Until September
by Harker Jones

In the lull between the conservative ’50s and the turbulent ’60s, Kyle Ryan Quinn, an introspective, sentimental boy, leads a golden life. He’s rich, beautiful and smart, and he summers every year on the same island with the same group of friends. Haunted by the ghosts of a tragedy that took place in his youth, Kyle is more sensitive than his privileged peers. He understands loss, and secrets.

When he meets Jack Averill, a quiet, bookish boy, his fateful 18th summer on the island, Kyle attempts to integrate him into his tight-knit yet troubled circle while at the same time he’s pursued by another summer boy, and his best friend toys with the affections of an island girl. Amid mounting familial, sexual and peer pressures, all four young men make heartbreaking decisions that will steal their innocence, destroy lives and consume them forever.

5 out of 5 fairies

This was beautiful and sad all at once, and lingers long after you’ve finished the final page. We get to know Kyle very well through the course of the book, spanning several months over one year. He’s sensitive, kind, and a bit obsessed with the new boy in town – Jack. But he never comes across as creepy, more like he’s experiencing his first real crush, and maybe a little puppy love. There’s nothing like first love, after all. We get to know Kyle’s friends quite well also, and see how Jack’s arrival acts like ripples in a pond affects them all. Jones’s descriptive style gives an almost dream-like quality to the whole story, and although it moves along at a leisurely pace, there aren’t any lulls in the story. If you’re looking for a love story that’s not your typical romance, then you’ll want to grab this!

Until September Prologue

I was so young when it all began that the blame hardly feels like mine. But no matter how minor a part I played, mine was the most pivotal. In the end, it was a decision I made.

So though there are many stories I tell, this is the one I’ve never shared. I can’t bear to think about it, except in my most submerged recesses, releasing it in the deep deep dark of night, when it will not be evaded.

How many years would you have to go back to change your destiny? That question plagues me. Because if I can think in terms of destiny, I can afford myself a slight reprieve, a misguided waft of air in a stagnant, decaying well. If I can think in terms of destiny, I can believe that I did what I did because I had no option. It had been predetermined and I’d only acted out my role.

But destiny is the weak man’s conception. To believe in destiny is to take no responsibility for your choices.

And I won’t allow myself the luxury.

I learned a little from Trent that summer, but not enough to open the eyes of a self-involved, spoiled, jealous 17-year-old. Then, later, years later, I ran into Dana. We had drinks, both of us smoking too much, talking too much, drinking too much, wondering if the other was glossing things over. I saw a subtle loneliness in her eyes that I recognized only because it was in mine, too. She knew. And she knew that I knew. It’s scary, that loneliness, because you want so much to have someone alleviate it, yet the only people who can are those who know it, too. And when you find one of those people you’re terrified that that person can see through your carefully wrought facade, and you realize you’re naked in front of a virtual stranger, so you just run.

Run.

I learned most of it from Kyle. The details. The things I couldn’t have known. Those things pursue me. Those and the things Dana told me happened after. After I passed out of the picture. I was able to spend some uncomfortable but pleasant time with her until she told me. That was when I had to flee. I had to escape. That was when the running became all.

I’m still running.

Just as Kyle is still chasing. 

Neither of us will succeed—me in escaping or Kyle in capturing. 

We know this. 

We don’t stop.

Someone once told me that tears water the soul. I do not believe this. If it were true, my soul would be fertile and verdant. But it is stunted and gnarled and withered and cracked.

Which is something I could live with.

If Kyle’s had been spared.

Kyle would say this is Jack’s story. But, just as this is the only story I can never share, this is the only one Kyle will ever be able to tell.

So I think of this as Kyle’s story.

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Harker Jones is the author of the Amazon #1 best-selling gay love story “Until September” and nine screenplays. His short thrillers, “Cole & Colette” and “One-Hit Wonder,” have been accepted into more than 60 film festivals combined, garnering several awards. He’s a member of both the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle and Mensa, loves cats and carbs and would like to be a one-hit wonder but would settle for being killed in a slasher movie.

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