The Bookseller's Boyfriend

by Heidi Cullinan

  “Oh, Adina isn’t over you.”

  Rasul had been focusing on the cat, but with that remark, his head whipped up. So did his heart rate. “What are you talking about?”

  Gaze averted, Jacob sipped his coffee. “I… might have opened a personal Instagram to keep tabs on what was going on.”

  Jacob had the same badass look he’d worn when he was fucking Rasul the night before. If what he was saying hadn’t been so unsettling, Rasul would have played footsie under the table and tried to coax him back to bed. He couldn’t ignore this, though. “What’s going on? What happened?”

  “Word has gotten out, probably through your agent or editor or someone, that you were close to finishing your book. A lot of people are talking about it, including Adina. She’s sort of been hinting for a while, but two days ago she out-and-out said you’ve worked out your differences and are back together. She’s so proud of you, she says.”

  Rasul couldn’t believe this. “Why in the world would she do that? Never mind. I know why. But…. Jesus, you and I did that whole thing where we had the fake relationship. And now the real one.”

  He remembered that DM she sent, saying she knew he wasn’t really dating, and went cold.

  “The funny thing is,” Jacob said, “we documented our relationship better when it was fake. Perhaps that’s it.”

  Rasul didn’t think so. “I worry there’s someone here feeding her information.” He told Jacob about the DM, about giving his accounts to Elizabeth to monitor.

  Jacob looked pensive. “It’s possible we have a mole here somewhere, but it doesn’t completely hold up. We are dating. We’ve been serious about each other… well, honestly, I think I was from the start, only in denial.”

  “Me too. But not in denial.”

  Jacob took his hand. “My point is, that shows. If we’d legitimately been faking our relationship, people would have wondered about it. So if there’s someone who is telling her we’re not dating, they’re either very poorly informed or have their own agenda.” He tapped his finger on the top of the table. “I still think the problem is there’s nothing showing we’re dating as far as the world is concerned. A few people here took some updates as intended at first, but since we haven’t gone on public dates in a while and you’ve been working hard for some time, not really leaving the house, there’s nothing more for people to post. And online a few people tried to say they thought we were still together. A few of them are local, in fact—at the college, where they’re not as plugged in to what’s going on in Copper Point proper. But every time someone tries to counter the narrative Adina is pushing, they get attacked.”

  Rasul ran a hand through his hair. “God, she must really be struggling in her efforts to get noticed if she’s recycling our relationship like this.”

  “Or she honestly has feelings for you.”

  Rasul considered Jacob’s point. “I suppose? Possibly? But I really don’t think so. She has a lot of drive, but she also likes shortcuts. It’s why her career isn’t doing well. She’ll work harder to pull one over on people or arrange a side hustle than she will on actively trying to put herself forward in a way that would help her. I think she gets too angry with how rough the business is and convinces herself she deserves better and this justifies whatever means she wants to use.”

  “Why exactly did you date her again?”

  “I never dated her like you’re thinking. It was more that we got together on the regular, which is a kind of dating, but we didn’t have long deep talks or anything. We partied and we fucked. I hooked up with her because she’s hot and because she can be charming and intriguing when she’s not manically chasing her doomed career. Also at the time I was even more messed up than she was. Misery loves company, and she felt like a way out. Or a faster way down the drain. Depended on the day.”

  Jacob humphed and set down his cup.

  Rasul studied the man in front of him, thinking about how much he cared for him, thinking for the first time what a future with him would be like. Never had he so much as considered staying in Copper Point, but it dawned on him that staying with Jacob meant remaining here. Jacob had roots, and that was part of what attracted Rasul to him. You didn’t take Moana off her island. You learned to live on the island.

  Right now, though, his Moana was jealous and annoyed. He wanted to fix that. “I can log on to my Insta on your phone and snap a picture of us, right now. That would solve the whole thing.”

  Jacob pursed his lips. “I admit this isn’t my area of expertise. But I think they’re in a frenzy and this will only become food. They seem attached to the narrative of you back with Adina, and injecting facts and logic only makes them furious. For you to appear after a long absence and suddenly post a photo, then vanish again? I suspect they’ll think it’s fake.”

  Rasul sighed. “You’re probably right, dammit.”

  “If I posted one, tagged your account, and started updating more regularly with photos of you, that might work.”

  Rasul sat upright. “Holy hell, baby, I don’t think you understand the kind of trolling you’re going to get if you do that.”

  “No, I do. I’ve been reading the comments on Adina’s page, and yours. Honestly, I’m amazed you wrote anything at all with that filling your head.”

  “You read that stuff and you want to voluntarily step into it?”

  “I can turn off notifications and not read the comments.”

  “That’s a lot easier said than done.”

  “You’re right. I suspect I would learn a lot from this exercise. But I think that’s part of why I want to do this.”

  The quietly fierce expression was back. Rasul’s libido pushed aside his worries for his partner and purred at the idea of being protected. He also could read the subtext again, both in what Jacob said and how he said it.

  I intend to keep you, if I can.

  Rasul reached up to stroke Jacob’s cheek. “I’ll send your account information to Elizabeth, and I’ll have her find someone to monitor the comments for threats and report them immediately. Actually, send the information for the bookstore’s Instagram too, and warn Gina. Before you post anything, let me log on and follow you. I would strongly advise you to not read the comments anymore. Not on my page, not on Adina’s, not on yours.”

  “I’ll probably read a few, but I promise not to get involved.”

  Rasul squeezed Jacob’s hand. “I’m telling you. Stay out of them. Nothing good will come of it.”

  Jacob withdrew his phone from its charger at the other end of the table with his free hand, pushed at the screen a bit with his thumb, and passed it over to Rasul. “Go ahead and log in.”

  Rasul did, surprised at the unsettled feeling in his stomach. He wanted to believe it was because he worried for Jacob, who couldn’t possibly be ready for trolls, but if he were honest, it was just the idea of getting back into such a negative space, even if it was to friend Jacob.

  You can’t change who you are.

  Was this who he was, though? As Rasul moved through his account, trying not to read things and feeling queasy at the number of notifications for comments and DMs, he struggled to connect this feeling to an important part of him. He hadn’t been on social media because he enjoyed it. Maybe Twitter before it became a hellscape cascade of the dismal world news and a sea of trolls, maybe Instagram when he was in the heyday of promotion and he hadn’t yet tried to start book three.

  Well, no. It had been rough as soon as the backlash for Carnivale started. And Twitter had always been pretty fraught too.

  Had he ever been happy online? What had he been chasing? Why would he go back to that?

  “My username is castlecaptured,” Jacob said, breaking Rasul’s spell.

  Shaking his head to clear it, Rasul entered the name. There were five posts. One of each cat, a nicely stylized picture of a cup of tea next to books, and a shot of the bay. Each one tugged at his heart.

  Maybe he hadn’t wondered about the future because there wasn’t an
ything to think about. It was already decided.

  He friended Jacob, logged out, and passed the phone back.

  When Jacob held up the phone for a selfie, Rasul looked into the screen and felt his heart click into place. Everything he wanted was right there. The apartment. The cats. The clock. His lover.

  His heart.

  Before Jacob snapped the photo, he turned his head and kissed him on the cheek, a soft sigh escaping from the bottom of his soul.

  Jacob smiled as he showed Rasul the result. “That’s nice.”

  It wasn’t just nice. It was perfect. Rasul leaned on Jacob’s shoulder, his soul quieting again. “Email it to me, will you? I’m going to make it my desktop.”

  “I will, but let me take another one in landscape so it’ll fit better.”

  They posed for several pictures, laughing and mugging for the camera. Rasul requested every single one of them, even as he made Jacob promise to take a thousand more.

  THROUGHOUT JANUARY and February, Jacob battled the trolls on his Instagram.

  It was by turns a fascinating and horrifying experience. He failed utterly in not reading the comments, but he did limit his logins to once or twice a day, not allowing any notifications on his lock screen or on top of the app itself on his home screen. He also, at Gus’s suggestion, didn’t ever respond to anyone.

  Gus and Matt had both followed him immediately to get in on the fun, and of course Jared was an early follower too. Soon everyone on QUAG followed him, and they frequently brought up the drama when he ran into them around town. Before long, almost everyone in town who used the app followed him.

  Gina didn’t like it. The trolls quickly got annoyed that Jacob wouldn’t take their bait, so they shifted to trying to get a reaction out of the store, and that drew Gina into the mess. Jacob had to take over the store’s account because it was too much for her, though even he had to take notice when the commenters began leaving negative Yelp and Google reviews.

  “I don’t understand how people can talk like that,” Gina said. “You’d be arrested if you behaved like that to someone’s face.”

  It unsettled Jacob, but he was determined not to let it get to them. “I’m not responding to them anywhere.” Jacob calmly sipped his coffee at the front desk as he flipped through a newspaper. “They have to find an outlet, so they keep trying for things that might reach me. This will blow over when I don’t respond.”

  “But you’re posting, so isn’t that a response? Anyway, I don’t like them attacking the store. It’s not good for business.”

  “Most people around here aren’t finding us because of those search engines, and we’ve actually quadrupled our Instagram followers since I posted that first photo of Rasul.” But that online stain did concern him. Still, wouldn’t it be worse if he backed out now?

  Of course, Les Clark had a field day. Now he not only berated Jacob at meetings and questioned his judgment to every voting member, he also wrote opinion pieces in the paper, warning these unstable outside influences would doom the town. It seemed like hyperbole—until Engleton’s and Café Sól saw negative comments on their online reviews.

  Now Jacob was alarmed, and Matt and Gus were the ones trying to downplay what this meant.

  “My dad was upset, but he just called our lawyer,” Matt said. They were at an MMS meeting in the back of the coffee shop. “I don’t know if he’ll get anywhere with Google or Yelp, but if it’s possible to do so, he’ll get it done. He was never going to vote for you anyway, so he’s not a loss.”

  “The college kids are really into the feud,” Gus said with a smile. “Honestly, I think my business has picked up because of it. The kids who come to the store have started commenting back, and several have snapped photos of the two of you to prove their point. It’s a war now. Copper Point versus the Adinastans.”

  Matt raised an eyebrow. “Are you serious? That’s what they call themselves?”

  Gus shrugged. “C-list celebrity, C-list fans.”

  Rasul was oblivious to all of this. He was too absorbed first in his edits, then in a barrage of advance magazine interviews, all of course he had to juggle against teaching. Most of Jacob’s taunt photos were of Rasul working, though they did manage to sneak away one afternoon to get a pic at the lighthouse. Rasul said he needed to go for research, but it was also a nice day out, for the time of year. Jacob didn’t bring up the online struggles. He figured if Rasul didn’t mention them, that meant he didn’t want to know.

  Meanwhile, Jacob continued to run his bookstore, arrange for the care and feeding of his boyfriend, and check in with his haters. The bookstore’s business was up, significantly in fact, and Rasul was so blitzed at the end of every day that Jacob practically poured him into bed. This left him a lot of time in the evenings to check on things online. He frequently startled the cats as he talked back out loud to comments from users named adina4life33 and WeLoveAdinaAndRasul. The user who really made him angry, though, was truthseeker98. They were the ones who had all the Copper Point photos and who seemed to possibly be feeding new shots to Adina for her deepfake videos and photos. This meant someone was in his town, in his store, spying on him. It made him crazy.

  He tried to console himself by saying the Adinastans obviously had no life and were incredibly sad creatures he shouldn’t let bother him. He enjoyed their torment as they argued over whether Jacob was a liar or if he could somehow possibly be legit. Jacob observed them like a colony of insects from far away, and he swore he could see the patterns, could know everything about them sight unseen. There were factions, and ringleaders. They were invested in the story Adina had created, each for their own reasons. When he began looking at their pages, despite what they shouted at him, it was difficult to take them too seriously. They didn’t have a lot of agency in their own lives. Most of them had more than one passionate online following, and they were consistently angry everywhere they went. Some of them posted all day long and in the middle of the night. It would have been one thing if they’d been enjoying themselves, but they were clearly miserable.

  Especially truthseeker98. It was probably some twenty-year-old who’d dropped out of school and wanted to be an online influencer the same as Adina.

  Adina herself was something else. While Jacob had a complicated set of feelings for her followers, the woman who had started all this he had no patience for. She was manipulative and self-involved, and while she might have her own reasons for pursuing Rasul, she had no right. Also, she was lying.

  Not just lying, but fabricating. She’d taken to posting videos of her own that were so convincing they gave Jacob momentary pause. He was aware photo and video editing had gotten intense, but this was… this was something else. If you wanted to believe Adina’s story, it would be easy with her fakes.

  Why? He desperately wanted to ask her. Why are you doing this? What could this possibly get you? You aren’t dating him. He won’t come back to you, especially because of this. What in the world are you doing?

  Gus wasn’t surprised by her efforts. “People get caught up in alternate realities online. I think it’s the illusion of control. Commanding the crowd like that is a heady experience. I remember in college I went with a boyfriend to a game, and this woman in the front of the stands started playing around, trying to get the crowd to mimic her. She got the whole section of the stands to respond. You could see the progression on her face. It was a lark at first, but she got caught up in the thrill of it. And people got caught up in following. She went on for a long time, and it was only some activity on the field that broke the spell. I think the internet is the same thing, but there’s a lot less to distract you if you’re operating in a bubble. Plus you can’t see people’s faces, can’t know who they are or even guess because you just don’t have enough information. But you’re sure you know them, because you fill in the blanks. It’s an endless cycle. You can distort your reality to be whatever you want, and people will follow you because they want to feel the world is more understandable than it is.�
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  Jacob frowned. “I don’t like it.”

  “Of course you don’t. You don’t like it when it happens here in town either. Les Clark and his iron hold on the chamber of commerce is the same thing, his determination that people and businesses should behave a certain way, that progress should only happen under his terms. He just wants to control people, and people want something comforting to follow.” He winked. “That’s what I love about you. You look like someone decent and dependable, and you are. But you’re also a disrupter. You say, calmly, ‘Follow me into a new future. It’ll be fine.’ And it’s easy to believe. You could run for mayor if you wanted.”

  Jacob shuddered. “I don’t want to be mayor.” He considered what Gus had said. “You really think I’m like that, do you? Someone people can follow?”

  “Of course. Matt and I do. A lot of people agree. That’s why we’re supporting you for chamber president. I don’t think you’re going to win this online battle, however.”

  That got up Jacob’s nose. “Why not? She can’t possibly win this.”

  “Why couldn’t she? She’s a master of her arena. You don’t just leap into a war and win because you’re using logic. She’s got moves you don’t even understand. But that’s fine. You don’t really want to win there anyway.”

  “But I do. I don’t want them saying untrue things about Rasul.”

  “For Pete’s sake. The whole internet is going to say untrue things about him forever. You can’t possibly stop them all. But why bother? All that matters is what’s in front of you. You have him. You have Copper Point. He’s finished his novel. You’re both going to live happily ever after. Do you need anything else, really? Do you honestly need to feel like the virtual world is yours too? Maybe you could get it for a short while, but you’d have to go defend it. All the time. Is that where you want all your focus to be?”