Is there a time limit on love and forgiveness?
Fifteen years ago, Manny didn’t show up to take Wes to the Shelby High School prom as he promised. Instead, Wes found Manny’s letter jacket at their meeting spot without a note or any explanation.
From college to his current job in Monterey, California, Wes has carted the jacket around as a memento of his teenage love and rejection. This year he decides enough is enough. He’s attending the high school class reunion, returning Manny’s jacket, and going home free to find the real love of his life.
When Manny sees Wes at the reunion tour of the new high school facilities, he’s determined not to let his teenage lover leave without them clearing the air and possibly getting back together.
Through reunion activities such as a quiz bowl, meet-and-greet meals, and a formal banquet with a prom-like ball as well as outside activities like the quinceañera of Manny’s niece, Wes and Manny work through the lies and misunderstandings of the past.
With so much to reconcile and forgive on both sides, will they end up together? Or go their separate ways with only memories of the past?
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Q: What was the most valuable piece of advice you’ve had from an editor?
A: One of my first editors told me to keep a running list of character names, ages, short telling description, and pertinent details as I write. This was particularly important when I wrote the 8-novella Foothills Pride series. The short, sweet character list grew from one page to seven and includes relationships detailing who interacted with whom from one book to another. I expanded on what the editor told me into writing up a places list as well as a character list for each story I write as well. Both help me from giving all my characters and all the places they go the same name.
Q: How do you combine all the different worlds of your life in your works?
A: Each one of my books include bits and pieces I’ve picked up through travel, living across the U.S., eating in restaurants and cafes, meeting and talking with people, watching movies and TV shows, and visiting art galleries and museums around the world. In other words, I’m just like every other author I know. We all use our life knowledge when we write. For example, in this book, one of the germs of the idea for the story came from the letter jacket my husband had when we met. The jacket has moved with us from Texas to Colorado to Virginia to California. The thing that makes this jacket unique and story-worthy? It’s not my husband’s jacket. Instead because of a locker room mix-up, the jacket that should have Henshaw embroidered on it has Alvarez instead. And from that little mix-up decades ago, a book was born today. So I use a kernel of truth and expand it in my imagination into a gay romance.
Q: One of the places where you set many scenes in the book is a seedy historic bar that dates from the late 1800s called The Trap. Where did you get that idea?
A: Actually, The Trap exists here in Sacramento. It’s a weathered little wooden building with no parking to speak of which has been a working bar since the 1800s. The building has been designated an Historic Landmark and can’t be altered or raised. So even though a private elementary school was built abutting the property and took away the field where patrons of the bar usually parked, The Trap will be a working watering hole for area residents for a while longer. My fictional Trap? Because of the notoriety that Wes, Teddy, and the rest of the trivia team brought to the place with their victories over the other reunion teams, it too will remain a place where honest working men and women can get a cold drink on a scorching hot day or listen to country music on a warm, windy night.
Q: What are you working on next?
A: Currently, I’m writing another Heart/Home novel about a former cop who was wounded in a robbery gone wrong and who is now recuperating in Spindrift, California, a small town on coastal Route 1 near Mendocino. He’s prone to sudden brain glitches that incapacitate him. Worried about him, his parents persuade him to share his house with an artist who’s fresh out of a horrible relationship. As well as writing that book, I’m planning the next Foothills Pride books and a holiday short story. In other words, I’m still writing and loving it.
Pat is giving away two $10 Amazon gift cards with this tour:
Because of all my wanderings through the past, it took me a few seconds to process what he’d told me. He’d written me a letter, and on the night of the prom, he had put it with the jacket at our prearranged meeting place.
He’d left the jacket—for me. He hadn’t crushed it into the ground in some undecipherable message. He’d left it with a note for me.
What had happened? Who’d come along and taken the note? And tried to blot out the jacket? Why hadn’t he or she taken it, too?
There was still a lot of food left on our plates when we both stopped eating and sat staring at each other.
“Okay, please tell me what happened from your side. What did your letter say? I have to make sense of this.”
He put his hand on the table, open for me to grab it with mine. We needed to hold on as we looked down at the rift that had separated us for fifteen years.
“What the letter said was I was stupid and asked you to forgive me. I knew I was gay. You knew I was gay. Hell, most of the town and the class probably knew, too. Everyone but my mother who insisted I wasn’t. According to her, none of the Garcias or the Escobars had ever been. She had read about homosexuality running in family lines. We had no gay men in the family. Therefore, I could not possibly be gay.” His thumb started rubbing over the back of my hand. “But I am. I knew it then. And I know now she knew it.”
The last part was said so low and his thumb over my skin was so seductive the words at first bypassed my brain. He kept speaking, so I had to scramble to keep up.
“Her big ambition for me wasn’t to get into a good college and have a fulfilling career like some parents wanted for their kids. No, it was for me to be a chambelane for as many of the daughters of friends as she could arrange, pick one of the girls, get married, and have as many kids as the girl would allow.” His thumb stopped, and he stared into my eyes.
“All I wanted to do was go on dates with you and for us to go to the prom. Together. As boyfriends. That’s all.”
His soulful eyes reflected the conflict between him and his mother.
“In the end, she won a tiny victory that has nicked away at my soul. When it came time for me to stand like a man, I failed. I cut myself down to her size. I agreed to play her game of life.” He looked away and sighed. “I learned the quinceañera waltz. I partnered her friends’ daughters. She smiled at me and bragged about her dutiful son. She dangled me by the strings she had woven since I was a baby.”
A short silence descended on us. I had nothing to say and knew he had a lot more to tell me.
Pat was born and raised in Nebraska and since then has lived at various times in Texas, Colorado, Northern Virginia, and now Sacramento, California. Over the years, Pat has traveled to Mexico, Canada, Europe, Nicaragua, Thailand, and Egypt, and Stowe, Vermont, where she now has family.
Author Website: https://www.pathenshaw.com
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Thank you for hosting my book! Hope everyone is starying safe and healthy here at the end of the pandemic! Peace.