by Austin Bates
Rick heard his confident voice echo softly through the bookstore, explaining the procedure to the waiting mob. He cracked his knuckles and counted his fingers, wishing for anything to numb the feverish itch in the back of his brain that told him to bolt. It was better now than it had been, but it was by no means gone; he squashed the impulse as well as he could as the red velvet curtains parted, revealing an excited young-looking guy.
“Mr. Dominguez, it’s an honor,” he said in a rush, gripping Rick’s hand.
“Thanks,” Rick said awkwardly. “Um, who should I make this out to?”
“Daisy,” he said, flushing red.
Rick raised a curious eyebrow.
“It’s not for me, it’s for my sister,” the man chuckled. “My parents weren’t that mean. I’m Doug.”
“Nice to meet you, Doug. Birthday present?”
“Sort of. She had a baby, and we all kind of had a falling out afterward. I was… I was really hard on her. Said some stuff I shouldn’t have. She was only seventeen, she wasn’t even dating anybody. Mom took it real hard, and… well anyway, she’s a huge fan of your books, and I thought maybe a signed copy would be a first step to resolution.”
“Good plan,” Rick said thoughtfully. “I wonder… no, never mind.”
“Go ahead, please, I’ve read your work as well and I appreciate your insight.”
“Well… okay, it’s none of my business. But stories are kind of what I do. I was just wondering if any of you got her story.”
“What do you mean? I mean it’s a teen pregnancy, how many different ways could that have happened?”
“Off the top of my head? Divine intervention, one-time mistake, rape, peer pressure, true love, rebellion, pain expressed poorly, a feeling of loss, an inability to communicate—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Doug held his hands up defensively. “I get it. Oodles of ways. Alright, well… maybe I’ll ask her.”
“Thanks,” Rick said, relieved for the girl he didn’t know. “It’s just that sometimes people live their whole lives without their perspective being noticed or acknowledged, and it’s… it’s a hard life to live, isolated like that.”
“Thanks,” Doug said. “Hey, mind if I get a picture?”
“Not at all, come back here.”
Rick did as Jules instructed, using his arm as a barrier without looking standoffish. Doug left with his items, and the next person came in. Rick asked her a leading question or two, and she spilled her story to him. Slowly Rick stopped seeing his fans as unpredictable people who expected him to perform a particular way, and began seeing them as collections of stories. He harvested their stories subtly, collecting drops of their timeline in the back of his mind, filling his creative well with perspectives, personalities, and histories.
It was almost fun. He surprised himself with that realization. He didn’t know if he was just more comfortable or if he was beginning to break through his own issues, but he didn’t question it. He went with the flow, and by the end of the day he was brimming with new ideas.
“So you know that book I was working on, the one with the crystal?”
“Yeah?”
“I know what I’m going to do with it. The kid’s in high school, and he wears it like a keychain on his back pocket. As he goes through his day, the perspective changes. Every person he passes picks up the story, and it builds, person by person, chapter by chapter, until it uncovers a secret, climaxes into some big reveal that will blow people’s minds. Now, I’m not sure if it’ll work best as a short story or a novel, but I think I’m just going to start writing and see where it goes. What do you think?”
“Um… it sounds like quite the experiment.”
“I know! I haven’t been this excited about a book in years, I can’t wait until this tour is over. How do you think we should try to get it published? I’m thinking a series of flash stories on social media, to kind of build up the hype, you know, teasers for the chapters, and then maybe a little video combining some of the stories on YouTube? Get people interested before we even approach publishers.”
“Uh, Rick?”
“Oh! We could get little keychains made up, maybe with mirrors on the facets? It would drive people nuts, with the little hints and things, we could keep them guessing for months before the release date.”
“Rick, hold on a second.”
“Yeah?”
“When are you planning to write this book?”
“As soon as I can, it’s practically writing itself in my head!”
“What about the five Luther books?”
“Five?”
“That’s what the contract states. Eight books total. You’re working on the third now, right?”
“Yeah….”
“Well that gives you five plus however much you have left of the one you’re working on.”
“You’re telling me I have to do all of those before I can do this?”
“Well, I mean, it sounds like a project that will take a lot of time and creative energy. I can’t really sign off on that, not now. We’re just starting to work your fans into a frenzy, we can’t lose momentum on this now.”
“But if I don’t at least get started now, I’m going to lose it.”
Rick heard the desperation in his own voice and bit his lip.
“I’m sure you’ll remember,” Jules said dismissively. “It just isn’t something you can spend your time on right now.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I don’t think you understand,” Rick said with strained patience. “It’s building inside of me, it wants to get out.”
“Sounds dirty,” Jules said with a grin.
“Jules,” Rick snapped. “Be serious, for a second. Give me six months to work on this book, and I’ll go right back to the Luther series and finish it.”
“We can’t afford the break,” Jules repeated for the fifth time as he handed their boarding passes to the flight attendant.
“What if I don’t really take a break? What if I just write my story as I’m writing the Luther books?”
“How do you propose to do that?”
“Well, I’ll put in my usual ten hour days on the Luther books, then I’ll work on my project on the side. Won’t even ask you to push it, I’ll do all the marketing and publishing myself.”
“It’ll distract you,” Jules said stubbornly.
“Oh what’s there to distract from?” Rick exploded. “It’s a formula. Luther finds trouble, Luther gets in trouble, Luther bests the trouble, and Luther gets the girl. I can write these books in my sleep! Half the time I do!”
“Oh, come on, have you forgotten that I read everything you write? Your stories have depth, analogies and subtleties and texture; they aren’t formulaic, they’re structured. Are you telling me that you’re bored because it isn’t Tarantino meets Lewis Carroll levels of insane?”
“No, that’s not it at all,” Rick huffed as he took his seat. “I need room to breathe. Room to explore. Not forever, just long enough to see where this idea goes.”
“So incorporate it,” Jules said.
“What?”
“It’s a magical item, right? Luther’s is a magical world. Use the crystal as a story arc, hell, use it as a whole story. Listen to me. You’ve proven your success. You have half the readers in this country hanging on your every word. Do whatever you want, break the mold, break out of the story line. You only have two rules: It has to be Luther, and it has to be fantasy.”
Rick mulled that over for a moment.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Explore the boundaries of human psychology. Write a language, create artifacts, hell, open a portal to another dimension, I don’t care. Just keep it relatable enough to sell, and keep it Luther.”
“Alright,” Rick said. “I think I can do that.”
“I know you can,” Jules said with a grin. “Hey, we’ve got two nights free between Albuquerque and Bisbee. Wanna go out somewhere, explore a little?”
�
�That sounds uncomfortably close to an adventure,” Rick said hesitantly.
“Oh, come on, I’ll be right there. I’ll protect you from all the scary people. We need a night off, it’s been a breakneck week. You need to decompress, I need to decompress, it’ll be fun!”
“Alright, alright, I’ll go,” Rick sighed. “But don’t expect me to be friendly.”
“No pressure,” Jules grinned. “You can glare at the world to your heart’s content, just so long as you do it outside among the people.”
“You’re getting good at these deals,” Rick said thoughtfully. “I must be losing my diva edge.”
“Don’t say that like it’s a bad thing,” Jules laughed. “I think we could both use with a little less drama, don’t you?”
“Hm. Or a little more. Really depends.”
“On what?”
“On what kind of story we’re living,” Rick said with a sly grin.
“Huh. No dragons, so I’m going to guess it’s not a fantasy.”
“You’re hilarious.”
The Albuquerque signing went off without a hitch, and Jules found them a comfortable hotel room in the center of town. Rick begged off of going out that night; though the signings were becoming easier, they still wore him out. He wrote instead, diving back into his story about Luther. He grew more frustrated with the story the longer he wrote it; it sounded just like his last book, and the book before it. He knew that the market would eat it up.
But it wasn’t what he wanted.
He used the keyboard to select the entire document. He stared at the blue highlight for eight heartbeats. He pushed delete and watched three months of his life disappear. The bubble of anxiety he’d been holding onto for so long burst, and tears slid silently down his face.
“What’s the matter?” Jules asked, coming into the room with a box of pizza.
“Nothing,” Rick sniffed, wiping his face.
“I’ll listen,” Jules told him. “No pressure or anything, but if you want to talk… if I can help… I’d like to.”
“I hated it,” Rick said, taking a shuddering breath. “I hated the book. It was flat and dull and cliché, and I hated every word of it.”
“That’s okay, I’m sure you can make it better—”
“I deleted it,” Rick interrupted.
Jules stared.
“Oh. So… can you get it back?”
“No. I emptied the trash. Someone could, I’m sure, but I can’t.”
“Why did you do that?” Jules asked, trying, and failing, to mask his distress.
“Because I hated it!”
Jules swallowed hard and breathed deeply, trying to keep his composure.
“Okay, it’s okay. You remember the story, don’t you? So you don’t have to recreate the story from scratch, and you must have an outline and notes and—”
“I’m not doing it,” Rick interrupted quietly.
“What?”
“I’m not going to recreate the story that was. I’m going to rewrite the story from scratch.”
“How long is that going to take?”
Rick shrugged.
“Took me three months to get that far. I was a month out from finishing. Call it five, six months to get it the way I want it.”
“Oh.”
“Not counting the rest of the tour, of course. So we’ve got almost three months of touring left, six months of writing… nine months to have the book baby.”
Jules flipped through his internal calendar and did some quick mental calculations. Nine months would be exactly one year from the completion of his last book, three months for design, editing, and revisions puts the release date at fifteen months from the last book. He could work with that.
“Okay,” he said. “Then why were you crying?”
“Because,” Rick sighed. “Because I just killed it. Because I was relieved to kill it. It was like a fetid boil on my soul and I lanced it and it hurt, burned like I would die. And now it’s gone, and I just… I feel free.”
“Then it’s good,” Jules said, slapping a hand on Rick’s shoulder. “And it will be alright. You’ll get this, it’ll be great.”
“Yeah,” Rick said with a watery smile. “Yeah.”
“Hey, um… I was going to wait until tomorrow, but since we’re already talking and all, I had a question for you.”
“Ask.”
“The day we left the cabin, you were angry with me.”
“Yes, I was.”
“Why?”
Good question, Rick thought. He recalled that day, every detail. He heard Jules’ husky voice growling those cringe-inducing words.
“Do you remember what you said, when we were… you know?”
“Vaguely,” Jules shrugged.
“You told me to tell you how much I wanted it. You said it over and over.”
“So?”
Anger bubbled in Rick’s chest, and he ground his fist into it.
“So you turned it into a performance,” he said in a rush, looking away from Jules. “You were the first person I’d slept with in years. Years! I was vulnerable, I was half-drunk, and I made a decision to trust you. I literally put myself in your hands, and once I was there, you wanted me to jump through hoops.”
“Oh.” Jules sounded surprised. “That really wasn’t my intention. It turns me on to hear it, that’s all.”
“Yeah, I got that,” Rick said bitterly.
“Hey, if it bothered you, I can promise it won’t happen again.”
“Well, it just… it showed me that I’m not ready. For that, for you, for any of it, and that made me angry. I mean, the combination of that and the other part. I… I don’t really think about this, and I never talk about it, but I’m… I’m lonely. Not often. I mean, all the time. I… dammit, I’m out of words, how can I be out of words? It’s like a steady undercurrent of loneliness wrapped in waves of leave me alone with sudden lonely rapids that crash over me.”
He sighed, shoving his hands through his hair.
“But if I can’t even handle sex… casual, no strings, dirty, drunk, sex, then how can I… how can I even think of anything more? I break off Luther’s romances because I don’t know how to write them beyond the initial encounter, because writing real attachments… real love… it hurts. It cuts deep and creates a sucking wound in my chest, and then I can’t write or eat or sleep or anything, because I know that I will never—”
Jules spun him around suddenly and kissed him. Rick sobbed and melted into it, clinging desperately to Jules like a life preserver.
“Never say never,” Jules whispered as he pulled back to look into Rick’s eyes. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Rick, but I… I am really enjoying being with you. Professionally, and… you know. Whatever. I don’t… I don’t want you to ever feel alone.”
Rick initiated the kiss this time, pulling Jules’ head to his with feverish intensity. They kissed again and again, hearts pounding, tears wetting their cheeks. Jules broke the embrace, stepping away, leaving more than an arm’s length between them.
“Hold on,” he panted. “I don’t want to hurt you again. I need to know. Do you want me?”
Rick paused, trembling. Simple question, complicated answer. His body, his emotions were screaming yes, but his mind… his mind was tucking into itself, protecting itself. He didn’t have an answer. All he knew was that he needed to be back in Jules’ arms more than he’d ever needed anything in the world.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“You don’t seem sure,” Jules said, his throat tightening.
“I’m n-not,” Rick stuttered, lifting his inflection like a question. “But I feel… my thinking isn’t working, but my feeling… please.”
Rick held his hands out to Jules, and Jules closed the space between them in a heartbeat. The look on Rick’s face had broken his heart, and he needed to put it back together. He held Rick tight against him as their mouths met once more, their hearts beating in sync, their bodies moving like dancers.
They fell to the bed together, free of clothing, free of awkwardness. Jules was tender, Rick was passionate; together, they found their perfect middle ground. They were slick with sweat and hot with lust, rocking together as if they’d been together forever.
Jules brought Rick to climax with tender insistence, and Rick moaned his name. Jules emptied into him, quivering in the aftermath, holding him tight against him. He kissed Rick’s dewy forehead, and the taste of him sent a shiver of pleasure over his spent body.
They shared a bed for the first time that night. Jules expected it to be as it had been with Steven; cozy, but awkward and mildly uncomfortable. Instead, he slept like a baby with Rick curled against him. They fit together perfectly in bed, whether active or passive, and it awoke in him a feeling he’d rarely felt before. Suddenly, he felt like a hero. Like the valiant knight on his steed, protecting his lover from harm.
He wanted to be that for Rick, if Rick would let him. He wanted to shield him and help him grow into the power that Jules saw beneath the anxiety. He wanted to nurture his talent and his body, care for him the way he couldn’t or wouldn’t care for himself. Jules wouldn’t assume it was one or the other; for the first time in his life, he didn’t need to have all the answers. He would rather sit back and let Rick show him what was real. In doing that, he hoped, he might be able to find the reality within himself.
They went out to dinner the next night. Jules chose a low-key, darkly lit restaurant, thinking it would put Rick at ease. After a few minutes at the table, he thought he must have been wrong. Rick was twitchy, glancing around the dimly-lit room, counting his fingers silently as he moved his lips.
