The Rainbow Room-could the name be any more gay?-felt like a neighborhood type of bar, a place where a guy could have a conversation without screaming over loud dance music. And now that he was here, he wondered why he’d waited so long. Now, months later, he’d finally worked up the courage to hit happy hour. Jonah thought it would be easier to bare all to a stranger, but now that he’d found the right bar, he couldn’t force himself to show his true colors, even in a place that was user friendly. He’d known coming out wouldn’t be easy, but he never imagined it would be this hard. The first time Jonah saw the rainbow flag flying out front, he’d taken off like a scared rabbit. On one of his forays around campus, he’d spotted the one and only gay watering hole.

Jonah looked around-discreetly of course-for a gay bar, a place where a guy could go by himself and not feel left out. A bar seemed the best option, but Jonah didn’t have one ounce of gaydar in his body, and unfortunately for him, gay guys did not go around wearing sexual ID tags. Being a little shy and short on friends didn’t help. Making the decision had been easy finding the man, not so much.

He blamed it on his studies, but in reality he didn’t know how to break out of his shell to meet a like-minded goy. Jonah had planned to celebrate his first Christmas, and his freshman year at Penn State, by losing his virginity to the perfect man, but he had yet to act on his decision. Too bad more than the width of the room separated them. Yes, he was exactly the type of man Jonah could see himself with.

Jonah shifted to the left, inching his image closer to the blond’s. The blond appeared tall, and he had a square chin bisected with a noticeable cleft.

The object of his desire had the sun-kissed good looks of a surfer dude-blond, blue-eyed, and cherub-cheeked-a nice contrast to Jonah’s halo of untamable dark-brown hair, hazel eyes, and stubbled jaw. The phrase objects in the mirror are closer than they appear came to mind, making him smile. T HE MAN ’ S image in the mirror, framed by small twinkling lights and swags of spruce and holly, appeared to be just the sort of ornament Jonah Stern had been looking for all his life-or at least the part of his life that spanned the years since puberty.

Bashert by Gale Stanley