Jacob pursed his lips. “I admit this isn’t my area of expertise. But I think they’re in a frenzy and this will only become food. They seem attached to the narrative of you back with Adina, and injecting facts and logic only makes them furious. For you to appear after a long absence and suddenly post a photo, then vanish again? I suspect they’ll think it’s fake.”
Rasul sighed. “You’re probably right, dammit.”
“If I posted one, tagged your account, and started updating more regularly with photos of you, that might work.”
Rasul sat upright. “Holy hell, baby, I don’t think you understand the kind of trolling you’re going to get if you do that.”
“No, I do. I’ve been reading the comments on Adina’s page, and yours. Honestly, I’m amazed you wrote anything at all with that filling your head.”
“You read that stuff and you want to voluntarily step into it?”
“I can turn off notifications and not read the comments.”
“That’s a lot easier said than done.”
“You’re right. I suspect I would learn a lot from this exercise. But I think that’s part of why I want to do this.”
The quietly fierce expression was back. Rasul’s libido pushed aside his worries for his partner and purred at the idea of being protected. He also could read the subtext again, both in what Jacob said and how he said it.
I intend to keep you, if I can.
Rasul reached up to stroke Jacob’s cheek. “I’ll send your account information to Elizabeth, and I’ll have her find someone to monitor the comments for threats and report them immediately. Actually, send the information for the bookstore’s Instagram too, and warn Gina. Before you post anything, let me log on and follow you. I would strongly advise you to not read the comments anymore. Not on my page, not on Adina’s, not on yours.”
“I’ll probably read a few, but I promise not to get involved.”
Rasul squeezed Jacob’s hand. “I’m telling you. Stay out of them. Nothing good will come of it.”
Jacob withdrew his phone from its charger at the other end of the table with his free hand, pushed at the screen a bit with his thumb, and passed it over to Rasul. “Go ahead and log in.”
Rasul did, surprised at the unsettled feeling in his stomach. He wanted to believe it was because he worried for Jacob, who couldn’t possibly be ready for trolls, but if he were honest, it was just the idea of getting back into such a negative space, even if it was to friend Jacob.
You can’t change who you are.
Was this who he was, though? As Rasul moved through his account, trying not to read things and feeling queasy at the number of notifications for comments and DMs, he struggled to connect this feeling to an important part of him. He hadn’t been on social media because he enjoyed it. Maybe Twitter before it became a hellscape cascade of the dismal world news and a sea of trolls, maybe Instagram when he was in the heyday of promotion and he hadn’t yet tried to start book three.
Well, no. It had been rough as soon as the backlash for Carnivale started. And Twitter had always been pretty fraught too.
Had he ever been happy online? What had he been chasing? Why would he go back to that?
“My username is castlecaptured,” Jacob said, breaking Rasul’s spell.
Shaking his head to clear it, Rasul entered the name. There were five posts. One of each cat, a nicely stylized picture of a cup of tea next to books, and a shot of the bay. Each one tugged at his heart.
Maybe he hadn’t wondered about the future because there wasn’t anything to think about. It was already decided.
He friended Jacob, logged out, and passed the phone back.
When Jacob held up the phone for a selfie, Rasul looked into the screen and felt his heart click into place. Everything he wanted was right there. The apartment. The cats. The clock. His lover.
His heart.
Before Jacob snapped the photo, he turned his head and kissed him on the cheek, a soft sigh escaping from the bottom of his soul.
Jacob smiled as he showed Rasul the result. “That’s nice.”
It wasn’t just nice. It was perfect. Rasul leaned on Jacob’s shoulder, his soul quieting again. “Email it to me, will you? I’m going to make it my desktop.”
“I will, but let me take another one in landscape so it’ll fit better.”
They posed for several pictures, laughing and mugging for the camera. Rasul requested every single one of them, even as he made Jacob promise to take a thousand more.
THROUGHOUT JANUARY and February, Jacob battled the trolls on his Instagram.
It was by turns a fascinating and horrifying experience. He failed utterly in not reading the comments, but he did limit his logins to once or twice a day, not allowing any notifications on his lock screen or on top of the app itself on his home screen. He also, at Gus’s suggestion, didn’t ever respond to anyone.
Gus and Matt had both followed him immediately to get in on the fun, and of course Jared was an early follower too. Soon everyone on QUAG followed him, and they frequently brought up the drama when he ran into them around town. Before long, almost everyone in town who used the app followed him.
Gina didn’t like it. The trolls quickly got annoyed that Jacob wouldn’t take their bait, so they shifted to trying to get a reaction out of the store, and that drew Gina into the mess. Jacob had to take over the store’s account because it was too much for her, though even he had to take notice when the commenters began leaving negative Yelp and Google reviews.
“I don’t understand how people can talk like that,” Gina said. “You’d be arrested if you behaved like that to someone’s face.”
It unsettled Jacob, but he was determined not to let it get to them. “I’m not responding to them anywhere.” Jacob calmly sipped his coffee at the front desk as he flipped through a newspaper. “They have to find an outlet, so they keep trying for things that might reach me. This will blow over when I don’t respond.”
“But you’re posting, so isn’t that a response? Anyway, I don’t like them attacking the store. It’s not good for business.”
“Most people around here aren’t finding us because of those search engines, and we’ve actually quadrupled our Instagram followers since I posted that first photo of Rasul.” But that online stain did concern him. Still, wouldn’t it be worse if he backed out now?
Of course, Les Clark had a field day. Now he not only berated Jacob at meetings and questioned his judgment to every voting member, he also wrote opinion pieces in the paper, warning these unstable outside influences would doom the town. It seemed like hyperbole—until Engleton’s and Café Sól saw negative comments on their online reviews.
Now Jacob was alarmed, and Matt and Gus were the ones trying to downplay what this meant.
“My dad was upset, but he just called our lawyer,” Matt said. They were at an MMS meeting in the back of the coffee shop. “I don’t know if he’ll get anywhere with Google or Yelp, but if it’s possible to do so, he’ll get it done. He was never going to vote for you anyway, so he’s not a loss.”
“The college kids are really into the feud,” Gus said with a smile. “Honestly, I think my business has picked up because of it. The kids who come to the store have started commenting back, and several have snapped photos of the two of you to prove their point. It’s a war now. Copper Point versus the Adinastans.”