Fan Service

Chapter 5

5

Alex normally avoided both alcohol and social obligations, but considering the morning she’d had, she made an exception.

“Oh my god,” Seth yelled from across the bar before rushing to throw himself into her arms. “I can’t believe you showed up.”

“Happy birthday,” Alex said into his shirt. He smelled like rum and Irish Spring soap.

“Come meet everyone.” Her coworker tugged her to the back of Ott’s bar, where a small group had clustered on the sticky dance floor.

Ott’s was an institution in Tompkins, the kind Alex normally wouldn’t be caught dead in. It was a bar for rich people who enjoyed pretending to slum it. The pool hall was dark and artificially divey. They charged ten bucks for domestic bottles and played PGA tournaments on their flat-screens. But it was the only place in town if you wanted to dance on a Friday night without driving an hour and a half each way.

“This is my boyfriend, Matt.” Seth looped his arm around a handsome Latino guy. “Matt, this is my grumpy coworker, Alex.”

“Nice to meet you.” Matt smiled and then said, sotto voce, “Sorry, he’s a little drunk.”

“No, it’s okay,” Alex assured him. “That description is accurate.”

She gave Seth the little wrapped present she’d brought, a set of his favorite Muji pens.

“See,” he told Matt, clutching them to his chest. “I told you we were friends.”

Alex’s heart twisted. She always chalked up Seth’s offers to hang out after work to the kind of mandatory, insincere social niceties demanded among coworkers. That suddenly seemed really shitty and unfair.

Why couldn’t she let Seth be her friend? According to Rowen, Alex needed more local ones.

They got along well enough, and she knew he was into nerd stuff. Comic books, Alex was pretty sure. She’d tuned out the last time he went on a rant about Saga in the break room.

Man, was she maybe an asshole?

Not forming attachments to people, places, or things in Tompkins had been a conscious choice in high school after her mom left, a sort of “I’ll leave before anyone else can leave me” cheap teenage rebellion.

But ever since Alex had dropped out of Florida State and come back to take care of her dad, her self-imposed isolation felt more like an unintended side effect of working and worrying all the time.

Now that she’d made a deal with the devil for half up front, maybe that should change.

“Do you guys wanna do shots?” she yelled over the music. Alex needed to bury the memory of Devin Ashwood saying Did you ever have a crush on me? under about ten thousand layers of booze.

“Yes,” Seth shouted, adding a lot of S ’s at the end of the word.

Alex laughed. Yeah, they could definitely be friends.

Matt offered to come with her to the bar, but she waved him off, and he and Seth went back to dancing with a small crew of other locals Alex vaguely recognized.

The bar was packed, some big football game on the TV. People jostled for shoulder space to get their order in with the single harassed-looking bartender.

After serving a group of rowdy guys in Hawaiian shirts, he made his way over to Alex. “Hey. What’s going on?”

“It’s possible that I made a deal with a monster this morning.”

The bartender held his hand up to his ear. “What was that?”

“Three shots of tequila, please,” Alex shouted back, holding up the corresponding number of fingers.

He nodded and went to grab a bottle off the shelf.

Unfortunately, waiting for her drinks gave Alex what she’d been desperately trying to avoid—time alone with her thoughts.

Alex had spent an inordinate amount of time—half her life, really—diagnosing what was wrong with Devin Ashwood. Perhaps she was uniquely qualified for this bizarre job.

“That’s a lot of money,” she said after he made his offer, in case he didn’t know. “Do I still get paid even if nothing happens?”

“Absolutely. If we go through this whole thing and it turns out I’m just having a nervous breakdown or something, no one’s gonna be more grateful than me.”

“Than I,” she corrected instinctually.

“What?”

Alex shook her head. “Never mind.”

When she got the auto-forwarded SOS email from her long-dormant mod account two nights ago and arranged to meet the sender, she never expected it to actually be him. Alex thought for sure she’d walk in to find Eliza pulling a prank while in town for a business trip. It would have been an elaborate setup, sure, but what was fandom if not people investing questionable amounts of time and energy into fictional stories?

Flesh-and-blood Devin Ashwood could never in a million years come to Tompkins . That should be, like, illegal, actually, Alex was pretty sure. Something they added to the town charter. No celebrities. Especially ones with which residents once had intense, emotionally fraught interactions.

Alex’s tiny, embarrassing hometown was so sad and rural they didn’t even have a real coffee shop. But in further evidence that the universe did not give a single shit about her mental stability, Devin Ashwood had shown up anyway. He sat across from her sipping from a foam cup, asking for her help. And he’d looked—Alex refused to think about how he’d looked for one-third of a Tide commercial on the TV across the bar.

Fine. He looked fucking good. Seventeen years older and somehow more handsome. He’d been almost too pretty when he was young, those full lips and high cheekbones, ridiculous cow eyelashes, and honest-to-god freckles in the summer.

Now he had that full tawny beard threaded with a few gray strands, fine lines at his eyes and across his forehead (despite the Botox rumors; nature must be healing). He was still the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, but this time he looked real.

Whatever. It wasn’t news that Devin Ashwood was hot. The face that launched a thousand ships was Cam’s favorite pun.

It didn’t matter. Clearly, there was something wrong with him either physically or psychologically.

Alex didn’t care about the results of a fictional lie detector simulation. In no way was she prepared to engage with the possibility that (1) werewolves might be real, and (2) Devin Ashwood might be turning into one.

So yes, she’d gotten herself into a huge mess. But that was a problem for tomorrow.

“Here you go.” The bartender passed across four shot glasses—three full of liquor and another one full of limes—and Alex collected them in a square between her hands. She barely made it ten feet back toward the dance floor.

“Alex Lawson, as I live and breathe!”

Oh fuck.

She didn’t turn around, just kept squeezing past people as tequila sloshed over her fingertips. Thanks to her morning run-in with Devin Ashwood, Alex was now uncomfortably aware of her own racing heartbeat.

“I thought that was you.” Pete Calabasas pulled up in front of her with two of his friends. “Are those for us?” He plucked the shot glasses from her fingertips and then handed them back to his lurking buddies. “You shouldn’t have.”

“Seriously?” Alex said to no one in particular, since the Calabasas family got to do whatever they wanted in this town without consequences because they owned one of the racing facilities.

In boat shoes and a pink polo, Pete might as well have been a meme for a douchebag. Alex wanted to reach out and pop his collar so bad.

He raised one of her shot glasses in a toast. “You ruined our party. Seems only fair we ruin yours.”

Ugh. Not this again.

Senior year of high school, Pete and the other rich kids started hosting illegal bonfires in Ocala. Alex didn’t give a shit if they wanted to drink Natty Light and jerk each other off, but they left their trash everywhere and destroyed animal habitats, so she’d reported them to the forest rangers.

The rest of the story was simple: They got busted. It went on Pete’s permanent record. His parents paid some fines. And apparently, he’d never gotten over it.

“Listen, Pete, I know you peaked in high school, but sheesh. You really gotta let this one go. It was sixteen years ago.”

“Yeah,” he said, artificially white teeth gleaming in a leer. “And I’m still waiting for you to make it up to me.”

Jesus Christ.

Alex moved to step around him but he shadowed her.

“Where are you going?”

“Some asshole stole my alcohol,” she said, turning on her heel and shouting over her shoulder. “I’m going back to the bar to buy more.”

Alex made the mistake of letting her guard down after that.

She danced with Seth and Matt after bringing back a fresh round of shots. They talked about Seth’s manga collection and Matt’s latest woodworking project. The DJ played some halfway-decent music. Alex thought about leaving an hour in, going home, and watching reruns of The Good Wife , and decided against it.

At closing, Seth and Matt had a sober friend willing to drive to an all-night karaoke place a few towns over, but Alex begged off. She’d stopped drinking hours ago and the day was catching up with her. Besides, she was at the end of a very long bathroom line and didn’t want to make them wait.

By the time she got to the parking lot, it was mostly empty, her car at the very end under a fading yellow streetlamp. Her phone vibrated in her pocket.

Cam: OOP, according to E! “sources close to Devin Ashwood” say he’s spending time at a “Bali wellness retreat”

Eliza: I need a Bali wellness retreat.

Cam: if the video was a public cry for help, does that mean we have to stop making fun of him?

Alex was in the middle of typing a reply when the screen went black, the battery dead. Shit. She’d forgotten to plug it in after work this morning, caught up in the whole Devin Ashwood of it all.

It was strange to have intel on him that she couldn’t share. To be sitting on the ultimate Arcane Files gossip and have to swallow it. She hated keeping stuff from her friends.

Are you attracted to me right now?

Her skin heated all over again. Mortification and…something else.

Maybe it wasn’t the worst thing that she’d signed an NDA.

This time, Alex smelled Pete before she saw him. Cologne and stale beer filled her nose right before he grabbed her arm.

“Where you going, Lawson?”

Alex slipped out of his hold, her free hand clenching into a fist instinctively, the other gripping her useless phone.

“Get away from me, Pete, or I’ll call your wife and tell her about the lipstick on your collar.” It was a poorly kept secret that he slid his wedding ring off when he went out drinking with the boys.

Alex lengthened her strides. Her car was fiftyish feet away. But she didn’t want to run if she could help it.

“Aw, come on,” Pete said as he and two friends slid into position, flanking her in a half-moon, cutting her off. “Don’t be like that. Greg and Chip and I, we’re just being friendly.”

“Be friendly with each other.” Alex was reasonably sure Pete didn’t actually want to fuck her, but he’d always had some kind of fetish for the fact that she found him repugnant while everyone else in his life lay down on their bellies for his family’s money.

She veered right, trying to go around them, but they moved with her.

“Get out of my way,” she said, proud of herself that her voice didn’t waver. They were big, a pack of former high school football players gone to seed after a decade. Her dad had given her pepper spray when she went to college, but it was at home in a drawer somewhere, forgotten like all her other best-laid plans.

Alex had the most absurd flash of Colby Southerland in her mind at that moment. He was good in a back-alley bar fight. A small, silly part of her wished he was real. That he’d show up to save her.

Compulsively, she looked around the parking lot again. It was still empty.

Her heart thundered rabbit fast. These men thought she was a nightmare, but apparently not enough to leave her alone. At least, not yet .

Once Alex accepted that there was no way out of this situation where she retained her dignity, the rest was easy. It was a strategy she’d invented one night during her freshman year of college, when she’d been walking home alone from the library after dark. The approach relied on a simple cultural truth: no one wants to mess with the weird girl.

The first time she barked, the three grown men just stared at her, uncomprehending. The second time, when the animal sound she made was louder, more urgent, they jumped back involuntarily.

“Dude, what is going on?” either Greg or Chip said, tripping over his loafers, looking to Pete for instruction.

It was always simpler than Alex thought to make the noise, to tap into something feral. Also, strangely, kind of fun. A little like learning to roll her R ’s in Spanish class.

She barked a bunch of times in quick succession, pulling from her diaphragm to make the sound deeper.

“Stop it,” Pete yelled, his face curled up in a mix of revulsion and discomfort.

Alex lunged forward, letting her hair fall into her face as she tilted her head at an unnatural angle. Her imitation of the dogs at work was pretty decent, she thought, snapping her jaws at the end of the noise, driving these assholes back.

“Man, this chick is nuts,” the smaller of Pete’s buddies said, holding up both his hands and backing away.

The other one took out his wallet and threw it at Alex’s feet.

“Take what you need, lady,” he said, before fleeing to his car on the other side of the lot.

Alone, Pete was no match for her. A few more barks—the key was to let your mind depart your body for another plane—and he immediately bailed.

Alex bolted for her car and locked herself inside.

Holy shit. She breathed hard through her nose, hoping she wasn’t about to puke from adrenaline. Alex crossed her arms over the steering wheel and lowered her head onto them, trying to breathe.

The knock on her window a moment later made her scream and clutch her chest.

Devin fucking Ashwood crouched down and gave a little wave. “Hey—sorry to bother you. But are you, uh…good?”

No. She was not good. Public humiliation wasn’t enough. This guy had to show up after the fact as a witness?

Alex rolled down the window. “Where the fuck did you come from?”

“I just got out of an Uber. I thought I’d grab a drink”—he thumbed toward Ott’s—“but apparently the only bar in this town closes at nine thirty p.m.” After a beat, he said, “I, uh, came back here because I thought someone might be hurting a dog.”

“So…you caught the end of that, then?” Alex hadn’t been this mortified since she got her period in the middle of chem class and Ryan Wellesley asked her why she didn’t just “hold it in.”

“Well, yeah.” Devin looked a little embarrassed for her. “Got those…you know…”

“Super senses. Right.” Alex nodded because, sure, why not. “How could I forget?”

The hysterical laugh that had been bubbling in her for the last few minutes finally bubbled over before taking an immediate dramatic nosedive into a sob.

“Oh holy—” Devin reached for her side door and set off her alarm.

“What are you doing?” she said, wiping at her eyes as she unlocked it.

“I don’t know. You’re crying,” Devin said helplessly as he slid into her passenger seat, lifting his knees to avoid the small mountain of trash in her footwell.

As if that explained it.

He fumbled in his pockets and came up with half a Dunkin’ napkin. “Do you want this? It has my gum in it but I folded it over.”

Alex stared at him. But you know what? It was better than her sleeve.

“This is a low moment,” she said, taking it and blowing her nose.

“For what it’s worth, I thought that barking thing was cool.”

Alex closed her eyes against a fresh wave of mortification. “Please do not condescend to me.”

“No, it was honestly impressive. I mean, no offense, but look at you.”

“Oh, no offense?” She blinked. “Okay.”

“I just meant,” Devin said, voice soft and almost gentle, “there were three big guys. You weren’t gonna fight ’em.” He shrugged. “So you did what you had to do.”

“I guess.” By tomorrow morning the story would be all over town. She’d probably spend the rest of her life with rich assholes barking at her. And the worst part of that was, Alex would have to figure out some other way of scaring off drunk assholes for next time.

“You’re brave,” Devin said, not like a platitude but like an observation.

Alex made a dismissive noise.

Her hands were clammy where she still had them in a death grip on the steering wheel. The scent of Pete’s cologne lingered in her nose. Cloying. Overwhelming. She could still feel his hand on her arm, a phantom weight she couldn’t shrug off.

“I’m serious,” he said, Colby earnest, and the sincerity in his tone did something funny to her stomach.

Ask anyone in Tompkins not related to her by blood and they would tell you, Alex Lawson was a loser.

A menace.

A fuckup.

A nerd who spent her life fantasizing about other people’s adventures.

No one called her brave. Ever.

“Brave” was a word for fictional protagonists on her favorite shows. Though Alex had to admit, the suggestion was flattering. Even when you considered the source.

“You’re also scary as shit,” Devin said, not without awe.

That compliment she would take.

Alex scrubbed her hand across her face. For seventeen years Devin Ashwood was the grudge she couldn’t—wouldn’t—shake. Now he was her best chance of getting her family out of debt.

“You want me to go find those guys and kick their asses?” To add insult to injury, his jawline looked marble-forged in the low light.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Alex said, even though that was exactly what she’d wanted ten minutes ago.

She could pretend in less weak moments that she had killed and buried the version of Devin Ashwood that had served as her childhood hero, but reality was a lot more complicated. Part of her would always be that brokenhearted teenager who desperately wanted her favorite actor to make everything okay.

That was the trouble with fandom. Spend enough time thinking about a fictional character and you started to believe that your version of them was real. That they belonged to you in some small, private way. Devin Ashwood had Colby Southerland’s face, and Alex still didn’t know exactly how to parse them apart.

She wanted in that moment, foolishly, what she’d always wanted from Colby. What he’d given her for thirteen seasons despite the asshole actor behind the role—comfort. The ache was so strong, the longing for this person who didn’t exist, that Alex had to wrap her hands around her knees to keep from reaching for him.

If she wasn’t careful, Devin Ashwood would break her heart twice.