Kathryn Hulme & Marie Louise Habets

Kathryn Cavarly Hulme was born in San Francisco on July 6, 1900, the daughter of Edwin Page and Julia Cavarly Hulme. After her graduation from high school in 1918, Hulme attended the University of California at Berkeley for three years. In 1922 she moved to New York City, where she studied journalism, wrote freelance articles, and worked as publicity director for the Ask Mr. Foster Travel Service. Hulme spent much time in Europe during the 1930's, and her early books reflect her interest in travel. Her first critical success, however, was her 1938 memoir We Lived As Children.

Hulme worked as an electric arc welder at the Kaiser ship yards during World War II. After the war, she spent six years in Germany as deputy director of United Nations Relief and Refugee Association field teams. The Wild Place , which won the 1952 Atlantic non-fiction prize, describes conditions at the refugee camp of Wildflecken. While there, Hulme met and befriended Marie-Louise Habets (January 1905-May 1986), a Belgian nurse and former nun. Her experiences were the basis for Hulme's best-seller, The Nun's Story (1956), which was both a critical and a popular success. Hulme followed this with Annie's Captain (1961), a fictionalized account of her grandparents' lives. Her final works were both non-fiction. Undiscovered Country (1966) is a memoir centered on her years as a pupil of Gurdjieff. Look a Lion in the Eye (1973) describes Hulme's 1971 safari in East Africa.

From 1960 until her death, Hulme resided on the island of Kauai with Marie-Louise Habets. She hoped to write a novel with a Hawaiian background, but never accomplished this goal, perhaps because of increasing ill-health in her late years.


Kathryn Hulme (July 6, 1900 - August 25, 1981) was an American author and memoirist most noted for her novel The Nun's Story. The book is often, mistakenly, understood to be semi-biographical. After the war, she spent six years in Germany as deputy director of United Nations Relief and Refugee Association field teams. While there, Hulme met and befriended Marie-Louise Habets, a Belgian nurse and former nun. From 1960 until her death, Hulme resided on the island of Kauai with Marie-Louise Habets.

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Source: http://drs.library.yale.edu:8083/HLTransformer/HLTransServlet?stylename=yul.ead2002.xhtml.xsl&pid=beinecke:hulme&query=Kathryn Hulme&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes&hlon=yes&filter=&hitPageStart=1

Marie Louise Habets (January 1905-May 1986) was a Belgian nurse and former religious sister whose life was fictionalised as Sister Luke (Gabrielle van der Mal) in The Nun's Story, a bestselling 1956 book by American author Kathryn Hulme. The Belgian actress Audrey Hepburn portrayed Gabrielle van der Mal in the 1959 Fred Zinnemann film The Nun's Story.

Habets was born in the town of Egem in West Flanders during January 1905, and in 1926 entered the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary, an enclosed religious order, which cared for the sick and poor within their cloister. She was admitted at their convent on Molenaarstraat in Ghent, and then took the name Sister Xaverine. In 1933 she was sent to the mission hospital her congregation staffed for the Belgian government in the Belgian Congo.

She returned to Belgium during the summer of 1939 due to her having contracted tuberculosis, shortly before the Nazi invasion of her country that September at the start of World War II. Her father was killed shortly after this. Sister Xaverine developed such a hatred toward Germans that she became involved with the Belgian Resistance. She came to feel that she could not obey the dictates of her faith for forgiveness and applied to the Holy See for a dispensation from her religious vows, a very rare request in that era. She was eventually granted this and left the congregation on 16 August 1944 from their convent in Uccle.

Habets settled in Antwerp, which was liberated by Allied forces a few weeks later. She joined a British First Aid unit which nursed the soldiers wounded while fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. She was present in Antwerp when German forces massively bombarded the city soon after its liberation, killing and maiming some ten thousand people. After the end of the war in Europe, she was sent to Germany to help care for her fellow Belgians who had been imprisoned in concentration camps there.

Hulme’s 1966 autobiography Undiscovered Country describes Hulme and Habets’ first meeting in 1945. Both were volunteers with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), an international project working to resettle refugees and others displaced by the war. Hulme recounts that, at a training camp in northern France, she became aware of a Belgian female colleague who spent most of her time asleep. Even when awake, the woman, a nurse, was taciturn, solitary and preoccupied, almost antisocial. In time, however, the Belgian nurse revealed herself as a diligent worker, a good friend, and a woman with a secret: she had just left the convent after 17 years of struggle with her vows. She felt burdened and depressed by a deep sense of failure.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Louise_Habets

Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time by Elisa Rolle
Paperback: 760 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition (July 1, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1500563323
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
Amazon: Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time

Days of Love chronicles more than 700 LGBT couples throughout history, spanning 2000 years from Alexander the Great to the most recent winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Many of the contemporary couples share their stories on how they met and fell in love, as well as photos from when they married or of their families. Included are professional portraits by Robert Giard and Stathis Orphanos, paintings by John Singer Sargent and Giovanni Boldini, and photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnson, Arnold Genthe, and Carl Van Vechten among others. “It's wonderful. Laying it out chronologically is inspired, offering a solid GLBT history. I kept learning things. I love the decision to include couples broken by death. It makes clear how important love is, as well as showing what people have been through. The layout and photos look terrific.” Christopher Bram “I couldn’t resist clicking through every page. I never realized the scope of the book would cover centuries! I know that it will be hugely validating to young, newly-emerging LGBT kids and be reassured that they really can have a secure, respected place in the world as their futures unfold.” Howard Cruse “This international history-and-photo book, featuring 100s of detailed bios of some of the most forward-moving gay persons in history, is sure to be one of those bestsellers that gay folk will enjoy for years to come as reference and research that is filled with facts and fun.” Jack Fritscher

Michael Grumley & Robert Ferro

Robert Ferro (October 21, 1941 - July 11, 1988) was an American novelist whose semi-autobiographical fiction explored the uneasy integration of homosexuality and traditional American upper-middle-class values.

He was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, on October 21, 1941. The son of Michael and Gae Panzera Ferro, he was raised in nearby Cranford, New Jersey, with his siblings Michael Jr., Camille, and Beth. While his father was born in America, Ferro's mother had immigrated in 1914 from Italy, a country that would figure prominently in her son’s life and writings.

Ferro attended public school in Cranford and in 1963 received a BA in English from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. After graduation, determined to become a writer, he lived for a year in Florence, Italy, where he studied Italian and wrote fiction. Ferro enrolled at the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in the fall of 1965; there he studied with the Chilean novelist Jose Donoso and earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in 1967. During his final semester at Iowa, Ferro met Michael Grumley (1941-1988), also a student at the Writers' Workshop, and the two began a two-decade-long personal and professional partnership. Known to their friends as “the Ferro-Grumleys,” the couple lived primarily on New York’s Upper West Side, but also spent extended periods of time in Rome and London. The Ferro family owned an oceanfront home at Sea Girt, New Jersey, which was a place that held particular significance for Robert Ferro: he named the house with a double entendre, “Gaewyck,” and designed extensive improvement campaigns for the property. As recorded in Michael Grumley’s engagement calendars and daily journals, the pair regularly stayed at the shore house, where they gardened, cooked, read books, and entertained friends and family, while still carving out time to work on their writing projects.


During his final semester at Iowa, Robert Ferro met Michael Grumley, also a student at the Writers' Workshop, and the two began a two-decade-long personal and professional partnership. Known to their friends as “the Ferro-Grumleys,” the couple lived primarily on New York’s Upper West Side. Robert Ferro died of AIDS a few months after his partner, Michael Grumley, in 1988. Their estate helped founding the prestigious Ferro-Grumley Award to honor culture-driving fiction from LGBT points of view.

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Source: http://drs.library.yale.edu:8083/HLTransformer/HLTransServlet?stylename=yul.ead2002.xhtml.xsl&pid=beinecke:ferro&query=whiting&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes&hlon=yes&filter=&hitPageStart=226

I‘ve just reread The Blue Star, Robert Ferro‘s third novel —or his second-to last, to use a method of ordering that felt inescapable in the year when the novel came out, 1985. It was a time when all the young gay authors I knew were thinking that their next books might well be their last. Robert certainly thought that; he told so me many times, when working on Second Son, a thoughtful and surprisingly entertaining AIDS novel that appeared in 1988, the year Robert died of the disease just six weeks after his partner of many years, the novelist Michael Grumley, died of it, too. For Robert, I think, Second Son had to be about AIDS. He was constantly sick by then, and the prospect of his death was too momentous to leave unexplored. The Blue Star, on the other hand, seems about life and the forces that drive it, unhaunted by "a death out of order," which is how Robert referred to AIDS fatalities.
[...]
Some might have thought Robert a control freak, but he was really a perfectionist, attentive to the smallest detail, like the placement of an amethyst-glass vase on a windowsill in the beach house in Sea Girt, New Jersey, that Robert and Michael often shared with friends on weekends. That house — another story, I‘m afraid — had been his mother‘s, and its maintenance as an idyllic escape for himself and loved ones was one of Robert‘s greatest pleasures and perhaps one of his greatest achievements. The walls of the downstairs powder room were specially muraled with stone arches and a tranquil blue sea, just like the book cover.
That house helped make The Blue Star possible, in a big way. He often went there to work, and completed large portions of all his later novels there. Moreover, Robert had a talent for living well, which deeply informed the voluptuous living in his novels — the kind of good living that is sacramental, not consumerist. Robert and Michael traveled with their own bed sheets, for instance, just in case, because one has certain standards. Lots of people have written about the legendary tea salons the boys hosted at their West 95th Street apartment — again, another story, except to mention that the teas seem, in retrospect, to have taken place in a kind of temple: the long living room of the boys‘ graciously-proportioned, pre-War apartment, made even more palatial by a pair of towering faux marbre columns that Robert had installed at great expense.
Those salons were always packed with cultural luminaries, gay and otherwise, and it was at one of them that Robert first told me of the new book he was writing.
"It‘s going to be beautiful, Muzzy, if I can just pull it off," he said in a whisper. "But let‘s not speak of it here, among these people." --Stephen Greco, The Lost Library, Gay Fiction Rediscovered

( Robert Ferro, 1985, by Robert Giard  )

The illustrator and writer Michael Grumley (July 6, 1942 - April 28, 1988) was born in Davenport, Iowa, on July 6, 1941, and raised in nearby Bettendorf, Iowa, with his three brothers Charles, Terry, and Timothy. He attended the University of Denver and Mexico City College before earning a BA degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1964, after which he took a seasonal position with the Johnson's Wax Pavilion at the New York World's Fair. He returned to work at the fair the next summer, and when it closed in October 1965, Grumley applied to City College of the City University of New York for graduate study in literature. He enrolled at CUNY in January in 1966, but transferred in February 1967 to the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he studied writing with Kurt Vonnegut and took film courses. While at Iowa Grumley met fellow Workshop student Robert Ferro (1941-1988; MFA 1967), and by semester's end, the two had begun their life together. Known to their friends as "the Ferro-Grumleys," the couple lived primarily on New York's Upper West Side for twenty years, but also spent periods of time in Rome and London. Another favorite place was the Ferro family's oceanfront home in Sea Girt, New Jersey, where they regularly entertained friends and family. (Picture: Robert Ferro, NYC., by Robert Giard, 1985, Source: Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers, Location: Stephen A. Schwarzman Building / Photography Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Rights Notice: Copyright Jonathan G. Silin.)

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Source: http://drs.library.yale.edu:8083/HLTransformer/HLTransServlet?stylename=yul.ead2002.xhtml.xsl&pid=beinecke:grumley&query=Michael Grumley&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes&hlon=yes&filter=&hitPageStart=1

AIDS did not just kill the brilliant writers and artists whose names we know. AIDS also killed the literary agents and the editors and the publicists and the audiences that nurtured and supported those artists, and in the process an overwhelming amount of art and talent has been lost. In a very real sense, Michael Grumley is part of a lost generation, and Life Drawing is only one more casualty in a tragic war whose death toll continues to mount.
[...]
The estates of Michael Grumley and his lover, Robert Ferro, endowed the annual Ferro-Grumley Awards for queer writers, which, since 1989, has honored the best of queer lit, including such luminaries as Edmund White, Christopher Bram, Sarah Schulman, and Felice Picano. Life Drawing survives to move readers in ways at once more ineffable and more devastating than the mainstream emotional juggernauts. It's a sketch, a simple thing, really, but no less moving for being simple. Life Drawing has the same slow emotional impact of fireworks bursting over a suburban golf course or the sight of a boat on a river at dusk, dark against the bright sky. --Sam J. Miller, The Lost Library

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Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time by Elisa Rolle
Paperback: 760 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition (July 1, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1500563323
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/4910282
Amazon (Paperback): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1500563323/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Amazon (Kindle): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MZG0VHY/?tag=elimyrevandra-20

Days of Love chronicles more than 700 LGBT couples throughout history, spanning 2000 years from Alexander the Great to the most recent winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Many of the contemporary couples share their stories on how they met and fell in love, as well as photos from when they married or of their families. Included are professional portraits by Robert Giard and Stathis Orphanos, paintings by John Singer Sargent and Giovanni Boldini, and photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnson, Arnold Genthe, and Carl Van Vechten among others. “It's wonderful. Laying it out chronologically is inspired, offering a solid GLBT history. I kept learning things. I love the decision to include couples broken by death. It makes clear how important love is, as well as showing what people have been through. The layout and photos look terrific.” Christopher Bram “I couldn’t resist clicking through every page. I never realized the scope of the book would cover centuries! I know that it will be hugely validating to young, newly-emerging LGBT kids and be reassured that they really can have a secure, respected place in the world as their futures unfold.” Howard Cruse “This international history-and-photo book, featuring 100s of detailed bios of some of the most forward-moving gay persons in history, is sure to be one of those bestsellers that gay folk will enjoy for years to come as reference and research that is filled with facts and fun.” Jack Fritscher

Glenn Scarpelli & Jude Belanger

Glenn Christopher Scarpelli (born July 6, 1966) is a child actor and singer. Born in Staten Island, New York, he is the son of long time Archie Comics artist Henry Scarpelli. He attended a private Catholic school, St. Joseph Hill Academy, from K to 8th grade.

He is best known for his 1980-1983 role of Alex Handris on the long-running television situation comedy One Day at a Time. He left that sitcom to appear in the NBC sitcom Jennifer Slept Here. Scarpelli's other television appearances include 3-2-1 Contact, Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories, MacGyver, The Love Boat, and Fantasy Island. He was also a co-host in Summer 1983 of the NBC game show/human interest show Fantasy (game show).

In 2012 he announced he was divorcing from his husband, Jude Belanger: "It seems it's time for a catch up. (My husband) Jude (Belanger) and I are in the process of a divorce after 14 years. We are still great friends and still own the TV station together but we have grown apart on a personal level. We were legally married in California before the whole Prop 8 debacle and now have to get legally divorced. I am still a great supporter of LGBT rights and Marriage Equality, but one thing we need to know in our community is "Marriage Equality" can also mean "Divorce Equality". All's fair in love and war. I have been the type to always remain friends with my exes and Jude is no exception. We've shared so much and no one can ever take that away from us! We will always love each other but I am embracing the single life again... and loving it!" (Picture: Jude Belanger)


Glenn Scarpelli is a child actor and singer. He is best known for his role of Alex Handris in 80s One Day at a Time. In 2012 he announced he was divorcing from his husband, Jude Belanger: "It seems it's time for a catch up [...] We are still great friends and still own the TV station together but we have grown apart on a personal level [...] We've shared so much and no one can ever take that away from us! We will always love each other but I am embracing the single life again... and loving it!"

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Scarpelli

( Further Readings )

More LGBT Couples at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Real Life Romance

John Falabella & Laren T. Lambdin

John Falabella was a Broadway and TV set designer. Nominated for an Emmy in 1992 for his work on the Tony awards.

John M. Falabella, a designer for theater and television, died on July 6, 1993, in New York City. He was 40.

The cause was AIDS, his press representatives, Boneau/Bryan-Brown, said.

Mr. Falabella designed 14 Broadway shows, including Harvey Fierstein's "Safe Sex," Edward Albee's "Lady From Dubuque" and "Harry Connick Jr. on Broadway." He was the artistic supervisor and costume designer for "Tango Pasion." He also worked Off Broadway and at regional theaters around the country, among them the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn., the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

His television credits include "Broadway Sings: The Music of Jule Styne" and five Tony Awards shows for CBS. He also designed many AIDS benefits, including "The Best of the Best: A Show of Concern" at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1985.

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/13/obituaries/john-m-falabella-40-tv-and-stage-designer.html

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Jules Elphant & Richard

Jules Elphant used to camp out for the weekend just outside of Lido Beach on Long Island. "In those days you didn't have anybody there. It was just wild. And it was great. It was isolated and people could go sunbathing nude and bathing nude and nobody ever thought about it. It started to get bad when a lot of drag queens started doing shows on weekends on the beaches. They started performing, and some straight people happened to see it and they started bringing their friends. Once that happened, forget it. Before you knew it, there were too many people coming down and that started to ruin Lido Beach."

In the late 1940s, thousands of lesbian and gay soldiers who had streamed through New York City on their way to Europe settled in Manhattan, bolstering what was already the largest gay community in America. In 1945, they founded the Veterans Benevolent Association, one of the first gay organizations ever incorporated in New York State.

The group met monthly and then twice a month on the fourth floor of a building on Houston Street near Second Avenue. Jules Elphant attended its meetings right from the start, when he was twenty-two. "A lot of it was uncomfortable because in those days we just didn't talk about being gay," Elphant remembered. "Of course in those days we weren't "gay". I think we were just "queer." Or "sissies." Sissy was the word that took care of everything, but so many of us were so far from being sissies. I always found myself in a macho-type way."

The association's dances attracted nearly two hundred men. The dances also attracted a couple of veterans' wives, including the woman married to James Lang, who founded the association and did most of the work that kept it together until 1954. "The women were all straight, but they knew their husbands were gay and they just went along with the husbands," said Elphant.

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( Further Readings )

More Real Life Romances at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Real Life Romance

Euro Pride Con: Serena Yates

Starting from June 1, 2015, I will daily feature authors attending the three conventions I will join, Euro Pride in Munich (July), UK Meet in Bristol (September) and GRL in San Diego (October).

For the Euro Pride in Munich, July 11-12, 2015, today author is Serena Yates (Serena Yates will also attend UK Meet in Bristol): "I’m a night owl and start writing when everyone else in my time zone is asleep. I’ve loved reading all my life and spent most of my childhood with my nose buried in a book. Although I always wanted to be a writer, financial independence came first. Twenty-some years and a successful business career later I took some online writing classes and never looked back.

Living and working in seven countries has taught me that there is more than one way to get things done. It has instilled tremendous respect for the many different cultures, beliefs, attitudes and preferences that exist on our planet.

I like exploring those differences in my stories, most of which happen to be romances. My characters have a tendency to want to do their own thing, so I often have to rein them back in. The one thing we all agree on is the desire for a happy ending.

I currently live in the United Kingdom, sharing my house with a vast collection of books. I like reading, traveling, spending time with my nieces and listening to classical music. I have a passion for science and learning new languages."

Further Readings:

The Carpenter (Workplace Encounters) by Serena Yates
Series: Workplace Encounters
Paperback: 188 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (August 20, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1463633394
ISBN-13: 978-1463633394
Amazon: The Carpenter (Workplace Encounters)
Amazon Kindle: The Carpenter (Workplace Encounters)

Tom Halderson is a carpenter who inherited his father’s construction company. Despite the fact running a business is not one of his strengths, and having made his foreman a full partner, he is in trouble. His older brother, Derek, who vanished five years ago, has returned and wants what he thinks is his part of the inheritance. Tom refuses to give in, but lets him live in their father’s house. When Derek fails at the job Tom gives him, he turns vengeful and makes life even more difficult for Tom. Matt Lanford is a safari guide who inherited his grandfather’s house when his mother committed suicide, not wanting to face her husband’s infidelities any longer. Matt plans to have the dilapidated house renovated so he can sell it, and move back to his adventurous life in Africa. The immediate attraction he feels for Tom completely derails him. Could the stability-loving Tom be just what Matt needs to settle down? Could the adventurous Matt be exactly what is lacking in Tom’s life?

&

UK Meet: Lillian Francis

Starting from June 1, 2015, I will daily feature authors attending the three conventions I will join, Euro Pride in Munich (July), UK Meet in Bristol (September) and GRL in San Diego (October).

For the UK Meet in Bristol, September 11-13, 2015, today author is Lillian Francis: An avid reader, Lillian Francis was always determined she wanted to write, but a 'proper' job and raising a family distracted her for over a decade. Over the years and thanks to the charms of the Internet, Lillian realized she’d been writing at least one of her characters in the wrong gender. Ever since, she’s been happily letting her ‘boys’ run her writing life.

Lillian now divides her time between family, a job and the numerous men in her head all clamouring for 'their' story to be told.

Lillian lives in an imposing castle on a wind-swept desolate moor or in an elaborate ‘shack’ on the edge of a beach somewhere depending on her mood, with the heroes of her stories either chained up in the dungeon or wandering the shack serving drinks in nothing but skimpy barista aprons.

In reality, she would love to own a camper van and to live by the sea.

Further Readings:

Theory Unproven by Lillian Francis
Publisher: Love Lane Books Ltd; 1 edition (February 18, 2015)
Amazon Kindle: Theory Unproven

Working with elephants in their natural habitat has always been Eric Phillips dream. Getting what he’s always desired introduces him to Tyaan Bouwer, the bush pilot that flies in his supplies, and Eric discovers the allure of South Africa goes beyond the wildlife and the scenery.

But in an area where bushveld prejudices and hatred bleed across the borders, realizing their love will be a hard fought battle. Keeping hold of it might just kill them.

GRL: Ethan Day

Starting from June 1, 2015, I will daily feature authors attending the three conventions I will join, Euro Pride in Munich (July), UK Meet in Bristol (September) and GRL in San Diego (October).

For the GRL in San Diego, October 15-18, 2015, today author is Ethan Day: "I write mainly contemporary GLBT Romance Novels, but who knows what the future might bring and what other genres I may dive into.

Hopefully, you’ll find my books to be sexy as well as fun. Sex and romance, should be fun! If it isn’t, then perhaps you’re not doing it right.

I hope you love my characters as much as I do. With any luck they’ll inspire you the way they do me."

Further Readings:

Love Me Tomorrow by Ethan Day
Paperback: 326 pages
Publisher: Wilde City Press, LLC (March 11, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 192518076X
ISBN-13: 978-1925180763
Amazon: Love Me Tomorrow
Amazon Kindle: Love Me Tomorrow

Event planner Levi Goode is positioned to inherit the newly vacated throne, becoming the in-demand party planner for Wilde City's elite. Years of hard work and perseverance are finally paying off as Levi lands his next big fish, working with socialite Julia Freeman-Kingsley. Distracted by work and dealing with his head strong mother, an ex-Vegas-showgirl suffering from debilitating health issues, Levi has his hands full. Time for love or even the occasional one-night stand, is one aspect of life Levi hasn't been able to master. Sparks of interest fly during a chance meeting with a paramedic called to the aid of his mother, and thanks to Ruby's meddling, Levi finds himself on a movie-date with the handsome Paramedic Jake. Personal and professional worlds collide when Levi realizes his new love interest is actually Jake Freeman, estranged brother to his brand new client. Discovering the man of his dreams already has a boyfriend, leaves Levi stunned realizing any hopes he had for something more with Jake were never going to be anything more than wishful thinking. Struggling to downshift his expectations and remain friends with Jake while continuing to work closely with Julia quickly consumes all of his time and attention. Wondering if there will ever be a special someone to love him, is where Levi's love story begins.