Love in Real Life

by Seth King

  “Sure did. And okay, I’ll hold off. But I want your dad to know who I am soon, though.” He closed his eyes and winced. “Okay, was that too much? Am I being too forward?”

  I took a breath. “I think you’re going at just the right speed, actually. But show up with a wedding ring in the morning, and I’ll really be alarmed.”

  He smiled at me. He was so adorable it hurt. “I don’t believe in the government sanctity of love, for your information. I’ll see you soon, for our first date?”

  “Date?”

  “Fine. Just call it a hangout. A hangout between two friends, one of whom is definitely not interested in sucking the other one’s dick. Not at all.”

  I turned red. I didn’t want to smile. I did, though. With every last square inch of my face. “Okay, see you then.”

  He nodded, his hope breaking my heart. “Sorry, but I already told you I’m just a big psycho.”

  “Okay. But if you get sick of me after one day, it’s your own fault. And stop putting yourself down – that’s my job.”

  He held my arm as I walked him out, and it made my skin feel like someone had pressed a live electrical wire against my body. So this is what it felt like, the whole infatuation thing…

  He looked at me a little too long as he got into his car and drove away, and a strange moment bloomed between us – but it withered away as soon as he almost drove into the neighbor’s trashcans. We both laughed, but it also made me a little scared, too, because for some reason the prospect of anything bad happening to George gave me a gross, queasy feeling at the bottom of my stomach. Already. And I wasn’t sure how much I liked it.

  When I got to my bed I had an impulse to pick up my Kindle and drown out my thoughts in a brainless memoir or essay collection to just turn off my feelings and go cold to the world. But for the first time in a long time, I realized I wasn’t so desperate to get lost in a sea of words. Real life was just a little less dreary now.

  In fact, it was starting to sparkle...

  Books in Real Life

  So, hey guys, it’s me. I’m writing from my disgusting bed, but my computer area is a disaster zone and life’s a mess and then you die, so yeah. Anyway, I’m posting tonight because I have some news. I know this may shock all twelve of you who will actively care, but…I’m reading the romance novel one of you suggested to me, and I’ll be reviewing it for you guys.

  I know, I know. I’m basically the Lizzie Borden of the book world (Google her if you aren’t familiar, but rest assured, it’s not a cute tale). But I’ve been thinking about romance, and hearts and flowers and good-morning texts and all the things that modern, levelheaded people like me are supposed to reject out of hand. But I’ve been contemplating it on a deeper level, actually.

  Like, what even is romance? What’s the point of it all? What is love? Does romance serve a purpose, does love really exist, or are we just highly evolved monkeys on a rock experiencing urges that are merely serving to help us procreate? Is human consciousness a nagging itch we are all trying to nullify with a few Tinder swipes?

  And…does anyone love me? Do I take up space in anyone’s heart? Does anyone dream about me? Or am I as invisible as I imagine myself to be?

  ...And why in God and John Green’s name am I even wondering about any of this? Who am I? And what kind of mushy mess am I becoming?

  Whatever. I’ll check back later.

  Love, Me (Whoever Me happens to be today, anyway)

  Oh, and PS: I can’t make a post without getting in a little plug, so don’t forget the Bookworm just got in the latest Meredith Wild novel, and I hear it’s really good. A “wild” ride, even?

  Okay, sorry for the cheesiness. Come by and check it out so my dad doesn’t end up in the poor house!

  X’s and O’s,

  Teddy

  Teddy Martin

  I slept and read most of the day after the wallpaper party – I was overdue a day off, anyway – and I didn’t hear from George much besides Snapchat. But that night, he called. And then he called the night after that, too. The next day, same thing. Mostly just chitchat about books; nothing major. And when Saturday came, he was in the Meow by ten. I saw warm, gooey, playful eyes from across the room and felt my stomach flip and then disappear completely. He’d gotten a haircut and he looked sexier than any human I had ever seen. And oh my Jesus, his stubble…

  I distrusted it all immediately. He was fun to look at, obviously. But he was making me feel things, and I didn’t particularly like feeling things. Feelings were messy and dirty and couldn’t be closed, like the back cover of a book. Feelings basically destroyed people, right?

  So I tried not to notice him, feel him, breathe him, enjoy him. I failed fantastically, and I kind of loved the failure, actually. He was an adventure every day.

  “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” I teased as I handed him his second coffee.

  “Nope. I’m admiring our work. And can we talk soon? For longer than a minute?”

  Now that I knew he was…well, interested, I got a bit butterfly-stomached around him. Why hadn’t I felt like this before? What did the interest have to do with anything? It was as if him liking me made him even more improbably appealing.

  “Okay,” I finally said. “I have an hour off for lunch. I’ll be over here soon.”

  When I got off, I slid into the booth, the same booth from the other night.

  “Where have you been?” I asked as he looked up at me. He appraised me.

  “Home. Thinking.”

  “About?”

  “Nothing too interesting. And reading, too.”

  “Reading what?”

  We did the whole “book talk” thing for ten or fifteen minutes. He was reading a novel he thought was overly precious, but I actually loved it. Eventually he looked up at our work from the other night. “Damn, that is some pretty art up there, if I may say so myself. I love it here. This is quite simply the best book bookstore in the world.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh, come on – it can’t be the best one in the world.”

  “Yes it can. If I lived here I would literally never leave.”

  “Trust me, I don’t. I have books and coffee – what else would anyone need to live a happy life?”

  “Exactly. And it is the best in the world. Who says it can’t be? Have you been to all of them?”

  “Well…have you?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “Exactly. You haven’t.”

  His eyes twinkled harder than ever. “Let’s go, then.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but eventually, let’s visit some bookstores within driving distance and test my theory.”

  “What? When?”

  “Soon.”

  “I don’t even really know you. And how will you go, if you have that whole anxiety thing going on…”

  His lip disappeared into his mouth. “I think I’ll be fine with you. And I want to get to know you. And this is a perfect excuse to spend more time around you. Why not?”

  I smiled. Something told me to turn him down. But something also drew me in unlike anything I’d experienced in a long time.

  “Okay, here’s a deal, weirdo,” he said playfully. “Eventually we visit some places around the city, and if we find one better than this, I’ll be proven wrong. But if we don’t, and if this is indeed the best bookstore around, you have to sleep with me.”

  “Sleep with you? That is literal prostitution. Are you trying to exchange sexual favors for services?”

  The smile that followed nearly murdered me with joy. “Hey, I warned you that I was a little crazy, didn’t I?”

  “I guess you did. At least you were honest.”

  “Ha. What’s on your docket for the rest of the day?”

  I opened my laptop. “I’ve been neglecting my blog like crazy. I’ve got to finish a book review, then maybe do a piece on the mural, then some other random stuff…it’ll be really boring. What about you?”
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  “Can I watch?” he asked, and I did a double-take.

  “Watch what? This boring blogging stuff?”

  “It’s not boring. It’s your ‘thing.’ Therefore it is fascinating.”

  He leaned forward and rested his chin on his hands, his eyes glowing. I blushed and unlocked my screen. “I mean, sure, if you say so…”

  And so, as we sat together, I blogged well into the afternoon.

  George Charles

  So, I had a bad day. Or two. I do feel a bit better now. But still, the past few days have been…

  I don’t have to explain. You can imagine it. It was like being inside a tornado – a spiral that shook my whole body and only went down, down, down…

  Most of the time, my trigger would involve someone saying something bad about me, or me imagining that something was about to go wrong. First my face would go kind of numb. Then I’d get a sensation like I was spinning. Then my mood collapsed and I’d get all jittery and dazed. After that, nothing, save for a rescue dosage of Klonopin, would help me. But that only knocked me out for twelve hours, making me even more unreachable to the world…

  My psychiatrist called it “getting caught speeding,” when I’d have a few good days and then think I was invincible and try to do too much, too soon. Something would trigger me, a stranger would look at me weirdly, and then I’d careen into my room, reeling with panic. Sometimes it was like even people who weren’t there were still watching me through the windows, still talking about me. Sometimes books wouldn’t even help, but usually they did. So I texted Teddy for some recommendations and dove into my Kindle.

  That helped even more than usual, because he was a good distraction. Our tastes were different, but I kind of liked that – I didn’t want to date my twin. A few differences kept things interesting. Speaking of interesting: another home remedy I’d found was masturbation, as weird as that sounded. But it was a very effective release, a very good way to blow off some steam or some pressure. So basically I’d been alternating between reading and wanking, you could say. And you didn’t even have to guess who’d been the star of my mental show…

  I was curious about Teddy. I wanted to see what his lips would look like, against the tip of me. I wanted to know what his hair would feel like as I pulled it. I wanted all that and more. So my doctor adjusted my dosages a little – she said my sleeping pill was sending me downhill, and needed to be lowered – and by today I felt much better.

  I took out my iPad and pulled up his blog. BOOKS IN REAL LIFE, the title said, followed by a short description.

  Dear Bookworm, are you tired of people telling you to get over your books and start living a little? Is your addiction to books affecting the rest of your life? Do you feel the need to speak about books with like-minded friends without making the rest of the people in your life think you are crazy? If so, this is the place for you. This is where you can live inside books – in real life.

  There was a new-ish post entitled HOW TO KNOW YOU’RE A HOPELESS BOOKWORM. It went like this:

  Do you need help? Are you hopelessly addicted to books? Let’s find out:

  Do you frequently become so fixated on a certain book, you beg and badger your friends to read it until they break down, just so you can have someone to talk about it with?

  Do your parents or peers think you read too much, and it is affecting your quality of life?

  Do you conceal from friends and family members how much money you actually spend on books?

  Do you frequently find real life disappointing, and get the sudden urge to jump into Hogwarts or Narnia as if they are real places?

  Do you form delusional one-sided relationships with fictional characters, pleading with them to make certain decisions or chatting with them in your head long after you read their stories?

  Have you ever mourned the death of a fictional character like they were a real person?

  Do you find yourself sometimes avoiding real life when it gets too hard and jumping back into the safety of literature?

  If you answered ‘yes’ to two or more of these questions, please high-tail it to the nearest library and keep reading. There is nothing wrong with the book life, and please wave your nerd flag high until the world agrees.

  I sat back and laughed. This kid really was funny. And cute, and smart. And popular, too. The post already had 96 shares. Impressive, considering I couldn’t even maintain social media profiles without being terrified I was going to log on one day and overlook some terrible thing about myself that would send me into a spiral…

  I checked the time and thought of his smile, his unruly hair. Maybe he was still on his shift at the Bookworm. I already missed him so much. Maybe I could go bother him and apologize for being distant for the past days…and maybe I could figure out a way to trick him into hanging out with me more, as much of a mess as I was…

  Teddy Martin

  From then on, George visited me every day to talk about our upcoming bookstore tour, and about life in general. I suspected this was only because it was summer and he had nothing else to do, but still it made me feel special and adored and cute for the first time in a long time. He would come in and sit in the same beanbag in the café every time, not talking sometimes, and other times chatting so much I would keep having to excuse myself to deal with Big Joe or listen to another regular, Tanya, tell the same story about how her ex-husband had attacked her with a can opener in the trailer park. I learned a few things about George, like how he looked down and to the side when he laughed, and how he moved his arms when he talked, and how when he talked about things, no matter what those things were, he was as passionate as an author talking about his characters. Most people were passionate about just one thing, but he had that vigor for life itself. He meant what he said, or he seemed like it, at least, and that was so refreshing.

  One day he showed me all his favorite music on his iPad Mini. While I shamelessly listened to what I called “gay guy pop,” the pop queens like Britney and Gaga and Katy and Taylor, he liked Kendrick Lamar and Frank Ocean. Another day we read together and talked about all the annoying things the authors were doing, even though we were both enjoying our books. (A reader without a qualm was not a real reader at all. I can fall in love with a book and still point out a character I despised and wanted to fall into a canyon.) Then we went running one night, since he said he couldn’t face a crowded gym yet. The first time I had to stop and walk for eighty percent of the time, but by the third go-round, I was basically keeping up with him – if he ran really, really slowly, at least. And when I went to bed that night, I couldn’t fall asleep. I was too excited to see him again.

  For one week, and then ten days, we were together every day. Well, definitely not every day, because sometimes he would just drop off the map, but I saw him more often than I didn’t. Mostly we talked about books and writing and authors, but slowly the personal started filtering in. Friends, parents, cousins, childhood vacation spots, etcetera. He also told me horror stories about his condition before he was diagnosed, but looking back, he could laugh about it – like the time he’d walked onstage at an awards ceremony at school, taken one glance at the crowd, and immediately turned around and left. It didn’t sound fun, but he said he felt a bit better and calmer these days.

  Soon I became more grateful than ever for the Bookworm, because it gave us a perfect place at which to hangout. It was like it was built for Teddy and George. Sure, we would jog together sometimes, but the Bookworm was our mothership. Each time I saw him I got that cold rushing newnewnew feeling like I’d stepped off a ledge into empty air. We’d talk, laugh, read together, whatever. In a weird way he was already making my life brighter and more interesting. Books did some of that, I guess, but come on – books weren’t enough on their own. I guess I was starting to realize that, as traitorous as it sounded. He could be so funny and cute and achingly, adorably awkward when he tried. If I had a joke, he’d already heard it. If we got a new book in from the delivery trucks, he’d already g
otten it on Kindle and formed an opinion on it.

  One day he told me had something disappointing to share. I panicked and thought he was announcing he was done with our friendship or something, but instead he said he couldn’t let the Bookworm go any longer without any “designated selfie stations.” He said he’d come up with an idea in a dream, and admittedly it did sound pretty smart. So we cleared one wall, hung up a huge Jackson Pollack-style painting from storage, perfected the lighting, roped it off, and soon we had a selfie station. Customers could post pictures of themselves there with the prospect of being chosen by our account for a weekly re-post, and as a side effect we’d get a huge amount of people posting pictures from our own store. Within two days, one hundred hashtags had been posted on Instagram, serving as free advertisements for us. He was a genius.

  I spent one Friday morning dusting and cleaning the Booktube, the entrance to the shop. Taking up the whole entry hallway, it was a seven-foot horizontal “tube” made of old hardback books donated by local libraries that stretched from the front door to the café – a vortex of literature, it was the single most Instagrammed spot in the whole mansion. (Before George had come along with his Selfie Stations, at least.)

  I looked for George all afternoon, but he did not show. Instead of sinking into despair, though, I busied myself entertaining the regulars in the Meow, our coffee shop. When I was bored I would talk to them and listen to their stories, and it was like a real-life Humans of New York. As the cats circled the room, I stopped by to see Big Joe, a gigantic biker who would sit and drink our strongest coffee and talk about the man who broke his heart in the ‘80s. They broke up over something so stupid he couldn’t even really remember what it was, and then two years later Joe saw in the newspaper that he’d died of AIDS complications. The story haunted me just as much every time. Then I stopped by Tanya’s table, but excused myself very quickly when she started ripping into her other ex-husband, “that goddamned Richard,” who’d apparently run off with Dottie, a woman she described as a “trollop” due to her habit of wearing crimson lipstick.