Page 11 of Based on You

At the office, everyone waited for the collapse. They kept a careful distance, watching my every move like the floor might give out.

Everyone except Violet. She'd come back from the memorial service, dropped a crisp briefing folder on my desk, and treated me like a working man with a company to run. She only said Elena's name when the business needed it. She never once tensed up standing near me. It was the most grounding thing anyone did for me during that stretch, and she likely had no idea she was doing it at all.

"I'll call you tomorrow, Dad." I ended the call before he could push.

I wouldn't call tomorrow. He knew it as well as I did. That polite fiction had run on a loop between us for years.

I closed the unread reports, set the laptop on the nightstand, and switched off the bedside lamp.

Some time later, lying flat in the dark, I heard a noise.

It came from down the hall, faint, muffled by the drywall. I lay still and held my breath, and then it came again.

A burst of laughter.

I shot straight up in bed.

I threw off the covers and padded barefoot into the chilly hallway, stopping in front of Olivia's closed door. A thin yellow sliver of light spilled out underneath it. I raised my knuckles to knock, then stalled, my fist hovering.

She'd been barricaded in that room for months on end. The therapist had told me to let her come out on her own terms, when she was ready. But the sound on the other side of the painted wood wasn't grief. It had slipped past whatever she'd been holding in place for months. I hadn't heard my niece laugh in eight long months.

I rapped my knuckles three times against the wood and waited a beat. When no protest came, I turned the brass handle and eased the door open.

Olivia sat cross-legged in the middle of her mattress, a lit tablet propped against her thigh. She snapped her head up at me, and her expression went flat.

"It's late." I kept my voice easy. "Why aren't you asleep?"

She dropped her gaze back to the glowing screen. "I was just reading a book."

"What's the story about?" I leaned against the doorframe.

She looked back up, openly suspicious. "Aren't you going to order me to turn the screen off and go to sleep?"

"You have nothing scheduled tomorrow. You can sleep in."

She let out a small, startled sound, and the corner of her mouth twitched up into the start of a smile. "Okay." She patted the empty stretch of duvet beside her.

I crossed the messy room and took a careful seat on the edge of her bed.

"The plot's about a hardcore fan and a famous idol." She found her place on the page.

I shot her a baffled look. "What's an idol?"

She slapped a dramatic hand over her own face. "Oh my god. You're so old."

"I'm not even thirty-five yet."

"Keyword being yet. You're heading there fast." She held the tablet up like an exhibit. "An idol is basically a huge Asian pop singer. They have these terrifyingly big, dedicated fan bases. So this book's about a fan who's obsessed with one idol. She figures he doesn't even know she breathes, but then, through a crazy accident, she lands a job working for his management company. The female lead is so cute. She tries to learn Korean just for him. She's terrible at it, but she keeps trying anyway. It's the sweetest thing."

I laughed, already invested in the ridiculous made-up drama despite myself.

"Mom always used to complain that internet fan fiction wasn't real literature." Olivia's tone went wistful. "She was so wrong about that."

I nodded. Elena had believed in old-school, traditional romance, books that had survived agents and editors and a few rounds of someone telling the writer no. A real book, she'd say, earned its spot on the shelf. She'd told Olivia as much more than once.

"There's nothing wrong with enjoying either one," I said.

"I know that now. And the crazy part is, this author writes both. She writes wildly popular fan fiction, but also traditional, original romance. The fan fiction's what she's most famous for online. She writes so well it's practically poetry. She writes about love and somehow makes it feel like something you could hold, real and worth wanting." Olivia pulled a knee up to her chest, balancing the tablet against it. "I can't wait to fall in love someday."