The Bookseller's Boyfriend

by Heidi Cullinan

  A smile, the real smile that made Rasul’s heart skip, spread across Jacob’s face. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

  Rasul didn’t wait for him to leave, only plunked down in his chair, sandwich forgotten as he opened the word processing document with trembling hands and started typing.

  When he looked up an hour later, dazed and quietly euphoric with victory, there was a metal water bottle and a note beside Susan, who sat, legs tucked, on the other side of the laptop, eyes shut as she dreamed.

  The note said,

  The remainder of your sandwich is on a plate in the fridge. I’ll make us a reservation for seven Friday night. If Indian isn’t okay, let me know and I’ll change it.—Jacob

  Rasul rubbed the edge of the paper between his thumb and forefinger, reading it through a second time. Then he tucked it into his pocket, saved his file, took a drink of water, and started in on the next scene.

  JACOB WAS nervous about his date with Rasul all day Friday.

  It didn’t matter how much he told himself it didn’t matter because it wasn’t a real date. It was Rasul Youssef, the author he’d been calling his favorite for ten years. It was the intense but charming man who kept barging his way into Jacob’s life.

  It was the man Jacob had been attracted to for a long, long time, first in the abstract and now in the very specific.

  He left for India Palace at twenty to seven, far earlier than necessary, but he didn’t want to be late. It was on the University Avenue side of what the locals thought of as Front Street, the name it had borne until sometime in the middle of the twentieth century when Bayview had been founded and some city planner felt having a campus town sounded nice. It was the same small-town phenomenon that made Copper Point Pharmacy’s unofficial name Peeley’s, which came from it being known as Peeley’s Drug in the 1960s and early seventies.

  It was another nice day, though a bit windy as a front edged over the bay. Soon Jacob would need a jacket when he took this walk, which usually ended at Gus’s shop. He glanced through the window of the café as he passed, but the windows didn’t let him peek too far in, still reflecting the street in front of them.

  India Palace was in essence a slightly upscale diner, boasting a buffet at lunchtime for the students and professors, and a fancier dinner service complete with candles on the table for the locals in the evenings. The owners were a lovely Indian couple who tended to come out to the guests’ tables and ensure they were having a quality dining experience. Jacob also knew them from chamber of commerce meetings, the same way he knew most of the Main Street and campus-town proprietors.

  Avni met him with a smile as he came through the door, drawing him in for a quick embrace. “Jacob, so good to see you. Your boyfriend is already here, so I seated him.”

  A thrill of delight and terror ran through Jacob at your boyfriend. “Thank you.”

  She beamed like a proud mother as she escorted him to the booth near the window where, indeed, Rasul sat gazing out the window, a cup of chai in front of him, as well as a spread of naan and samosas. As Jacob expected, the restaurant was full to bursting, and everyone had their eye trained on Jacob and Rasul.

  He didn’t blame Avni or her husband. He’d chosen them because he liked them and wanted them to do well. Also he knew from online interviews that Rasul loved Indian cuisine.

  Rasul rose, smiling as Jacob approached. Then he put his hand on Jacob’s shoulder. “I ordered already because I accidentally skipped breakfast and lunch and I thought I was going to faint. Avni’s been taking care of me.”

  Jacob went still as Rasul leaned in and bussed his cheek with a dry kiss. It was a perfectly acceptable part of the ruse, he acknowledged. All the same, it short-circuited all his nerve endings and made him long to curl into a ball on the floor and expire quietly.

  Instead, he returned the kiss with what he hoped was a cool gesture, and sat down. To Avni, who hovered like she was watching the best television episode ever, he said, “Another chai, please, and a glass of water.”

  “Of course.” She drifted away, casting several glances back at him.

  “She’s wonderful,” Rasul said, dragging a samosa through the mint sauce. “And so is this food. Holy cow. You’re welcome to have some of this, of course, but I’ll warn you I asked her to make the samosas extra spicy.”

  “How spicy is spicy?”

  Jacob’s heart sped up again as Rasul dredged the samosa through the sauce and held it out for Jacob. It was intimate and sensual and made Jacob want to melt. He wanted to lock his gaze with Rasul’s and drag his tongue across those long, dangerous fingers.

  Instead, he politely took the food from Rasul with his hands and steadied it before taking a bite. His eyes widened as the spice hit him. “That’s hot.” He caught some crumbs falling from his lips as he gave the samosa back. “But very good.”

  Rasul’s eyes sparkled as he passed Jacob some naan and his cup of chai. “We can order some more.”

  “I want room in my stomach for the main course.”

  “Look, I have absolutely no argument with leftovers. Also I’m in the mood to pack away everything they have in the kitchen.”

  They ended up ordering more samosas and naan and three main dishes to serve family-style in a variety of spice levels.

  “I love samosas.” Rasul dipped the last of the one in the mint sauce again and paused to chew it with obvious pleasure. “They remind me of my grandmother’s kubbeh. Not the same at all really, but they’re similar enough to make me nostalgic.”

  Jacob sipped his chai as he watched Rasul enthusiastically consume his food. “Your grandmother emigrated from Syria, yes?”

  “Grandfather and father too, back in the 1960s. Dad was only seventeen when they came over, but he leapt headfirst into assimilating as an American. Got himself a high-powered job in New York City and flirted with a Brazilian model, who became my mother.” He wiped his fingers on a napkin, his lips thinning briefly into a line. “Mom thought Dad was richer than he was, but in the end she decided a green card marriage would do well enough as compensation, so she got pregnant to force his hand. Then got divorced and took off as soon as she was in the clear.”

  What? “I never heard that in your bio, only that your parents got divorced when you were young.”

  “Yeah, well.” Rasul shrugged and sopped up more of the sauce with his naan this time. “Doesn’t sound as nice, plus she’s mostly rehabilitated herself now. She—” He stopped short, his entire face lighting up as he froze. “Jacob, listen. They’re playing our song.”

  Jacob glanced around, then realized Rasul meant the atmospheric music. During the day they played Indian music, but at night they put on various Spotify soundtracks full of soft rock. Right now Air Supply sang with heartfelt intensity.

  Jacob couldn’t help smiling. “I don’t think we danced to ‘Every Woman in the World,’ though.”

  “Every Air Supply song is our song, babe.” Rasul put a hand on his chest and lip-synched along with the singers as if he were on stage with them.

  Blushing, Jacob tried to bat him away. “Stop, you’re making a scene.”

  “I love scenes.” Rasul calmed down, though, resting his chin in his hands. “I sat up a lot trying to figure out what that song meant when I was little. Why is she every woman in the world to him? The only thing I could come up with was that when he was with her, all the women on the planet sucked into her and became a single entity. It was terrifying and wonderful.”

  “Your speculative fiction roots being formed.”

  Jacob had meant it as a gentle ribbing, but Rasul deflated and curled around his cup. “Do you know, sometimes I hate that I got boxed into that genre? I feel like I always do the same thing and people are going to call me on it. They already do. If they’re not bitching at me for taking so long to finish my book, they lambaste me for doing the same thing over and over.”

  “What do you mean? You’ve only written two novels and a handful of short fiction. Your editor says this,
or reviewers? That’s impressive, though, if it’s the latter, still giving you ink after all this time.”

  “No, no. Readers. People online.”

  Jacob leaned back in the booth, even more confused now. “They email you this?”

  “No, though I think my publisher gets letters. They don’t know my email, thank Christ. This is on social media. Go read the comments on my Instagram sometime. They’re a nightmare. And on Twitter and on my Facebook page I get a lot of random posts about how I should be writing. And input on how I could improve in general. I should be more diverse. I should include more marginalized groups. I should stop doing diversity theater. I shouldn’t hate white people so much. I shouldn’t use Oxford commas. There was an error on page forty-five and when am I going to fix it, could I notify them so they can redownload their ebook. Would I like to hire them as a proofreader and here are their rates. Though some are only there to see me party, so there’s a clash.” Rasul laughed sadly and ran his finger through the mint sauce. “The look on your face.”

  Jacob hoped the look on his face was that he was horrified, because that’s exactly what he was. “So people come up to you constantly and… what, give you advice? Yell at you?”

  “Some comments are amazing. Sometimes someone tells you how much your book meant to them, and it hits at just the right time. Sometimes someone tags you in an awesome personal review and it makes your day. Other times it’s the other way. When I’m in a healthy mental place, I thrive on it. All that feedback. But Elizabeth says even when I think I’m okay with all that input, it affects me in complicated and detrimental ways. I hate to admit it, but I think she’s right. I have so many voices in my head all the time. Sometimes the most random remarks will stick to me, and instead of writing for days I’ll mentally masticate, worrying all the bits and corners for truth and things I should improve on. The problem is often the volume of feedback. For each online poster, it’s simply them saying something. When I log on to see how people like the photo of the sunset I posted, though, and somebody feels the need to complain about how I’m not writing fast enough or offer commentary on how I treated the shopkeeper on page forty of Carnivale, it can be a bit derailing.”

  “I should think so.” Jacob frowned as he sipped more chai. “You should stay away from social media, or at least not read the comments.”

  “But reading the comments is why I go, and I go the most while I’m writing. Sometimes the solitude gets to me, and I need some contact, any contact. Except I’m doing okay in your apartment. That clock is a gift. Well, and of course the cats.”

  Their food arrived then, and after they loaded their plates, Jacob indulged in a moment of watching Rasul enthusiastically enjoy his food. “Can I ask how your writing is going there, or is that a bad question?”

  Rasul wiped his lips with a napkin. “It’s a delicate one, for sure, and I think every author has a different attitude regarding someone asking how their work is going. For me right now, it makes me tense when my agent or editor ask, or random people online. What you just did is okay. Because you framed it like you wanted to know if your space was working for me, and in general I felt more like you were making sure there wasn’t something additional I needed, or giving me an invitation to talk about it.” He arranged another bite of food. “And to answer your question, yes, your space is excellent. I decided to restart the draft completely—this is the tenth time I’ve done that, but I stopped feeling horrible about that seven versions ago. In this new draft, I only have one scene. I like it. At your place that first day I barfed out the bones, and today I shaped it up a bit. It’s in the beginning of the book but not the opening, so I’m curious about what ends up coming before it.”

  “Wow, you don’t write from beginning to end?”

  “Eh, kind of? For my first book I did, but my second one was all messy in my head, so I jumped around. Doing that with this one hasn’t worked, so I’m trying a modified version. I work on the opening, with all of it loosely plotted, but I leap around and alter things as I go. I have an outline for the whole novel, but I’m already sure the ending is completely wrong.”

  Jacob had stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth, and now he set the utensil down. “I had no idea this was how writing worked. It sounds so intense.”

  “Writing a novel is like finger-painting in your own blood while blindfolded alone in a room without light, and without windows or doors. Except sometimes you find a magical paintbrush bleeding light and wonder, and you feel like you can whip up whole universes with a fell swoop. You basically screw around and try not to cry while waiting for those eureka moments to come.”

  “That doesn’t sound very pleasant, I have to tell you.”

  Rasul winked at Jacob as he lifted his water glass to his lips. “Writers are masochists at heart.”

  It sounded like it. Jacob resumed eating, but his thoughts didn’t stop. “So I know not to ask you how your writing is going, or at least to ask in a careful way, but how about what you’re writing? Can I ask about that?”

  Rasul’s whole demeanor brightened. “Oh, absolutely. Authors love talking about their stories. Be careful, because it’s like opening Pandora’s Box.”

  “Mmm, I’m okay with that. Tell me about your story.”

  “Veil of Stars? Well, my editor and the publicist argue a lot over whether it’s young adult or not, because the hero is in high school. That’s where my first hang-up started, I think, because they wanted it to be a certain way to fit into that market, and then I turned in my initial drafts and they changed their mind and said I should write normally and they’d tweak it later. That weirded me out, though, because when I asked what they wanted to tweak, they said it would depend. After that, I didn’t write for six months.”

  “What got you started again?”

  “Elizabeth cracked some heads, and she said ignore everything, just get a story out and she’d go to bat for me if they wanted to do something weird.”

  “Good. I like Elizabeth already.” Jacob took some more naan. “I knew this new book had a younger protagonist, but that’s all the detail I had.”

  “They kept it under wraps pretty tight. That was the other thing that held me up the first year. I wanted to write a bisexual protagonist trying to find a way to confess to his crush. His gay crush. Except his suppressed intensity activates latent powers and he starts spawning alternate universes instead.”

  Jacob’s whole body reacted like an antenna picking up a heavy signal. “Oh, wow.”

  Rasul grinned. “See? That’s what I told them would be the reaction. But they worried it wouldn’t sell and asked me to make the crush a girl and to not talk about the protagonist being bisexual. The girl could be a tomboy, they pointed out.”

  Jacob recoiled. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “Absolutely not. That was another eighteen months of me circling the drain, alternately arguing with everyone and attempting to make the wrong character work. When I turned in a forty-thousand-word partial where the love interest turned into a monster and started ripping people in half, they had a meeting and decided the book should be shelved and I could maybe write something else. I think that’s when I started going out and partying.”

  “My God, I had no idea about any of this. I can’t believe they told you to change the orientation and gender of your characters. Did they not read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay?”

  “I think they got hung up on the part where I made the character bisexual. In their mind, that meant he could go either way, so why not the way that made them feel safer? The only reason they changed their tune was that there were a few minor hits with gay characters in young adult.” Rasul pushed his food around his plate. “Wait until they find out I want to make it even more of a romance and give it a happy ending.”

  “Can you tell me more about the story you want to tell? Forget what other people have said.”

  Rasul became animated as he talked in granular detail about a Los Angeles high school and
a sixteen-year-old boy serial dating girls but pining for what Rasul described as “a high-class gay.” In the library the protagonist manages to get his love interest alone, but instead of a confession, an electric wall of emotion sends a wave over everyone and tugs them into the first alternate dimension.

  “I want to keep escalating them,” Rasul said. “At first I splatter-shot a lot of fun dimensions, but now I want them to build. Fun, but with a secret ladder underneath so you look back and realize they were all his subliminal attempts to communicate. At first Adam thinks he’s the only one aware they keep jumping dimensions, but my plan right now is for him to find out at the midpoint that the love interest has also been cognizant all along. I want it to be that Milo is also manipulating things, but I feel like that’s too obvious.”

  “Oh, I like that.” Jacob gave up on eating and rested his chin in his hand, letting the story spin out in his mind. “I don’t think it’s too obvious. If it’s a story about connection and emotion, that makes perfect sense, don’t you think? The thrill won’t be in how clever your twists are but how deeply and originally you allow them to connect.”

  Rasul stared at Jacob, eyes shining. “Okay, if we were actually dating, you’d get so laid tonight.”

  Ears burning hot, Jacob fussed with the napkin in his lap. “Stop.”

  “God, now I want to go write more. I just know there’s no way I’ll get anything done in my apartment. I hate it so much.”

  “You’ve said that several times now. It still feels sterile? I thought you went shopping.”

  “I did, but it’s still bad. I don’t know why I have such a strong reaction to it, but I do. The only time I feel okay about it is when I curl up in bed reading the books you gave me. Which, I hate to tell you, I’ve blown through.”

  “Come get some new ones, then. Feel free to raid my personal shelves.”

  “Can I come tonight?”

  If it had sounded even a little like a come-on, he would have refused. Mostly, though, Rasul sounded desperate. “You can come over long enough to get some books.” He paused, considering. “Well, if you wanted to write in the bookstore, you could do that too.”