Too Soon For Love
Michael Stricker is still reeling from his partner’s sudden and untimely death when he meets someone new, someone he could really care about. But first he needs time, time to get his life back in order and time to get over is lost love.
But learning to live alone again is nearly impossible with his well-meaning relatives treating him like a poor helpless blind guy.
When Alan Stuart befriends Phillip DiMartino’s grieving partner, the last thing he expects is to discover hidden lies and infidelity. Guilty over his attraction to the still-grieving man, Alan resolves to stay silent. But the truth has a way of coming out, and soon a dead man’s secrets bring about more heartbreak than Alan could have imagined.
Although both men vow to keep their distance, staying away is easier said than done, even when it’s
Too Soon For
Love.
“Too Soon For Love is a wonderful read: beautiful, emotional,
and gripping. It’s a quiet story with characters that wrap around your
heart, and it doesn’t let go, even after you close the book.”
~ Z.A. Maxfield, author of
Notturno
and
Vigil
“I fell in love with Michael within the first few pages of this
wonderful romance. I was happy to see a man like Alan come into his
life. A man who not only saw beyond Michael’s physical limitations,
but helped him overcome his emotional limitations with patience and
love.”
~ Carol Lynne, author of the Cattle Valley and Campus Cravings series
MLR PRess AuthoRs
Featuring a roll call of some of the best writers of gay erotica and mysteries today!
M. Jules Aedin
Maura Anderson
Victor J. Banis
Jeanne Barrack
Laura Baumbach
Alex Beecroft
Sarah Black
Ally Blue
J.P. Bowie
Michael Breyette
P.A. Brown
Brenda Bryce
Jade Buchanan
James Buchanan
Charlie Cochrane
Jamie Craig
Kirby Crow
Dick D.
Ethan Day
Jason Edding
Angela Fiddler
Dakota Flint
S.J. Frost
Kimberly Gardner
Roland Graeme
Storm Grant
Amber Green
LB Gregg
Drewey Wayne Gunn
David Juhren
Samantha Kane
Kiernan Kelly
M. King
Matthew Lang
J.L. Langley
Josh Lanyon
Clare London
William Maltese
Gary Martine
Z.A. Maxfield
Timothy McGivney
Patric Michael
AKM Miles
Reiko Morgan
Jet Mykles
William Neale
Willa Okati
L. Picaro
Neil S. Plakcy
Jordan Castillo Price
Luisa Prieto
Rick R. Reed
A.M. Riley
George Seaton
Jardonn Smith
Caro Soles
JoAnne Soper-Cook
Richard Stevenson
Marshall Thornton
Lex Valentine
Haley Walsh
Missy Welsh
Stevie Woods
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too soon
FoR Love
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2011 by Kimberly Gardner
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Published by
MLR Press, LLC
3052 Gaines Waterport Rd.
Albion, NY 14411
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Cover Art by Deana C. Jamroz
Editing by Kris Jacen
ISBN# 978-1-60820-300-0
Issued 2011
This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. This eBook cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this eBook can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the publisher.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust …”
The voice of the priest—Father Malone, was it?—droned on, the words of the Catholic burial ceremony little more than a buzzing in Michael’s ears.
The February sun, brilliant and bright after the snow storm, felt warm on his face. But the wind, all teeth and claws, whipped across the open cemetery grounds. Michael could no longer feel his toes inside his boots. Thanks to the valium Dr. Z. had prescribed, some of that numbness had seeped inside him.
He hated the numbness, hated feeling like his emotions were wrapped in cotton, but even the feeling of chemical detachment was better than the wrenching pain that had been his constant companion ever since Phillip’s death nearly a week ago.
Yes, Phillip was really gone. For the first time in nearly twelve years, Michael was alone, the pain his only companion, despite the people who’d surrounded him ever since he’d made that first phone call.
“Michael, here’s a flower.” Phil’s sister Jane pushed a stem into Michael’s gloved hand. His fingers closed around it. He’d raised it halfway to his face before stopping himself, suppressing the nearly irresistible urge to stroke the petals along his cheek, either that or crush them between his fingers just as his lover’s death was crushing him now. Slowly he lowered his hand.
“C’mon,” Jane whispered, “we’re going to put it on the …
you know.” She took his free hand and tugged him forward.
Why couldn’t she say the word coffin?
Jane took the flower from him, then gently turned him away and guided him back to his place. He heard her sniffle, but whether she was crying again or it was from the cold he couldn’t say.
For his part he had yet to shed a tear. All his tears were frozen
2 Kimberly Gardner
inside him, a huge icy lump where his heart used to be.
At last the service ended. The voice of the funeral director cut through the frigid air as he invited the mourners to the luncheon. Boots crunched on the frozen ground, the sound of people making their way back to their cars.
Jane clutched Michael’s hand in a death grip. “Let’s go.”
“Just a minute.” Michael hung back. He wanted to stay, to have just a few more minutes with Phillip before they put him in the ground in this cold, desolate place. He recalled a scene from a book, he couldn’t remember which one, where a grieving mother had literally thrown herself into the hole in the ground atop her dead child’s coffin. Totally unrealistic since they didn’t put the coffin in the ground until after everyone had left. They wouldn’t put Phillip in the ground until he and others were safely tucked away in their cars on their way to the post-funeral party. If he stayed right here, if he refused to leave, maybe Phillip wouldn’t have to go into the ground at all. What would they do if he simply refused to go?
Jane tugged at his hand. “Michael, c’mon, I’m freezing, and they’re waiting. Let’s get in the car.”
Fuck them. Let them wait. He wasn’t ready to go, wasn’t ready to leave Phillip here in this frozen place of death, in the hands of strangers.
And he almost said so, almost told Jane to just go without him, to leave him here with Phillip. But he didn’t, and she wouldn’t, even if he had. Because of course the blind guy couldn’t be left alone in the cemetery. How would that look? What would people say? What would happen to him?
He knew he was being unfair to Jane and the others. They were just trying to look out for him, to help him through this difficult time. Difficult time. What a bizarre euphemism that was.
As if having your heart and soul ripped out could be classified as merely a ‘difficult time’, something you would, with the passage of days and weeks, months and years, get over.
But he would never get over this, and didn’t want to.
too soon FoR Love
3
“Michael?” Another tug on his hand, more insistent this time.
“I’m frozen. Can we get in the car?”
He nodded; let Jane lead him away from the graveside. He would come back, maybe tomorrow and bring flowers. He’d talk to Phillip, just stand there and talk to him. Stand there until the icy emptiness in his chest spread to every part of his body and he froze.
But of course that wasn’t going to happen because, not being able to drive, he couldn’t get to the cemetery on his own. Why had he let them bully him into putting Phillip here?
Phillip had wanted to be cremated, to have his ashes scattered on the beach. Or that was what he’d said on the few occasions when they had actually talked about such things. Talked about them in that rather detached way people do when they believe, however falsely, that death is a distant specter, something they’ll have to face someday, but not any time soon, certainly not today.
They were almost back to the limo. He could hear the engine idling.
Suddenly it was all too much. He simply couldn’t take it anymore and he stopped walking. “I’m not going to the luncheon.
Where’s the driver? I have to tell him I want to go back to the house. And I need my cane. I have to get it from the car.”
“What do you mean, you’re not going to the luncheon?” Jane asked.
The door to the limo was open. Michael felt the blast of heat from inside. “I just can’t. I want to go home.”
“Problem?” Ross, Jane’s husband stood on the other side of the open car door.
“Michael wants to be dropped off at home,” Jane said.
“Would you tell the driver, honey?”
“That’s ridiculous.” Ross’s voice was too loud in the stillness of the cemetery. “We’re all going to the luncheon.” He laid a meaty hand on Michael’s shoulder, gave it a squeeze then a brief pat. “Everyone’s expecting you, Michael. Besides, the house is in
4 Kimberly Gardner
the opposite direction.” Another pat. “We’ll go, have some lunch, then Janey and I will take you home afterward.”
“I said, I’m not going, Ross.” Michael flinched from the touch. He hated being touched unexpectedly, having his personal space invaded, and Jane’s husband was big on that sort of thing.
Ross was big on a lot of things Michael wasn’t.
“Michael, look—” Ross’s tone changed, his words losing the sympathetic but no-nonsense let’s-just-get-through-this tone and taking on that of a parent talking to an unreasonable child.
“Ross, honey, please?” Jane took a step toward the open door.
“Michael, I know this is hard on you, but can we just—”
“I’ll give Michael a ride home.” A new voice, one Michael recognized immediately, broke in.
“Alan, I didn’t know you were here.” Michael tugged his hand free of Jane’s and held it out. Alan took it and they shook.
“Thank you for coming.”
“Of course I’m here. I wouldn’t have not come.” Alan released Michael’s hand and spoke to Jane and Ross. “I’d be glad to give Michael a ride home.”
Though the offer was made quietly, it had the effect of cutting off the argument before it could really get going. And for that Michael was grateful. After three days with Phillip’s family hovering and tending and lovingly bossing him around, he needed space and silence. If Alan Stuart could get that for him, then he was all about that.
“Thank you, Alan, I appreciate that. “
More than you can ever
know
, Michael added silently. He turned back to Ross. “Can I, please have my cane from the car, Ross?”
Alan Stuart had been one of Phillip’s nurses while he was in the acute care wing of the nursing home. Not really a nurse though, more of a minder, a certified nursing assistant hired by the family—not that the decision had been unanimous, not by any measure—to supplement the care he got from the facility staff. Seeing him now, here at Phillip’s funeral, was somehow comforting, like Alan had not entirely finished caring for Phillip; too soon FoR Love
5