She’d responded, and then I had, and then like normal humans, we were conversing. Wild. Was I so starved for simple company that Kate’s emails felt like a gift?
I laughed out loud thinking of her teasing. My humor sometimes accidentally offended people, but she gave as good as she got.
I stared at the email address she provided.
My heart raced like she’d asked me out. This didn’t mean anything. Maybe she talked to all of her fans like this. She could just be friendly like most Americans. Maybe this wasn’t typical for her. Or maybe I was hopeful and projecting. This was more invigorating than foreplay.
Lord, I needed a life.
Kate must get dozens of messages a day like mine. I still got fan emails, and I hadn’t played Freddy in over ten years. It wasn’t like I deserved the praise, not like she had with her writing. I had been hired at eleven to play Freddy Finks because Iwashim. We were the same age, we had similar personalities, and my round face and rotund build slipped me perfectly into the role. I was the obnoxious kid who found making people laugh preferable to having them laugh at me first.
Based on what she shared, Kate was only a few years younger than me. That made sense. It was more surprising when I discovered new generations of devoted fans that hadn’t even been born when the show was still filming.
It was the maturity of her writing that had me imagining her as an older woman, maybe with a gaggle of children around her. Or maybe that’d been wishful thinking. Because truthfully, I had a crush on her before I even sent that first message. With every exchange, the weight of those feelings grew. Soon I’d be flattened.
I was flustered. Like I was a teenager and had just made eye contact with someone across the hall at a dance. At least that’s how I assumed teenagers did it. I wouldn’t know what a normal childhood felt like. The first time I kissed a girl, there were thirty people standing around, a camera in my face, and the director pointing out how awkward I looked.
Anyway.
She wrote back. She had said I could reach out any time. Had the offer been out of politeness? But if she offered …
I should send her an email.
No, play it cool. I didn’t want to appear as abysmally depressing and lonely as I was. She deserved more than blatant lies … but she couldn’t learn who I was now, could she? Our exchanges had already gone on longer than I had meant.
Whatever this was should end before things got too out of control. She probably wasn’t sitting around debating all this.
I forced myself to bed. I slept a whole four hours before getting up and hitting the home gym. Agata had a spinach smoothie and a cuppa ready for me after.
I sniffed the tea when she wasn’t looking and thanked her.
My resolve lasted eight hours. Eight measly hours before I was back in front of my laptop.
I couldn’t leave Kate hanging like that. I couldn’t let her think she had done anything wrong. Maybe just one more message. Just to make a clean break.
Now. How to respond? I wouldn’t ever lie to her. I made that promise to myself before I ever even sent the first message. But I couldn’t tell her many personal details without giving too much away.
I reread her last message. Kate had essentially told me to go look at her social media accounts. She told me to picture her.
I swallowed. My lonely mind filled in gaps that I wasn’t proud of.
No. It would be good. I would look at her pictures and find some reason to end this fascination. Maybe she had a partner? She’d have to be with someone else for me to stop daydreaming.
I followed the links and my heart stopped.
“Bloody hell,” I groaned.
She hadn’t posted a ton of pictures of herself, mostly fan art that readers had made based on her stories. Lots of sketches of me, hand-drawn and brooding.
“Regrettable.” The fan art, not her. Kate was breathtaking. I was already half in love with her from her stories. This wasn’t good.
Dated a fortnight ago, she’d posted an exquisite photo of herself sitting in front of a window with buttery light illuminating a round face with big brown eyes behind large circular framed glasses. Her light brown hair was short in a chic-looking bob with fringe that matured her otherwise innocently cute features. The sun made her eyes look as speckled as the freckles on her pert nose. Her full lips softly curved into a contented smile. It was as though she’d been lost in a book, and someone had walked in and taken a photo of her in her most natural habitat.
“Enjoying the sun from the safety of my apartment,” she’d captioned it.
With every image, warmth spread through me. But also a sort of niggling fear. She was more than I hoped for. She must be with someone. There was no way people passed her in the street, worked with her, and said hello at cafes without instantly falling for her. It was unfathomable.
More and more photos and yet no mention of a partner. It was better to have not known, let myself keep imagining her as a housewife happily married with a slew of children. Or better yet, a man living in his mother’s basement. Now I had a gorgeous face to put to my growing infatuation. I was a total nob.
