Page 111 of Fate Fiction

It happened.

It’s real.

Maybe: Evan:

I’m so fucking proud of you.

You’re googleable now!

Welcome to the club.

He replied instantly. He rarely left me on read for longer than a few hours. That fact baffled me, wasn’t he supposed to be one of the busiest people in show business? Didn’t he have more important people to text or things to do?

It didn’t matter, and it wasn’t the kind of thing I should waste my time ruminating on. I beamed at my phone, staring at his message saying he was proud of me.

He would’ve been just as proud if I printed out the word document and stapled it to a bulletin board in Harvard Square, I knew that. Something tugged inside me at the thought.

I hadn’t been trying to prove anything to anyone but myself, but a strange pang of validation signaled in the back of my mind. He and I inched closer to being of a similar caliber. Both professionals being recognized by these fickle industries for the work we’d put in. An Emmy was different than a singular book deal, but it was something.

I told him when Kimberly took me on as a client, I’d gotten an email from her two days after we met. Her closing line to me was “hope those ghosts haunt you for a while, I’m going to keep you busy.”

The first thing Evan said when I told him I was officially agented was that he’d only communicate through our respective agents now.

“My people will call your people.” We joked at the end of phone calls. It was cheesy and an in-joke that wasn’t all that funny to anyone else but us.

Evan—whose net worth sat solidly at eight figures—made quips about me buying a yacht now that I was about to find crazy success thanks to my agent. He said I could anchor in the center of the lake at camp and he’d paddle out to it. I told him based on his canoeing skills I’d doubt he’d make it. And I doubt I’d come close to having yacht money.

Though, the money I was going to be receiving as an advance was certainly nice.

It wasn’t “quit-your-job-and-buy-a-writer’s-retreat-on-the-coast” money like I so badly craved, but it was a not insignificant amount of money. Conversations about earning out, royalties, foreign rights, and audiobook rights all blurred together. Kimberly understood the minute details of all this so I didn’t have to.

My phone buzzed with another message.

Maybe: Evan:

Send me a pic.

I wanna see what an author with a deal looks like.

I FaceTimed him instead. Calling him had become an easy habit, and selfishly, I wanted to hear his voice right now.

He blooped onto the screen, sitting in what looked like a hotel room. A lazy grin on his face when I appeared on his screen.

“East Coast or West Coast?” I asked. I was always curious. When he was on the East Coast, I wished I could take the short train ride down to him. When he was on the West Coast I fantasized about seeing Palm Trees and the Pacific Ocean. We’d talked on the phone a handful of times since I broke the ice. I called on my commute home from work, he called when he was cooking dinner. We talked about nothing, and it was oddly nice.

“West coast,” he said, and a hand dipped into the frame to powder his face.

I watched my eyes grow into saucers in the corner of the screen. “Oh, shit, I can go if you want⁠—”

“I’m getting gussied up for the premiere tonight,” he chuckled.

Right. Sword of Thorndown, the reason why I knew who he was in the first place. When the new season was announced I had lost the same kind of rabid, uncontrollable excitement I used to feel. I felt nothing at all. It had only been eight months since I’d seen an episode of Thorndown, but that’s a lifetime by deep fandom standards.

There was a past version of myself that craved being beside him on that red carpet, arm in arm with him. I’d have a chance to meet the show creator, Carl Loudon and see his signature black baseball cap and gray beard up close. The show had originated from a series of short stories he had published in the late nineties, and he had been acting as the overseeing God-figure throughout the show’s run. I owned paperback copies of those short stories that had tattered edges and ripped spines from how often I read them.

Thorndown used to be the closest thing I had to a religion. I was a devout follower, I’d read the Bible, and now it was nothing more than my friend’s job.

I forgot about the new season entirely. Evan hadn’t mentioned it in conversation and without keeping up with it on social media it’s like it didn’t exist. I’d become a Thorndown agnostic.