In a perfect moment of cold November sunshine, pudgy accountant Kit Allen realizes Jesse, his new office assistant, is everything he's ever dreamed about in a man. Feeling supremely unworthy and desperate to get a life—even an imaginary one—Kit embarks on a self-improvement campaign featuring DVD fitness guru, Danny Fit.
In the meantime, Jesse has begun a subtle campaign of his own, one designed to bring Kit out of his DVD dream world and into Jesse's arms. Jesse isn't perfect—he's no Danny Fit—but he hopes that the kind, funny man who has been looking at him so soulfully since his first day at work has what it takes to be everything Jesse has always wanted.
How can you not fall in love with Kit? He is like so many of us in his "averageness" or at least in his mind, and yes I know averageness is not a real word but if you can't create a word when describing Amy Lane's writing then I don't know when you can create new words. And like so many of us, Kit's fascination with Danny Fit keeps him from seeing what is right in front of him, even though Jesse's attempts at friendship and inclusion is what jump started Kit's desire to improve himself. A great tale any time of the year but throw in the holiday setting and it's an amazing read that you don't want to miss.
RATING:
KIT ALLEN moved out of his mother’s house one week after he started his new workout regimen, two months after he got his new personal assistant at work, and six weeks before Christmas. He was thirty years old, and these events had more in common than first meets the eye—all except the Christmas.
Jesse, his new assistant, was a beautiful man, with hair the color of dark honey and sloe brown eyes. He keyboarded like the wind, understood the internet like a prodigy, ran interference when Kit was getting work done, and prodded him to get up out of his seat and move around when he’d done too much work and had to force himself to remember to breathe. He was constantly trying to anticipate Kit’s needs, and since Kit didn’t seem to need much, he was constantly trying to bring Kit things—coffee, water, a funny YouTube.com video he’d never seen—that Kit hadn’t known he needed but apparently couldn’t live without.
Something about Jesse made Kit supremely aware of the fact that he was forty pounds heavy and had never gotten laid.
It wasn’t that Jesse tried to make Kit feel uncomfortable. In fact, just the opposite. Jesse went out of his way to be friendly, and since Kit had always been a shy, awkward sort of boy and then a reserved, awkward sort of man, overtures of friendship were foreign to him.
“Would you like me to get you coffee, Mr. Allen?”
“Uhm….” And suddenly another cup of coffee sounded both wonderful and frightening.
“How about some water? Water’s good for you, you know.”
“Uhm….” It was the first time in his life he’d ever felt that something good for him would actually seem good for him.
Jesse would offer to eat lunch with him when he worked at his desk, and Kit would freeze, absolutely stunned. Should he make conversation? Should he work on the tables and figures he’d stayed in his office to finish in the first place? Holy crap! How was he supposed to behave when Jesse sat and chatted to him about television and movies and….
Wait a minute.
“Yeah,” Kit said in bemusement, “I thought David Tennant was the best Doctor Who. How could you not? But I think Matt Smith has a lot of potential—he’s got this wise thing about him that makes him seem a little older, you know?”
Jesse’s face lit up, and he looked a little surprised as well. “Absolutely—and I think Amelia Pond is adorable. Donna Tate seemed like a lot of fun too—probably less likely to try to get into my pants, which would be more comfortable. So tell me, do you like Torchwood too?”
As it turned out, both of them shared a deep and abiding love of science fiction television, starting with Doctor Who and moving on to Torchwood, Being Human, Firefly, Dollhouse, Stargate (SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe!), Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, Warehouse 13, Eureka, and even that most holy of holies, Star Trek, all five incarnations, including the only spin-off not to make it seven seasons, Enterprise.
After that first week, lunch became less and less about doing work at his desk and more and more about talking about sci-fi with Jesse.
It was at the end of the second month that Kit saw Jesse with some of the other men from his building, playing basketball in the yard across the street from their accounting firm in the slanting November sun. He’d waved, and Jesse had waved back, but after a couple of months of working together—and eating lunch and yearning, at least on Kit’s part—Kit was not quite sure if he was comfortable enough to go up and say anything.
Amy Lane has two kids who are mostly grown, two kids who aren't, three cats, and two Chi-who-whats at large. She lives in a crumbling crapmansion with half of the children and a bemused spouse. She also has too damned much yarn, a penchant for action adventure movies, and a need to know that somewhere in all the pain is a story of Wuv, Twu Wuv, which she continues to believe in to this day! She writes fantasy, urban fantasy, and gay romance--and if you accidentally make eye contact, she'll bore you to tears with why those three genres go together. She'll also tell you that sacrifices, large and small, are worth the urge to write.
