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    Flamingo
    Flamingo
    Flamingo
    Ebook44 pages24 minutes

    Flamingo

    By Sarah Black

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Gentle and shy, William has lived life on the sidelines. Solitude and his tiny bookshop have been a safe haven, and he's watched New York evolve from Stonewall to the gay marriage bill. At 61, he falls in love with Tommy, a young veteran going to school on the GI Bill. William doesn't believe Tommy could possibly care for him, and he begins to fear that Tommy and his troubled roommate Marley are setting him up for a heartbreaking fall. When Tommy disappears, William has to risk leaving his safe haven and walking into danger, maybe into betrayal, to save the boy he loves.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamspinner Press
    Release dateDec 21, 2011
    ISBN9781613722435
    Flamingo
    Author

    Sarah Black

    SARAH BLACK is a baker and baking instructor with 25 years of professional baking experience in New York City, having worked at such legendary bakeries as Tom Cat Bakery and Amy’s Bread and consulted with companies such as Whole Foods Market and Pepperidge Farm. Her future plans include teaching bread classes at The Seasoned Farmhouse and opening a recreational bread and baking school called Flowers and Bread in the spring of 2016, both in Clintonville, Ohio.

    Read more from Sarah Black

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    Reviews for Flamingo

    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      Wow, Sarah Black has my number on this lovely short story. When I choose to read a story that I tag "age gap", I always worry that it might be a bit uncomfortable for me. In this case the gap is forty years and the discomfort started to rear it's ugly head. Happily it was short-lived.The relationship between William and the much younger Tommy is not about sex, though they do indulge on occasion, it's more about a tender and loving relationship between two lonely souls. They support each other in many ways. And when push comes to shove and Tommy is in trouble, the reclusive and timid William will do whatever it takes to see Tommy safe.Even now, Flamingo tugs at my heart as I write this review and I am amazed at how deeply I felt their bond. It's simply a wonderful love story. Highly recommend.

    Book preview

    Flamingo - Sarah Black

    Chapter One

    WILLIAM looked up from the stack of books he was cataloging when the door opened. Tommy let some bright summer sunshine and fresh air into the tiny bookshop. He had his friend with him, a boy with cornsilk dreads who had not been able to maintain eye contact long enough for William to see the color of his eyes. He knew Tommy’s eyes, though, warm and dark as Tupelo honey, shy behind their curtain of long lashes.

    William, we went to Stonewall last night. There was a rally to celebrate the gay marriage bill. I brought some pictures to show you. Tommy showed him the phone, and William pulled his reading glasses down from their perch on top of his head to look at the little screen. He could hardly make out the famous old bar. The picture was tiny, and his eyesight wasn’t as good as it used to be.

    Tommy turned to his friend, who was staring around the bookstore, not moving. William was seeing that look more and more often from people wandering in by mistake and looking as if they had never seen such a place: shelves filled with books, an old man behind the counter, and a couch and a chair containing a sleeping cat next to the window. Marley, William was here in New York during the Stonewall riots in ’69. He was nineteen.

    Marley looked at him and grinned a little. Whoa! So, you’re, like, seventy or something?

    William studied him carefully. Sixty-one. If I was nineteen in 1969, then I was born in 1950. Right?

    Yeah. I’m not good at math.

    William turned to Tommy. He had his eyes closed, rubbing his forehead. How are you, Tommy? How are your classes?

    He opened his eyes and smiled up at William, but he looked tired, strained around the eyes. I’m okay.

    What are you studying? Anything interesting?

    He nodded. I’m working on the war poets this semester. I’m doing an independent study—you know we usually separate them into English and American lit by author’s nationality? I’m trying to look for themes across—

    I’m going outside for a smoke. Marley pushed the door open and stepped out to the sidewalk.

    Tommy leaned across the desk. William, can I come and see you? Tonight, after you close?

    I would like that very much, Tommy. He didn’t touch him, not with his boyfriend right outside the bookshop. When he was hungry, when his GI Bill money ran out by the twentieth of the month, Tommy climbed into William’s bed and spent the night. William always gave him a book as a gift, with three twenty-dollar bills stuck inside. Maybe I can find a book for you.

    WILLIAM had been nineteen in 1969, and

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