Boy Under the Bridge by Eden Winters

[reviews_and_ramblings]

I can’t possibly not like this story, since, more or less, I asked for it. Yes, if you will buy it, and will read the dedica, it starts with “For Elisa…” and yes, that is me. When I read The Wish, and I wrote about it, my main worry was that, despite the happily ever after for the couple in that story, Alex, one of them, was really mean with a young boy, barely 21 years old, he met in a nightclub. That boy, James was pretty and cute, but he gave me the idea of not being “strong”, and when Alex kicked him on the curb, after a night of meaningless sex, I wondered where he would go, imagining him starved under a bridge.

And it’s exactly there that Eden Winters decided to put the boy and start his story, or better, to give also to him an happily ever after; while thinking back at the near past, his one night stand with Alex, James also thinks to his long-term relationship with Travis; Travis maybe is not as handsome or rich as Alex, but he is, to James’s eyes, way better. And even if for most part of the short story we don’t have the chance to listen to Travis’s side of the story, if not through the first angry and than worried messages he left on James’s phone, also the reader realizes that James did a big mistake cheating on Travis. But even if I’m all against the cheating, I can’t be hard on James; he and Travis are really young, and at the beginning of their relationship as lover (even if they are friends since years); they need to test it, to compare it with something else, to understand that what they have is precious and they need to treasure it. Eden Winters was really good in bringing me on an emotional level that allows me to care for James instead of accusing him, same emotional predisposition of Travis. Even the "physical" reminders of James's cheating, instead of putting me off, are an element more to understand that Travis really loves James, since he is able to completely forgive his lover.

Even if only a short story, Boy Under the Bridge is a concentrate of 101 course on how to build a long lasting relationship; and in the end, even if James and Travis are young, they arrive to the right conclusion way before of bitter Alex.

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Reading List:

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