“I’ve got a soft spot for it. My parents were busy a lot when I was young, my grandparents too old, and one of my most regular babysitters was a big ballad fan. I can sing every word of this song and most of Air Supply, honestly. I associate the music with summers in the backyard, floating in the pool while Carla belted out old-school love songs with a heavy accent.”
Jacob smiled, his own memories overtaking him. “My mom liked Whitney Houston.”
“Another good choice.”
They swayed in comfortable silence for a while, Russell Hitchcock’s vocals swirling around them, but as they cleared the bridge, Rasul moved in closer and spoke almost in Jacob’s ear.
“I wrote my first novel because I was in the biggest depressive funk of my life. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, I felt like everything I did turned to ash, and I hated myself. The only time I felt good was when I wrote, so I wrote so much I had to be reminded to eat. I wrote my second novel because I was angry—with my parents, with the media who kept telling me who I was, with myself because I still didn’t understand who I was or what I was supposed to be doing. I really liked that novel, and when it was received with even higher praise than my debut, I thought, well, that’s it, then. This is what I’m good at, what I’m doing. I’ll write books, and that’ll be that. Except it’s as if as soon as I let the idea float through my head, everything broke.”
He sighed, and for a second Jacob thought he would lean against Jacob’s shoulder, but he didn’t, only continued talking. “Now I’m just lost. Everybody has an opinion on what I’m supposed to be doing, who I am, what mistakes I’m making, how I should correct them. Everyone takes one look at my career and puts me in a box.” His grip on Jacob shifted slightly, then tightened. “You didn’t do that, though. You treated me like you would any other customer, you helped me like I was simply a human who needed aid, and you accepted the job of escorting me with grace. Except when I signed your book, you flared to life, and I can’t get it out of my head.”
Jacob tripped.
Rasul righted him, kept talking. “It’s like you’re the kind of calm, rational being I wish I could be. I’m emotional and messy and dysfunctional. I ricochet around like a Ping-Pong ball. You, though, see something in me, you know my work maybe better than I do, and yet I can’t help feeling as if you’d love to bolt away from me if you had the chance. Yeah. I’m interested in you.”
Jacob was dizzy. He didn’t know what to say, how to respond. He had a million questions, though. What did Rasul mean, he was interested? Interested how? Curious? Bemused?
Attracted?
The song ended, and in a somewhat awkward transition, Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” belted through the room. Rasul broke into a grin, his hold on Jacob shifting again. “Damn, I’ve gotta go tip the DJ again. But first….”
He spun Jacob into another dance.
This time there was no swaying, no swing steps, only grinding. Jacob felt more self-conscious with these moves than he had with the others, especially with all of Copper Point looking on, but Rasul wouldn’t let him retreat into himself.
“Let go. Relax and move.” Meanwhile, he had turned into some sort of boneless creature who apparently felt the beat inside his soul.
“I can’t,” Jacob protested, which was the wrong thing to say because then Rasul pulled him against his chest.
“Feel how I’m moving and match it.”
God, he was so close. Jacob had been smelling him all night, but now he could taste him. He tried to mimic Rasul’s movements, but they were so erotic and smooth, he felt foolish.
“Relax. Relax.” Rasul’s hands slid to Jacob’s hip and spine, further guiding him. “Stop thinking you look ridiculous and move with the beat.”
The seventeen-year-old singer’s sultry whispers that she was the bad guy kept creeping into his brain. There certainly was a bad guy, and he was luring Jacob into a wicked dance. This wasn’t the Rasul Youssef that Jacob imagined as he lay in bed with Carnivale clutched to his chest. This wasn’t the Rasul who had just whispered all those stunning things to him, sad confessions about how he’d arrived at this moment.
This was the Rasul from the tabloids. The party boy. The dangerous bachelor. The seducer. The sinner.
The temptation.
Rasul pressed in so close to Jacob his lips brushed Jacob’s ear. “Let me see that flare again, baby.”
Jacob’s eyes fluttered closed as he felt some clasp break free deep inside him. Drawing a breath, he opened his eyes. Rasul was right in front of him, staring back like every kind of erotic dream Jacob had ever had.
Jacob let go.
He wasn’t sure if he danced any better now than he had before, but he released the part of him that was afraid he looked ridiculous, that he shouldn’t do this. He shifted his hips, rolled his shoulders, felt the fast pulse deep in his belly.
He never looked away from Rasul, and Rasul never looked away from him. It was the most intense moment of his life, which felt strange to acknowledge because his life, contrary to what most people thought, hadn’t been all quiet days at the bookstore wearing cardigans. There on the community center dance floor, grinding to the goth whispers of a child, Jacob set free the part of him that would have recoiled to learn his thirty-four-year-old self was this buttoned-up.
Rasul liked it.
Jacob could see it in his gaze, the way his eyes widened, then narrowed, focused even harder on him. He wanted Jacob, that was absolutely clear. With one stroke of his thumb along the man’s throat, Jacob could seal his invitation into his hero’s bed. Which was funny, because Jacob had always disliked the playboy side of Rasul. He’d told himself it was because he could never play that way.
Well, he was playing now.
As the song came to an end, shifting into a slower, heavier bass beat, Jacob and Rasul matched the music with their moves, still staring at one another. As Eilish whispered, it was as if Jacob and Rasul were whispering with her, each of them confessing to the other.
The song stopped, the spell broke, and Jacob regretted everything. Packing that part of him back into the box it had come from, he drew away, smoothed his suit, and put on the politest face he could manage.
“I’m sorry, but I need to get going. Please give my apologies to President Larson and Dean Clare.”
He turned and bolted before Rasul could reach for him, not running exactly but moving as fast as he could go through the crowd. He saw Clark glaring at him, but he ignored him, just as he ignored the clutch of excited women in the foyer. He didn’t have time for anyone right now. He had to get home.
Jacob triple-timed it out the door, down the street, and back to the bookshop. For a moment he thought he heard people calling after him, but when he glanced over his shoulder at the corner, he was alone on the street.
Halfway up the back stairs, he started to tremble, and he had to stop twice and grip the rail to steady himself, whispering that he was all right, that he was fine, that he’d never do anything like that again.
When he opened the door to his apartment, all three of his cats stood in the foyer waiting, regarding him with part curiosity, part annoyance.
Locking the door behind him, he greeted them with a warm, if not slightly watery, smile. “Who would like a wet food treat?”