Chapter 18
eighteen
. . .
Saturday, Late August
I slid the laptop across the table to Andrea after she finished her croissant. The crumbs hadn’t even been cleared from the table yet.
“I finished it,” I said sheepishly. The pastries were nothing more than a bribe to get her here, and give me time to muster up the courage to let her read my manuscript.
She squealed in delight, “please tell me you’re going to let me read it. I have nothing on the calendar today, I’ll clear my schedule—”
“Before you get too excited, it’s not the fic. It’s not even remotely related to Thorndown or any existing intellectual property. I couldn’t make it work when it was so closely tied to the original story. And it didn’t feel right considering…”
She lifted a pink manicured hand up. “Let me read it before you spiral.”
Her eyes scanned across the screen as I watched along anxiously. Every pause, every scroll was another hit of stress.
It could be complete shit. It probably was.
I wrote the first draft in a two week long fever dream, using every chance I could to get words down.
I’d type obsessively in my notes app on the train or on the elevator at work.
I shouted across the bathroom to Siri while I was in the shower and had the perfect line pop into my head.
I edited during my lunch breaks and every night until my eyes glazed over.
I’d been running on maybe five hours of sleep a night for the last month.
I rested my elbows on the table, seeking any sort of micro reaction from Andrea.
She played with a strand of her long blonde hair as she read.
As her manicured fingers twisted around the strand I remembered how wonderful it felt to have Evan’s hands tangled in my hair.
How he’d reach for a dark brown curl at every chance he could.
My own finger found itself wrapped around my hair, seeking the ghost of his touch while trying to push the thought of him away.
A few minutes later she looked up at me, her brows furrowed. “Can you not stare at me? I sense you breathing over me and I can’t actually enjoy a single word.”
I stood up from my seat and sighed, dejected. I’d have a lot of time to kill. “I’m going to go stress clean my entire kitchen and make…something. Call me over when you want to tell me it sucks.”
She rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t suck. At least not yet.”
I began cleaning. I found stains in the grout of my kitchen backsplash that were probably from the Bush administration. The senior one. I wiped down corners that had probably never seen water, let alone the cocktail of chemicals I was scouring it with.
Once the kitchen was sparkling, I decided to dirty it again to kill more time.
I popped my head out, “do you want lunch? I’ll make us something.”
Andrea was engrossed in the story, she didn’t look up at me. This was a good sign, or she was too ashamed to look at me because it was that terrible. “Sure, sure, whatever you want.”
I knew exactly what I wanted to make. The small bag of masa harina I had in my kitchen was on the verge of expiration, and I had a pitiful onion and a can of beans. I’d make a pathetic excuse for pupusas.
“I’ll tell Caroline to come by when she’s done teaching,” I said as I assessed the ingredients.
Her ears perked up and she grinned at the mention of her fiancée. “Sounds perfect.” She went right back to reading.
I hacked together some quick refried beans that were almost as good as authentic ones, and started rolling the dough out. Cooking served as a great distraction from the mortifying reality of someone consuming your art.
Andrea ate with one hand while continuing to scroll.
The only words she said were, “damn that’s good” after she took her first bite.
I wasn’t sure at first if she meant the food or the writing.
It was only when she happily hummed after her second bite it was confirmed to be the food.
I sat across from her, trying to focus on my own meal and not her reactions.
She was painfully expressive, gasping at times from either shock or fear or delight—I couldn’t tell.
I kept wondering what part she was reading. What lines elicited these reactions? I had gotten plenty of feedback on my writing before, but it was contained to the comment section of a fic. I’d never seen it in real time like this.
Caroline came over sometime mid-afternoon while I was wrapping up cleaning the kitchen a second time. Aside from a quick kiss, Andrea hardly acknowledged her.
“That’s a first,” Caroline shrugged when she came into the kitchen. “What spell do you have her under?”
“Apparently the book doesn’t suck as much as I thought it would.”
She turned excitedly to the laptop and looked back at me, flashing the dimples in her cheeks from an excited grin. “You finished it? Even after the whole…Evan thing?”
“It’s incredibly far removed from Evan.” A half truth. He haunted the narrative in a sense. Pieces of him were sprinkled into one of the protagonists. His easygoing nature, the way he carried himself, but he was little more than a phantom in this story.
“I’m proud of you, seriously,” she replied.
I made popcorn for Caroline and I, and we watched a romcom we’d both seen a million times as Andrea continued reading. We recited lines and gave commentary as we watched, yelling at the male protagonist for every poor decision he made.
As the credits rolled, my phone buzzed on the coffee table.
I glanced over at the glowing screen. The only two people I regularly talked to were here with me.
Andrea was still engrossed in my manuscript, and Caroline was lounging on the couch scrolling through videos on her phone.
We were collectively doing nothing together.
I swiped the phone off the table to see an Instagram notification declaring “@eomc195 has followed you.”
I dismissed it as another spam account. They seemed to appear in bursts with their fake usernames that were a random mix of letters and numbers, sliding into DMs proposing to be my sugar daddy or selling me cryptocurrency. But I was bored. And curious. I clicked on the profile.
It was a private account with a few hundred followers, no bio, and a photo that was nothing more than a silhouette of a person backdropped by a city skyline.
My eyes tracked to the bottom of my screen, where my DMs glowed with a message request. Out of sheer curiosity I opened it, expecting to find the same spam message I’d received countless times before.
@eomc195
Hey.
It’s Evan.
I dropped my phone onto the couch and slid away from it like the thing was made of hazardous waste.
I nervously glanced over at Caroline, she was focused on some influencer’s obscene designer bag haul, her dark brows furrowing at it.
My heart rate skyrocketed, and I got up and locked myself in the bathroom.
I perched on my toilet seat, unable to close my eyes because my brain kept conjuring up images of Evan’s face, of his body, of that fucking message.
It wasn’t Evan. Of course it wasn’t actually Evan. Maybe it was another Evan I had met at some point and not the Evan McLeod I’d spent a week with and then spent better part of the last two and a half months getting over.
I flushed the toilet and turned on the faucet to pretend to wash my hands so Andrea and Caroline wouldn’t question anything. I didn’t know what possessed me to make me sneak around about this. It all still felt surreal. Evan was an anecdote, not a real person that could reach out.
If it was Evan at all.
And if it was Evan, how on earth did he find me? I’d unfollowed him, every Thorndown official account, every costar, every meme and fan account. There had to be thousands of Dani Grants in the world, did he follow and DM every single one?
I picked the phone up and sent a reply with shaky hands.
@dani_kg
…McLeod?
@eomc195
Yes, lol.
Secret account.
…how many Evans do you know?
He saw the message immediately. Like he was waiting for it. Whatever joke this person was playing on me was especially cruel.
@eomc195
View photo
I opened the photo to see Evan softly smiling with his mouth closed, giving a thumbs up.
It was a jumpscare of the worst degree. My heart fluttered a bit, betraying my sound mind.
This was a new glimpse of him, reserved only for me.
I had to smack some sense into myself. I studied the photo.
He looked like he was sitting on a couch in his apartment.
It was amusing how he sent proof of life without me even asking. He looked tired, and weirdly…sad?
Of course it could still be fake. That was still the most likely of options.
I took a screenshot and ran it through reverse image search.
No results found. I examined it for all the markers of AI and came up empty.
He had the correct number of fingers and I could clearly read the label on the box of crackers in the background.
If it was a fake account it was certainly a good one.
When I swiped back to Instagram there was another message.
@eomc195
You told me to reach out if I needed a tour guide in Boston.
@dani_kg
that was before you found out I was fucked up.
Seen 5:20 p.m.
The text bubbles popped up and disappeared a few times. I added an “lol” to soften my knee jerk message.
@eomc195
You’re not fucked up.
@dani_kg
It’s okay if I am.
Seen 5:22 p.m.
“Where should we get dinner from?”
I dropped my phone from the shock, it landed beside me on the chair with a thunk.
“What?” I asked.
“Dinner?” Caroline confirmed. “I think Andrea is almost done, and it’s gonna be a long wait to order from anywhere…”
Right right. The present. My two best friends in my apartment. Andrea reading my manuscript. Those three dots of text bubble were playing in my head.
Why did he even reach out? What was his endgame here? Was he trying to gather proof for a court case? Could you even sue someone for writing fanfiction?
“Dani?”