Page 25 of Fate Fiction

He furrowed his brow a bit. “I asked you what you wanted to do, don’t feel like I should get any sort of special treatment.” His plush lips pulled taut into a line.

Funnily enough, I wasn’t even considering his status when I made the statement. In fact, for the first time since he’d arrived, I hardly took his celebrity into consideration.

It was a brief, beautiful moment where I forgot that I was stilted and awkward because he was Evan McLeod and not because he was an attractive guy in close proximity to me.

I looked at the clock again. “Are you cool with, like, seven fifteen? I need to pack a bag for myself and eat something before we go.” And maybe get my heart rate down to a normal pace.

He seemed a little puzzled at this. “Should I also pack a bag?” he asked meekly.

“Like a daypack, yeah? You know water bottle, lunch, snacks, some first aid stuff et cetera,” I gesticulated with my hands as I explained. “You do know the hike is almost eight miles, right?” I flinched a bit at my own snark.

From his face it had become clear that he very much did not know it was an eight mile hike.

“Oh fuck, I’m so embarrassed,” he braced his feet up against the railing of the porch. “No, your uncle failed to mention that detail…I should have caught onto that fact with the map he’d shown me and the context clues…I would’ve seemed like such a dick showing up in sandals carrying nothing more than my camera.”

He definitely wasn’t saying that to be coy, from the deep line in between his brows and he worried at his lower lip he seemed horrified by that hypothetical. Nothing that I had previously known about Evan made him appear to be anything but cool and confident, but here he was floundering about the idea of showing up to a hike with a stranger unprepared.

I didn’t know what to say, should I offer to make him a peanut butter sandwich and toss a few more protein bars in my bag? Should I play into his feelings somehow?

God, I hoped at the very least he had a water bottle. Wasn’t he supposed to have some elite athletic prowess? His entire job was to look hot and kill CGI dragons, usually that came with some physical training. Physical training required hydration and so on and so forth.

“I could probably get some extra things from Sue and Randy—” I offered, my voice rushed.

“No, no I have it all, I spent a stupid amount of money at some outdoors store before coming here. I’ll be good. Seven fifteen. On it.”

He repeated the time almost as if to reassure himself that he’d make it by then. He stood up and jogged back to his cabin. His unfinished coffee sat on the table still. I dumped the extra into the flower bed and returned the cup to the sink, not thinking about the fact that his pink, soft lips were just touching the rim of it.

This man was nothing if not absurdly punctual. I was zipping up my backpack when there was a light tapping at the door. The clock on the wall showed the hands at 7:15 on the dot.

I sighed deeply.

“Come in!” I shouted as I searched for matching socks and sneakers. Evan stepped inside and stood in the doorway, propping an arm up on the frame.

“We match,” Evan said with a twitch at the corner of his mouth. He was wearing a variant of the outfit he had on the day prior, swapping the black shirt he had on yesterday for a white one and the red shorts for black. His very obviously brand new backpack hung from one shoulder, the nylon still stiff and puckered in places. I glanced down at my own outfit. White tank top. Black shorts. His reaction was unreadable.

“Should I change?” I asked dumbly.

He laughed, loudly like I was being ridiculous. I was being ridiculous. “No, what? That would be absurd.”

I stood back up after tying my shoe. He was right, obviously. We wouldn’t see a single soul for roughly the entire day, who cared if we happened to wear the same colors?

Every interaction proved how horrible I was at playing it cool. If overthinking was an olympic sport I would be Simone Biles. My muscles were tense and I kept clenching my jaw to the point where I’d get a headache. One teased at the edges of my temples now.

“Okay,” I exhaled, “let’s go.”

The two of us walked back towards our parked cars in silence, I jogged up to Sue and Randy’s house and peeked my head in the door, “we’re heading out, send a search and rescue team if we aren’t back by five.”

I turned back to Evan, who was fiddling with the straps on his backpack. The left one was currently six inches longer than the right. I gestured with my thumb at our cars, “the trailhead is a bit of a drive. I can take us, I wouldn’t want you to get your rental all scratched up.”

“It’s my car,” he said as he took his keys out of his pocket. “I’m fine driving if you tell me where to go.”

So he did want some control, or he thought I’d kidnap him if we took my car.

I opened the back door of the expensive black truck to put my backpack in. Defying my expectations, the car wasn’t pristine and untouched. Instead it was slightly a mess with an empty soda bottle, a few folders, and scattered papers that were clearly tossed into the back seat. It was another refreshing sight proving he was actually human.

The cab of the truck was a space far too intimate to occupy. It smelled like him, it had his discarded protein bar wrappers stuffed in a small trash bag hanging from the shifter. It had a leather cord with a pewter unicorn hanging from the rearview. This truck was an extension of Evan himself.

I shouldn’t be here.