Chapter 15 #3
If only I had followed through with my empty promise from earlier in the week to burn them.
I should have gotten rid of them and brought this up in the future as a funny anecdote from a past version of me.
Because that’s how I’d kept referring to my fandom, as some distant, passive thing.
Not a present obsession that had been eating me alive.
It was mildly amusing to Evan in the past tense, maybe even charming, this was anything but.
“It’s…it’s…” What was I supposed to say? No witty remark or aloofness could get me out of this. I couldn’t keep it obscured anymore. I felt sick to my stomach.
“Is this…fanfiction?” Evan bit. The word stung like a slur.
I laughed nervously, thinking I had one last shot to explain away this quirk of mine, “I can explain.”
“Can you?”
Seeing the mounting frustration and confusion in Evan, I took a few steps back. I suddenly felt disgusting, and from the way Evan was looking at me, he agreed. We were two magnets, and the polarity had been flipped.
“It’s a silly hobby, I’m not like—”
That was the problem. I was exactly like that other woman right now in his eyes. I rubbed my temples, willing my brain to think of something better to say. I couldn’t come up with anything.
It wasn’t a silly hobby, either.
It was years of honing my craft and staying committed to storytelling. It was late nights curled up in bed finishing paragraphs or editing dialogue. Fanfiction was my favorite thing to create, and the world of Thorndown was my favorite fictional place to be.
“Like what? Like her?” His eyes darkened as he glared past me. He couldn’t look at me. My heart was shattering over and over again.
For all he knew there were pages upon pages of words of sexual fantasies with him hidden inside the notebook. It could have been a manifesto of sorts on how I’d get together with him.
“It’s different, I promise,” I said quietly. “It’s storytelling, not anything about…”
“Us?” For a moment Evan stopped, his anger quieted.
Looking at my pleading eyes like he was asking if I was being truthful.
There was so little in his life that was authentic.
He’d been treated differently for years, everything was a masquerade.
I’d led him to believe he found something real. And I burned him.
“You told me I was nothing like her. You said you would never lump the two of us together—”
“That was before I saw this,” he cut me off.
He was still holding the notebook, the pages were wrinkling in his hands with how tight his grip was.
“You were so sympathetic about that story I shared. I can’t believe I thought you understood how I felt.
” I saw glassy streams of tears falling down his cheeks.
I wanted to reach out and swipe them away. I knew I couldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “When I said I wrote about you this week I didn’t mean in this context. I am being a hundred percent honest about that. I was planning on destroying all these notebooks and deleting my accounts on the fanfiction sites—”
“Fanfiction sites?” he barked. “How much have you—actually, nevermind. I don’t want to know,” he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. He was trying to force the tears back in.
He was no longer Evan McLeod, the guy from camp I was falling for.
He was turning back into Evan McLeod the untouchable celebrity.
The ghost of his touch was burning my skin.
He raked a hand through his hair in disbelief. “God, this is so fucked up. You’re—”
Fucked up.
He was going to tell me I was fucked up. Because I was.
My own eyes were welling with tears. Why couldn’t I be clearer in conveying my thoughts?
Why did I have to lie about this? Why did I let myself get tangled up with him in the first place?
Things were slipping through my fingers and I couldn’t grasp them.
I knew this would happen. I knew this would be our inevitable end.
“I trusted you. How am I supposed to know that you’re not going to write about everything we did together for everyone to read?
” his voice cracked as he swallowed back more tears.
What did he think when I slammed the notebook shut that first time?
Evan briefly sat down in the dining room chair but quickly stood up, not wanting to indicate any sort of permanence to his presence in my cabin.
The notebook had been tossed aside at this point.
I’d held onto fragile hope too tightly and it crushed in my grasp.
“I wouldn’t do that—”
“Dani, I don't know you. I didn’t think you knew me…but you definitely knew more than you let on.” He began to fumble for his still damp shirt and sweatshirt in an attempt to cover himself from my seemingly leering eyes.
“If you just read—”
“Why the fuck would I do that?” he said sharply.
Without realizing it, I’d backed myself up all the way against the kitchen counter. The cold brass handle of a drawer shocked my still bare legs. A salty burning sensation was hovering around my eyes, tears were forming that I couldn’t yet fully release.
He sighed and massaged his thumb and forefinger across his eyelids. “I’ve read more than enough of this shit for my lifetime. I told you about the worst experience of my life in confidence. And now I find out that you’re no different. Do you realize how messed up that is?”
I wouldn’t attempt to explain what the differences between her and I were. There was no convincing him now. I’d resign myself to this label he affixed to me.
“You’re right. I’m no better,” I said dejectedly. “And it’s fucked up I hid it from you, I know that. And I’m so, so sorry. Things moved so quickly and there’s no good way to bring something like this up.”
“So you chose to not bring it up at all,” he said flatly.
“I tried to allude to it. You didn’t seem to care about the fan thing and—”
“I would have cared if I knew how deep it all went.”
Evan started pacing around the kitchen. I pressed myself against the cabinets, wanting to make myself as small as possible. As I watched him anxiously step back and forth, working his jaw, I realized that I had truly fallen for him. I had so badly wanted this to work.
Evan had fallen too. Fallen so hard that this crash broke him into thousands of pieces.
“I made a horrible mistake,” he shook his head, as if he was in disbelief of himself. “This whole week—”
“I’m sorry.” I had no words left.
We had one perfect day that wasn’t derailed by my anxious heart.
One fucking day where I pretended this reality wasn’t looming over us.
I ruined it all so swiftly. I killed it so thoroughly that it couldn’t be resuscitated.
I didn’t know if he would have ever heard me out or let me explain all this.
I didn’t know if it was something we’d be able to laugh about a year from now. There wouldn’t ever be a year from now.
There was no coming back from this. Whatever precious thing we had built had toppled.
I had to be the one to kill this completely.
“You should go, this should be over, I’m not—” I choked on a sob. “I’m not a person you deserve to be around, I hurt you. I’m a fucked up mess, okay? I was stupid for thinking this could work.”
Evan didn’t move.
Our unfinished glasses of wine sat on the counter, if I had the strength to stand up and dump them out I would.
All I could do was stare at anything but him.
The cabin was a mess, the sort of mess that we could have woken up to and giggled about the following morning.
We’d joke about our carelessness, I’d get up to clean and he’d grab my waist and pull my back into bed.
Our future was real, a few hours kept it from being so.
“Seriously, go,” I cried. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry for writing this. For keeping it hidden from you. For even speaking to you this week. I’m sorry I came here at all. You deserved so much better.”
Evan nodded, his eyes cast on the ground. “I really, really liked you,” he said quietly as he turned to leave. His footsteps crunched on the gravel as he walked back to his cabin.
I stumbled behind him outside. Heaving, choking sobs washed over me, the word “wait” caught in my throat. He disappeared.
As I looked up, the clouds had started to clear and I stared up at the indifferent stars above me.