Chapter 22 #2
I stood up and carried my phone and the empty bowl into the kitchen.
I couldn’t sit down, I had to move. The confirmation that he’d chosen that outfit, hired someone to design that bolo tie, and made sure I’d see it were getting to be too much.
And it was happening all for, what, proof that he didn’t resent me for something that happened eight months ago?
Indication that he wanted something more?
I dropped the bowl in the sink and paced around. “I don’t understand.”
Evan watched as my background changed from my kitchen ceiling, to my living room ceiling, to my entryway ceiling as I did loops around my apartment.
“The comparisons I’d made between you and that other woman were massively incorrect, I couldn’t figure out how to undo it.
I was going to tell you in September, but it didn’t make sense.
It’s why, though, I knew your book would get picked up.
And why I know it’s going to be a best seller.
I know it’s too little, too late, but you deserve to know all of this. ”
I pressed my thumb and forefinger to my forehead, grasping at something that felt tangible. “So the finale episode…”
“Definitely pulled some inspiration from your writing. Not totally identical. There’s one major change, but it’s a massive spoiler. One that you might take a particular interest in.”
The streaming app reloaded on my TV and it popped up with one new episode to watch. There it was, season ten, episode ten, “Ice on the Turret.”
“We should watch it,” I said. “Rip the bandaid off.”
I settled back on the couch and pressed the play button.
The episode started with the signature Thorndown theme, the same one that Evan whistled to himself incessantly last summer.
Then the first shot opened with Sir Erwyn standing in front of a pitch black castle in the middle of a thunderstorm, the shot was almost exactly what I’d imagined when I wrote it.
How quickly did Evan pick up on what was poached from my writing when he first read the script?
The episode progressed. My ideas were there, in pieces broken up and rearranged like a stained glass window. It toed the line between blatant ripoff and something else. Sir Erwyn’s haunted dreams were still there, his ghostly visitors different than I’d described.
I had never finished the story. After breaking out of his prison cell he was on a hunt for the supposed stolen dragons. He’d battled orcs and guards, he sought out his love, but I never gave him a happy ending.
The showwriters weren’t going to either. I could sense it deep in my gut. There were two minutes left in the episode, and Sir Erwyn was mid-battle with King Bespem. Erwyn was weakened from days starving in captivity and left having to fight his way to the king.
He was battered and bloodied, his hands braced on his knees, body heaving up and down with every breath.
The king hoisted his sword into the air, then swung it downwards in a swift motion.
“No,” I gasped, unable to stop myself.
The blade sliced cleanly through Sir Erwyn’s neck, and a helmet clattered to the ground.
Something thick and heavy settled into my throat. Sir Erwyn was dead.
The final scene was a shot of his lifeless head on the stone floor.
Evan didn’t say anything. I’d forgotten he was there, and seeing his very much alive face when I finally looked away from my TV screen sent a chill down my spine. His pixelated visage blurred. Everything was getting blurry, actually.
A hot tear trailed down my cheek. I had started crying over the death of a fictional character.
In front of the person who played him. Tragedy served as an incredible plot device, and it wasn’t the first time a major character had died off in the series.
It was the first time I actually felt something because of it.
“Oh, this is not how I thought it would go,” Evan murmured on the other end of the line. “Dani, had I known—“
I felt deranged. Two opposing human emotions were at war in my heart.
Sir Erwyn’s death was the final nail in the coffin for the era of my life that had been enmeshed in Thorndown, but it felt like a blank page for Evan and I.
The perpetual elephant in the room had been shrunken down into something that could fit in the palm of my hand.
“You finally got what you wanted,” I burbled out a laugh through the tears. “You’re free of Thorndown for good.”
“Not for good, there’s a few flashback scenes I have to film and—”
“Evan, I’m happy for you, seriously.”
He studied me, and I swiped a stray tear off my cheek. His brows lowered and a subtle sadness flashed across his features, like he wanted to be there to wipe it away. “You’re crying, and those don’t seem like happy tears.”
I rubbed my cheek with the heel of my palm, “they are, I swear. Do you know what this means? We don’t have to talk about the show or my fanfiction anymore.”
“So, what do we do now then?”
This kind of freedom came with a few dozen question marks attached.
Sword of Thorndown—and consequently, everything I’d written about it—were the reason we were here.
The reason for my book. The reason he reached out again.
The reason I was crying on my couch while Evan was on a separate couch somewhere in the same city. “I don’t know.”
Evan cleared his throat. “Would you be open to trying the dinner thing again?”