Page 125 of Fate Fiction

It wasn’t his fault. The general public was like a bacteria that fed on gossip, I knew that. But the second public outing we ever had was the one that was broadcast to the world, and if it happened so fast while I still maintained anonymity, what could happen once they learned who I was?

It was the exact thing I was terrified of when letting Evan back in. I was swiping through my Instagram profile and changing all my settings to private. I’d already had to clean out and block a handful of new followers, unsure if they found me because of the book or because of the photo.

I’d dreamt of a life where I was noticed for my work, but now I was being seen as nothing more than mystery arm candy. The feelings were drastically different and I wouldn’t know how to explain that to my agent and the publisher who’d claim that “all press is good press.”

“I can’t believe I’ve already been thrown to the wolves,” I groaned, my face still half-smashed into my pillow. It was beginning to all sink in and I realized it may be a stress headache and not a hangover. Or a terrible combination of the two.

“At least you look hot in the photo,” she laughed. Maybe a decade from now I’d find this as amusing as she did.

“That photo is the same quality as Bigfoot caught on a trail cam,” I countered.

A few beats of silence passed. “Are you sure this is what you want?” Andrea asked. “It’s still early and new for you both, you could always bow out now, protect yourself.”

She couldn’t see me, but I emphatically shook my head. “I’m pretty sure I want to be with Evan. I’ll find a way around it, or through it. Whatever your flawless fiancée would say.”

“But what about everything else that comes after? The speculation? The criticism? It’s a lot and you’re starting getting your footing with your author career.”

“I don’t want to have to choose, I…I think I need time to sit with it all. I ran out of Evan’s apartment last night and haven’t even had the chance to talk about it with him.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt, being in the public eye can fuck a person up,” she said. “But, selfishly, I kind of love seeing this all play out. It’s like my own personal romcom.”

A few minutes after I got off the phone with Andrea my phone began ringing again. I was lying staring at the ceiling feeling everything at once. Upon seeing the numbers across my screen—with maybe: Evan dashed underneath—my ambiguous feelings shifted into regret.

“Hey,” I answered and toggled the phone on speaker so I could lay it down next to me and continue mentally dissecting a frog-shaped spot on my ceiling.

“You’re the talk of the town,” he tried to play it off as funny at first, but quickly trailed off like he’d gained some sentience on the matter. “I’m guessing it wasn’t a stomachache that made you run off last night.”

“Just the mortifying reality of being Evan McLeod’s hot date for the evening. A blurry, ghostly figure,” I sighed heavily.

Anxiety burned a hole in my stomach like it was acid.

“I didn’t know we’d be seen. I wanted us to feel normal. We were able to go to that place in your neighborhood undetected in September and I got cocky,” he rambled. “I put you into a terrible position with no preparation.”

I realized the frog spot looked more like a fighter jet, and was focusing my energy on outlining its shape in my head. “You’re fine, don’t worry about it,” I paused a beat. “I’m sorry you have to be at the receiving end of the bulk of the chaos.”

Evan went silent momentarily. “My publicist already has the official statement that we were getting dinner and that we are just⁠—”

What were we here? What were we to each other, Evan? Are we careening on the path towards a relationship like I think we might be?

“Just what?” I asked rhetorically.

“Just friends.”

“Is friends what this is?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he trails off. “That’s what we had settled on last time I saw you. But something has shifted in the last few months. You’re the first person I want to say good morning to every day, you’re the only one I want to talk about mundane shit with for hours. That doesn’t feel like friends.”

“It doesn’t,” I answered.

“Do you still want to pursue all this? If you don’t want to be thrust into this chaos that’s fine, I won’t fault you. But it would kill me to lose this right when it got started.” His voice echoed a bit in my room. His words bounced around the high ceilings and the not-completely-straight walls. It would kill me too. I felt like I’d invested more of myself into him than I ever had with Nick. I wanted to see this through, and should we come to an end some day it would be for the normal reasons people split up and not because I’m afraid of the “what if.”

“I want to be with you,” I said. “I promise. I know I’m flighty and freak out easily, but I’m so new to this. I’m not always going to keep running, but I need time to slow down to a jog.”

I wanted to promise that I’d wrap all this nonsense up in the next week, but that would be a lie to both him and myself.

“I’ll come over on Friday if you’re free, we can get takeout, watch a shitty movie, and pretend the outside world doesn’t exist.”

He groaned on the other end. “Friday is Shelby’s concert in town.” A beat. “But you could come with me, I could get you on the VIP list and⁠—”