Page 106 of Fate Fiction

“I don’t know,” I replied as I followed his gaze. “I don’t want to lose you entirely, though I am sure it’ll be relatively difficult to escape you. I want to be friends.”

“Friends,” he parroted back. A strange finality to the word. “Maybe in the next life we can meet each other at a grocery store, as two regular strangers. It might turn out far simpler for us.”

Evan’s eyes followed a car driving down the street. He was holding onto hope with a white knuckle grip as I was prying each of his fingers off. We were a curse on each other that neither of us could shake.

“It wouldn’t have been nearly as fun. Do you regret ever speaking to me when we first met at camp?” I asked.

“No,” he paused, “I don’t think I do. Do you?”

“Only because you ruined my favorite show for me.”

Evan rolled his eyes.

“I suppose I should head back to my hotel,” he said. His shoulders slung low, a heaviness to his stance. He fiddled with something in his pocket, the rustling of whatever it was blending in with the rustling leaves.

“Okay,” I said quietly.

Somehow this outcome was worse than a restraining order or lawsuit, those were predictable and while shitty, to be expected given the circumstances. I didn’t anticipate that Evan would come sauntering into my life again wanting to make amends and proclaiming that he wanted to be with me.

I couldn’t catapult myself into a reality where I’d be beside him on red carpets or padding around a lush Brooklyn apartment for an Architectural Digest interview. Maybe Evan forgave me for being Cl0ud3dR0se, but many others wouldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough to see the Reddit threads dissecting my every movement or the TikTok hot takes on my mere existence. If I couldn’t keep my old digital identity secret from the subject of my fanfiction himself, there was no way I could hide it from the fandom.

“I’ll see you,” he said, fumbling with his maps app to try to get back to a hotel room in a city that he wouldn’t be able to come to again without thinking of me.

“Yeah, see you,” I stooped up my building stairs as Evan got into his car. He sped off in the wrong direction, probably so he could get out of my neighborhood as fast as possible.

I shut my front door and slid to the ground, my legs splayed out in front of me.

In the safety of my apartment, Thorndown didn’t exist anymore. And Evan McLeod didn’t exist as more than a still-unsaved contact in my phone and a random Instagram follow. My entire life was low-risk and comfortable and the only place avoiding risk had gotten me was in this exact spot, alone, on the wooden floor, in tears over Evan McLeod.

I fucked up.

And I hated myself for it.

twenty

. . .

Wednesday, Mid September

“I’ll be direct with you, Dani, you’re talented as hell. But there are a lot of talented people out there.” Kimberly—not Kim, not Kimmy—was focused on her other monitor as she spoke to me. Everything about her was sharp angles and lines, her jawline, her red cat eye glasses, the stiletto manicure she kept tapping on her desk.

“Thank you?” I replied, unsure how I was supposed to react.

Was this a compliment? A thinly veiled insult? Some secret third option? Whatever it was stung me right in the center of my chest. I felt childish. It was my first day as a real adult and somehow everyone could tell.

We’d spent the last half hour talking through this book, she asked a few clarifying questions about plot points or other details. I surprisingly had answers to them. I told her the shaky synopsis I had practiced in the mirror every morning since the day she sent me the calendar invite for this meeting.

The room kept getting hotter and I could see a flush creeping up my neck under my shirt in the tiny version of me in the corner of my screen. I was sitting in a spare huddle room in my office, my calendar blocked off and my cortisol spiking the longer this conversation went on. Despite Andrea’s insistence that her boss was “actually really cool,” I was petrified speaking to the woman on this call.

“So,” she pulled her glasses off and tucked her sleek black bob behind her ear. “Andrea says you’re big with the Sword of Thorndown crowd?” That name made my heart drop into my stomach. There was still a weight attached to it all, it was a steel ball shackled to my ankle, something I dragged three feet behind me. I must have made some sort of face, Kimberly leaned back in her seat and pursed her lips. I had limited time to get my shit together and formulate an appropriate response. A hundred thousand words I had written sat open in another tab on her laptop and somehow I managed to have none come to my brain.

“I was,” I clarified after clearing my throat. “I stepped back from fanfiction. And from the manuscript you can tell that I’d rather focus on writing my own original work. I know I could have taken the romantasy route, and maybe that would be an easier sell for you, but I really love this new world I’ve created and how different it is from Thorndown.”

“I can respect that,” her tone gave away nothing. I was amazed at her ability to not show her cards at all. I’d tell her she’d make a great poker player if I wasn’t so terrified of saying the wrong thing and fucking up this opportunity.

“What are your plans for the future?” she asked. Such a philosophical question asked in such a clinical manner. I didn’t know what I was having for dinner tonight, let alone the plots of the books I’d write next. I had begun outlining a few based on side characters in this first book. I liked the idea of an interconnected series, webs between people woven together through my stories.

“I’d like to stay in this similar genre-less purgatory,” I nervously laughed. “I like things that don’t fit neatly into one box, which might not be the most marketable kind of book. I want to write about love, but also other messy human emotions. Fear, anger, sadness. I want a happy ending, but I know that happy endings aren’t always easy to get to. I have other ideas for this universe, other places I’ve been inspired by. Other ghosts that have haunted me. Does that make sense?”