Jacob shrugged. “Gina will get them all to buy books, so it’s fine.”
Okay, not the reaction he expected. He scritched the back of the cat’s head. “Do you have many of mine in stock? I could do an impromptu signing.”
“I have about thirty of each. People have been interested in picking them up ever since they heard you were coming, but I assumed more would be curious once you arrived.”
“Well, like I said, I’m happy to sign them, and that’s a standing offer.” He shifted the cat slightly. “That wasn’t why I came here, however. I have something I need to ask you.”
Jacob kept fussing with the pot and cups in a way that made it clear he was distracting himself. “I’m listening.”
Where to start? The beginning, he supposed. “I told you a little of this last night, how I’m behind on turning this book in. I mean, I think the whole world knows that. But it’s causing a lot of trouble for my agent and my publisher. My agent is ready to chuck me out the door, and I live in fear that my publisher will ask for the advance back because of my failure to deliver.”
Jacob turned to him, suddenly focused. “Do you still have the money?”
Rasul snorted. “No.” Sighing, he shut his eyes and submitted to another round of Mr. Nancy’s nips of love. “I’ve compounded everything by being visible to the public while I’m not writing. For a while I could get away with saying I was trying to find inspiration, but it’s gone on too long. And I just can’t sit in a room and force myself to work. I’ve tried, believe me. So Elizabeth—my agent—came up with the idea that I should come teach somewhere remote where I couldn’t get into trouble. She was hoping the experience might be focusing for me. I had my doubts, but I was willing to try anything at this point. So I came here. But I panicked at the last minute and got back together with an ex, and not only did I miss my initial flight north, I was also plastered all over the gossip sites. This infuriated Elizabeth so much she confiscated my phone. Then, as you know, there was the incident here yesterday. There was another last night after you left. And now this stuff outside this morning.”
He put the cat down and paced a bit, the nerves starting to get to him. “Adina is playing some kind of game, which isn’t surprising but is a big problem.” How did he explain Adina? “I actually like her, even though she does some questionable things. If she would apply the hustle she has for cultivating a social media presence into getting gigs as a model, she’d have an incredible career. But she dreams of being an influencer, and I guess I was good for that route when we were dating. Then I got back together with her and it spiked again. So now she’s telling everyone we’re still dating, it’s in secret. We’re not dating, and I don’t think she actually cares about me. Just her fame.”
Jacob frowned at the tea. “That’s a bit rude.”
“Yeah, well. She might have been able to make it work, but she shot herself in the foot by sending people to keep tabs on me last night. They saw the two of us dancing instead.”
“And now they’re outside the bookstore?”
“Yes. I guess Adina has posted again, insisting this is a farce, you and I. Which….” He ran a hand through his hair. “Anyway, the bottom line is that Adina is messing up an already tense situation for me.”
Jacob finished pouring the hot water and turned around to face Rasul. “Can you talk to her about it?”
“Wouldn’t do any good. It’s attention she wants, and she’s decided I’m a good way to get it.”
“So in addition to rude, she’s callous and inconsiderate.”
Rasul shrugged. “Yeah, but I can’t cast too many stones. She’s my go-to bad choice path. We’ve gotten together and broken up six times now, and every time it’s like I’m willingly leaping into the snake pit, thinking somehow this time it’ll be full of sinful goodness that will set me free. We’re the worst match for each other, but neither of us is good at quitting.” He sighed. “But none of that matters. Well, it does, because it’s the problem, but I just made a bigger one.” He fidgeted, hating himself worse than when the original sin had fallen out of his mouth. “My agent saw the social media blowup—” He stopped, realizing, and glanced at Jacob. “Oh, wow. You’re not online much, you said, so maybe you don’t—”
“Gina showed me.” Jacob didn’t look at all happy about it. “Apparently several people at the gala uploaded photos and video. Some of them are my friends, which I apologize for. Believe me, I’ll be having a word with them later.”
Rasul resumed pacing, a slow, agitated meander back and forth across the kitchen tile. It was cream-colored with faint red and blue flowers and scrolling greenery. He loved it. He also loved that this morning he saw a few errant cat hairs that hadn’t yet been whisked away. It felt like he’d been let a bit behind the curtain. “Well… anyway, my agent called me last night because of the photos and video.” His stomach knotted and he leaned against the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. “And I did a stupid thing.”
After the pause went on too long, Jacob asked, “And the stupid thing is?”
Rasul didn’t want to say it, but he had to. He didn’t even know how to spin it. Say it, apologize, and see what happens. “I… told her you and I were going out.”
Jacob didn’t say anything, didn’t even gasp in shock, which Rasul took as a very bad sign.
He hurried to fill the dead air. “It slipped out. It’s horrible of me. Presumptuous, awful, rude, inconsiderate—” everything you said Adina was. He winced. “I’m sorry to say, that’s me when I get in a bad place. I think it was the apartment that did it.”
“Apartment?” Jacob blinked in confusion.
“Yes. The apartment. My awful one, your amazing one.” Rasul gestured accusingly at the space around him. “Look at this. Why do you have such an amazing space? I can’t even determine what it smells like, but I want to bottle it and wear a sachet of it around my neck so I smell it all the time. Meanwhile my place is horrible and sterile and stinks like grease, and I can’t sleep there. All I can do is think about your space and how much I want to write a novel in it.”
“You… told your agent you’re dating me because of my apartment?” Jacob spoke slowly, as if trying to make something nonsensical logical.
Out with it. All of it. “I told her that because I keep thinking about you. Your apartment, your bookstore, your Mr. Rogers sweaters, your way of talking about my work, your way of being all buttoned-up except sometimes you’re not, and I want… more of that. Which I’d been thinking about how to make happen anyway, and then Elizabeth called getting angry at me again, and I couldn’t even check what she was looking at because I don’t have Wi-Fi set up yet, and… I blurted out that we were dating.”
Rasul slid down the doorway to the floor, drawing his knees to his chest. Mr. Nancy immediately jumped on top of them and tried to bite his beard again. Rasul let him.
Meanwhile, Jacob fussed with pouring the tea. “So is that why you’ve come here? To ask me out? Or try to muscle me out of my apartment?”