“Reese’s Pieces,” Benny says in a warning tone just behind me, “are you sneaking samples of our nachos before they become nachos?”
I whirl to face him. “Oh, please, like you haven’t beenlicking cheese off your fingers when you think I’m not looking this whole time! Don’t be a hypocrite, mister.”
I’ve brought my face extra close to his and narrowed my eyes, and I can tell we’re both working hard not to smile. If we were alone right now, I would kiss him.
“Now, children,” Raj says in an exaggeratedly parental way. Then I hear Aiden’s voice introducing another audience member to ask a question.
“Yeah, so, uh, Benny.” The voice is deep and sounds on the edge of laughing about something. I look up to see it comes from a young dude-bro in a muscle tank, his vibe not unlike Benny’s when I first met him. He’s holding his phone in one hand. “Saw an interesting picture on Twitter, where it looks like you’re kissing some blonde outside a hotel room. Reese, you know anything about that?”
My head jerks back in surprise. I don’t make the connection at first, what he’s talking about, what it has to do with me. Some murmurs start in the audience, all sorts of confused and amused as people pull out their phones to look. I take a step away from Benny, my eyes flitting toward him to see that he’s frozen in place, jaw clenched tight.
The silence stretches on, but I don’t know what I expect—a save from Aiden?
Instead, it’s Katherine who speaks next. “What a weird and inappropriate question,” she says bluntly. “Anyone have anything actually relevant to ask?”
That pretty much puts a stop to things. The room quiets anda few hands raise. Aiden, snapping out of whatever stupor he was in when we actually needed him, rushes over to a woman who asks what kind of dough Nia is using for her blankets.
I’m blinking down at my hands as I break up a couple of too-large chips and start transferring them to the serving dish, unable to engage with whatever just happened. I feel a hand on my back and then Benny stepping close beside me. He double-checks that both our mics are off.
“Hey. Reese, look at me,” he whispers urgently. “It must’ve been the people I saw in the hall this morning. I didn’t realize they got a picture, but it’s no big deal, okay? Forget about it. We didn’t do anything wrong, all right? It’s some misguided fan’s dumb attempt to make something out of nothing. Are you okay?”
I avoid his eyes, trying to focus on the task at hand. I know logically that I should listen to what Benny’s saying and not be bothered by a picture on the internet I haven’t even laid eyes on yet. Apparently, the photo doesn’t even show my face.
“I’m fine. Let’s just focus on this. We can talk about it later,” I whisper back, then move away, brooking no argument.
The Friends carry on seamlessly like nothing has happened, and Benny and I play along well enough. I’m shaken up, though, and he knows it. I don’t joke around much during the rest of the demo, and he does most of the talking about our food. I thank my lucky stars that my coworkers can put on a good show.
The nachos are excellent, for what little that’s worth, and ofcourse the rest of it is, too. We get a huge standing ovation at the end and I smile and wave with everyone else, but I’m mostly relieved that it’s over. I can run away.
Which I do quite promptly once we’ve stepped backstage. Aiden gathers us and lets us know that we’re free to roam around and enjoy the convention as guests from here on out. Nia and Lily are stopping by the hotel first and offer to take our aprons with them so we don’t have to hang on to them. I practically throw mine in Lily’s face, then make my excuses about heading to the bathroom.
Except I bypass the bathrooms and keep on going, hightailing it down aisle after aisle in the massive maze of an exhibition hall, looking for a place where a girl can sit and have a long-overdue freak-out.
Eventually, I find a spot that’ll have to be good enough. It’s a couple of big watercoolers with stacks of cups surrounded by a handful of tall tables and barstools. The best part is there’s only one other person hanging out there. I fill up a cup, down it, then refill it and take a seat with my back to the main thoroughfare so hopefully there’s little chance of anyone recognizing me.
I almost laugh at the thought.Life! It comes at you fast!
Then, all settled in, I pull my phone out to double down on my do-not-approach vibe. Immediately confronted with all the familiar icons that I use to check the Friends of Flavor social accounts, my stomach sinks. Do I dare look at this incriminating picture? If I avoid it, pretend it isn’t there, is it possible that it’llgo away? If a tree falls in a forest and I don’t see a picture of it on Twitter, did it really happen?
Delaying the decision of whether or not to look, I go to my texts instead. I’ve missed several from Benny, who’s surely wondering where I ran off to. Guiltily, I skip those and pull up my messages from Nat.
Natalie:Hey babe, doing okay?
Uh-oh. This is Nat’s Sincere Text Voice. The one she saves for when someone’s died or one of her shows gets canceled. I don’t like the sound of it.
Reese:Yeah I’m fine, you okay?
Natalie:Are you sure? I saw the picture on twitter. And was watching your ulticon stream when that dbag harassed you
Natalie:I’ll fly to California and kick his ass if you want me to
Natalie:Virtually kicking some asses in the comments in the meantime
Ah shit. So the tree really fell. It isthat bad.My fingers are itching to close out of messages and go inspect the damage. My heart beats faster, anticipating the abysmal rush of my private business being exposed to the world, of a bunch of strangerstalking shit about me. Have I become addicted to this oddly specific brand of self-destruction?
Who am I kidding? I’m too weak for this. Too weak to resist it when the button is right there. I know it’ll hurt, but I’m afraid it’ll hurt me more to sit here and obsess over what’s going on without my knowing about it.
I bring up Twitter first and immediately see all the tweets tagging or hashtagging our channel name. Which, today, happens to be a lot of the same picture. It captures Benny from the side, in his clothes from yesterday, ball cap slightly askew. The way I’m standing plus the way his hand came up to rest on my cheek during our brief goodbye kiss make it so my face isn’t visible. But the old county science fair T-shirt with holes in the armpits that I wore to sleep—that’s quite visible.
