Seeing young, twenty-something white men dressed in army fatigues and carrying a duffle bag isn’t a rarity of itself, but there’s something about this one that stands out. Not only is he broad in the shoulders with thighs that fill out those camo trousers perfectly, but he has the gentlest eyes of anyone Huan has ever seen.
He’s in love.
Never shy about making the first move, Huan walks right up to him on the bus and says, “Is this seat taken?” He tries to be flirty with it, but on a scale of one to ten, where one is predatory and ten is Elvis’ hips, he reckons he lands somewhere along three. Which is slightly weird and concerning but not giving off bad vibes. Then again, it’s not as if he’s very threatening to look at with his soft frame, slight pudge, and mismatched eyes.
His beautiful soldier looks up at him with his own mesmerizing eyes, and they hold the soul of a man just looking to be swept off his feet. He shakes his head one single time. Huan sits, smiling perhaps a tad too brightly. “I’m Huan,” he offers, even though you don’t usually offer your name to strangers on the bus.
The soldier turns his head to look at him again and Huan wants to guide him down to lay in his lap, run his fingers over that buzz cut and feel it prickle on his palm. Then with a solemn tone in a voice as soft and dark as his eyes he utters his name, “Arthur.”
Atlin Merrick: In Full Uniform begins as it means to go on: with giddy affection, affectation, and the effect four different men in uniform have on others. In our sneak peek at Letters from Fallujah, above, Huan is a hopeless romantic, Arthur's a soldier shipping out to Iraq and something amazing sparks when their paths cross…
But wait, in this lovely novella there are three more stories!
Being a British police officer is all Eli's ever known in Copper Top, then Eli meets Gloria Hole, a drag queen who's an expert at turning heads and causing trouble…
And while there's not much night life in Ezra’s quaint hometown, in How to Grab His Attention: A Guide to Getting Your Man, Ezra learns there is the prim bookstore owner Vincent, who Ezra's determined to woo with book titles…
Finally, in Digging Holes and Ditches, it's 1976 and Dov indulges once a year behind a gay bar across town. Then Detective Charles Blasted Coleman catches him in the act and everything Dov knew to be true is turned on its head…
For four men and the men in uniform with whom they fall in love, what may seem the end of everything, turns out to be the best of beginnings.
Finding romance, learning to live with disability, discovering what you fear is in fact the very thing that will save you…each story in In Full Uniform starts as they mean to go on: with love.
