Page 105 of Fate Fiction

That question alone was reason enough to stop this before it derailed.

I looked to the ground and coughed to dispel the lump that had made a home for itself in my throat. The silence was growing unbearable.

Evan had to have known this would be the outcome. Before I even said it I saw the shifting muscles in his face as he studied me in that practiced academic manner.

He must have known this was a fool’s errand, thinking that showing up three months later for a singular dinner could be enough to make this into something sustainable.

“I’m in therapy,” he blurted out as a car drove past.

“What?” I asked. Surprised by this sudden admission.

“I had never gone for that…incident,” he said. It sounded practiced. I wondered if he rehearsed this part of the conversation like they were new lines to learn. “It was overdue, and I had this absurd alpha male stubbornness about the whole thing. I’d always been a ‘therapy is a great tool for other people but not me’, and clearly my mental health paid for it ten times over,” he chuckled wryly. “When we had that confrontation that last night I realized how much unresolved trauma I had. I tried to push it aside…but it all came up to the surface when I saw your notebook.”

A stray hair freed itself from my bun in the wind. Evan reached out to tuck it behind my ear, then abruptly stopped himself. He snapped his arm against his hip.

I tucked it back myself. Missing the indentations of his rough fingertips. “That’s good. I mean, I’m glad my fanfiction could serve as a catalyst for your healing⁠—”

He shook his head and scrunched up his face, like this conversation wasn’t following the script.

“There’s more,” he said surely. “In hindsight I realized how much I threw at you emotionally, without even knowing for sure if you wanted it. We had known each other for a few days, but you made me feel so normal and so safe. You made me feel like I could trust you, I wanted to chase that feeling.” He ran his fingers through his hair, the soft waves stood on end and fluttered in the wind. “I mean, shit, I probably seemed like I was love bombing you. My therapist also enlightened me with that phrase, turns out it’s a bit of a pattern for me. It doesn’t change how I felt about you. I liked you a lot, Dani. I still like you.”

“Right,” I said quietly. I liked you too, I wanted to say. I liked you so much that I wondered if I could ever like another person as much. “Me too,” I squeaked.

“I don’t have any expectations of you. I want to make that abundantly clear. But I would never forgive myself if I didn’t get to tell you all this. That’s why I wanted to meet up with you.”

I stood, ruminating in all of it. He deserved something better than monosyllabic answers, but my brain wouldn’t let me say anything of value. My heart, on the other hand, wanted to run back into his strong, safe arms.

“What would you want to happen?” I asked. “When you came here tonight, what was the outcome you dreamt of?”

“That the night wouldn’t end. That you’d let me into your apartment. That we’d see where things fell into place with each other. That I’d wake up next to you tomorrow. That you’d want the same thing.”

“I do.” It slipped out in a wretched choke. “But I can’t. We shouldn’t.” Bitter sobs wrapped themselves around my throat. My voice was strained and warbling. I wasn’t myself, but I also couldn’t stop myself. “I spent years waiting for something to end as a means to get to the other side of it. Something better has always felt out of reach, and when I met you, when we were doing nothing with each other in the woods, I thought I could actually grab it for the first time. I wanted everything to stay still. But you and I both know ultimately this isn’t going to work.” I stared at him, biting my lip to keep it from trembling. Not here. Not right now. “We’re romanticizing a moment in time.”

A breeze gave us both a chill. Like unspoken words it echoed through our beings. As a gust cut between us we shared a nanosecond of eye contact, the first we’d made since we were in the restaurant. Evan’s eyes grew glassy.

I bobbed on the balls of my feet with my arms wrapped around myself. Autumn chill was seeping in. September had been deceptively warm and I forgot what fall in New England could be like.

Was it timing? Was it the stark differences in our lives? Was it because I could never let him love me in the way he seemed like he wanted to?

He looked wounded by the statement. Like he’s Bambi and I’m the hunter who just killed his mom. I was bracing for tonight to be filled with snarling teeth and ferocious growls, instead I was met with doe eyes and a stifled whimper.

“That’s the problem,” he spoke softly. “I think we found each other at the exact right moment.”

I shook my head, not fighting the tears anymore. “I’m fucked up,” I whispered. “You said it. I believe it.”

He smiled stiffly. A half-joke-half-apology. “Do you seriously believe that?”

I didn’t know. I wanted to. There’s so much I wanted to believe in between us. Hope and doubt existed on the same plane. Every emotion was more complicated than I needed to be when it came to Evan and I.

One thing was still remarkably clear. As clear as the water in the lake. My baggage would drag us to the bottom of it.

Fanfiction was an anvil tied to my ankle. As much as I tried talking through it rationally, it would always be something that hung in the air. No matter what, I would always be classified as the fan to his celebrity, even if I consciously tried to strip all of that away.

“I don’t know, and because I don’t know, that’s enough of a reason,” I replied.

“Those were stupid words I said in fear and anger, they aren’t some sort of curse I placed on you.”

“Where do we go from here?” Evan looked as if he were asking the lamppost on the sidewalk beside him and not me.