2024 Top Ten Gay Romance

Chapter 1December 1, 2022 Evan The countdown had begun. I scrolled through the catalog for the last time, trying to balance two conflicting needs: first, a well-stocked store for Christmas shoppers; second, minimal spending on stock. The budget was even tighter than my timeline. Plus, whatever didn’t leave the shelves by eight P.M. on December 31st would be returned to the publishers, or given away, or pulped. I hated wasting books. And I loved this bookshop. It was nothing much to look at, a small storefront that wasn’t even on the main drag of Melrose Avenue, but at least it was only just around a corner. We had two metered parking spaces for customers and two off the alley in back for staff. The store had been here so long, everybody who might’ve shopped there knew about it, so our advertising didn’t amount to more than putting up flyers on the bulletin boards of neighborhood businesses, plus posting on social media whenever we could. Our own bulletin board was, of course, a fluttering crazy quilt of other people’s flyers. I’d been coming for years—well, to be honest, decades—before walking in and asking for a job. The person on duty that day was the new manager, and she was desperate enough to hire me even though my direct customer-service experience was far in the past. I’d been working in law firms since college, meaning thirty-plus years. This job represented my midlife crisis. It also had an intentional end date. The store was closing at the end of the year, which made quite a few nostalgics tear their hair and rend their garments. Some folks wanted to blame That Big Online Seller; but listen, everything changes. It’s unusual for any small independent business to last more than twenty years, and this little joint had been open, in this location, as a bookstore, for over fifty. The previous manager was the owner, and he simply (though not easily) decided it was, as ineffably stated by Billy Porter, Time Ta Go. He was eighty years old; the pandemic was too much; he was tired. Sanaa, formerly the assistant manager, was scrambling: she couldn’t work more than forty hours a week and there was only one other part-time employee. You can’t expect to keep a retail establishment open at all if it’s not open on weekends, and you’re asking for trouble if you open on weekends with only one person. Thus I, a presentable and literate middle-aged person with an inexplicable willingness to work for less than twenty dollars an hour, seemed like a gift from heaven. And I loved this bookshop. I mentioned that, right? When I finally (with the help of my therapist) admitted I’d hit a wall and needed to take a leave of absence from the law firm, I knew I couldn’t do nothing for six months. In the interest of not doing nothing, I spent a wine-soaked evening talking options with my three best friends, one of whom knew the bookstore was closing. I’m not a person who believes in signs, but it felt like one. Still staring at the online catalog, toying with the idea of ordering to please myself, I didn’t even look up when the street door opened. Heard the bell jingle, said absent-mindedly, “Hi, let me know if I can help you find anything,” and clicked on a queer classic from the 1950s. If nobody else took it home, I would. “How long have you worked here?” Okay, I looked up then. Sounded almost challenging. Was this a former regular who didn’t know Mr. Cohen retired? Did I care? The guy was freaking gorgeous. This isn’t unusual in Los Angeles. Gorgeous people are everywhere, from the carwash to the dentist’s office to scruffy little bookstores off Melrose. And I was not a man who failed to respond to gorgeousness. So I sat up straight, set my reading glasses on the scarred wooden top of the cash wrap, and smiled. “Who wants to know?”