Tea company owner Tate Blackwood isn’t just in search of the perfect persimmon-flavored tea; he’s also looking for a good time. Many one-night stands are his thing. There’s no way he’ll have a boyfriend, or fall in love with another man.<br><br>Enter Paul Persimmon, the green-eyed owner of a little bookshop in downtown Channing, Pennsylvania. Tate thinks the man is honest, warm-hearted, and uninhibited. When Tate enters the bookshop, his life takes a quick turn. Although Persimmon insists on a date with Tate, Tate thinks another one-night stand will happen.<br><br>Is Tate too set in his ways to settle down with one man, though? Can he reach for love after finding Persimmon? Or is his relationship more about being best buds with Persimmon? Only time and persimmon tea will provide the answers to his steeping questions.

Finding Persimmon

There was no such thing as the perfect guy in Tate’s life, he surmised, and there never would be. Singlehood demanded his attention; a life without a boyfriend or husband, a certain someone he could take a part of his heart and emotional weaknesses and share with, keeping nothing for himself. No guy out in the world fit that position for Tate, at least maybe not until now. Persimmon here and queer and accounted for in Tate’s world. Present. Alive. Emotional bliss. All of it made no sense to Tate, and wouldn’t, if he didn’t listen to his father.


Blurred reality felt as if it were swallowing him whole. To fall for Persimmon, or not to fall for the guy, kept circling, tumbling, rowing, and roaring within his chest, interfering with Tate’s everyday life and world.


Settle down, Alfred kept saying in his head.


“I’m trying. It’s not as it easy for me as it was for you when you fell for Mother.”


Chapter 18