by Rachel Kane
And how much time is it supposed to take? That was a good question he kept asking himself. Ian had broken up with him two years ago. Surely he was healed from that by now.
Wasn’t he?
Then why, when Ian returned, did Alex feel just like he’d felt when they were together—uncertain, nervous, incompetent? No one had ever made Alex feel so helpless, so utterly incapable of handling his own life.
It was like there was this part of his soul that had been hanging out there, injured but ignored, this whole time. Maybe I can ignore it a little while longer.
Because honestly, after yet another day with Ian and Bastian, he’d decided: No more friends. What he needed was something closer than that, something more honest. The time he’d had recently with Judah hadn’t just been fun, it had touched some deep part of him that he’d tried to convince himself didn’t exist. As though someone could be completely emotionally self-reliant.
It scared him, of course. Having Ian hanging around reminded him of all the ways relationships could go wrong.
But he was ready for more. And so, last night, he’d offered Judah more—on his own terms.
Judah had agreed.
He wanted to talk to Judah some more, wanted to delve into hours and hours of conversation…but no. Let’s go slow. That was important, even when he felt himself eager to rush into danger.
Well, especially when he felt himself eager to rush. That was the whole point.
At least Ian wasn’t here yet. He and Bastian were touring the local beauties, as Ian had put it. He had the place to himself, for a little while, at least.
The bell over the door jingled, and for a moment, Alex was excited—was it Judah? Was it time for another back-office secret meeting? Then his heart clenched with anxiety—is it Ian? Would they have to talk more about how this store wasn’t good enough for Alex?
He was relieved when he looked and saw it was just a kid, Tim Norris, Harry Norris’ son. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” he asked.
Tim shrugged. “Teacher planning day,” he said.
“And you thought, of all the places in Superbia to hang out, you’d come to a bookstore? I congratulate you on your choice.”
The kid was sixteen, sullen, with one of those gaits like he was pulling the whole world behind him. Alex recognized the walk from his own teenhood. Tim seemed to stare blindly at the shelves, not paying attention to anything around him.
“Could I help you find something?” he said.
Tim flinched, like Alex had offered to beat him with a stick. “I dunno,” he muttered.
“What do you like to read? We’ve got a lot of options here. Are you interested in sports? There’s—”
“Not really,” said Tim. “I hate sports.”
And yet you live in a town that worships high-school football. You poor kid.
“Science fiction?”
Tim shrugged again.
“Well, why don’t you look around, and if you have any questions, I’m here to help.”
“What happened to your foot?”
“I broke it in the gutter near the post office.”
Tim nodded, as though that were an appropriate thing for an adult to do. “Cool. Okay.”
He was so quiet that Alex had practically forgotten about him, as he worked on email invitations to Ian’s book signing. God, how did he let himself get talked into that? He wasn’t even sure it’d be good for business. What if only three people came? Alex would be on the hook for cheese and champagne and everything else, even though Ian had insisted he could talk Liam into giving them a discount on the catering.
A few minutes later, Alex glanced up. Tim was really quiet back there. Was he shoplifting? God, please don’t do that, the last thing I need right now is a scene. Harry Norris worked at the insurance company one street over, and Alex squirmed at the thought of having him march in here to collect his son.
But if Alex said something, if he asked if everything was all right, then he was just being one of those weird intrusive shopkeepers, wasn’t he? The kind he used to hate growing up, that would follow kids around the store, convinced they were stealing. That would be embarrassing. He couldn’t be an old curmudgeon, he was too young for that.
Still, he was curious, because Tim wasn’t a regular customer by any means. He couldn’t remember ever seeing him in the store. Was he a reader? Did he usually stop by the library?
As Alex stood up from his chair and got his crutch, he realized too that some books were missing from the front display, the Problematic Faves. That sale had not gone as well as intended, and made him despair even more about Ian’s signing. Nobody around here wanted books, that was the problem.
Except that maybe a certain shoplifter wanted books. How slick had Tim been, that Alex hadn’t even noticed him taking some copies down?
He headed to the back of the store, step-click, step-click. Except that he tried to keep the clicks quiet, so he could sneak. Which wasn’t easy. He felt wobbly on his feet, and put more weight on the cast than he meant to, but he’d be damned if he was going to let some kid steal from him. This store hardly brought in a dime as it was—Ian was right about that!—and he couldn’t afford to let shoplifters just stand there in the back like it wasn’t obvious what they were doing, and—
“Hey!” said Alex.
“Oh god!” said Tim, shoving a book behind a stack of others. “I wasn’t doing anything!”
“Let me see your hands!”
“I’m not— I’m not—”
The boy was blushing a deep scarlet. Caught red-handed and red-cheeked. Alex, so frustrated after these past few days of having his life all twisted up, was ready to give the kid hell over stealing.
He was angry enough that it took a second to realize what he had just seen.
Tim hadn’t been pocketing a book. Hadn’t been shoving it into his pants or under his shirt.
He’d been hiding it behind another book, there on the shelf.
A stern look still on his face, and his eyes not leaving Tim’s, Alex reached over and plucked the book down. He looked at the cover.
Two boys lying on a field of grass, hands nearly touching.
He glanced back at Tim. Saw the vivid red of his cheeks, but more than that, saw the beginnings of tears in the corners of his eyes. “I wasn’t doing anything,” Tim said, a pleading note in his voice. “I swear. I’d just seen it online and thought I’d look at it, but it was stupid, I was going to put it back, I wasn’t going to buy it—”
The two boys on the cover were smiling at each other dreamily.
“Oh, Tim.”
“I’m not— I’m not—”
“Look, I’m not asking any questions, okay? I thought you were stealing.”
The kid swallowed. “Stealing?”
Now it was Alex’s turn to be embarrassed. “Well, you know, you snuck back here—”
“I can afford a book, Mr. Roth.”
“I know, but—”
“My dad makes a lot of money, more than you, I imagine.”
Alex swallowed. “I’m sure he does.”
“I just can’t buy it.”
“Because you don’t want your dad to see it?”
Tim shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and his eyes searched the floor. “I dunno. Can I go?”
“Listen, I don’t know why you wanted to read this one, and I’m not going to ask, all right? But I just want you to know, it’s okay. If you like…um…this kind of story, it’s all right. I can order more.”
He shrugged. “I can’t buy them, I told you. My dad would kill me.”
I never would’ve figured Harry Norris for a homophobe, Alex thought, but then, straight people were dangerous like that, because you never could tell how they’d react. “You could read it here,” Alex said. “I mean, if you wanted to. There’s chairs and stuff over there.”
Now Tim eyed him suspiciously. “You want me to sit there and read?”
“God, stop making it sound creepy,
I’m trying to be nice. I’m not trying to lure you into my serial killer van or something.”
That put a skeptical grin on Tim’s face. “All right. But if you try anything—”
“Jesus Christ, Timothy Norris, do you give every business in town this kind of trouble? Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to hobble back to work. Jeez. Kids.”
But he felt a little lighter on his way back, and not just because he was able to get the crutches under him and take all the weight off the cast.
That was the whole point of the display. To make someone feel like they weren’t alone.
It was funny, that little idea—an idea that had caused him to pick up a huge box of books that got his foot broken—was about making connections in a quiet way…whereas Ian’s idea was all about making big, splashy connections, connections too loud to ignore, and yet it left Alex feeling more alone than ever. Why, if it weren’t for Judah—
Judah. Just thinking about last night made his heart swell all over again. His thoughts kept going in circles—Dive in! Go slow!—and it just didn’t feel fair.
Alex groaned, causing Tim to look suspiciously over from his book. Alex ignored him, and went back to planning this stupid signing.
But first, he tapped a message into his phone.
You left kind of suddenly last night, he wrote. I miss you.
Then he erased the I miss you because that truly was too needy. Too much of a rush.
I might love you.
Yeah, he erased that one just as fast.
And then he erased the whole message, and put his phone back on the counter.
How did anyone ever figure this stuff out? How did anyone ever talk?
“And I said to Bastian, you must lie down next to this brook, this creek, this rivulet, and let me photograph you.” Ian raised the heavy black camera that was hanging from a strap around his neck. “The light was so special, I could not believe it, it was like we were in a dream-world.”
Some people had no problem talking, of course. Some people could go on and on. Alex pasted a fixed grin on his face so that he could survive Ian’s latest onslaught. Tim Norris had taken one look at the couple entering the store, his face paling, and had scrambled out, leaving his book behind.
Bastian glared at Alex, his arms folded, his razor-like cheekbones suggesting grievous bodily harm would be the proper punishment for having been dragged back into Alex’s store.
“It is a lovely place,” Alex said neutrally.
“And yet…” Ian hesitated, then looked over at Bastian. His boyfriend huffed and rolled his eyes. “We talked about this,” Ian said to him, and finally Bastian turned on his heel and stalked out of the store.
For the first time in two years, Alex and Ian were alone in a room together. Alex did not like the way it made him feel.
“Are you two fighting?” Alex asked. The last thing he wanted was to get in the middle of that kind of battle.
Ian scoffed. “Fighting? Darling, you simply mustn’t think that Bastian and I disagree on any fundamentals. We are one soul in two bodies! One mind in two heads!”
Alex struggled to put aside the monster-movie vision that brought to his imagination. Ian clearly wanted to say something to him, and no matter how many protests he made that he and Bastian were of one mind, clearly there was tension between them, and that more than anything set off the warning bells. I don’t want to hear what you have to say next, Alex thought, as he pushed himself subtly back from the counter, his subtlety only a little marred by the squeaky wheel under his office chair. A real wheelchair wouldn’t have given him away like that.
Ian was never one to wait to be asked to explain himself. “I made a proposal to Bastian this afternoon.”
“Congratulations!” Alex said with a falsely hearty cheer.
“Not that kind of proposal,” Ian said, his brow wrinkling. “No. What I suggested to Bastian, and he agreed, was that we need to get you out of this town.”
Sometimes in conversation with Ian, Alex felt like someone had just dropped a large safe on his head. This was one of those moments.
“I get out of town all the time,” he said.
“Permanently,” said Ian. He opened his arms, his gesture taking in not only the confines of the store, but Superbia itself, possibly the entirety of Georgia. “This is all charming and lovely. I am not saying anything against it. But it’s very small, Alex. It’s very limiting. I have always said you would flourish in a more open environment. New York, San Francisco—London—there are so many places an independent bookseller such as yourself could prosper. Every time I walk in, you’re the only one here.”
“You just scared off a customer,” said Alex, pointing at the chair Tim had so recently occupied.
“You should be packed,” Ian said. “It’s a crime that a man as literate as you, with such taste in books as yours, is not the toast of the town.”
Why did Ian’s compliments always make him feel worse?
He sensed there was more to come like this, and he had to put a stop to it, politely but finally. This was, after all, how their final fight had gone. You do not respect yourself enough to understand what you deserve out of life, Ian had said, while Alex, tears in his eyes, had called him a lying bastard. How much did you respect me, he’d asked, when you started seeing Bastian behind my back?
Ian had answered and answered and answered, that old trick of his, the torrent of words that swept you along until you couldn’t help but agree with him, not out of any sense of true likemindedness, but out of sheer exhaustion.
“I appreciate what you’re saying, but it’s my business, not yours. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
“What if it were my business?” asked Ian. “I mean that in a literal sense. What if I owned some portion of this business?”
The floor seemed to fall out beneath Alex, and he reached a steadying hand to the counter. “Ian, with all due respect, whatever you’re about to suggest, don’t.”
“I have come into wealth, you see, with these books of mine. Inspector Kestrel is surprisingly profitable, with his walking-stick that doubles as a magnifying glass and a periscope. Between my books and Bastian’s modeling, we already have more money than I know what to do with, and the television series is still in the works. I will be rich when that comes out, Alex. Richer than I have ever dreamed. And I feel I must give back. I must repay my community.”
“First off, Superbia isn’t your community.”
“No, no, you misunderstand me. I’m not talking about buying this building, this business. I’m saying, what if I were to set you up somewhere better, somewhere more deserving of your talents? What if we opened a store somewhere nice?”
“That’s ridiculous. I can’t even grasp why you’d suggest it…and can’t believe you actually ran this past Bastian. The man hates me. For good reason. There’s no way he would agree to this.”
“In a way, it was Bastian’s own idea. He said—you must forgive him the directness, you know how he is—he said, this place is a dump. And while that’s not how I would have put it…it is very small, Alex. Very small.”
“I’ve been here all my life. You know that. Even when we were together, you knew where I was from, knew I’d always planned on settling down here with my store.”
The store did feel small when Ian was here. Something about his presence, replacing all the oxygen with words. His personality made the walls feel like they were closing in. Why was he still here, in Alex’s life, two years after he was supposed to be gone for good?
You are the reason I had to slow things down with Judah, Alex thought. I finally meet a man I’m into—a man who listens, a man who understands me—and you show up and throw a wrench into it. Why can’t you understand that you’re as helpful as a hurricane?
Not the sort of thing he could say to Ian. He wouldn’t have listened to Alex anyway. He had a thought in his head, and once Ian had a thought, he had to play it out to the bitter, deadly end. Which was fine if he was writing
a murder mystery with Inspector Kestrel…not so fine if he was talking about uprooting Alex from his real life.
“Don’t be hasty,” Ian said, “but do try to understand what I’m offering here. The store would be yours—you would have complete creative control. I would simply ask that you have a large and varied mystery section, for my own selfish purposes, of course.”
“I can’t leave Superbia.”
“Darling, you can’t stay in Superbia. I know what a place like this does with a sensitive soul like yours. Look at you, having to stay with friends because of a minor broken bone.”
“That’s kind of the point. I have friends here. I have a life here.”
But Ian shook his head. “I remember when you told me your dreams. I think you’re hiding from life here. You’ve chosen the easiest possible life—a place where you would not have to struggle. It is the bookshop equivalent of moving back in with your parents.”
“Ian, I—”
He tutted and raised his hand. “I don’t want your answer right now. I want you to think about it. Think, truly think. There is such a limit to what you can do here, in this tiny town, compared to what you could do in the larger world. I am offering you just that. The world. Now, don’t say another word. Really, Alex. Think it over. I need to retrieve Bastian before one of the village matriarchs tries to steal him away—he has such an effect on the ladies!”
It was as gut-wrenching as if someone had told him some truly terrible news, and for a moment, after Ian left, all Alex could do is sit alone in his store and hyperventilate.
The nerve of that fucking—
The unbelievable cheek—
Sentences would not finish themselves in his mind. He was too angry, too insulted.
It was a trick, it had to be. Nobody offered anything like this. Really, Ian, you’d set me up in a Manhattan storefront, you’d foot the unimaginable bill for something like that? It was absurd…yet Ian had seemed so sincere.
Alex’s stomach hurt. Maybe it was the stress, or maybe the fact that he’d run out of ibuprofen and had started taking aspirin for his foot. It throbbed inside his cast, the way his mind seemed to throb inside his skull, pained and pressured.