Page 128 of Fate Fiction

People began streaming out in droves. “Dani!” I heard Caroline shout as she and Andrea fought through the crowd to find me. I waved them down.

We walked back to the T and I let his message hang in purgatory.

If I was watching this show I would’ve hit pause right about now from sheer frustration.

I would have opened my laptop to a blank document and begun plunking the keys to write a fanfic with a better ending than this.

The writers didn’t know what they were doing with the main characters, couldn’t she see that he loved her? Why was she written so poorly that she was constantly running away from something that felt fated?

If I was authoring the fanfiction for this show, Dani would have kept her eyes locked with Evan’s during the song. She would have said yes to the invite backstage. There would be conversations and confessions and laughter. Dani and Evan would have gone out into the alley behind the House of Blues, where only VIPs were allowed to linger, and they would have kissed. Shelby Dawes’ love song would fade back into the scene at full volume, and by some stupid chance of fate there’d be fireworks overhead.

But this wasn’t some half-cracked fanfic written in a haste at two in the morning. This was my own story that I’d lost the plot of in the last nine months. I had to regain control of the narrative before I jumped the shark entirely.

The will-they-won’t-they I was living was far too much to bear anymore. I pretended to be the protagonist, but I was barely more than a side character. Someone with a half-fleshed out story that petered off into nothing.

But for the first time in my life, I could let myself be the lead. I could chase after my happy ending.

“Actually, guys wait,” I stopped walking and frustrated patrons grumbled and cursed under their breath as they had to walk around me.

Andrea and Caroline both skidded to a stop. The train screeched into the station and the crowd flooded inside once the door opened.

I looked at it, making my split second decision. “Go on ahead. Evan told me to meet him backstage⁠—”

They both started yelling at me in jumbles of words that I could barely make out. Andrea stammered and waved her hands around wildly in frustration. Caroline grabbed me by the shoulders and began shaking me. They only fell into sync when they both said, “go back!”

My feet were frozen on the ground. I had a direction I needed to run and my body wouldn’t let me.

I was about to beg for a push from the two of them when I watched their eyes grow wide. The crowd around us fell into hush murmurs and stares began to point in my direction.

Not my direction. Behind me.

I turned on a heel and saw Evan pummeling himself over the turnstile. The MBTA transit police officer was too stunned to stop him.

He jogged towards me, his hair in a tousled mess from running and dodging the Lansdowne Street crowds. He hadn’t even managed to put on his Clark Kent glasses. He ran on instinct towards me. I’d run away from him so many times before it was a pattern that he’d run after me.

“My fucking phone wouldn’t tap—” he started. “Nevermind it doesn’t matter⁠—”

“What are you doing here?” I cut him off.

“What do you think? I’m chasing after you. When you didn’t answer me about coming backstage I knew I had to do something drastic.”

“A big romantic gesture,” Andrea said under her breath.

“Kind of, yeah,” Evan replied, still out of breath from running here.

A phone camera flashed in the distance. This would inevitably be across social media tomorrow. The world would see me under the fluorescent lights of the Kenmore T station, jaw on the floor as I processed Evan standing in front of me.

As I processed the fact that I was completely in love with Evan McLeod, and had been since that week in June.

Sometimes love happens slowly, over time, and this was always the expectation that I had for myself. I hadn’t considered the alternative, a love that happens in a bright burst of light. The kind of feeling that hits someone in the center of their chest so hard they’re knocked off their feet.

Evan knocked me off my feet the moment I saw him on the beach.

Andrea sauntered up towards Evan like he wasn’t an A-list celebrity who’d brought an entire train station to a standstill.

She extended her hand towards, her engagement ring flashing in the light, “I’ve heard quite a bit about you, Mr.McLeod, and I should let you know up front, The Heir of the Mist is one of my favorite movies of all time, Andrea Galecki, by the way.”

Evan obliged and shook her hand, “Oh god, the blatant Princess Bride rip off? I think you might be the first actual fan of that. You should get a Medal of Honor.”