bittersweet - Stories

Benny's parents are sending him to spend the summer with his great-aunt, because they can't afford to pay someone to watch him while they work. Benny is resistant, because he knows it means that he won't be with his friends over summer vacation, but his parents have no choice. The thing is, it doesn't turn out as bad as he fears.

In 2001, at a Catholic boarding school defined by strict rules and quiet expectations, Tommy Harrington expects nothing more than to blend into the background. Everything changes when he meets Brian McFadden, a charismatic, fearless boy who pulls him into a friendship unlike anything he has ever known. As the years pass, their bond deepens through shared secrets, quiet moments, and unspoken feelings. In a world where some truths are too dangerous to name, Tommy and Brian must navigate the fragile space between friendship, love, and everything left unsaid.

When your voice is too loud even to your own ears, then write the words down so they won't hurt that much.

So I realized writing helps more than talking, although I have no talent, I still want to call these poems.

Julian Aldrich has never had reason to doubt the world built for him. At twenty-one, heir to a gilded American dynasty, he sees his life as most people see a painting: beautiful, composed, complete. His father Victor is the architect of that world. His mother Catherine is its atmosphere. And Mark, his best friend, is the person Julian loves most.

During a family trip, the careful geometry of these relationships begins to warp. What Julian slowly uncovers will collapse every structure he has built his identity upon: family, loyalty, desire, and the dangerous assumption that the people we love are who we believe them to be.

Yorkshire, 1901. A baronet's younger son learns the duties of an estate he will never fully inherit. A groom who survived the Boer War tends horses he has known longer than the young master himself.

Between them: the precise distance that rank requires, and everything that accumulates in the space it creates.

Loose Box is a quiet story about two men who never say what they mean — because one has no words for it, and the other already knows.

A musically based story where a young guitar player takes over for a deceased member of a popular group and is guided by his ghost.

Today, with modern treatment and prevention, we often forget about AIDS and the toll it took upon the gay community. At the end of a long trip, Robert's final stopover is Minneapolis. There, he encounters a friend of a friend who had fallen to AIDS twenty-five years earlier. This is a sad story, and was difficult to write, and I've kept it on the back burner for over a year. Dedicated to a close friend who passed thirty-two years ago on his favorite holiday, Halloween.

This story completes a trilogy, following "A Class Reunion" and "Love, In the Ashes of Time."

Some choices are within our control, while some are not. Life is about acceptance and balance... and living with consequences as we look forward and back.