The California Dashwoods by Lisa Henry

Author:Lisa Henry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, gay, contemporary
Publisher: Lisa Henry

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Marianne and Jack’s whirlwind romance was fast and intense, and it ripped the air from her lungs. When Elliott got home from the restaurant on Sunday night, Marianne was sitting on the top step waiting for him, wrapped in a comforter and smoking a joint.

“He’s gone,” she said. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying. “He’s gone back to New York.”

Elliott sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulders.

“I mean, he’ll be back,” Marianne said with a shaky laugh. “Of course he will! But I already miss him.”

He’ll be back.

She said it a few times over the next few days. She lived and died by the pinging text message notifications on her phone, each one buoying her up again and rebuilding her shaken happiness.

He’ll be back.

He’s busy.

He loves me.

Abby was in total agreement. “Oh, Mar. The way Jack looks at you, of course he’s in love with you. A blind man could see it.”

Greta looked worriedly at Elliott whenever Marianne or Abby talked about it, as though she was waiting for him to say something to contradict them. Elliott didn’t. Whatever was going on with Jack, it hadn’t been an act with Marianne. Elliott hoped he was a good enough judge of character to be sure of that.

But love wasn’t all-encompassing, was it? There was love, but there was also work, or school, or day-to-day life. The bubble had to burst sooner or later. Didn’t it? Henry and Abby and their great romance were the exception to the rule, Elliott had always thought. And, even then behind all the grand gestures, they’d had something smaller, quieter, but also stronger. And that small, quiet thing, that certain bond between them, that was what Elliott thought of when he thought of love. Not sailboats or serenades, not poems or presents. Just two people who looked at one another and thought, Yes.

He hoped, now that Marianne and Jack’s bubble had burst, that the yes still somehow remained.

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