Page 91 of Fate Fiction

Andrea held me close and ran her hands across my greasy hair, “please tell me no one died?”

I shook my head between sobs, and Andrea ushered me across the apartment and gently lowered me onto the couch. I’d been utterly unraveled by five words, and stared at the ceiling to forcibly dry the tears. It took a few moments to catch my breath and formulate a true sentence. I kept starting and stopping after a word or two.

Andrea surveyed the apartment, still looking for some sort of clues. My luggage was still packed sitting in my entryway, with one bag rummaged through for a few essentials. It was unlike me to not immediately unpack, wash, and put away every article of clothing after a trip.

I was methodical, organized, not a crumpled piece of paper slowly learning to unfurl itself after being clenched up in a fist.

“I don’t even know where to begin,” I choked out. The tears were building again, I was shocked I had anything left, it had been nearly non-stop since Friday night. The singular piece of self care I’d managed to complete in the last thirty or so hours was drink enough water to replenish all the lost hydration.

“Take your time,” Andrea cooed softly, “but you’re okay right? Like you’re not hurt?”

“I mean it’s cliche but no I’m fine physically…”

Andrea rolled her eyes at the dramatics. “Then what is it? Did Nick do something?”

“Fuck, no, it's not Nick.” I laughed a little even thinking about him, that breakup had been far removed from memory, Nick had hardly crossed my mind in days. I almost wished it were something as simple as something to do with him. I didn’t care enough about him anymore to be devastated by his departure.

Andrea looked like she wasn’t wanting to play a game of twenty questions right now, my thoughts were still too scattered to say anything of meaning.

Finally, I blurted it out.

“Evan McLeod was at camp. Last week. With me.” Each statement punctuated by a cry.

She was silent for a beat.

“Don’t make me say it again,” I quietly pleaded.

I watched her process the information. Piecing the combination of words together. “I’m sorry, what? You’re sick. You hallucinated something.”

Andrea held her hand to my forehead, the odds of that being true were nearly impossible. She and I both knew that. Andrea had gone to camp once herself. Logically, of course there was no way an actor of his level would even consider it. Logically there was no way that last week could have been real.

I still had the tangible proof that this absurdity that had unfolded wasn’t a delusion. I’d checked it myself a few times to make sure. I silently scrolled through photos to the ones Evan and I took atop the mountain. I wanted to delete them and erase last week from my memory entirely, but each time my finger hovered over the little trash can shaped icon I froze and locked my phone.

Andrea took the phone and swiped, hovering far too long on the photo. Maybe she was searching for fuzzy lines or missing details that could prove this was an elaborate photoshop or some ridiculous AI-generated bit of garbage. It could’ve been possible in the midst of the breakup I conjured some fantastical tale about celebrities and a whirlwind romance. People did crazier things in the heat of passion.

There was a silent pause while she was stunned speechless. Her eyes needed to adjust to the photo that was clearly her best friend, cheek to cheek with Evan McLeod, and then another photo of Evan McLeod obviously kissing the aforementioned best friend on the cheek. This wasn’t a photo between fan and actor, this was something bizarrely intimate. It felt like something that happened years ago lived by an entirely different person.

“Is he kissing you?” she couldn’t hide the complete disbelief in her voice.

I began to choke on sobs and held my chest to catch my breath. “I slept with him. He told me that he was falling for me, I thought I was falling for him.” My voice began to tremble, “and then he found out about the fanfiction. He freaked out, obviously.”

Evan’s voice was echoing in my mind, each word like a stuck arrow in my back, still unable to be removed.

“I really, really liked you.”

Their barbed edges hurt more than the initial impact. I held my head in my hands. Andrea laid my phone face up on the coffee table, still frozen on the photo of the two of us. I couldn’t decide if I’d give up everything I had to be transported back to that moment or give up everything for it to have never happened.

“You fucked Evan McLeod?” Andrea got up and began pacing the apartment. I nodded. “How did he find out about the fanfiction, when did he find out?”

“Friday night, we split a bottle of wine and we wanted to do this whole thing to make it special and we were in my cabin and he knocked over my stack of notebooks and of-fucking-course one fell open to the notes I was making for that stupid, stupid book.” I’d spare the details of the ensuing conversation and the hours afterward I spent hearing Evan pack his cabin up so he could leave at first light.

“So you guys were together, together,” Andrea said quietly.

“We were talking about me going to visit him in New York, like this weekend. It was so fucking stupid.”

Recounting any of this was a humiliation ritual of the finest degree. What should have been one of the most interesting things to ever happen to someone felt like an after-school special of what happens when you keep a part of yourself hidden from someone.

Evan delayed any talking of official plans. Maybe deep down he knew that we had an expiration date too, and was preventing the inevitable. It was for the best that I’d never be able to contact him again. Even if I sent a DM to one of his verified social media accounts it would be an invisible drop in the bucket, I’d be gloriously anonymous to him again.