Love in Real Life

by Seth King

  As I escaped to the counter and looked around at everyone, I realized something strange: I was bored, for the first time in my life, of this bookstore. I wanted more. I wanted George in more places, in more lighting schemes, in different settings. I wanted to get this show on the road, wherever it was going to lead us…

  George showed up the next day, and I basically accosted him as soon as he sat in the corner, his usual place. Today I didn’t want to sit here in relative privacy with him and talk about all the same stuff – I wanted to move forward. I wanted more. I liked him, but I felt like we were dragging our feet. And who wouldn’t want more from him? Today he was wearing an orange shirt that contrasted with his dark hair in a weird but sexy way, and he looked stomach-jumpingly hot.

  “So…we hangout here a lot,” I said soon. “Besides the night running, I mean. Which is also done in privacy, basically…”

  “Yeah?” he asked.

  “Well. We hang out. In the same place. With the same people. Doing the same things…”

  “Oh. Is that bad?”

  “Yes. No. Well…I mean…I know you have your social issues, but you always talk about how you feel better when you’re around me, and I kind of want…”

  “Yes?”

  “I want to go on a date, George,” I finally said very quickly, looking away. “Can we do that? I know you get nervous, but it’s been a while, and…are you ready for the tour? Are we going to only see these four walls, forever?”

  He leaned back like this had never occurred to him, that we might go on a date. Had I spoken too soon?

  But then he bit his lip. He looked scared, truly scared, at this proposition. Oh, shit. Had I underestimated the power of his anxiety? What if he really couldn’t leave the Bookworm?

  “Wait,” I said. “Never mind. I was stupid to bring it up. We can-”

  “No,” he interrupted. “Good point. I would’ve been afraid before, but I think that with you, I’ll be fine leaving. As long as you’re close.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” he swallowed. “My fear is of being alone. I won’t be alone with you. How about we start the bookstore tour tomorrow, before I can back out? But at a place with a café, so I can buy you many unhealthy scones and cookies and coffees? A bookdate – how does that sound?”

  “It sounds like you should text me the details.”

  So that was the day George asked me on a date. A real date. And who cared if I’d had to shamelessly force him into it: it was still a date offer. My first in forever, actually. So I ended the conversation before I could ruin it for myself and then left the room, saying there was a Bookworm emergency. But the emergency was me. I had mere hours before my first real date in forever. This wasn’t some meetup between two of my favorite characters. This was a date in real life.

  ~

  My dad limped his way into the apartment at about seven (bad hip that he couldn’t afford to get operated on), saw that I was reading and chewing my nails out of terror, and sort of sighed. My father had always had an ambivalent relationship with my life as a reader – sure, he owned a bookstore, but that was more of a business thing than anything. I was the true-blue book person of the family, not Nelson, as I sometimes called my dad. He said he didn’t get it, and I didn’t get why he didn’t get it.

  It wasn’t like I was out dancing in a club or appearing on Maury with my multiple boyfriends or anything – I was just reading. But he told me it wasn’t enough. It was a strange thing to live your life inside of books – nobody knew the secret thrills that jumped up your spine on any given day. You could be fighting dark wizard overlords in a Scottish castle while sitting in math class, or journeying to New Zealand mountain ranges from your messy bedroom on a drizzly Saturday night. Readers were embarked on a constant adventure, end date: never, and nobody knew it but them.

  “Teddy?” he asked. “That new J.K. Rowling mystery book is flying out the door, remind me to make a new order in the morning. And Rossi, the regular who always sits in the corner by the plant and drinks free waters, she stole another book the other day. We’re really going to have to do something about that soon.”

  “Ugh, but she’s so interesting and funny.”

  “I know, but she’s also a kleptomaniac. Just keep me on my toes, okay?”

  “That’s what Siri is for, but okay, no problem. Also, we need to rethink the pricing on that new book by that Instagram blogger – the publisher is charging forty-five dollars for it, and at that price, that book had better mow the lawn, cut my hair, clean my room, and revive my will to live.”

  “Stop joking like that. And fine, I’ll look into it.” He paused. “And something else.”

  “Hm?”

  I could hear him picking at his fingernail. “I stumbled across an old photo album last night, and…do you remember Mom?”

  I sighed. Not this again.

  “Of course I remember her,” I said sarcastically as things started opening up within me. Mom – just the word seemed to call up things from somewhere unnamable and untraceable in me. “I remember her back, and her shoulders, and her hair, all the parts of her that faced me while she walked out of my life a hundred times over.”

  “Teddy, seriously – do you?”

  I swallowed. “Yes. And I was serious. That’s mostly all I remember about her.”

  “Surely there have to be some good things you remember?”

  “Not really. Nothing besides mess. She was kind of a disaster.”

  “Well that’s unfortunate, because I sure have some good memories.”

  He got that dreamy, vacant look that told me he was still in love with her. His whole face still lit on fire when he talked about her, even after all these years – it was so sad and weird. It both validated love’s existence for me, and made me terrified of it. If he was still burning up for her, what chance did I have to resist George’s flames? Maybe it was unavoidable…

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about the whole shebang,” Nelson said. “You have no pictures of her, you tossed all her clothes I gave you into the garage. You should talk about her sometimes – hell, maybe even go down to Key West to see her.”

  “But-”

  “Let me finish.” I heard him sniffle, then I saw big shiny tears dripping down his collar.

  “Dad. Please stop. You being sad makes me sad for you, and then it’ll all just become one big teary sadness party. Why don’t you try to date one of the regulars or something? What about Tanya? God knows she’s single…”

  “Yeah, we’ll see,” he said a little too quickly. “And sorry. I just…I feel so rotten that…that my little boy never had a mother.”

  “Dad. I’m going to cry. Please stop!”

  He wiped his cheek. A few minutes passed. When he was “together” again, he sighed. “Okay, the drama’s gone, I promise. But why don’t you want to remember the good times?”

  “All two of them?”

  “Stop. She could be so fun, so wild, so...alive. Remember when it stormed and thundered all day and the power went out, and we had nothing else to do, so she grabbed a raincoat and ran outside with you?”

  “Wow. Yeah. I remember the raincoat, at least. That was probably the last good I had with her, actually.” I sighed again. “Why did she have to go and do all that, after the fact?”

  “You know she had her own issues.”

  “She left, Dad. Gone. I just wish…”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing. Doesn’t matter. Leave me alone, I’m trying to get lost in Lorde’s last album without killing myself, which is already hard enough.”

  He threw me a look.

  “Okay, sorry, I know you hate when people joke about that. Sorry.”

  He said something so quietly, I don’t think he was aware he was even saying it: “another female who left the stage too early.”

  “What was that?” I asked. “You said something. About…females who leave, or something.”

  He caught himself. “Oh, uh, nope,
never said that.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “I was just thinking…you’re so vocal about other things, but totally silent about Mom. Like books, for example. You’ll talk about them endlessly, but avoid your own mother?”

  “I am not vocal about books. You make me sound crazy or something.”

  “Oh, yeah. That time you lost your mind a little and spent four hundred and eighty dollars on books in like an hour – that wasn’t crazy at all.”

  “Excuse me, the library was closing down and everything was on sale, how else was I supposed to react other than by having a full-blown break with reality?”

  “Well, I had trouble paying the mortgage that month, sweetie. I mean, we had to borrow the neighbor’s truck to get all those books home, for god’s sake.”

  “Sorry. Let’s just pray Barnes & Noble sticks around for a while, or I might be putting us out on the street soon.

  He laughed, and I was grateful the subject of my mom had passed. I didn’t like to acknowledge her, because that just made me want to think about her more, and that was a slippery slope that could occasionally lead to me retreating to my bedroom with wine and strawberry ice cream until kingdom come. The trickle usually led to a downpour, so I usually just threw up an umbrella and cut it all off before it could even begin. But it was still hard. Sometimes when I was on the street at night alone, even the streetlights seemed to whisper her name.

  I looked away. I could tell he was sad, too, but he glossed it over like dry lips. Mom’s departure hung around him like an elephant that wouldn’t leave – we both noticed it all the time.

  “What is that?” he teased soon. “Is my Stonehenge son showing…emotions?”

  I wrapped my arms around my knees like a little kid and looked away so he couldn’t see my glassy eyes. “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “I just wish…I wish I could’ve been more important to her than the thing that took her. I wish I would’ve mattered more. Mattered enough to make her stay.”

  He wiped something shiny and silvery in his eye again, then looked away. “Baby. You don’t have to – I know. I know it’s terrible. I feel it too. But the way you deal with it is so…you don’t deal with it. You deal with nothing. You never even acknowledge her. And you can’t fix a problem you don’t name.”

  “I deal with it fine!”

  “Come on, get real. All you do is go back to your room with your books and-”

  “Oh, not this again,” I scoffed. “I mean, do you even know how lucky you are to have a bookworm for a child? I could be out doing crystal meth or participating in group sex or something.”

  He grimaced. “Teddy, that is disgusting. Just, downright gross. And sort of true, I guess. I’m lucky to have a little bookworm, in some ways.”

  “At least I’m not your little crack head.”

  “Teddy! Stop. I just want you to get out in the world more. The world deserves you. Don’t cheat everyone out of you. Don’t run from difficult things.”

  I smiled, then shoved it down. “I do have a world. It just exists inside my books. And don’t forget that I’m not alone – I have my blog followers.”

  “Oh, how could I forget?” he asked sarcastically. “A bunch of people you’ve never met, who don’t even live here.”

  I sighed.

  “Look,” he finally said. “It’s not lost on me that you’re hurting, but I don’t know what to do about it. What happened with your mother was unavoidable. Life is a mountain, and some people just…aren’t climbers. They aren’t. One day you are going to become an adult – a real adult, not this halfway stuff – and you will grow into a man, and you will understand. I hope that doesn’t happen for another decade, though, and I’ll get to control you for much longer.

  “Yeah, yeah. We’ll see about that. In the meantime please take your heart medication. You’ve been eating like a bodybuilder who is carb-loading for a competition, and it’s making me nervous. Why don’t we go out and play tennis tomorrow or something?”

  “You know I can’t do that. I’m too out of shape. And I think I’m eating just fine – I’ve only gone to Golden Corral twice this month.”

  “Yikes at that being something worth bragging about.”

  “Oh, kiddo. What would I do without you?”

  “I don’t know. Date someone?”

  He tensed. “You’re one to talk.”

  “Are you really encouraging me to date? That’s weird.”

  “Whatever. You’ll never find a life in books, Teddybear. You need to get out more, and that is coming from someone who owns a bookstore and hasn’t been on a date since our president was sane.”

  I set my jaw. “You’re wrong. That’s exactly what I find. Life. Every day.”

  “Oh, come on. You’re not living.”

  “Of course bookworms don’t live.” I did a weird little bird-like motion with my arms. “We fly.”

  I headed to the kitchen to consume some carbs I knew I didn’t need. Why didn’t my dad get it?

  The more I thought about it as I stared down at the courtyard and the pool, the madder I got. Books were the most important relationship in my life, because they never left me. And he would never understand this, no matter how hard he tried. Books would never lose interest in me or stop texting me back or tell me they wanted to focus on their career and wouldn’t be able to see me anymore. They didn’t take, they just gave and gave and gave. They made me smile in cars and laugh in supermarkets and weep on Sunday nights in the soft glow of my bedside table while the rain whispered me off to sleep. Books broke me open and put me back together again, and until that stopped happening, until I found something else that could jump-start my heart in that way, I’d never abandon books, no matter how many people called me a nerd or a geek or said I lived my life lost in fantasy. In fact, I’d gladly get lost in the fantasies of my books forever, just as long as I got to turn the last page and then find something new and start all over again.

  This all made me think of George, a boy so strange he stumped me more than the most elaborate of mystery novels. I’d never met someone who understood what it was like for all the people you felt strongest for to be on a page. Everyone was wrong – we were the cool kids.

  Or maybe, just maybe, my dad was right. Maybe we were all just prisoners of print, slaves to the page. I loved reading, but sometimes I also felt like the whole world was happening out there and I didn’t even know where “there” was, or how to even start looking for it. I guess I suspected that in the end, all roads led back to my mother and what she’d done. Maybe I needed to get over my anger and confront it all. Or maybe Nelson had no idea what he was talking about. After all, the situation with my mother was why I was the person I’d become. Her departure had left me anxious and timid. Something was boiling within me, and books were the only thing that turned down the heat. Why should I feel sympathy for someone who’d made a mess of not only her own life, but mine, too?

  At the end of it all, I didn’t even really know how I felt about her. Most of the things I felt about my mother were so far away, I couldn’t even access them – I’d gone totally numb to myself. My mother was a distinct lighthouse on a foggy night, and sometimes I thought I would do anything to keep the fog dense and impenetrable forever. Because the fog kept me alone, and the aloneness kept me safe.

  And considering all that, how in the world was I ever going to let George into a fortress that was already locked, considering he even desired entry? Or would he just stop trying to break down the barriers and give up? And was that what I really wanted?

  In any case, none of it mattered anymore. The bookstore tour was starting tomorrow, and I had absolutely no idea how it was going to go.

  Books in Real Life

  So how’s your summer going? Mine is…going. I feel like I’m balancing on a wire suspended above a circus, and I could fall off at any moment into a pool of sharks. That’s basically my career as a young adult thus far: hey, I might be a socially-awkwar
d weirdo, but at least I’m not a shark attack victim, right?

  Anyway, send me good vibes please, will you? I know many of you aren’t religious, but I have a very big life event tomorrow, and with my luck I’ll burn down the building and set off a few explosions, too. Just think good thoughts for me so I don’t create a barren hell-scape for myself, okay?

  Tell me what you’re reading in the comments and I’ll respond with my opinion when I can. You know the drill. I appreciate all of you so much lately, all eight of you.

  Love,

  Teddy

  THE GREAT CHARLES/MARTIN BOOKSTORE TOUR

  STOP ONE: BARNES & NOBLE, JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA

  So…the day had arrived. My first real date with George Charles. He showed up wearing dark jeans, a wrinkled white collared shirt, and the cutest smile in history. After early coffee at the Bookworm, we headed to the St. Johns Town Center, a huge and gross mall in the middle of the city.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked, and he smiled in a nervous way.

  “Of course I’m okay. I have you with me. And Klonopin. I’ll be fine.”

  He took longer than me to exit the car, but once we hit the sidewalk, he seemed to open up quite a lot. That’s finally when I was able to feel a little less guilty about pushing him out into the public. He pointed out a few stores, and I tried to sort of noncommittally nod and act like I wouldn’t have rather been back in my bed.

  “Okay, I have to ask you something,” I said soon. He looked just as uncomfortable as I did, to be honest.

  “Sure.”