Chapter 6 #5
In this instance he wasn’t Evan McLeod the actor, or Evan McLeod the VIP camp guest, he was Evan.
He was a guy who may have gotten nothing more than a quick double take if he walked into the same bar as me.
He was a guy who a year ago—when I was still in love with Nick—wouldn’t have even been remotely on my radar had he not had the name and fame attached.
Of course he was handsome, but handsome guys existed in my social sphere already, and in the words of Shania Twain, “that don’t impress me much. ”
I had always tried to not get too parasocial with Evan, or any celebrity for that matter.
I knew there was a clear delineation between the characters they played and their public persona versus who they actually were.
I didn’t claim to know him in any way, even now.
But now I felt like I understood him a little bit more.
For starters, he couldn’t be more different from Sir Erwyn. The character was brooding, cerebral, and closed off, while Evan seemed to be affable and jovial in a way. If Sir Erwyn was the moon, Evan was the sun.
In my life I’ve read over a million words of fanfiction and have written nearly as many. I can recite tags and ships for the Thorndown fandom like the alphabet.
What I love about fanfiction is that it is fiction. I can craft my cinematic moments and risky romances without the real life repercussions.
You can’t get your heart torn open by a fifteen hundred word one-shot. One bed tropes don’t turn into messy breakups that haunt you for months. Fiction doesn’t wreck you in the same way real life does.
But I wasn’t a character in a story, which meant that whatever happened from here on out would be solely my problem to handle.
Sue had inadvertently sent me down a strange path.
What’s worse is that she more or less gave me exactly what I asked for when I begged for an escape, Nick was becoming a distant, fading memory.
Realistically, what could happen between Evan and I right now?
He could easily lean towards me and cup my chin before turning my head towards his. We could lock eyes and he’d pull me in closer. Then, our lips could meet. We could hold each other on the ledge, absorbing every inch of the other’s skin.
We could do a lot of things. There could be a fictionalized version of this instance where this all happened. Because it all could so easily happen.
Reality settled back in with a garish bright light, the rush of the falls filling my head.
Oh my god. How had my mind jumped that quickly?
There was a lingering heat bubbling in my core from my brief foray into fantasy.
It swirled inside me like churning lava, ready to explode if I let the surface crack too much.
I couldn’t keep doing this to myself, just because he was here and polite out of obligation didn’t mean he’d ever show a millimeter of true interest.
I fiddled with the string of my bikini bottoms, gnawing at my lower lip. There was no chance I didn’t look absolutely petrified right now. Evan’s gaze was a laser through my skin, straight to my soul. Could he read minds? Did he somehow know all my crazy inner thoughts or was I that obvious?
My mind was cloudy, but there was no misconstruing the fact that his blue eyes were solely focused on me. Why couldn’t he fixate on the scenery instead? Why did I have to be the view he was taking in? I gripped the sides of the ledge to steel myself.
It had to mean nothing, because if it meant anything but nothing, that would be a massive problem.
Heart and head were at battle to meet his gaze. His reflection in the water showed his head turned towards mine. I couldn’t manage to look up.
Whatever he was trying to convey was utterly terrifying.
I double downed on my theory that this all entirely fabricated in my imagination. I was living in a massively detailed self-insert fic. Nothing more.
Ice cold water froze my brain as I disappeared off the ledge and dove back under the water.
If only I had gills and could stay under here forever, I wouldn’t have to resurface and see what Evan was doing.
I popped out of the water in a shallower area far from Evan, who remained on the ledge, dejected.
Unlike Orpheus, I wouldn’t look back, instead I flipped onto my back and focused on the sky above.
Evan used the ledge as a ladder to climb out and hopped across the rocks to return to his backpack. I continued swimming. He pulled out his towel and wrapped himself in it. I continued swimming. I was aware of every one of his actions, but I continued to act like I was in my own world.
After eight miles hiking I knew I wouldn’t want to go for a run back at camp, but damn, did I need to. Evan remained perched on the rock, towel loosely hanging from his shoulders. He stared at the water in quiet contemplation.
“All good?” I posed nonchalantly, giving him a thumbs up as if it were a secret signal he could return back.
“Yeah, I got cold,” he shrugged.
A few minutes passed before he got up from his spot and began wandering to take more photos. I watched him intently, the way his back muscles subtly flexed when he raised the viewfinder to his eye, how he’d slightly cock his head to the side when trying to focus.
Evan existing as himself was fascinating to watch. It was like I was on a safari, he was wonderful to observe from a safe distance but the moment he inched closer I had a primal survival instinct kick in, and that instinct told me to flee as quickly as possible.
He turned again to face me. I had to break the shell.
I smiled at him, a true warm smile rather than the small glints I had given him previously.
He returned the expression and once again raised his camera towards me.
Rather than cower, I decided to embrace it.
It truly was sweet, him using me as subject matter as though I were a part of the landscape itself.
“Do you want to head back?” I called from the water.
“Do we have to?”
“We don’t have to do anything.”
“I’d actually like to stay here a bit longer then, if you don’t mind,” he said warmly.
I didn’t mind at all, this was actually my preferred outcome but I couldn’t exactly express that and feel like I was forcing him to hang out with me.
I swam to the edge of the swimming hole and climbed out. There were flat rocks we could lay out and tan on, so I grabbed a sandwich, my towel, and book, and padded my way across.
“I made you a sandwich too, don’t be mad if it got crushed.” I swung the flattened sandwich back and forth to show the damages.
“You made me a sandwich?” he asked brightly.
“Don’t have too high of expectations, it’s an extremely juvenile American peanut butter on white bread situation.”
He laughed at that and pulled it out of my bag, eating the entire thing in two bites.
My towel was warmed from my backpack sitting in the sun, and I stretched out on it to let the sun dry me off. A shadow passed above me, shrouding me in darkness. I didn’t have to open my eyes to know what, or who, it was.
I wanted to curl myself up as small as possible and away from him, but the sun felt so nice, and the damage was already done. First, my body freshly showered in the towel, now my winter pale soft stomach reflecting the sun’s rays.
Evan spread his towel out next to mine, and once again the self conscious teenager creeped in.
I tried to not think about him seeing me splayed out in my bikini.
I was thinking about myself too much, bodies were rarely so memorable that someone would so much as think about them after seeing them.
He then began whistling again. The same tune.
It was obviously an absent-minded tic, albeit an annoying one.
“That ‘ditty’ again, huh,” I lowered my sunglasses and turned to him. He stopped again and turned his head in kind.
“God, sorry. It’s like second nature at this point.”
My entire body went cold. I suddenly knew exactly how I recognized the song. It was the Sword of Thorndown theme. Of course, when stripped away to a few simple notes whistled slightly out of key it was far removed from the source material, but it definitely was that.
For someone who spent nearly a decade of their life involved in a fictional universe it made sense that its very theme song would be embedded into their brain, but hearing the Thorndown theme escaping from the lips of Evan McLeod himself was…unsettling…in a way.
“Is that the theme from Sword of Thorndown?” my voice cracked a bit when I casually asked, maybe too casual.
Quickly, I wracked my brain to determine if the average person would recognize it.
Alarm bells were going off in my head. My brain was a building on fire that desperately needed to be put out.
I was tempted to dive back into the water.
Evan was silent. Maybe I’d done a decent enough job of covering up my fandom, or maybe he’d been anticipating this moment since he first met me. His quiet grew unsettling.
“You’ve seen it?” he asked tentatively, he turned his face skyward. His fingers drummed on the rock anxiously.
My fandom was a mask I could put on and transform like the Green Goblin. I envisioned myself ravenously obsessed, finally able to show my true colors, chasing Evan out of the woods waving around a replica of the very sword he carried in the show.
Surely that’s how he’d perceive me if I gave off even the tiniest indication of being a fan.
Maybe four years ago I would’ve been slightly more unhinged in the presence of him, not exactly the chasing in the woods piece, but head over heels for sure.
Four years ago I wouldn’t have even been able to look at Evan, much less speak to him.
Maturity was a fickle thing. Sure, much of my obsession had dissipated, but there was still a small glow of embers, almost waiting to be reignited.
Every so often I’d need to tamp it down.
Especially in the past twenty four hours.