Free Bookended by Heidi Belleau Page A

who?” he hisses back. Last time he’d been followed, it was by an anarcho-communist with a chip on his shoulder and a paintball gun.
    “Your friend ,” Julian replies with an eye roll, face still ostensibly tilted down toward the book in his hands. “Three o’clock. Scarf Guy.”
    Fletcher looks to three o’clock, and sure enough, there’s a man in a scarf standing there, poking around in the poetry anthologies. He’s young, maybe Julian’s age, wearing impossibly tight, gray, skinny jeans, bright high-top sneakers, and the eponymous overlong scarf drooped three or four times around his shoulders.
    “Oh,” Fletcher says, a little self-conscious because Scarf Guy is actually pretty cute, in a wheedly-faced sort of way, like a high-fashion model. Not that he knows anything about that. “He’s not my friend.”
    “He wants to be,” Julian quips back, licking his thumb and turning a page. “Wait for it… wait for it.... All right, now .”
    Fletcher looks over in Scarf Guy’s direction, and surely enough, Scarf Guy is peeking at Fletcher out of the corner of his eye, pretending to be engrossed in The Complete Works of Pablo Neruda . Fletcher should be used to this kind of attention, especially from younger men for whom a little bit of gray at the temples is some form of aphrodisiac. Even ten years ago, still in his early thirties and in that awkward closeted space between frat boy and business mogul, Fletcher had attracted a fair bit of attention. Tall and built and brown-haired, it was his eyes and smile that did men in, the former an impossible-to-ignore pale blue, the latter more a smirk than anything else, an expression that told of a cocky man who’d earned the right to be. And excuse him saying so, but he’s only gotten better with age and with more expensive suits.
    So Fletcher does the only thing he knows how to do and flashes Scarf Guy the most brilliant smile he can muster, amplified by the genuine glow of flattery.
    Scarf Guy flushes up red and moves to raise his book to his face, but halfway up he fumbles it, once, twice, and it hits the floor with a comically loud thump. Fletcher wets his lips and tries not to laugh. He looks to Julian for help, but Julian is just staring into his book, wearing one of his ironclad poker faces.
    Down the aisle, Scarf Guy reshelves his Neruda and turns on his heel, sharp, like he’s about to make an actual run for it, when Julian’s voice rings out clear and cold: “You might as well come introduce yourself. I can assure you he doesn’t bite.”
    “Hard,” Fletcher wants to add, but doesn’t. Apparently, it’s bad form to flirt using stale movie quotes. So says Julian, anyway.
    Scarf Guy stops, looking between Fletcher and Julian helplessly. Fletcher, confused a little as to what Julian’s playing at, just smiles and shrugs, eyes rolled up in a patronizing “Don’t ask me” expression. Scarf Guy tilts his head as if asking permission. Fletcher looks once more at Julian, who is still poking through the book in his hands, and makes an executive decision: hands in his pockets, he nods.
     
    T HEY wind up in the bookstore’s coffee shop, clustered around a table so small their knees knock together underneath it. Julian’s hand rests on Fletcher’s thigh, stroking slow and sure and possessive.
    Scarf Guy’s name, as it turns out, is Ogden. He’s twenty-four, Californian, an anthropology student, and he takes his latte with soy milk. (“Lactose intolerant, not vegan,” he tells them, catching the rise of Julian’s eyebrow when he orders.)
    At first, it’s all small talk—incredibly awkward, bordering surreal, if only because Fletcher’s in a social situation he isn’t quite sure the nature of yet. Julian spins his spoon through his coffee idly, asking Ogden nonthreatening questions and speaking in that university jargon of “credit hours” and “thesis defenses” and “textbook buybacks”. Fletcher only half-listens to the conversation,