Undercover (Vino and Veritas)

For the third time that week, Hot Scruffy Leather Jacket Dude stood by the true crime shelf, holding the latest bestseller in the genre and shaking his head slowly as he leafed through it. I watched him from the shelter of world religions, peeking over the top of a book that might or might not be about Buddhism.

I had no interest in Buddhism. But my usual section, science, didn’t have a good view of true crime.

And the book didn’t matter anyway. I only had eyes for the guy I’d been checking out for a couple of weeks now. So tall. Such long, muscular legs, encased in unfashionable medium-blue jeans. Who even wore jeans like that? Where did you buy them, lacking a time machine? I had no idea. Somehow they worked for him, along with the black jacket that made his shoulders look freaking enormous.

The unshaven cheeks and chin worked for him too. Ditto the old blue t-shirt stretched over his broad chest and his wavy, rumpled dark brown hair.

Who was I kidding? Everything about him worked for me, and I’d spent two weeks fantasizing about getting him to work for me in my king-sized bed, or possibly up against a wall. On my couch. No, not picky.

That thought brought a familiar twinge. I should be pickier. I wished I could be pickier, to the tune of having just one guy to be picky with all the time.

Not in the cards for now.

Hot Dude snorted in what sounded like irritation and slammed the book back into its spot, and I jumped and ducked behind the sign on the top of the freestanding religion shelf. Not that I needed to, really. At five foot nine, I could hide well enough anywhere.

I peeked out again. He’d pulled another book from the shelf and started his head-shaking and grumbling routine again.

I glanced around the bookstore. A few customers wandered and browsed, and a couple of little kids in the cheerful, rainbow-plastered children’s section at the front of the store were giggling and whispering. No one seemed to have noticed me acting like a creepy stalker—no more than people usually noticed me, anyway. My hair changed colors like some people changed their underwear, and this week I’d settled on purple with streaks of teal. My weird green-gray-blue eyes looked awesome with the teal.

Not that my target had noticed. He hadn’t even glanced at me once. Bastard. And I couldn’t have been more obvious, with my hair and the line of piercings down my left ear and the tightest skinny jeans I could possibly squeeze myself into. And the skin-tight Henley with the rainbow bear on it.

I might as well have been wearing a sign that said, Hey, tall and burly guy with the leather jacket! Want to fuck me?

Maybe a sign wouldn’t be the worst idea. Not like I’d ever have the courage to walk up to him and actually say it, after all. Not during daylight and in a bookstore.

I shot another glance at the front of the store. Vino and Veritas comprised a bookstore and an attached wine bar…and a little liquid courage might be just what I needed. Sober, I had all the game of the Moo U baseball team. Drunk, well…when I got a little sloshed, maybe smoked a joint or even took a tab of ecstasy, I pulled more guys than a rainbow bear.

But he’d be gone by the time I got a glass of wine down. A normal person might’ve sauntered over and asked him to have one with me.

Normal went out the window for me when I got kicked out of my Ph.D. program for missing my seminars and not completing my research. Too many nights at the club, getting high and partying and having wild—but never all that satisfying—sex with Joey, whom I’d dated for six months and regretted dating ever since.

Hot Dude traded his second book for a third, looked at it for about twenty seconds, and then shook his head, put it back, and stomped straight out of the bookstore, disappearing through the front doors and merging into the groups of people wandering through Church Street Marketplace.

I slowly replaced my book on maybe-Buddhism, my shoulders slumping. Why did I have to obsess over a probably-straight, certainly-uninterested guy when Burlington had so many hot, gay men who’d love to get to know me—some of whom might even be in the wine bar?

Maybe because they only wanted to get to know me until I stopped buying rounds of top-shelf liquor and/or got on my knees.

Yeah. Probably that. Fantasies had it all over reality.