BooksBarbecue
Back The Great Pretenders
Chapters (55)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise for The Great Pretenders
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. PART I
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. Chapter Four
  10. Chapter Five
  11. Chapter Six
  12. Chapter Seven
  13. PART II
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. PART III
  25. Chapter Eighteen
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Chapter Twenty-one
  29. Chapter Twenty-two
  30. Chapter Twenty-three
  31. Chapter Twenty-four
  32. Chapter Twenty-five
  33. Chapter Twenty-six
  34. PART IV
  35. Chapter Twenty-seven
  36. Chapter Twenty-eight
  37. Chapter Twenty-nine
  38. Chapter Thirty
  39. Chapter Thirty-one
  40. Chapter Thirty-two
  41. Chapter Thirty-three
  42. Chapter Thirty-four
  43. Chapter Thirty-five
  44. PART V
  45. Chapter Thirty-six
  46. Chapter Thirty-seven
  47. Chapter Thirty-eight
  48. Chapter Thirty-nine
  49. Chapter Forty
  50. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  51. Readers Guide
  52. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
  53. Acknowledgments
  54. About the Author
  55. What’s next onyour reading list?

Terrence shooed Bruno down the stairs, came inside, and closed the door. He brought his lips to my neck and moved down my throat. The warmth of his hands penetrated my back, my shoulders, just as they had in the Comet Club. I caressed his close-cropped hair, his small, perfect ears. His bruised cheek against my stained one, he started to move as though he heard music, as though we were dancing, and then, in a manner of speaking, we were dancing, and I somehow said goodbye to Charlie as he blathered into oblivion, and I would have put the phone back on the desk, but it dropped from my hand as I wrapped both my arms around Terrence, who murmured against my ear something about being sure. Yes. Yes. Yes, I said as my personal tectonic plates shook, and the silverware rattled in the drawers as the walls waved and rippled.

He stayed till Monday morning. We ate all the ham sandwiches.

•   •   •

From that very beginning, our love affair was like a high tide sweeping everything in its lunar path. We fell in love the way that winter waves crash on the beach, a great whoosh of joy and discovery and emotion as our lives and bodies melded that summer. My better judgment constantly nagged at me, You saw what happened to Diana Jordan; this is madness. But it was a complicated madness, a rich, rewarding, and brilliant madness. Terrence Dexter endowed me with happiness such as I have never known. Loving him was like wine, a deep, complex melding of scents and flavors, swirled. We learned from and of each other, and in spite of—perhaps because of—all the vast differences in our lives and backgrounds, we each brought something fresh and resonant to the relationship. He loved my stories of the library conferences with the old writers, of Empire studio itself as my personal playground, of Julia and the Parc Monceau Thursday evenings, of L’Oiseau d’Or and the exiled, eccentric aristocrats who taught there. For all the fine private schools I’d attended, I’d never had a teacher like Dr. Browne of Jefferson High, who so shaped his students’ lives and values. I loved the stories of Terrence’s lively extended family, and the many times he and Booker did their best to outwit Clarence’s rules.