Page 22 of Fate Fiction

I could have imagined it, or maybe it was an animal scurrying by? I knew there were critters in the woods, and the bathhouse backed right up to a swath of trees. My ears remained tuned as I proceeded to brush my teeth and floss, stopping every few seconds to listen.

My reflection stared at me through the foggy mirror as I channeled some internal courage that didn’t seem to exist. I had two options, spend the night in the cramped bathroom stall, or step outside and hope that there was nothing, or specifically, no one, there. I loosely ran my hands through my hair to shake it dry, took a deep breath, and slowly swung the door open.

“Ah, fuck!” I shouted.

Evan was standing a few feet from the door, rocking back and forth on his heels with his hands in his pockets.

“Hi, Dani,” he assessed me quickly, taking note of the panic on my face and the towel wrapped around my torso. There was a gap in the terrycloth that extended from my mid thigh up to my hip that I swiftly gripped close as his eyes tracked downward.

Even in the dim light of the bathroom stall behind me I could see the tips of his ears redden in embarrassment. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, did I frighten you? I didn’t mean to hang around like a creep, I was also going to shower and wanted to know how to turn it on, Sue said it was a little complicated.”

He was making uncomfortable eye contact in an attempt to avoid looking at my body in the towel. My glasses were still foggy, but his blue eyes cut through it.

“Shit,” I cursed again and scrubbed my palm down my cheek nervously. “Yeah, of course I can.”

My face was flushed, from the heat of the shower and the ensuing interaction. Evan and I would soon resemble two pieces of chewed up bubblegum from all this awkward blushing.

He walked in front of me to his stall. I tightened the towel, there wasn’t a chance Evan McLeod was seeing me naked tonight or any other night for that matter.

I stepped into his bathroom, a mirror to mine. “Sue definitely over complicated it, all you have to do is need to turn this knob to release the water from the tank first and then turn your hot and cold knobs as you wish.” I proceeded to demonstrate—my arms in a T-Rex pose from pressing my armpits down to hold the towel up.

At least I had a chance to prove that I served some sort of purpose beyond being the brooding and weird niece of the camp owners.

A callused palm landed on my bicep. I nearly exploded.

My heart dropped deep into my stomach. A handshake was one thing but this? This was something else. Something horrifying.

His hand lingered there for a moment. Both our eyes darted towards the offending touch, both met the other’s gaze with a similar panicked expression.

Evan rescinded it after realizing what he’d done. “Thank you, so much.” He wrung his hands in front of himself. “Was that Fall Out Boy you were singing in there?” he asked with a smile.

How long was he lurking out there?

“Oh, yeah, sorry I thought you were—uh, everyone was—still up at the house.”

“No need to apologize,” he smiled, earnestly, in a way that made me feel worse about this entire interaction. “Thank you for the help, I’ll see you tomorrow. 8:30.”

Evan slid off his sandals and began unpacking his small Dopp kit of toiletries.

I backed out of the stall and shut the door behind me. A single piece of wood stood between Evan McLeod and myself. The same Evan McLeod that touched me without thinking. I could still feel the ghost of his hand and fingertips.

He was supposed to be two dimensional on a screen, not someone tangible.

I waited for cameras and reporters to pop out of the woods for a “gotcha” moment, clearly someone was setting me up. I could picture the investigative article now— “From Fan Fiction Author to Real Life Stalker: How Cl0ud3dR0se Took Her Writing Too Far.”

There would be endless internet discourse that would follow. I’d be made into an example of the kind of freak that lurked on those fanfiction sites. No camera or reporters jumped out as I walked away from the bathrooms, so I determined I was safe. For now.

When I went back into the cabin I closed all the curtains. I turned the cabin into a cave and lit all the gas lamps, each churning out warmth with their accompanying light. I didn’t need any more heat than what my skin was radiating, but I refused to open the windows and curtains until Evan went to bed.

My notebooks stared at me, almost tauntingly so. The idea of rereading the words I wrote caused a sour nausea to creep up my throat.

I laid on the bed, my gaze trained upward as I looked for shapes in the wood. Moments later I heard the door next door open and swiftly swing shut. It was barely past nine p.m. Any other evening I would have built myself a fire on the beach and stared at the sparks and embers dancing around for a few hours. Instead I was hiding out in my cabin from Evan. What an absolute whirlwind the afternoon had been.

The notebooks were stacked on the table, and in the hidden tranquility of the cabin I could maybe, just maybe, take a peek. I crossed the room and flipped open a random one at the bottom of the stack.

“If love is something that is meant to be forged in fire then I will burn the entire kingdom down for you.”

It was a good line. I knew it was because it was one of the ones most often copy-and-pasted into the comments of the fic with a slew of compliments attached. It was a line that felt like something slotting into its place in my mind when I first wrote it. It was a line that made me think that I could actually pursue this writing thing in a broader capacity.