cyphomandra

T.A. Webb, Second Chances. This is a mess. I really only kept reading to see what the author came up with next. Otherwise it’s pretty much soap opera, angst, whiplash emotions and wish fulfilment, all tossed in with irritating time jumps (it covers eleven years, usually in six month jumps).

At the start of the book Mark, a financial officer for an AIDS non-profit, has just broken up from his long-term boyfriend Brian after Brian cheated on him, and along with a Southern family who all each possess one rather cliched defining trait (e.g. homophobic Marine brother), is watching his mother die slowly from liver failure. To de-stress, he goes for a massage and meets Antonio, a certified massage therapist who tells Mark firmly that he is straight and not like those dodgy happy ending masseurs, and then promptly jerks Mark off to end the session. Somehow, this does not violate anyone’s personal or professional boundaries.

Mark ends up getting back together with Brian after his mother’s funeral, while having regular massage sessions with Antonio that do not include handjobs, although after a few years they start massaging each other naked instead but it is Purely Platonic (I know. I thought I was back in Sentinel fandom). Brian (who Mark tells about the massages but not the nakedness) has seizures, which Mark helpfully treats in completely the wrong fashion (he sticks his belt in Brian’s mouth. arrgh), and there are various family events during which Mark is annoyingly vague about just why Brian is sick. Then Brian has a seizure while driving and ends up with what are supposed to be untreatable constant seizures, although he’s able to exchange a meaningful glance with Mark as Mark watches the doctors switch off his life support. I should mention that at this point it is revealed that Brian also has an untreatable brain tumour and was only out driving because he was looking for Robbie, a troubled gay teenager who’s just run away from the group home that Mark now works at and is most likely back with his pimp who hooked him on unspecified drugs.

Antonio manages to track down Robbie, Mark’s dad then fosters Robbie (having gained qualifications as a foster parent after Brian was abandoned by his own family at the age of 12 for being gay), Mark continues to be appallingly obtuse while every single other person in the text points out that, you know, Antonio seems to be more than a little fond of him, and eventually they get together after a birthday dinner at a steakhouse (with an annoying bit where Mark is all “oh, he’s totally pranking me! This isn’t a real date! I will play along and see who blinks first!” but fortunately this gets dumped once they start snogging).

Antonio’s son Jason (from his previously straight life) becomes BFFs with Robbie, and eventually the two of them hook up (Jason has a girlfriend at this time, but this is basically ignored in favour of sex ed talks involving cucumbers and, subsequently, a hideously embarrassing conversation in which all the adults involved in looking after these two (who are 17/18 at this stage) decide that they can’t possibly have sex until they’re at college). There is a completely unbelievable ramping-up-the-stakes bit where Antonio decides to move to LA at two days’ notice to stay with his mother (who disapproves of homosexuality) in order to get his fledgling computer business off the ground, and doesn’t tell Mark until he’s mostly packed, because Antonio wants to make something of himself but it is all for them. He also refuses to tell his mother and sister about Mark, which has previously been a deal-breaker for Mark, but despite this after eighteen months Antonio comes back (possibly Jason’s graduation?) and all is forgiven. Antonio then sells his business to Apple for an eight-figure sum and they retire to a fabulous house in the country, start charities for liver failure and brain tumours that cause seizures, and get married, with Robbie and Jason as attendants.

I don't think I need to comment further.