Chapter 4 #3
Did I even have enemies with the resources to do something like this?
How had Evan even gotten here in the first place?
Was he actually standing before me or did I have a fast-acting brain amoeba from the lake water?
I grit my teeth, thinking of ways I could run away into the woods and never be seen again, “I guess I’ll be easy to find then. I don’t want to stop you from settling in, so anyways, have a great afternoon.”
I turned to leave, already recounting everything that had gone wrong in the ninety second interaction and the horror of Evan McLeod seeing me.
I briefly thanked the universe that I didn’t get a Sword of Thorndown themed back tattoo during a particularly bad fan phase coupled with a drunken night out a few years back.
I had to disappear.
Or die.
Or something.
Anything but stay here. My breath quickened with each footstep toward my cabin. I’d pinched between my thumb and forefinger repeatedly, praying that maybe I was still asleep on the beach and this was some bizarre dream. Or a nightmare maybe?
I had no grip on my emotions or my reality, and nothing was more unsettling than the unknown. The cabin door slammed louder than I intended it to when I rushed inside, the sound echoed through camp. I cast my bag onto the floor and made a beeline to the bed.
Screaming into my pillow made the most sense. A mature and rational reaction, of course. After getting scarily close to suffocating myself in the polyfill and shrieking until my throat was raw, I flopped onto my back and stared at the pile of notebooks on the table.
Twenty eight years old and I was surrounded by fanfiction written about the very man who was about to be sleeping in the cabin next to mine for a week.
It would be a good night for a bonfire. A few well placed logs and it could all go up in smoke. I could clear my laptop of anything and hell even burn that too.
It all had to go.
I had to go.
Going for a run was the only logical option. My body moved on autopilot. My leggings and a sports bra slid on my body with zero thought. Sneakers were laced. Someone was doing all this, not any conscious version of myself, but someone else.
I think I was built to bolt at the first sign of trouble. I wouldn’t fight, I would always flee.
When my dad died, I ran off for hours. My beat up black Converses weren’t made for the journey, but I plodded along for miles until my heels bled and my side felt like rusty nails were stabbing my ribs. Among my physical aches, my emotional ache had lessened. It was like I cracked a magical code.
After any fight with Nick, I'd lace up my sneakers and run off, I’d start at our apartment in Cambridge and find myself running alongside the Charles River.
Sometimes Nick would take off after me, or sometime later drive around the neighborhood looking for me.
I could never properly convey to him that running was the only way I could shake everything loose.
Tears would fall and burn in the wind and I’d return with my emotions processed, ready for a rational conversation.
I stood in the kitchen of the cabin, chugging a glass of water without a care that it was dribbling down my front. Evan was unpacking as I stretched on the porch, his silhouette moving about the cabin in a dark shadow.
I swear I saw a wave as well but chose to ignore it, instead jogging up towards the dirt road that had brought me into camp the day prior.
The path was heavily shaded by the tree cover, the blue skies were obscured under the thick leaves.
I could easily run down the middle of the road without worrying about cars, or pedestrians, or creepy guys who’d hang out on benches and shout oddly specific catcalls.
Once I got told I had “a thick ass like a Pixar mom.”
Free of the catcallers, absolute primal fear was still radiating through every bone, every nerve ending, every cell. It felt like something was about to chase me here.
I swiftly found my stride and couldn't stop. There were endless miles of road to run on. So long as my feet and lungs didn’t give out I could traverse across them all this afternoon.
The trees blurred at the edges of my vision, my feet pounded rhythmically on the gravel. My music was blaring so loudly I could keep the thoughts at bay, but I’d suddenly remember my present reality and start freaking out all over again.
Evan McLeod was at camp.
Evan McLeod was in a cabin fifty feet from my stacks of fanfiction about Sir Erwyn. How was I supposed to rewrite one of those fics into a novel while in such close proximity to the man who played the subject of them all?
Time passed, I don’t know how long I had run. Everything caught up to me once I slowed myself. I was over three miles from camp and my calf was already cramping ahead of the journey back.
My return trip was much slower, my panicked heartbeat had been replaced by a steady pumping of blood.
The cramping of my leg and the dull aching in my chest helped me forget—for a few moments, at least—why I was running in the first place.
My mind had completely been emptied. A few precious seconds passed by where I was totally fine again, then camp came into view and it all flooded back.
I could run into Evan at any moment, I had endless opportunities to fuck up an interaction.
The next week would be a long game of conversational Russian Roulette.
“Dani!” Sue’s head popped out her kitchen door and shook me from my stupor as I passed. “I’m glad I caught you.”
I slowed my jog into a walk and pulled out an earbud.
“What’s up?” I rasped. I was more out of breath than I’d expected, since the breakup I had fewer reasons to flee as of late. And six miles was admittedly pretty damn far.
A downright devilish grin spread across her face. “I thought we could do dinner all together tonight, since I’m cooking for four instead of fourteen. Evan was more than alright with it.”
How on earth was I supposed to say no, what could I even say? “Sorry Sue, I need to leave because I’ve spent countless Friday nights holed up on my couch writing about this man’s arms.”
Evan most definitely didn’t want me to join him.
Not after our awkward introduction, and Sue told me herself that he came in search of solitude.
Forced dinner with our ragtag bunch was anything but.
Sue’s blissful unawareness of his status likely made for an awkward position on his part, but I couldn’t exactly hide out in my cabin like a recluse until he left the kitchen each night, as badly as I wanted to.
“Are you sure he said that?” I finally replied after staring at her blankly. “I’m really not trying to ruin his week Sue—”
“He said he’d love the company.”
Easily a massive exaggeration on Sue’s part, but I didn’t call her on it.
“Okay then,” I replied nonchalantly, kicking around a pebble at my feet.
Spending more than the minute and some change I’d already spent with Evan wasn’t exactly how I wanted to spend my evening, but I had no other choice.
And now thanks to the run that took up the better part of the afternoon, I had the honor of being perceived at my greasiest and sweatiest—exactly how every girl wished she could be seen by her celebrity crush.
I prayed to not be perceived. I wished for invisibility.