The Bookseller's Boyfriend

by Heidi Cullinan

  “You’re fake dating?” Gus pursed his lips before sipping his double espresso. “I don’t like this.”

  “You mean he’s just using you?” Matt looked displeased. “I don’t like it either.”

  Jacob held up a hand. “No, this was my idea. He wanted to actually date, but I can’t handle that.”

  Gus settled into his chair and propped his feet on one across the table from him. “So he legitimately asked you out, and you said no?”

  “Well… it’s a little more complicated than that.” Jacob told them the story of the gala and the horde on his doorstep the next morning, plus Rasul’s confession of his lie to his agent.

  Matt shook his head. “I don’t like this. It sounds like a bad deal for you.”

  “He did sell a lot of books today,” Gus pointed out.

  “It’s not a bad deal for me. A little dangerous, maybe, but not awful. And I’m not doing it to sell books.”

  Gus waved this away. “Obviously not, but perks is perks.”

  “Clark is going to have a fit,” Matt pointed out. “He’s already going to be upset about the article in the paper.”

  Yes, Jacob was sure he would be. “Do you think I shouldn’t have agreed to the fake dating because it’ll upset our plans for getting on the leadership of the chamber?”

  Gus shook his head. “Naw, he’s going to resent you no matter what. Besides, he doesn’t get a vote on your personal life.”

  The smell of the pizza was getting to Jacob. He withdrew some money from his pocket and passed some to Matt for the pizza, some to Gus for the coffee. Then he opened a pizza box and took several slices.

  A knock at the door signaled Jacob’s beverage had arrived, and while Gus went to collect it, Matt also took a slice. They busied themselves with their food until the door had closed again.

  “Is this going to be a problem, you being in love with him?” Matt asked eventually.

  Jacob wiped grease from his lips. “I’m not actually in love with him. Not the real him. Do I idolize my mental image of Rasul? Of course. Will that fade away as I get to know him? Yes, but that’s going to be impossible to avoid. We’re going to be friends. I’m going to help him with a problem, and I’ll get to watch him write his novel.”

  “But you’re both attracted to each other,” Gus pointed out.

  Jacob busied himself with his pizza.

  “I still don’t like it,” Matt said at last. “There’s not a lot in this for you. Plus I know you. You’re going to fall in love with him.”

  Jacob sighed. “I know. But there’s not much I can do.”

  “Just be smart and safe,” Gus advised. “Including with these lies you’re going to tell everyone. Especially the ones you’re telling yourself.”

  Jacob drew his mocha latte closer to him and cradled the warmth in his hands. “I know. Believe me, I know.”

  RASUL DIDN’T mind Bayview University as much as he’d thought he would, but he still hated his apartment, which was unfortunate because he spent far too much time in it.

  Sunday and Monday he kept himself busy arranging his few belongings in his university office. He begged a ride from the dean and went shopping at the discount stores in the strip mall, trying desperately to find things to cheer up his living space. The junk store on the street behind the Wiccan shop was a true score, full of funky knickknacks and small practical items he hoped would make his apartment more palatable. A few hundred desperate dollars made it tolerable, but all he could think about was how great Jacob’s place was and how much he wanted to be in it.

  He had his first seminar Tuesday night—he only met with students in class Tuesdays and Thursdays at six, and had to keep four office hours a week. The understanding was that he’d spend the rest of the time writing, and probably not at the university. Elizabeth would expect him to be in his apartment, but he truly couldn’t stand it. He’d scrubbed every wall and set up an essential oil diffuser, but he still smelled grease every time he opened the door.

  Moore Books didn’t smell like his place. Moore Books smelled like literature and Jacob. It drew Rasul like a siren’s call.

  On Sunday he’d had a long conversation with Jacob laying out ground rules for their fake relationship. Rasul could come over any time during store hours, which were eight to five Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, and from eight to nine Thursdays. Traditionally Mondays were Jacob’s day off to run errands, leaving Gina in charge of the place, though he said he often popped into the office to catch up on paperwork during that time as well. This meant Monday wasn’t the best time for Rasul to occupy his kitchen table, but Jacob had said they could work something out if he needed to be there.

  Rasul had already decided he’d only appear on Mondays if he had no alternative.

  They still hadn’t worked out how they were going to perpetuate their fake dating, something Rasul thought a lot about. Every fiber in his being wanted to use this as a lure to woo the man, but he knew that was a slimy thing to do and he should in no circumstance act on that impulse. He still didn’t understand why they couldn’t date, and he desperately wanted to know. Was it because he was such a disaster? Did Jacob have some kind of hang-up? Was it the shitty way he’d trapped him into this? The latter seemed the most likely, despite Jacob’s protestations otherwise, which meant pushing the man was the worst thing he could do.

  The problem was this whole thing was the best setup ever to get Rasul to pine like mad for the man. He had a bad feeling about where this was headed.

  As he walked to the university for his first seminar, he got plenty of looks and a few photos taken. Elizabeth had given him a brief social media update Monday afternoon, reporting that there were still plenty of tags of him popping up, but Adina had gone quiet, with the excuse that she had a sudden call for work and would be taking a brief hiatus. Given what Elizabeth had said about her agent, that was a lie. Rasul was a bit sorry for Adina and wished her well, but he was glad everything was over.

  He felt a bit guilty that technically he didn’t need to fake date Jacob anymore, but it was probably safer to let it go on for a bit.

  He wasn’t excited for his class, he had to admit. He’d done a bit of teaching here and there at conferences, but never anything as sustained and organized as this. Usually his “classes” were people asking him questions and him pulling strategies out of his ass. Though he did have an MFA, he wasn’t sure how qualified he was for this.

  His class waited for him as he came into the room, every seat full, about twenty people in total. To his surprise, only a handful of the students were in their early twenties. There was a wide expanse of age, gender, and race in the room.

  Putting on his convention smile, Rasul put his bag on the desk and withdrew his lecture materials. “Wow, a full house. Good to see you guys. I’m Rasul Youssef, author of two speculative fiction novels and your instructor for this term. Pleased to meet you. Why don’t we take a moment to go around the room and have everyone introduce themselves as well?”

  They all did, some sticking to the facts, some taking the time to talk about the novels they intended to write. One woman, though, Meg Yardley, was already published with six novels under her belt.

  Rasul was intrigued. “That’s excellent. Where are you published?”

  Meg’s chin went up a little, but her expression remained cool. “I’m indie. I write lesbian romance.”

  There was defiance in her tone, waiting for him to challenge her credentials, but Rasul wasn’t going there. He’d already picked up some heavy butch vibes from Meg, and now he saw hints of Elizabeth overtones. Besides, he loved lesbian fiction. “That’s great. I’m sure you’ll have a lot to teach everyone as well.” He glanced around the room. “Not trying to get ahead of the introductions, but is anyone else published?” His eyebrows rose as several hands went up. “Wow. Well, mention that when you introduce yourself. I love this level of expertise we have going on here.”

  It turned out there were several poets, two
novelists, and two nature writers in the class. Every last one of them was self-published. Well, Rasul supposed that was the new thing, though given the grim looks on their faces as they talked about their publication experiences, it sounded like the self-pub game was as rough, if not rougher, than the New York game.

  This could be an interesting undertaking.

  He rubbed his hands together when they all finished with introductions. “Right. Okay. I’ll do my best to remember your names, but feel free to correct me when I invariably misremember some of you. Let’s dive right into it: so I can continue to get to know you better, I wanted to start today with a writing sample exercise. I’ll do some instruction after, but I don’t want to color your efforts. My goal is for you to be able to look back at what you started with and see your improvement. Your assignment: pick your favorite novel, or one of your favorite novels, and write a scene based on it. You can give us a scene you wish would have happened, put the characters in a different setting, whatever you like. Just make sure it’s your voice and your style shining through. I’ll give you half an hour for the exercise, and then I’ll have you turn it in. No worries if you don’t finish it, and there’s no minimum or maximum word count. This is diagnostic only.”

  A college-aged girl in the front raised her hand tentatively. Rasul tried to remember her name, then decided not to risk it. “Yes?”

  She lowered her hand. “So you want us to write fan fiction?”

  Rasul paused. “Huh. I guess I do.”

  Another hand went up, this time from the older gentleman named Ron who had taken great pains to talk about his unpublished novel’s hero, who liked to go fishing. “Are you going to do the exercise too?”

  Rasul shrugged. “Sure. I’ll do one, then share it. I’m going to type on my laptop, and if you have one you can do the same, but no worries if it’s handwritten. Ready?” He reached for his phone to set a timer, then stopped. “Ah. Anyone have a smartphone with a timer?”

  They all did, of course, but Meg took charge and kept the time. Rasul sat down at the desk, pulled out his laptop, and stared at the blinking cursor. The novel that flew into his mind, of course, was the one he’d recently reread, I Capture the Castle.

  Well, why not?

  He wrote a small scene between Cassandra and Simon, though very quickly it turned into Rasul and Jacob, respectively. Cassandra was trying to be glib and catch Simon’s attention, but Simon kept her politely at arm’s length, despite their obvious attraction. He was getting into a good attempt by Cassandra to lure him out on a walk through the castle when Meg’s phone went off.

  The room filled with groans and protests. Most people had barely gotten started, and everyone hated what they’d written. A few of the college-age girls and one of the older women, though, looked quite confident and almost smug.

  Rasul let them vent for a minute, nodding. “Sure. It’s tough to write on the spot, and tougher to write with someone else’s characters.” He plugged his laptop into the overhead projector and turned it on. “This is what I did. I worked from I Capture the Castle, though my Cassandra and Simon aren’t terribly accurate. There are elements of them there, but they quickly turned into my own creations.”

  “But what is this going to teach us? How are you grading this?” a woman asked. Rasul was fairly sure her name was Tina.

  “What it tells me isn’t very important. What it tells you is far more interesting. So that’s your next assignment. Twenty minutes, a quick paragraph about what you learned from this. No wrong answers. ‘I hate fan fiction’ is a valid response, the same as realizing you love it. Just take a moment to examine your work, your reaction to the exercise.”

  This time Rasul watched them while they worked. He would have played on his phone, but that was impossible, so he studied his charges instead. He hadn’t been sure how to go about this class exactly. The dean had said it was supposed to be very introductory level and free-form, so he was doing as requested so far. There were so many different ability and experience levels here. He hoped he could do a good job.

  Once they finished their exercises, he had them share them, which was fun. They gave a variety of answers and had some lively discussion, and all of a sudden it was time to end the class.

  Rasul pointed to the corner of the board. “For Thursday, read the short story I uploaded to Google Classroom. Come ready to discuss it. You have my office hours on my syllabus too, so if you have any questions, let me know.”

  They filed out, and several of them came up to tell him how excited they were about the class. The dean stopped by too, and he was smiling.

  “You’re off to a great start. Looking forward to seeing what else you do here.” Evan handed Rasul a flyer. “Also, I wanted to officially invite you to the Founder’s Day celebration next weekend.”

  Rasul threw away the flyer as soon as the dean was out of sight. He thought about the class all the way back to his apartment, though. It hadn’t been bad. He’d worried somehow his complete lack of ability to do his own work would translate into being a crap teacher, but it seemed like he’d done all right.

  He opened his laptop to see if he could work on his novel, but the same heavy, twisted feelings of anger, regret, and terror swamped him immediately.

  He shut it and lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

  JACOB ABSOLUTELY hated chamber of commerce meetings.

  He didn’t at all resent the idea of them—he wanted to connect with his community and share new ideas, to find ways to promote other local businesses. Problem was, the meetings were never about that. They were just another chance for Clark and his crew to complain about the internet and be suspicious of anyone under fifty.

  Every Copper Point small business could become a member, in theory, but traditionally only businesses of a certain type were welcomed. There had been a small scandal when the Wiccan shop, for example, had joined, and a certain set of members ensured the owner’s membership only lasted a brief time. Jacob had tried to help her, but Clark and company did too good of a job making her feel unwelcome. It was shortly after that Jacob organized Mini Main Street so they could coordinate their plans and counter whatever Clark and company were up to.

  Lately the controversy in the chamber had been that the Chinese restaurant owner had joined. The same clutch of members who had turned up their nose at the Wiccan shop owner were now working on Yi Fu Zhang. He was more difficult for the naysayers to take down, though, because in addition to MMS, Zhang had Rebecca Lambert-Diaz and her partner at the law firm, Julian Steele, on his side. It was difficult to say which one of the lawyers was more terrifying.

  They were so terrifying, in fact, MMS hadn’t worked up the courage yet to ask them to join even though they desperately wanted them to. But they knew Rebecca better now because they were all on the hospital board together, and Julian had joined GAG, so he wasn’t as scary. Maybe they’d ask them both soon.

  Being part of the St. Ann’s Medical Center board and watching that group take on long-established local institutions had given MMS the courage to take on the Main Street cabal. They didn’t have any coordinated attacks planned yet, but they did their best to keep in touch with each other and work behind the scenes and sometimes in front of them to manipulate things to get what they wanted. Jacob always thought of it as “Emma-ing,” but he was the only one in the group who’d read Austen. The other two called it scheming.

  Originally Mini Main Street had planned for this chamber meeting expecting they would need to shore up support for Zhang, but it didn’t take a genius to know that given recent events, the focus would be on something different. Or rather, someone.

  “I should like to know,” Clark began with a sharp glance at Jacob, “how it’s becoming of a community leader to cavort around a public function and then be written up in gossip columns.”

  “He actually just said cavort,” Gus murmured under his breath.

  Jacob kicked him gently under the table as he folded his hands together and gave
Clark his best and screw you too smile. “I assume you’re talking about me, Les? Yes, I danced at the university gala and did an interview for the Gazette the next day. What of it?”

  It pleased him to see how much his use of Clark’s first name bothered him. “It was highly unseemly.”

  Rebecca beamed a smile that matched Jacob’s. “I thought it looked like Jacob was having a great time. And I heard the Sunday edition of the Gazette sold out completely, something that hasn’t happened in a while.” She glanced around the table. “Am I misinformed?”

  Beside her, Julian didn’t look up from the legal pad he was perusing and replied in a bored voice, “You’re not. The paper’s owner asked me to personally thank Jacob, since he couldn’t be here tonight, and said to be sure to let him know of any more exciting events in his shop.”

  “I saw quite an uptick in sales that day as well,” Gus ventured.

  “We didn’t.” This was Matt’s father, the owner of Engleton’s Fine Clothing. “If anything, our sales were down.”

  Matt studied the table.

  Rebecca laughed. “Well, I doubt a bunch of eager young women and curious residents would naturally run from a bookstore and coffee shop to start suit shopping.”

  Zhang, who had been consulting his translator, popped into the conversation here. “We have good business Saturday.”

  Clark, annoyed this wasn’t going his way, launched into a fifteen-minute diatribe about respectability, morals, and community image. As he wound down, he fixed his gaze on Jacob. “I hope we’re not about to see some kind of repeated spectacle. Our businesses are struggling enough as it is.”

  Jacob offered a serene smile. “I don’t see how my love life could affect other businesses, but I’ll certainly keep your remarks in mind.”

  He enjoyed watching Clark’s mouth pucker at the idea of Jacob’s very gay love life.

  “If you think about it,” Gus ventured with a thread of maliciousness in his tone, “Jacob and Rasul will be contributing to the local economy. Dates mean restaurants. And wherever they go, others are sure to follow.”