Love in Real Life

by Seth King

  “This has been fun, but…can we just be nerdy together? I thought this was going to be a tour of bookstores, not large open-air shopping malls…”

  He smirked at me.

  “What?”

  “I know you wanted bookstores. That’s why I brought you to a mall with a Barnes & Noble.”

  He pointed at the telltale green sign up ahead. It sent a shiver from my arm all the way up to my bookworm heart. “Jesus, how could I forget? I just never come to this part of town. We’ve hit the mother ship!”

  We wandered the store for a while. Truthfully, it was…a Barnes & Noble. There wasn’t much I hadn’t seen before. When we both picked a few books to check out, we settled at a corner table in the café, as always.

  He turned to me and smiled with his eyes somehow. How could someone be so magical that they smiled with their eyes?

  “Tell me,” he said. “About the last guy you dated.”

  “What? Where did that come from?”

  “Well, I saw a few pictures on Facebook, and…”

  Oh, God. I thought I’d deleted all those. “I’ve never dated,” I said. “Not officially.”

  He gave me a crazy look.

  “What? I’m eighteen. I feel like that’s pretty normal.”

  “I’m just surprised,” he said.

  “Well, you shouldn’t be. And yeah…there was one person. And I hate to say this, but…his name was Charles. First name, though.”

  “Whaaaaa? Tell me about this other, less-important Charles.”

  I sighed at the ceiling. The truth was that I would never tell him the real story, because the real story was humiliating beyond belief…

  If my previous love life had a subtitle, it would be I liked you and you treated me like the clump of dust in the corner of the living room that nobody ever bothers to clean, so I liked you even more: a love story.

  Once I fell in desperately in lust with someone and it was the worst thing ever. Like, legitimately the worst. He came around, flirting with me and calling me cute. Soon we started hanging out. He was chubby, like “businessman chubby,” “golf course chubby.” It was so cute. He had a wide smile and these liquidy eyes that I trusted for some reason. Soon I fell helplessly into infatuation with him, the kind where you bake things for someone for no reason at all, or maybe write out what his last name would look like next to yours – but he kept me a million miles away. He said he “didn’t want a title or a label for us” because “it was summer” and “we were so close” and all these things, so I tried not to think about it. He was sometimes wonderful, but cold and cruel three times as often. People loved being around him, and gay men loved to stare at him. When my best friend Dooley started texting me that he was popping up on dating apps, his wide smile out there for everyone to see, I told myself Dooley was crazy. George was cute and sweet and he had dinner with his mom all the time – he would never do something like that to me. He was a good person and Dooley was just jealous.

  But he would do that to me, and deep down I knew it. When I called him he would mention what an inconvenience it was for him to answer the phone at that particular moment, and then he would pause and wait for me to apologize. He wanted me to apologize, for calling someone on the phone! And then to keep the peace I’d always just do whatever he asked, and then I would hate myself even more. My life with him was one long apology. He treated me like the box of junk at the back of your closet that you avoid for years, and the worst thing was that I let him. Like a neglected hound dog I circled back around to him every time he pushed me away, and I was too young and dumb to realize how much he enjoyed it, the pleasure he took in the fact that I needed him so much.

  The end was a mess. It finally took a screen shot of him telling a mutual friend on a dating app that he “loved blowjobs” for me to admit what I’d known all along: that he was a pathetic man-child who could never love someone else because he didn’t even love himself. Until a man figured himself out, he would ruin everyone he came into contact with, and I learned that the hardest way possible. He ruined me, or contributed to my ruining at the very last, and in the end he told people we’d never even been dating – he referred to me as “a hookup.” I spent a year of my life chasing someone, baking him ginger snaps to bring to his house, and I was “a hookup.”

  Sometimes, during the loneliest nights, I was sure I would never love again. I was love-ruined and nothing, or no one, would ever change that.

  A few months after we finally stopped talking, I saw him at Trader Joe’s, and he asked me to apologize for blocking his cart as I pulled one out for myself. I wanted to instruct him to insert the cart into his gaping anus, but I just tripped him instead. He knocked over an entire stand of orchids. Then he had to pay for them.

  After much self-examination, all this exposed a few things for me. I didn’t really know what love was because nobody had ever taught me what it was. My mom had never loved me in the right way, so with him, I was doomed. He treated me like hot garbage and I welcomed it, encouraged it even. It took me a year of front-porch therapy sessions with my father to learn that if Charles (the First) wanted to call, he would’ve called. If he wanted to see me, he would’ve come around. If he loved me, he wouldn’t have ignored me for nine days and then casually told me that my “face was swollen from wine and sun” the first time he saw me again. People treated you exactly how you let them treat you. If a guy was aloof and distant and keeping himself a thousand miles away from your life, he probably wasn’t “struggling with his feelings” or “taking some time to think” or doing anything any of the other things we invent to justify the shitty way we let people treat us. He was probably just an asshole, and didn’t really want you.

  In the end he didn’t save me, he didn’t rescue me from my own life like I’d hoped, he just left me – with even more problems than I’d had before, natch. All happiness ever did was crash and burn and then end in an even worse depression, and I was so sick of risking it all just to be disappointed all over again. That’s where books came in.

  I told George the rosier version of this story, that we’d spent some good times together before parting ways. He seemed understanding, but I saw confusion in his eyes.

  “Are you sure this was as mutual as you’re saying? Your eyes are very…angry right now.”

  “I mean, well…he did call me ugly one time, and tell me to get braces.”

  “Well, then. Do I need to pay someone to have this guy murdered and thrown into a river?”

  “Please don’t go to prison on my behalf. I’d feel terrible. And it was fine – he didn’t ‘get’ me or my life, anyway. He’d never read a book that wasn’t assigned to him by a teacher.”

  “Now I really do want to kill him. What kind of monster is this?”

  I laughed and leaned back. “God, I’m probably boring you and talking way too much. Sorry. I have a tendency to do that.” Charles was always ignoring me, telling me I spoke too much, telling me I blathered on and on about nothing. So after that I started to stay silent.

  “What do you mean?” George asked, looking genuinely confused. “Nothing you’ve ever said so far has been boring. Don’t ever think that about yourself.”

  I just stared at him. “Wow. Okay, then.” I swallowed. “Still, we don’t have to talk about him. It’s just that…every time I think about boys I think about him, and how he left. And lied. And left baggage behind. Like, you know how July is totally fun, but then it’s gone, and the year starts up again, and it gets cold, and it’s all over?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I was the summer to him. He wanted sun and sand and fun and games, and nothing more. I kind of knew I would never be the whole year to him, no matter how badly I wanted to be all twelve of his months. I was his July.”

  He looked away and dropped the subject. “Well, the douche missed out. You are a whole calendar to me. And now you’re totally single?”

  “Yep. Hopelessly so. And you?”

  “Indeed.” Those eyebrows,
sexy and strong, shifted as he took on the sexiest smirk I’d ever seen. “But not for long, if I have any say in it.”

  STOP TWO: CHAMBLIN’S DOWNTOWN

  JACKSONVILLE, FL

  On Saturday, a few days after I’d humiliated myself via TMI, George appeared in the Meow with a big hopeful smile on his face. I threw my dad a look that told him I’d taking a few hours off. Nelson rolled his eyes but let me go anyway.

  We took George’s car. I still felt awkward about my meltdown during the last hangout session, so it took me a while to open up as we drove to Chamblin’s Uptown, a hipster bookstore in the gay section of the city, about thirty minutes away. It was actually very cool, though, and it had more used books in one place than I’d ever seen before. (The Bookworm specialized in the hottest, newest books, along with special antique editions.)

  Something that wasn’t so cool, though, was when the attractive manager stopped George and basically slid his hand down the back of his shirt as he chatted with him. I guess I’d never considered the fact that other people would think he was hot, too. To me he was already just George. He clearly had no idea what the manager was doing, either, but managed to keep it together and generally acted much less awkward than I’d expected. And the manager was enjoying the conversation, that was for sure…

  When we escaped into the maze of shelves again, I felt a hand on my side, and before I knew it he was spinning me around and kissing me. His tongue slipped into my mouth and his hands wrapped themselves up in my hair – this guy knew how to kiss. I was still breathless when a mom approached with two little kids, cutting us short.

  George pulled away and smoothed his hair, his eyes bloodshot. “God,” he breathed, “I’ve been waiting to do that. I always just felt too awkward. But when that guy was talking to me, I had a weird feeling that told me: I need to kiss Teddy Martin.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Just to show you how wrong that Charles character was when he ditched you. You’re sexy, Teddy Martin. Very fucking sexy.”

  My face was cheery red. I avoided his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see how flattered I was, and how turned on I was, too…

  “By the way, wear those shorts a lot. Every day, if you want. It’s the one from the night of the wallpapers, yes?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, it’s hot.”

  “Okay, then,” I panted as we kept looking through the shelves, and I couldn’t even remember why we were here in the first place.

  Suddenly all I could think about were things that could only be found in the erotica section…

  STOP THREE: JANIE’S BOOKSTOP

  GREEN COVE SPRINGS, FLORIDA

  At Janie’s the next day, a place about forty minutes inland, we pulled up to see a storefront so tragically small it made me want to cry. This would obviously be useless. I started to turn around, but I felt his hand on my leg.

  “What?” I asked, shivering. “Can’t you see? It’s so small, there’s no point in even stepping in.”

  “Anywhere is worth going with you,” he said. I parked immediately. That was all the convincing I needed.

  Spoiler alert: it was useless. The kiss he gave me in the bathroom wasn’t, though.

  “Are you sure you’re already going to start hooking up with me, even though we haven’t finished the tour?” he asked breathlessly when we were done. I took an excited little breath and pulled him closer.

  “I’m pretty sure I’m okay with my decisions.”

  STOP FOUR: OLD CITY BOOKS

  ST. AUGUSTINE, FL

  This was a beautiful first-floor unit in an old brick townhouse in a place called St. Augustine, one of the first European settlements in North America. As this was also a liberal arts college town, AKA safe ground, George reached over and held my hand the entire time we browsed. And I let him, even if the book selection left much more to be desired than George’s touch did…

  STOP FIVE: JEPSEN’S USED BOOK EMPORIUM

  JACKSONVILLE, FL

  “Hey, Teddy?” George asked soon after arriving at Jepsen’s, which smelled like rotten carpet and had an old dog walking around in the back. He’d just tried to steer me by the waist, and I’d pulled away a little and pretended I hadn’t noticed.

  “Yes?”

  “So, tell me. When are going to stop acting like my being nice to you is a bad thing?”

  I cringed. I didn’t know it was that noticeable. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t know I was doing that again. I’m a newbie at this.”

  “At what?”

  “Stalking bookstores with beautiful guys.”

  “Ha. It’s okay. We’re usually the last ones to see ourselves clearly.” He swallowed. “But…I have another question.”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you happy, Teddy?”

  “Um. I don’t know. Who is really happy? And why do you ask?”

  “Because sometimes you just…drift away. Go somewhere else. Like yesterday in that little store, you were a million miles away when we were holding hands. I’m an expert in the field of Being Unhappy, and you can talk. Are you happy?”

  Finally I just sighed. “Nobody’s ever asked me that.” Then I stared down at my feet. “What does happy mean?”

  “Oh, it’s everything, when you’re feeling it,” he smiled. “It’s waking up and looking forward to what’s coming. It’s waking under streetlights at night and hearing the buzz and studying the glow instead of staring down at your phone. It’s…”

  “What?”

  His eyes opened up into mine. “Being here, now, next to you. This. This is happiness.”

  A warmth spread over me, a warmth unlike anything I had felt in years. Maybe ever. We passed a magician’s biography then, and it made me think of something related to this. Usually books were the only things that could ever make me feel happy and childlike. I was learning that it was just the nature of growing up to kill magic – falling desperately in love with books, or anything at all, just didn’t happen that much anymore. The older you got, the less you felt, until eventually you just went cold. That sparkling, exhilarating thing you’d felt when you rushed to Barnes & Noble to get your hands on the latest Harry Potter the day of release, and then spent the night leaning against the page, praying it would never end – that just didn’t exist anymore. But next to George, for the first time in years, I felt like I could be happy again. Free and happy, like only children could be.

  And maybe I was delusional. Maybe I was chasing something that didn’t even exist, running after a beautiful impossibility like a fool. But even the slim chance was better and more gorgeous than having no shot at all…

  STOP SIX: BOOKS-A-MILLION

  PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL

  This place in particular was actually our main competitor, so I made sure a snarl was securely on my face as we toured the bland superstore. I kept finding problems to point out that probably weren’t actual problems at all – “Ew, look at this beige wall. It’s just so…beige, you know?” But George said something hilarious about the Kardashians in the magazine section, and soon my mood was flying. That was happening more and more: no matter how hard I tried to stay the bitchy, sour Teddy of the past, George just lifted me out of myself. He was like a human dose of baking powder: he was just making me fluffier.

  “So how is the tour going, all in all?” he asked in the coffee shop. “Do you still deny that you have the coolest store in the whole world?”

  “To be decided,” I smiled. “And wait, we’re about to run out of stores to visit. That means…”

  “It means we’ll have to broaden our search area,” he said. “I’m not done with you yet, silly.”

  He rested his hand atop mine, and my whole body shivered. I wasn’t done with him either. I wanted more. So much more…

  On the way out, we passed whom I recognized as this kid Nick, George’s neighbor. Sometimes when we’d go jogging, we’d run into him in the driveway. He waved and walked closer and looked at George all expectantly, waiting for a greeting,
an acknowledgement, anything.

  Instead, George clammed up and pretended Nick wasn’t there. Sweat formed on his upper lip. He angled himself away until Nick sort of did the same, heeding the signal that George wasn’t going to acknowledge him.

  “You ready?” George asked me in an awkward tone, still angling his body away. I looked over at Nick, who looked hurt and confused, then back to George.

  “Um…yeah. Sure.”

  And then when we had to walk out of the store, we had to pass barely six inches past Nick, who looked baffled and mortified…

  “I’m sorry,” George said as soon as we got in the car. He banged his head against the wheel, then just rested it there. I couldn’t lie – it was one of the most awkward interactions I’d ever experienced. Or non-interactions, I guess…

  “It’s…it’s okay, George. But can I ask…what was that?”

  “Terror,” he said through a clenched jaw. “Because my ultimate fear is being shunned and alone, I have this specific anxiety of seeing people I know in public. I freeze up. My pulse explodes. I convince myself I’ll act weird or do something awkward or embarrass myself, and make them judge me. My whole body radiates with this chilly fear. I…can’t explain any better. When I told you I would never be okay, I wasn’t joking.”

  “But he’s a good friend…”

  “And? It still fucking horrifies me to run into people. So much so, I usually run in the other direction. If I can move at all.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say soon, staring out of the window. “I wish, so badly, that I could help you.”

  “Don’t worry,” he finally said as he started the car at last. Then he sort of smirked over at me. “You are. You are the only reason I didn’t just turn and run. Give yourself a little more credit, eh?”

  “Credit,” I smile. “Okay. Credit.”

  That night I stayed late at George’s above-garage apartment, as my dad was away for a few days at a friend’s lake house. I didn’t really know what to do with myself, but he seemed comfortable enough, so I tried to tell my brain to shut the eff up while we watched some nature show. Soon he pulled out his old high school yearbook, from the year he withdrew, and started sharing memories with me as it rained against the window. There was glitter on the cover of his yearbook, and glitter in my chest. He told me of the time he almost won the geography bee but forfeited because he couldn’t face the final round in front of the school; he told me of the day he made his first friend in gym class. I found myself holding onto every detail, wanting to know everything about who he’d been, and how he’d gotten that way.