Love in Real Life

by Seth King

“Ugh. I’ve got to wake up so early – my dad is making me do yet another refurbishment at the store, and I’m dreading the hell out of it.”

  “What, exactly?”

  “One of the areas in the Meow café needs redecorating, according to my dad. He thinks it looks stale, and he’ll give me three gift cards to Outback if I do it. But I have no idea how to fix it.”

  His eyes got that playful thing. “Hmmm. Are you taking suggestions?”

  “Sure. It’s the wall at the back of the café – he says it’s awfully bare.”

  “Hmm. I saw something on Tumblr recently. What do you say about wallpapering it, but with a collage of old paperback covers? Like, gluing them on with wallpaper paste?”

  “That’s…actually kind of genius.”

  “Hmm. Do you have any old books?”

  “Of course. We have a shipment that was being sent to an incinerator soon, anyway. I would hate to damage them, but then again, they are about to be burned. So that sounds perfect – we’re giving them a new home. Plus, it’ll be free.”

  “That’s what I’m here for, sir. This is my thing.”

  “What do you mean? You’re not, like, a visual artist or anything.”

  His eyes burned like coals in his face. “Of course I am. Anybody would feel like an artist around you. You bring out all of the colors, my friend.”

  After that, I fully let go of my neuroses and let him into the store. Into my home, really. We spent the night, and then the middle of the night, having a wallpapering party. He knew how to make this sloppy mixture to stick the covers on the wall, which I cut from the used paperbacks we found in the back storage area. (I know I was murdering the books, but better to murdered for the sake of beauty than to just be burned in some factory, right?)

  As we worked he told me about his mom and his dogs and his friends, and I felt myself becoming fond of him in the weirdest way. When we finished at around four in the morning, I turned on all the lights to see a gorgeous tapestry of blue, red, yellow, green, black – all the colors were there. It was like free wallpaper, but way better and more beautiful.

  “I want this to be my office,” he said as we marveled at our creation. “No – better yet, my throne. I want this to be my place of birth, marriage, death, and burial. I want to have a fake marriage, have a big ceremony, right here, right now.”

  “Sorry, we’re not zoned for weddings, I’m afraid. Fire escape laws, or something. Also, Florida in particular isn’t too crazy about the whole ‘gay weddings’ thing yet.”

  “And here I thought I would be getting hitched tonight.”

  “Nah. Maybe tomorrow.”

  We cleaned up in silence. But it wasn’t awkward – just comfortable. But when we were both putting the tools back in the closet, I accidentally hit him over the head with the very end of a ladder. He was totally fine, but I felt awful.

  “Seriously, I’m okay!” he said again.

  “Good,” I mumbled. “At least I know you’re made of flesh and blood now.”

  “What was that? I couldn’t hear you.”

  “Oh, it’s just that…I haven’t even decided yet if you’re real yet, or some kind of avatar.”

  “Elaborate, please?” he asked, and I swallowed.

  “Okay. I have a lingering theory that you may be a character from a book. I’m actually convinced that you are not a real human, and I’m just imagining you.”

  “Eh?”

  My face flushed. “Ah, see? Just that, right there – what you just did. Who leans forward with a sparkle in their eye and says things like ‘eh?’ Which author wrote you?”

  “Hopefully a good one. And keep going. I’m curious about this theory.”

  “Well. You also make eye contact – who does that? – and you dress reasonably well, and you’re just cocky enough for it to be cute without it being gross. Like, Cute Cocky and Gross Cocky are two very different things, separated only by a slight difference in posture and a few smirks.”

  “Cute Cocky, eh?”

  “But don’t push it. Like I said, a few smirks and you’re done. We all know boys like you were specifically created by sadistic authors intent on illuminating readers on the pathetic state of the boys in their hometowns, and I won’t partake in that evil scheme.”

  “I like you, Teddy,” he said, and I froze.

  “What?”

  “I like you. Can I say that?”

  “Yeah, it’s just…um, damn, it’s getting so late. Or early, I should say.”

  “God, how is that possible?” he asked soon, looking across the street. “Time flies when fun is involved. Dawn’s coming. It’s already blue at the edge of the ocean.”

  Blue, my brain whispered, echoing him. Blue blue. The sky, the water, human blood – why were all the most important things in the world the color of this boy’s shirt? Why was he sucking up space in the corners of my mind already? It’s not like he was perfect. I’d noticed that he talked out of the corner of his mouth in a weird way, like he was scared, and his body language was super awkward. He also wasn’t great at shaving, so his facial hair was a bit uneven and patchy.

  But then again, I’d be lying if I said all that didn’t just make him even cuter…for instance, I rarely liked a perfect book, a huge bestseller. I liked quirky little masterpieces that other people just “didn’t get” – to me, the weirdness was perfect.

  “Why do you do this stuff?” I asked soon. “Walk around at night all by yourself? Renovate bookstores for free?”

  He looked away, hiding whatever was showing in his eyes. “Don’t know. Guess I’ve found myself with copious amounts of free time lately.”

  “Same here.”

  “Why?”

  “I just don’t have much of a life. My idea of a good time is my bed, my phone and a book. Other humans never really fit into that agenda.”

  “And say you don’t have a life,” he scoffed. “That’s my own personal Valhalla.”

  I need to kiss this human: the impulse rose up within me, some deep instinct that both surprised and confused me. He was a hot boy who was talking about how his heaven contained books. So I did it. I kissed him.

  I didn’t know how or why I was kissing him, I just knew that suddenly, I was kissing George. Somehow Teddy Martin leaned forward and jammed his lips against George Charles’, and after a few seconds of awkwardly shuffling our mouths around, we were kissing. His tongue was exploring me and his lips were sucking me and it felt slightly uncomfortable but incredibly nice at the same time.

  It also made me super horny. He just seemed like a good person to kiss – he seemed like a good choice. So we did. And instead of pulling away or keeping his eyes open or doing the previous things my halfhearted flirtations had done, he seemed totally into it. I was into it, too, and I felt my hand sliding up his back…

  And then he was trying to do more than kiss. It made my whole body dissolve. He was…sexy. He was sexy, and I could admit that.

  Up until a certain point.

  I pulled back. “Oh,” I said, pulling up my boxer-briefs.

  “Oh. I didn’t even…I don’t know what that was just now. I kinda got grabbed by something.”

  “No, I think I was the one that got grabbed,” I blushed.

  He stared at me. “I’m sorry. Was it unpleasant?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “Can I do it again?”

  I looked away. “Yes.”

  He crept closer again. I could feel his breath on my skin, sense his warmth radiating on me. It made me see shades of red I’d never seen before. “Whenever we move closer,” he whispered, staring down at me, “you act like it’s a bad thing.”

  I had nothing to say.

  “It’s okay,” he breathed, as my body surged. “Let it happen.”

  “I’m trying.”

  But I couldn’t get any less stiff. He paused, frowned, and it was clear the kissy moment was over. It made my stomach turn on itself.

  “I have to tell you something,” I said
.

  “Okay?”

  Here it was: he didn’t want me. I’d come up short.

  “I’m kind of mentally ill,” he said, and everything went blank.

  “Oh, um…oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What, specifically?”

  “Can we sit?”

  He motioned at a booth. I sat across from him, and he took a breath.

  “Specifically, everything about me is under construction. Everything you saw the first day – that was an act, brought on by a new medication I’ve been taking. I used to be severely depressed, but that’s gotten better...well, as good as depression can get, at least. I still have severe Social Anxiety Disorder, though. There’s a reason its acronym is SAD. Before medication, sometimes I couldn’t leave my house.”

  “…For how long?”

  He looked away. “I left school when I was fifteen because I thought people were whispering about me in the halls. That was three years ago.”

  I just stared.

  “But hey, I’m healing. Some days are a lot better now. I’m in therapy, and on medication. The day we met – that was a good day, but there will be more bad days. The thing about mental sicknesses is that…I’ll never have a moment like in the books, where I wake up one day and I’m healed. ‘The magic touch of love,’ and all that. I am imbalanced. I will never be fully ‘normal’ in my whole life, as bad as that sounds. But I have a flight to a big city in a few weeks and I’m already dreaming up all the ways I’m going to die. This is just who I am.” He gulped. “Is that…okay with you?”

  Again, I just stared at him. “Um…is that all?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, is that all?”

  “I have a major mental disorder. What do you mean, is that all?”

  “I mean, do you have any hidden tentacles anywhere? Do you turn into a wolf sometimes like in the Thriller video? If you don’t, we’re good here.”

  For the first time in a while, he smiled. “It’s really okay?”

  “What? Of course it’s okay.” What else was I going to say? And why in the world did he think I would care?

  I sit back. “Actually…what’s it like? Can I ask that?”

  “Of course. It’s…tough. People always…you know, they want to act like you have to see an illness for it to be real. ‘Oh, you don’t have a cast on your arm? You’re fine. Suck it up, pussy.’ My mom still just mostly thinks I’m being melodramatic. But brains can be sick, too. Just like any other organ can be. My childhood was a struggle, every single day.”

  “How?”

  He shrugged. “Everyone can feel a little awkward or nervous when they walk into a room or party. I know that. But with me, I was swamped. It was inferno. My chest would tighten and my mind would race and my muscles would lock. I remember having full-blown physical panic attacks on the way to the lunchroom at school, dreaming up all the different ways I would be shunned and left alone, at my own table, and everyone would laugh. At church I’d stand outside the door for twenty minutes, convinced nobody would let me sit in their row. In general it was a fear of being excluded, of being alone in the end.”

  “I get that.”

  “Yeah. But looking back, it was all imagined. Nobody really cared about me that much. It’s almost hallucinatory, the sickness. And nobody understands it, everyone writes it off like I’m just a drama queen. Like I said, mental illness in America is a huge stigma, probably one of the biggest, and it’s not getting any better. You’re seen as being damaged or flawed or whatever. But...anyway, I’ve gotten better, but sometimes it is still unbearable. Unlivable. But at least it’s gotten better since the depression.”

  My ears perked up. “The depression?”

  “Anxiety often spirals into depression when it isn’t dealt with properly. When I was depressed, I didn’t have the tools to make good decisions for myself. You know that when you get home at night, you just know it would be stupid and self-destructive to hide in bed and junk food and ignore your responsibilities. That’s just common sense, right? Most people know to go jogging instead and stay away from alcohol and pills and get to bed at a decent time.”

  I nodded.

  “Sometimes I couldn’t think like that. I want to make the most destructive decision, because something inside me makes me want to fuck things up for myself. I’m regulated now, but before that I could just slip down the mountain, and it was scary. The lower I went, the harder it was to get back out of it. People would say I’m lazy, or tell me to get up and run a mile, read a book, think on the bright side. I couldn’t. Telling someone with a sick brain to ‘get better’ or ‘get happy’ is like telling someone with a broken bone to run a race. Society just wouldn’t accept it. They still won’t. They think you have to see a disease for it to be real.” He sighed. “Really, though, the disease itself wasn’t even really the worst part. Society’s treatment of the disease was. As soon as people heard the word ‘medication,’ they looked at me like I was from a horror movie. They got distant and they got pity in their eyes. You were damaged goods to them, and you would never be anything more.”

  “Hey,” I said. “I don’t think that. You’re going to have to try a lot harder if you want to scare me off.”

  “Well everyone else did. You know, by all accounts, I should’ve been happy. I had parents and iPads and a nice house. And that just made me feel worse: the guilt that I should’ve magically made myself better. I repelled people, because nobody understood me. Nobody got it. When was the last big summer blockbuster to feature a depressed kid, and humanize him or her? Mentally ill people are depicted as the nutty homeless psychos that people veer around when they pass on the street. But trust me – I’m much, much better now that I’ve confronted it all. Now I only have the social awkwardness of, like, an average bookworm, I’d say.”

  “Hey, now,” I said. “I’m not doing so well, either. I have no idea what I want to do with my life, besides the Bookworm.”

  “Welcome to the club!”

  I sighed. “Tell me about it.” Growing up to me was like one of those mirages you saw while driving down a hilly road on a hot day – up ahead, a puddle would shimmer and flicker, but as soon as you drove up on it, poof – no more puddle. I always assumed my thoughts would grow up with my body, but that wasn’t happening. Inside, I felt new as rain. Where was all this wisdom they talked about? Where was the seriousness? The stillness? Nobody had ever told me that basically, life was hard. Life was mean. Life was a mean old lady yelling at kids who crossed its lawn, and it did nothing to help. I was learning that shitty things happened to good people all the time, and that didn’t fit into the Sunday School fairy tale I’d been taught about adulthood as a kid.

  I swallowed. “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me twice about the mental illness stigma. My mom, even though I don’t remember much of it, was…”

  “What?”

  “Well, she’s bipolar. I’ve never told anyone that, but it’s true. She was the talk of the town, that’s for sure.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. For many different reasons.”

  “Wow. I’m sorry. But also…”

  “What?”

  “I’m glad we talked. I almost relieved that you understand, in a weird way. That you’re not…afraid. Of me.”

  “Of course I’m not afraid! I’m no picnic, either, mentally speaking. And…it’s kind of touching, too, that you opened up. That you trusted me.” Suddenly I tried to change the subject away from The Mom Thing. “Anyway, you said you’re getting better. What finally changed?”

  He looked suspicious, but he let it go. “My mom finally took me to a specialist, for one. Having someone listen and understand changed everything. I take a low dosage of two different pills, and also, I’m supposed to do everything I can to keep my body active and my brain exhausted – run, read, do whatever I can to stay active. If I let my brain go off on its own, it leads straight to Panic Town. Some mornings I
can’t get out of bed if I haven’t worked out in a while – it’s like I’m in the middle of a tornado. It sucks, so I work out whenever I can.”

  That probably explains the sexy, tendon-y arms, I thought to myself.

  “That’s probably why I’ve been slipping a little lately,” he said. “I’ve been lazy.”

  “Well I’ll help. God knows I need the cardio. Let’s do cardio sometimes. And maybe we can make some sort of buddy-read system or something.”

  “Sounds nice. And hey, you said you had some mental stuff in the mix, too. What’s your brand of crazy?” he asked with a smile. I felt myself shut down as soon as he said it.

  “Um, nothing.”

  “No, really, you can tell me.”

  “Nope,” I said. “God, I’m so tired suddenly.”

  “Okay then…but still…we can hang out tomorrow?”

  “Sure.”

  He smiled again. “I’m not talking about the typical ‘let’s hangout’ conversation, though. I’m too busy for games. I don’t want to touch base with you in three days about hanging out next weekend, and then awkwardly text back and forth before finally meeting for tapas in ten days. I want to hang out tomorrow. Perhaps here at the Bookworm?”

  I tried not to drown in his words. “Okay, but…why here?”

  He looked nervous again. “I can have some trouble with…new areas. New people. So for now, here would be ideal.”

  “Okay. Around my dad, though? He works here.”

  He shrugged. “Stop looking for excuses. He doesn’t know who I am. I’m just a friend. Or a customer.”

  “Oh. Well, okay.”

  “Does he know you’re…”

  “Gay?” I asked. He nodded.

  “Yes, and he doesn’t care. That’s just a detail to him. He’s just protective of me and my…choices.”

  “Same with my mom – she’s from Manhattan, she doesn’t give a shit. When she found out about my first male crush, she asked me what I wanted for dinner. Aren’t we lucky to have grown up just when that stuff started to matter less?”

  I nodded. I’d had a few incidents – guys in P.E. calling me girly or saying I had a “gay accent,” things like that – but since I’d always kept to myself anyway, most kids left me alone. “Of course,” I said. “I’ve heard horror stories from people only, like, a decade older. We lucked out.”