Chapter 19 #4
“I do.” It slipped out in a wretched choke.
“But I can’t. We shouldn’t.” Bitter sobs wrapped themselves around my throat.
My voice was strained and warbling. I wasn’t myself, but I also couldn’t stop myself.
“I spent years waiting for something to end as a means to get to the other side of it. Something better has always felt out of reach, and when I met you, when we were doing nothing with each other in the woods, I thought I could actually grab it for the first time. I wanted everything to stay still. But you and I both know ultimately this isn’t going to work.
” I stared at him, biting my lip to keep it from trembling.
Not here. Not right now. “We’re romanticizing a moment in time. ”
A breeze gave us both a chill. Like unspoken words it echoed through our beings. As a gust cut between us we shared a nanosecond of eye contact, the first we’d made since we were in the restaurant. Evan’s eyes grew glassy.
I bobbed on the balls of my feet with my arms wrapped around myself. Autumn chill was seeping in. September had been deceptively warm and I forgot what fall in New England could be like.
Was it timing? Was it the stark differences in our lives? Was it because I could never let him love me in the way he seemed like he wanted to?
He looked wounded by the statement. Like he’s Bambi and I’m the hunter who just killed his mom. I was bracing for tonight to be filled with snarling teeth and ferocious growls, instead I was met with doe eyes and a stifled whimper.
“That’s the problem,” he spoke softly. “I think we found each other at the exact right moment.”
I shook my head, not fighting the tears anymore. “I’m fucked up,” I whispered. “You said it. I believe it.”
He smiled stiffly. A half-joke-half-apology. “Do you seriously believe that?”
I didn’t know. I wanted to. There’s so much I wanted to believe in between us. Hope and doubt existed on the same plane. Every emotion was more complicated than I needed to be when it came to Evan and I.
One thing was still remarkably clear. As clear as the water in the lake. My baggage would drag us to the bottom of it.
Fanfiction was an anvil tied to my ankle. As much as I tried talking through it rationally, it would always be something that hung in the air. No matter what, I would always be classified as the fan to his celebrity, even if I consciously tried to strip all of that away.
“I don’t know, and because I don’t know, that’s enough of a reason,” I replied.
“Those were stupid words I said in fear and anger, they aren’t some sort of curse I placed on you.”
“Where do we go from here?” Evan looked as if he were asking the lamppost on the sidewalk beside him and not me.
“I don’t know,” I replied as I followed his gaze. “I don’t want to lose you entirely, though I am sure it’ll be relatively difficult to escape you. I want to be friends.”
“Friends,” he parroted back. A strange finality to the word. “Maybe in the next life we can meet each other at a grocery store, as two regular strangers. It might turn out far simpler for us.”
Evan’s eyes followed a car driving down the street. He was holding onto hope with a white knuckle grip as I was prying each of his fingers off. We were a curse on each other that neither of us could shake.
“It wouldn’t have been nearly as fun. Do you regret ever speaking to me when we first met at camp?” I asked.
“No,” he paused, “I don’t think I do. Do you?”
“Only because you ruined my favorite show for me.”
Evan rolled his eyes.
“I suppose I should head back to my hotel,” he said. His shoulders slung low, a heaviness to his stance. He fiddled with something in his pocket, the rustling of whatever it was blending in with the rustling leaves.
“Okay,” I said quietly.
Somehow this outcome was worse than a restraining order or lawsuit, those were predictable and while shitty, to be expected given the circumstances. I didn’t anticipate that Evan would come sauntering into my life again wanting to make amends and proclaiming that he wanted to be with me.
I couldn’t catapult myself into a reality where I’d be beside him on red carpets or padding around a lush Brooklyn apartment for an Architectural Digest interview.
Maybe Evan forgave me for being Cl0ud3dR0se, but many others wouldn’t.
I wasn’t strong enough to see the Reddit threads dissecting my every movement or the TikTok hot takes on my mere existence.
If I couldn’t keep my old digital identity secret from the subject of my fanfiction himself, there was no way I could hide it from the fandom.
“I’ll see you,” he said, fumbling with his maps app to try to get back to a hotel room in a city that he wouldn’t be able to come to again without thinking of me.
“Yeah, see you,” I stooped up my building stairs as Evan got into his car. He sped off in the wrong direction, probably so he could get out of my neighborhood as fast as possible.
I shut my front door and slid to the ground, my legs splayed out in front of me.
In the safety of my apartment, Thorndown didn’t exist anymore.
And Evan McLeod didn’t exist as more than a still-unsaved contact in my phone and a random Instagram follow.
My entire life was low-risk and comfortable and the only place avoiding risk had gotten me was in this exact spot, alone, on the wooden floor, in tears over Evan McLeod.
I fucked up.
And I hated myself for it.