BooksBarbecue
Back Never Look Back
Chapters (51)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Eight
  11. Nine
  12. Ten
  13. Eleven
  14. Twelve
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-One
  24. Twenty-Two
  25. Twenty-Three
  26. Twenty-Four
  27. Twenty-Five
  28. Twenty-Six
  29. Twenty-Seven
  30. Twenty-Eight
  31. Twenty-Nine
  32. Thirty
  33. Thirty-One
  34. Thirty-Two
  35. Thirty-Three
  36. Thirty-Four
  37. Thirty-Five
  38. Thirty-Six
  39. Thirty-Seven
  40. Thirty-Eight
  41. Thirty-Nine
  42. Forty
  43. Forty-One
  44. Forty-Two
  45. Forty-Three
  46. Acknowledgments
  47. P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
  48. About the Author
  49. About the Book
  50. Also by Alison Gaylin
  51. About the Publisher

Quentin hadn’t said any more than that, but he hadn’t needed to. Summer finally had a reason for the sadness that lurked just beneath that cheery surface, ready to pounce and devour. And now that she knew where it came from, she could defeat it. She could put him back together.

Summer had a big, noisy family back in New Rochelle, New York, and she took Quentin there for Thanksgiving and Christmas, convincing them to accept him as one of their own. When she got a job at KAMC immediately after graduation, she dragged Quentin in too as a package deal. And five years ago, she’d done something even better than either of those things. She’d gone onto his Grindr, found Dean Conrad, and sent him the message that had started their relationship. (“9.5” it had said. A slight exaggeration, probably, but screw it. It had worked.)

Summer had fixed Quentin. Or so she’d convinced herself. She’d been halfway to Brittlebush yesterday when she’d gotten the call. Dean’s voice over the phone, cracking, breaking. “It isn’t like him,” he kept saying, over and over. “None of this is like him.”

She’d turned around, sped back to her apartment to find Dean waiting there for her. She’d taken him inside, the poor guy, so genuinely hurt and confused. She’d made the plane reservation for Dean so he could identify Quentin’s body and bring his ashes home and stayed up with him all night drinking scotch and staring at CNN, and then she’d taken him to the airport at 4:30 A.M., her head throbbing. The entire time, the two of them had barely spoken.

Summer had been glad for the silence. What was she supposed to say? There was so much that Dean had never known about his husband. He had no idea that two weeks after his mother’s funeral, Quentin had told Summer he wanted to drive his car off an overpass. He hadn’t known how many times she’d had to cover for Quentin when he didn’t show up at work during that same period, or about the empty bottles of Klonopin she’d found in his desk. When Summer had talked to Dean about convincing Quentin to do Closure, he had no clue how desperate she was to get him fixed again or that she saw the podcast as a lifeline, a last chance. How could she tell Dean about all that now? How could she say that it actually was like Quentin to kill himself?

Shooting the Blooms, though. That wasn’t like him at all.