his self-destructive tendencies cause problems, and he pushes people away. Making sculptures out of the broken glass he collects is the only thing that brings him any peace, but it's not enough, and every day he feels himself dying a little more inside. Until he meets Thomas.
Thomas is shy but sure of himself in a way Sasha can't understand. He makes it his mission to prove to Sasha that he is worthy of love and doesn't give up even when Sasha hurts him. Little by little Sasha begins to trust Thomas. And when Sasha is forced to confront his past, he realizes accepting the love Thomas gives him is the only way to push back the darkness.
At seventeen, Sasha is a little lost and a lot lonely. He craves friendship and love, but although he’s outwardly confident, his self-destructive tendencies cause problems, and he pushes people away. Making sculptures out of the broken glass he collects is the only thing that brings him any peace, but it's not enough, and every day he feels himself dying a little more inside. Until he meets Thomas.
Thomas is shy but sure of himself in a way Sasha can't understand. He makes it his mission to prove to Sasha that he is worthy of love and doesn't give up even when Sasha hurts him. Little by little Sasha begins to trust Thomas. And when Sasha is forced to confront his past, he realizes accepting the love Thomas gives him is the only way to push back the darkness.
The Glass House: Excerpt
I stroked my hand across the dip in his mattress. It was a small crater, a valley for a body to lie in. It was my connection to him when we spoke on the phone.
Thomas watched, his expression curious.
“My mattress dips like this in the middle,” I murmured. “Sometimes I think of you lying here.”
“I think of you when I’m lying there,” he admitted softly with a rueful smile.
I didn’t know what to say. We kept looking at one another, but neither one of us could hold the eye contact for more than a few seconds. It felt as though we were standing on a tightrope, the both of us trying to stay upright, to achieve the delicate balance required.
“Have you ever… been with anyone…? I don’t mean—” Thomas tripped awkwardly over the words and closed his eyes.
I knew what he didn’t mean.
“No… for a long time I thought I might’ve become asexual or something, but now I’m pretty sure I’m not….” Mostly because I want you so fucking badly, I tried to imply as our eyes locked for a second. It’s possible I just never really felt close enough, safe enough, with anyone before now. Liking people from afar was so much easier. My foot juddered up and down of its own accord. I wondered if Thomas found it annoying.
“It’s understandable, though,” Thomas replied quietly. “Do you… masturbate much?” He blushed hard as he spoke, but I liked that he said it anyway even if it made him uncomfortable. I guess he just wanted to know if I was still interested in sex after what had happened.
“No. Sometimes I do, but….” Now it was my turn to feel embarrassed. “I find it hard to come.”
Weirdly I felt myself smiling just at the exquisite awkwardness of our conversation. We were barely looking at one another at all now. When I lifted my head, I saw Thomas was smiling a little too as he looked at his hands.
“What turns you on?” he whispered, as if he were asking me for a thousand precious secrets. And perhaps he was.
“I don’t know… when I jerk off sometimes I look at….” I didn’t know how to describe it.
“Porn?”
I shook my head. “Pictures. They’ve got to be sort of artful and, I don’t know, posed in a certain way—like their expressions have to be sort of faraway… like they could be statues or something.” I was sure Thomas would find it weird.
“Nonthreatening.”
“What?”
“Because of… of what happened, maybe you need them to look nonsexual or something.”
I stared at him. He blinked his large brown eyes and sucked on his full bottom lip as he looked back at me a little apprehensively.
It was a pretty accurate approximation.
“Sometimes I have this fantasy… but I can tell you’re just going to psychology the hell out of it too.” I grinned wryly at him to show him I was teasing. I wasn’t upset. In fact it felt kind of freeing to talk about this stuff all of a sudden. I’d never imagined I would ever tell anyone any of it. And here we were, trusting one another to talk about our desires.
“I won’t. I promise.”
God, he looked so earnest and sincere. It hit me then how much Thomas wanted me. It was like being whacked in the stomach with a thick plank of wood. He wanted me and I wanted him. The atmosphere was no longer swimming with our cautious uncertainty. At some point we had both realized the other was all
the way onboard here. And I didn’t have a fucking clue what to do about it.
“It’s a kind of obvious fantasy…,” I began. I felt a little light-headed.
Thomas waited, watching me closely, his eyes half-hooded and his pupils dilated, eyelashes touching his cheeks as he blinked.
“I’m always fully clothed, and the other person is…. They will…. I say what I want them to do, and they do it.”
“You’re in control.”
“Yeah, completely…, I mean, it’s just a fantasy. I know it’s not normal or anything….” I trailed off.
“We could… try it…,” Thomas said tentatively in a whispery voice.
“What?”
“We could…. I mean, if you want to tell me what you like, I would…. I don’t mind… as long as it didn’t go too far or anything…. I think I’ve heard that people use safe words and stuff so the other person knows when to stop.”
My eyes grew wide.
“I don’t want to tie you up or anything. All that usually happens is they get naked, and I wank them off….” My voice faded.
“I’m good with that.” He smiled hesitantly.
Fuck, I thought weakly.
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