Rebound

Obligatory warnings and disclaimers:

1. If reading this is in any way illegal where you are or at your age, or you don't want to read about male/male relationships, go away. You shouldn't be here.

2. I don't know any of the celebrities in this story, and this story in no way is meant to imply anything about their sexualities, personalities, or anything else. This is a work of pure fiction.

Questions and commentary can be sent to "writerboy69@hotmail.com". I enjoy constructive criticism, praise, and rational discussion. I do not enjoy flames, and will not tolerate them.

That said, we now continue.

I was still pissed when I got back to the store, pulling my car into the garage across the street, where I rented a space. I usually didn't drive, since it was a pain in the ass finding parking most of the time, but I thought that maybe Justin wouldn't want to ride on the T with all his bags. Obviously my kind thoughts had been a complete waste of time, and I had subjected myself to Boston's twisting rat warren of one way streets and narrow roadways for no reason at all. I knew it was only a matter of time before I gave up my car entirely, but I wasn't from the city. I grew up in upstate New York, where everyone drove everywhere out of necessity, since nothing was ever nearby, and I found my old habits hard to break.

When I came stalking back into the store, Michelle was still behind the counter. It was more or less her domain. The cafe area, to the right of the entrance, consisted of five tables for two and four booths for four against the right wall. The windows, looking out on the street over the displays on the sills, made up the front, and the counter covered the back wall. There were six stools along the counter, a register, and a case where we kept the baked goods. We made the soups, sandwiches, and coffee ourselves, but the breads, bagels, and baked goods came from a bakery on the next block. They delivered through the loading dock in the back in the mornings, before we opened, and then Michelle put everything where it was supposed to be when she came in, an hour before the front doors opened. Michelle was the only full time staff, besides me, and she was in charge whenever I was gone.

When we had a performer or a reading, we set them up in the cafe area, as that was the most open space, and the acoustics were good, because of the ceilings. The second floor of the shop didn't extend over the tables and booths, so if we were really full, people could walk upstairs and lean on the railing. The rest of the first floor, and all of the second, was taken up with the shelves. Fiction was on the bottom, and nonfiction was upstairs, with a children's section tucked away in the far corner of the second level. There was a large puffy chair there, surrounded by small bean bags and overstuffed pillows, and once a week a lady named Pam came in as a volunteer and did a story hour. We had started it a year ago, at Julie's suggestion, and it had proven pretty popular. We gave Pam free refreshments when she came in, and an employee discount on anything in the shop, and she brought in extra business for us. While the kids listened to a story, their parents usually bought something, and it also helped us feel a little more connected to the neighborhood.

Matthew and I had been lucky to find this building, which was so perfect for the business we had in mind. Some of the people we went to school with had written it off as a pipe dream, but the two of us were determined. We had a vision, and a plan. Matthew had a business degree, which came in pretty handy, and I had a literature degree, which, while very applicable to working in a bookstore, wasn't very useful out in the real world. Luckily, when I had Matthew, I didn't have to live there. We started planning our senior year of college, drawing up plans, working out the logistics, and lining up loans for the building and for startup capital. The building we ended up finding had been a fairly popular disco in the seventies, but had been closed for much of the eighties. In the nineties, urban renewal started to clean up that part of town, and we got a mortgage on the building right before the cost of real estate started to really climb. Still, things were a little tight, and to save money we lived on the third floor loft, making do.

Michelle, Pete, Meg, and Julie, the Beans and Books family, had been with us since the beginning, the entire three years the store had been open. Michelle worked full time, and, in the beginning, so had Matthew and I. Pete, Meg, and Julie were all part timers, college students who had started with us when they were freshmen. The three of them lived in Boston year round, but their hours shuffled a little depending on the semester and their class schedules. I knew the day was coming when they would graduate and move on, and I'd have to hire some new staff, and I looked on it with dread. The five of us, formerly six, had been through so much together that it was hard to imagine walking in every day and not seeing them. We had inside jokes, and we shared our good times and bad times. We watched out for each other, and we were loyal to each other. The customers sensed it, too, and the regulars seemed to enjoy the family atmosphere.

Michelle didn't say anything as I streaked by the counter, more or less flying into my office, but I caught her throwing Meg a look. Pete had left right after the lunch rush, which the three of us handled together, and Meg was perched on a stool by the register, flipping through a textbook, legs crossed demurely. Today she was going for the catholic schoolgirl look, plaid pleated miniskirt and cleavage hugging sweater, but tomorrow could just as easily be glam diva, club kid, skater girl, or preppy sorority sister. Each of the staff brought something different to the group, and to the atmosphere. Pete had iron control of the back stockroom, and could tell you where anything in the store was off the top of his head. Julie, all tie dyes and floral skirts, usually worked with the performers, making sure we had enough benefits to save the rainforests and feed the hungry of the world. Meg knew every customer by name, even if they had only been in the store once, and had an uncanny gift for evaluating their needs as soon as they came through the door.

Meg's outfit hadn't really registered with me when she came in, right before I went to the airport, but now that I was back, it put me in mind of Britney Spears, which had me thinking about Justin and his little tantrum at the airport, and I found myself even more pissed off as I closed my office door behind me. There wasn't anything needing immediate attention on my desk, no messages, although there was a packet Julie had brought in earlier with prices for computers and more web access. We were thinking of putting in a couple of machines on the first floor, giving it a little bit of that web cafe feel, but I wasn't sure I wanted to go in that direction yet. There was already a web cafe up the street, and it would cut down on some of the conversation and intimacy of our little area. People who came in now tended to be kind of social, and I was worried that the computers would attract quieter types, and shift our dynamic a little. Computer usage and time was also something that had to be monitored, which I wasn't sure I wanted the staff to have to deal with.

I dialed April's cell phone before I did anything else, and just got her voicemail. She'd probably switched her damn phone off on purpose just to thwart me, not because you weren't supposed to turn them on inside an airplane.

"Hi, April. I went to the airport to meet your friend, the spoiled pampered jackass, and told him you wouldn't be there. I'm not sure where he is now, since I left him midtantrum near the baggage claim, but you better not ask me for a favor for a really, really long time after this," I hissed, gritting my teeth. At the last minute I melted a little. "Also, hope the trip is going well, and you're having fun."

After hanging up, I looked around my office, and realized that if I kept sitting in there I would just stew, and get madder and madder. The unmitigated gall of some people, to snap at a perfect stranger just because he said your name, and had the basic decency to pick you up at a strange airport in a town where you didn't know anyone. How was I supposed to know I wasn't supposed to do that? April hadn't written it on any of her instructions anywhere, and really, what were the odds that someone recognized him, anyway? What kind of an ego was he carrying around with him? I was willing to bet that these guys walked around all the time, in lots of places, and nobody said a word to them. And then to follow it up with that childish snapping! Ugh!

I stormed out of my office and looked around frantically for something to do. Michelle, behind the counter, was drying off some glassware with a hand towel and putting it away. Meg was off in the shelves helping someone locate a book, so I went over to the register and began obsessively straightening the displays on the counter. The business cards were already in a neat stack, but my mind insisted that it could have been a little neater. After those, I turned to the bookmark rack, making sure all of the ones hanging on each hook were identical, and that people hadn't been moving them around again as they sometimes did when they looked at one and then put it back. I had been doing this for maybe two minutes when I looked up and saw Meg standing on the other side of the counter, smirking. Glancing over, I saw that Michelle was doing the same thing as she continued drying the glassware.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing," Meg said, shrugging. "Just wondering how the bookmarks managed to offend you."

"Does everyone who works here have to have something smart to say about everything today?" I asked, glaring at her.

"Isn't that a job requirement?" Meg asked, shrugging. She crossed her arms, squashing her breasts upward into the V of her sweater, and I saw a teenage boy up on the second level glance over the railing appreciatively. "Do you want to tell us what's wrong, or should we just let you keep barreling around the store until you break something?"

"What makes you think anything's wrong?" I asked. Meg titled her head to the side.

"Other than your tone of voice?" she asked, eyebrows arched sarcastically.

"Your body language is screaming," Michelle added.

I looked crossly at both of them, wondering why, whenever I was already in a bad mood, everyone seemed determined to make it worse. Then again, maybe they were just behaving normally, and I was reading into it because I was already in a bad mood. Either way, I realized the circular logic would just keep coming around to my bad mood, and shook my head.

"Why is everyone always so damn touchy feely around here?" I asked, walking away from the register, surrendering Meg's stool back to her. "I'm going to my office."

"It's not good to keep things that are bothering you inside," Meg called after me. "You can talk to us about it."

"Or you could just keep abusing inanimate objects," Michelle suggested as I shoved a chair roughly back into place.

As soon as I was in my office they both appeared, blocking the doorway, a study in contrasts wearing identical expressions.

"OK, out with it," Meg said, crossing her arms again. "What's the problem?"

"Bad day at the airport?" Michelle asked. "He was a jerk, wasn't he?"

"Did he sing in the car?" Meg asked. "Or offer you a signed copy of Tiger Beat?"

"Did you tell him 'Bye, Bye, Bye'?" Michelle continued.

"Enough!" I said, holding up my hands. The two of them giggled, and I wondered if maybe we should hire another guy or two. The store was really heavy on estrogen. "OK, I'm sorry I came back in a bad mood and more or less took it out on you two, but yes, he was a jerk, and it annoyed the hell out of me."

"What happened?" Meg asked, as the two of them waited, both glancing back to see if anyone needed anything out in the store.

"Nothing, really," I said, getting up. There was stuff we could all be working on, and we could just keep having this discussion out there. The place wasn't that big. "He was pissed that April wasn't there, and he threw kind of a tantrum because I used his real name out in public."

"They're all jerks about stuff like that," Meg said, twisting her long, straight hair into a ponytail. I was amused to notice that she actually had one of those elastics with the enormous plastic balls on it, to complete her schoolgirl look.

"Because you deal with so many celebrities," Michelle said, rolling her eyes as she went back to the dishes.

"No, it's like that time I met Marky Mark at this club," Meg said, shrugging, as she rang somebody up. "I was talking to him, and we were like, dancing, and stuff, and then he got all pissed off because I called him Marky Mark, and I guess you're only supposed to call him Mark Wahlberg now. Thanks for shopping Beans and Books. Come again, please."

Michelle and I glanced at each other, both thinking the same thing. If it was true of Marky Mark and of Justin Timberlake, then it must be true of all celebrities that they were all jerks about name related issues. After all, we now had a sampling of two.

"You never told us about that," I said, carrying a spray bottle and paper towels to the front windows.

"I didn't?" Meg asked, popping a stick of gum into her mouth. Michelle and I both shook our heads. "Oh, I thought I did. I guess I did now."

"Anyway, Chris, what happened at the airport?" Michelle asked, redirecting.

"After the tantrum?" I asked, wiping fingerprints off of the door glass. They both nodded. "I kind of told him to get his own taxi out front, and I ditched him at the airport."

"Wow," Michelle said as Meg let out a low whistle. "You know you're going to be in lots of trouble for that, right?"

"April can do her own dirty work from now on," I said, shrugging. "It's bad enough dealing with her sometimes, without having to deal with her friends."

"I always wondered what those guys were like in real life," Meg said absently, opening up a magazine. "Figures they'd be jerks."

We spent the rest of the afternoon doing our regular stuff, straightening up, helping customers out, that sort of thing. Around five Michelle started getting fresh coffee ready again, and Meg brought the microphone and speakers out of the back on their little cart. We had a poetry reading that evening, some woman whose name escaped me and who, honestly, I thought was actually a pretty bad poet. She breezed in right before six, looking pretty macrame, like the Lilith Fair tourbus had just dropped her off out front and she hadn't even had time to shower or wash her ratty braids. I had spent about an hour looking over her book, a fairly slim volume that I couldn't believe someone had published, and was torn in my evaluation of her work, unsure of whether I would say it was more Dr. Suess or Hallmark greeting card.

"May I walk around the store for a bit?" she asked, not taking off her sunglasses. I stared into them, below her braided leather headband, and kind of absently nodded. "I need to get a feel for the vibes in here. I have to sync my aura."

"Of course you do," I said, nodding again, somehow managing to keep all traces of sarcasm out of my voice.

Behind us, Michelle was standing at the counter pretending to be a mime trapped in a box, doubtlessly feeling her own aura, and I almost choked smothering my laughter. If I didn't know that some local poetry appreciation group was guaranteed to show, and that we could count on selling at least a few copies of this woman's work, especially with her personally dedicating them to people, I would have pushed her out the door. My patience was wearing a little thin at that point in the day, but it was also actually kind of funny. Meg greeted the poetry fans warmly as they shuffled in, sunglasses and berets in place, looking suitably jaded and bohemian, and Michelle happily served up coffee and biscotti.

"Julie lined this up, didn't she?" Meg whispered when I walked by.

"Of course she did," I said, shrugging.

"The next lesbian that looks at my boobs gets clocked," Meg said. "Nothing personal, but my face is up here."

The crowd was a little heavy on the lesbians, now that she mentioned it. A lot of short hair and wide shoulders abounded, and it looked almost stereotypical. I mentally smacked myself, realizing that so many of the poems had been about men destroying things, and women living peacefully as earth mothers. The clues couldn't have been much more obvious, but of course I'd been oblivious, mentally agreeing that yes, all men were liars, and scum. Maybe there was a reason why I hadn't dated in a while. As the reading began, I joined Michelle behind the counter, surveying the crowd, who seemed to be enjoying themselves.

"I think I'm going to go to my office and work on some, I don't know, some stuff," I said, starting to slide away. She grabbed my arm.

"Don't leave me out here!" she hissed, before turning, smiling, to a customer. "Refill? Sure."

"It's not like you're alone," I whispered back, both of us clapping as the alleged poet finished a reading about a dead bird under a broken flower. "Meg's out here, too."

"Meg's ready to kill the next girl that looks at her rack," Michelle whispered.

"She shouldn't have her rack out if she doesn't want people looking at it," I observed. "Really, you'll be ok. I just can't stand out here and listen to any more of this."

"You?" she asked, eyes bulging. "This is awful! I'm ready to kill myself."

"Isn't that part of being gothic?" I asked, smirking. She glared at me.

"Isn't supporting your lesbian sisters part of being gay?" Michelle fired back.

"That woman is not my sister," I said, grinning.

As I slipped into my office I heard the bell above the front door jingle, and figured it must be a fan arriving a little late, or it could be an actual customer. We were, after all, still open, and sometimes people saw something going on through the windows and came in from outside. I didn't give it a second thought as I sat down at my desk and began looking over invoices from the bakery, but before I got very far into them I heard a tapping at my door. Looking up, I saw Meg, and wondered if she was ok. She was trying really hard to maintain the friendly yet incredibly poised persona she tried to present to people, but she looked a little unsettled, and I wondered if maybe one of the poet's braids had caught on fire or something. She'd been leaning awfully close to the candles.

"Chris, you have a, um," she began, unconsciously twirling a strand of her hair. "Somebody wants to talk to you."

"Is something wrong?" I asked, standing. She shook her head.

"No, not exactly," she began. "But Justin Timberlake is out at the counter talking to Michelle, and he wants to talk to you. I don't think anybody's noticed him yet."

I wasn't sure what the reaction from the indie poet crowd would be, but figured it would be better for the store not to find out.

"Bring him back here," I said, standing, while I wondered what the hell he wanted. I'd just stopped being pissed about what happened earlier, damn it.

I wheeled back in my chair as Meg brought him around the counter, and was amused to note that he had changed his clothes, and that he actually looked a little pensive. Now he was wearing a plain dark turtleneck and a pair of cords, and he held a matching baseball cap in his hands, twisting it a little. I hadn't noticed before, being too busy getting mad, but he was sort of cute in person. His short, shaved hair gleamed under the lights, and when he actually made the effort to smile, his face lit up a little, distracting you from noticing the large, hooked nose. I also hadn't been able to see his eyes before, behind the sunglasses, but they were as bright blue in person as they'd looked all the times I saw him on television or on the front of a magazine. He looked good, but young.

"Mr. Vanderhall, Mr. Timberlake to see you," Meg said formally, pushing him forward a little with a hand on his shoulder. She vanished before I could remind her that he didn't like to have people use his name.

"Yes?" I asked, not standing. I kept my voice neutral, mainly because I was curious.

"Can I, um, can I talk to you?" he asked, reaching for the door.

"Sure," I answered, leaning back. I didn't cross my arms, remembering what Michelle had said earlier about my body language. "There isn't another chair."

"There isn't really room for one," he observed. He closed the door and leaned back against it. Out in the store, I heard people clapping again, and figured I'd just missed another page long ode to broken pottery or the cleansing rush of motherhood. God, I'd kill for a big, butch marine to come in and read something about crawling through mud and shooting people. "This is a nice store."

"Thanks," I said, waiting. "Did you want to buy something?"

"No, I wanted to talk to you," Justin repeated.

"How did you find me?" I asked, curious. Had he called April? She hadn't called me back, and I felt a little surge of annoyance at the idea that she would return his phone call over mine. I was family, damn it, more or less.

"You, um, on the box lid that you wrote my name on, it had the name and the address of the store on the back," he said uncertainly, still holding the hat. I think he could tell that I was getting a little irritated. "I didn't know your last name, so I asked the girl at the front if Chris worked here, and, you know, here I am."

"Yes," I agreed. "Here you are."

Justin sighed.

"I wanted to come talk to you because we kind of got off on the wrong foot," Justin began. "I thought about it, and, you know, what you said when you came to meet me, and I thought maybe you could take me out to dinner after all."

I blinked, unsure of whether or not I had heard him correctly.

"Are you kidding me?" I asked finally. His gall was amazing.

"Uh, well," he began, looking confused.

"Was that supposed to be an apology?" I barked. "We got off on the wrong foot, and could I please take you out to dinner? What the hell?"

"Wait a second, ok," he began, holding up his hands, his voice rising a little as well. "Maybe I didn't phrase it completely right."

"You could try again," I suggested.

"Why?" he demanded. Why couldn't the two of us talk to each other without snapping? We'd spoken twice now, and both times we were ready to slap each other after about thirty seconds. "It's not like I'm the only one who needs to apologize for something."

"Oh, so you thought you'd just come down here and demand an apology from me," I said, standing. "Who the hell do you think you are?"

"What's your problem?" he asked, stepping closer. "Are you always like this? What's wrong with you?"

Before I could answer and explain that I wasn't the one who had anything wrong with me, because I wasn't the spoiled brat playing prima donna in a stranger's office, we were interrupted by a knock on the door. I jerked it open and saw Michelle standing with her arms crossed, frowning.

"What?" I barked. Justin and I both glared at her, and she gazed back levelly.

"I'm not sure if you two noticed, but we have a poetry reading going on," she said icily, and I realized that behind her, the entire store was glancing toward us. The hippie lady was standing at the microphone paging through her book, probably looking for something about the shouting patriarchy. "Think library, guys. Think quiet. Think inside voices. Do you hear what I'm saying, Chris? Because we can hear you guys bickering through the door."

Justin and I glanced at each other, both flushing a little, the rug pulled right out from under our argument.

"Terribly sorry," I said, making an apologetic gesture with my hands.

"We'll, um, we'll try to keep it down," Justin said quickly. "Sorry."

"Yeah, sorry again. Please, keep reading," I said, pulling the door closed.

Justin and I looked at each other, and I thought about the look on Michelle's face. I tried to swallow my giggles, but suddenly Justin was giggling, too, and I lost it. The two of us leaned on each other, his hand on my shoulder, and tried to keep it down, holding our hands over our mouths. His eyes glistened, and both of our faces were red.

"We just got in trouble," he snickered, whispering.

"Big trouble," I agreed, wiping at my eyes. "The hippie lady's probably reading about us right now."

"We're in bad trouble," he giggled, and all I could do was nod. We both collected ourselves for a second, and then he started again. "Look, Chris, what I was trying to say before was, um, I'm sorry that I was rude to you at the airport. I was expecting April, and it caught me off guard when you showed up instead of her."

"Apology accepted," I said, stepping away from him. I sat back down in my chair and waited to see what else he had to say. He was looking at my expectantly, but I just raised my eyebrows, and he squirmed uncomfortably.

"I also, you know, I snapped at you because you used my name, and you didn't know any better," he said, jamming his hands into his pockets and looking down at his shoes. I must have made some sort of face, because he continued quickly. "I was afraid that if you said my name in the airport someone might recognize me, and, you know, sometimes when that happens there can be a problem with, you know, crowds and stuff."

Now that he said it, it made complete sense, and I felt a little bad about the way I had treated him. Not bad enough to apologize, yet, because I wasn't the one who had caused the problem to begin with. He was rude first, not me, and I didn't care how childish that attitude was, because I wasn't the child here.

"I didn't think of that," I said unapologetically.

"That's ok," he said softly, but I saw his eyes narrow as he caught the fact that I still hadn't said I was sorry for anything. "And what I said before didn't come out quite right, either. I didn't mean that I wanted you to buy me dinner. I meant that I wanted to buy dinner, to make up for yelling at you and pissing you off, but I don't know any restaurants here, so I was kind of hoping you could pick one out. That's what I meant."

"Justin, I don't know," I began. He sounded sorry, he really did, but we still didn't have anything in common. I didn't know him, and I wasn't sure I even wanted to. He was just some moody kid, and I still didn't want to spend the next couple of days babysitting him because April felt like being selfish. He looked at me seriously, though, and his face twisted a little.

"Look, Chris, I'm trying, ok?" he said, his voice a little tight. "It's just, I was already upset about some stuff, and, like I said, you caught me off guard, and I'm sorry I was rude to you. You're the only person I know in Boston, and I don't even really know you, and I'm sorry that I let things get off to a bad start with us, because I'm not usually like that. I don't know if you're getting your jollies out of making me squirm and apologize or whatever, but I'm trying to do the right thing."

He looked at me for a second, but I was so surprised I couldn't speak. I had no idea that I had hurt his feelings. I didn't think people like him actually had feelings. After all, he was so far above people like me I couldn't believe that my disapproval could actually affect him in any way. He swallowed, looking at me sadly, and turned toward the door. His hand was on the knob when I finally found my tongue again.

"Justin, wait," I began, standing. "I should apologize, too. I kind of already had this picture in my head of the way that you would act, and I guess I jumped at the first chance you gave me to prove it was right. I was pretty rude, too, and I'm not usually like that, either. Truce?"

I held out my hand, remembering how he didn't take it at the airport, but he took it now, his grip firm, and he smiled as I let my mouth curl into a tentative grin as well.

"Truce," he said. "What do you want to do now?"

"Well," I sighed, pausing to think. "April seemed to think that you and I would get along, and she's a pretty good judge of that stuff, so maybe we should give it a shot. If you're willing, I'd like to take you out to a nice restaurant, and be your babysitter for the evening."

He grinned even wider.

"I still don't need a babysitter," he said, opening the door. "But I would love a dinner date."

"Let me get my keys," I said, pulling them off of the desktop.

Wait. Did he just say "date"?

To be continued.