Evan

The Jackson Bend trilogy has quite a selection of secondary characters. One I haven't really discussed is Evan.

Read Hi, I'm Lance, Meeting No. 40 [Chapter 19] here.

When writing the chapter posted this week, I wanted it to play realistically, at least in my mind. Lance's fears I thought were authentic. Jakob would be one more person in the apartment. Even if staying in Lance's bedroom much of the time, there is an invasion of space to a certain degree. I could understand why Lance would feel the way he did.

I hope Evan's response came off truthful. Had I been in his shoes, when Lance was starting the conversation, I would have immediately jumped to the same conclusions.

Roommates can be tricky sometimes. People are different — whether it is cleaning habits, noise, invasion of privacy, etc. — and individuals are often placed in bad situations. We know Jakob has gone through this, although it has only been mentioned (so far).

Evan's role became necessary for the transition of Lance and Trent leaving their college lives and entering the "real world." His relevance to the storytelling remains a secondary character. Had he been gay, it might have been tempting to explore his world, but ... this is gay erotic fiction, after all. 

Before meeting the love of my life, I did have a small assortment of roommates. One was my brother, which worked well ... except. Keeping one's sexuality a secret to a rather homophobic relative does have its own challenges. Obviously, that has since been resolved. I was never out to any of my roommates. Once I accepted all that — and acted on it — it became time to decide I needed my own space. Before my partner moved to be with me, I enjoyed living on my own for a short time. While financially harder, it did have many advantages.

I'm sure readers out there have all sorts of horror stories from rooming situations.