Page 115 of Fate Fiction

“I highly doubt that,” he laughed.

“East Coast or West Coast?”

He sighed heavily. “East Coast. I’m actually in Boston…Cambridge, specifically.” He sheepishly raked his hand through his hair, his mouth tightened into an apologetic grimace.

I was silent for a few seconds, they dragged out into a lengthy uncomfortable pause. I watched my eyes grow wide and my mouth drop open in the corner of my screen. “You’re here? Right now?”

If I had known he was blocks from me I would have wanted to run to his front door the day he arrived.

I was convincing myself that it had been for the better, for both of us, that we went back to existing in our separate universes. It was healthy that our paths only converged digitally. It was safe in this existence where he still wasn’t tangible.

Evan and I were phone friends, nothing more.

He scratched at his jaw. He was fidgety. He couldn’t stay still. “I should’ve told you I was in town, I didn’t know if you wanted to see me. It’s dumb and selfish⁠—”

“No, no,” I stiffly laughed. “You’re good, I get it, you’re busy.”

“I’m really not,” he cut in. Then why didn’t he call me? Why had he been moving through this city like a ghost? Why was this bothering me so much? “I’ve only been here a day, but I was nervous to reach out. After last time and all, I don’t know if I could handle more⁠—”

“Awkward conversations?”

“It’s easier when it’s on here, when there aren’t other things to think about. Plus, I have to tell you something and I don’t know how,” Evan spoke directly.

My stomach immediately dropped, his tone wasn’t indicative of anything, “what?”

“Do you know what the finale episode is titled?” he asked as I fiddled with a stray thread on the blanket wrapped around me.

“No,” I answered.

“‘Ice on the Turret,’” he stared at me, watching closely for any sort of reaction to the words that slithered out of his mouth like a venomous snake. My blood ran cold.

The bolo tie was more than a nod, it was a warning.

Each word of the title felt like a BB gun bullet into my chest. They shouldn’t have left his lips to begin with and yet they were echoing through my mind now. I thought I’d freed myself of the curse of my past. Evan and I were good friends. Sometimes I’d forget that a year ago he was untouchable. I’d forget he was the Evan McLeod.

Evan McLeod who was staring at me at present.

“How do you know about ‘Ice on the Turret’?” I said quietly, like it was still a secret. The question was rhetorical, of course. It was the most popular piece of fanfiction in the Thorndown fandom. Even if I hadn’t written it, even if he didn’t find the scraps of it in my cabin that night, he would’ve heard about it peripherally.

“I…read it. In its entirety, well up until you stopped publishing it.”

That was far more than peripheral.

My most vulnerable words, the world within a world I’d built, the dialogue, the SEX. He’d consumed all of it. This was worse than a middle school crush reading my diary.

I felt more exposed than I had ever felt when I was naked in front of him. I’d been ripped open, every piece of red bloody viscera splayed on the blanket splayed across my lap.

“You read my fanfiction? When?” I blabbered, piecing together timelines and focusing on staying upright on a stream of consciousness of what he was trying to say.

“Maybe a few weeks after I left camp.” The thought that I was still on his mind in that way was frightening, what had been his initial motivation to even find it? How did he find it? I started to feel lightheaded from all the questions and took a few massive sips of water. “You’re a good writer Dani. A really good writer.”

I tried clearing my throat, once, twice, three times. Dry air rattled around. “So your secret signal to me was…”

“My not-so-subtle way of telling you that I knew, and when I read it, something changed. I understood it more, I understood you more in a weird way. The way you wrote about Sir Erwyn made me not resent the character for the first time in years. It felt like a gift.”

I stood up and carried my phone and the empty bowl into the kitchen. I couldn’t sit down, I had to move. The confirmation that he’d chosen that outfit, hired someone to design that bolo tie, and made sure I’d see it were getting to be too much. And it was happening all for, what, proof that he didn’t resent me for something that happened eight months ago? Indication that he wanted something more?

I dropped the bowl in the sink and paced around. “I don’t understand.”