Epilogue
The Author
I shut my laptop after hitting submit on the last chapter of my magnum opus. It was the longest story I’d ever completed, and I was flying high.
It wasn’t just the story I’d spent the better part of the ALF season working on.
My life had changed while I was writing my fanfiction.
My boyfriend of eight months had cheated on me.
I’d caught him, literally, with his pants down in our bedroom.
I’d almost lost my job. I’d gotten a promotion, somehow.
I still didn’t know how that happened. I had to spend a few days in the hospital, and I’d totaled my car. It was a whole train wreck.
And people say the fanfiction curse isn’t real?
But my team had made the playoffs, and I’d gotten to watch a few games at Stinger Stadium.
That was the wildest part.
I’d been a fan of the Tucson Scorpions my entire life.
I’d even gone as legendary Scorpions quarterback, Ray Wilson, for Halloween when I was six years old.
There are pictures of me dressed up in my dad’s old Wilson jersey and a secondhand helmet.
I’d gone on field trips to Stinger Stadium, but I’d never been for a game.
Actually, no, that wasn’t the wildest part.
The wildest part was I’d met Liam Lowe. We’d met at the car dealership, and again at the bar. We talked and exchanged numbers. He texted me. It was like most of my wildest, fanboy dreams come true.
I may have fantasized about the rest of my dreams coming true the night he texted me.
But this wasn’t one of my stories.
This was the real world. In the real world, ALF quarterbacks didn’t look starry eyed at paralegals.
Not even the ones who somehow managed to finesse their way into a promotion when they thought they were on the edge of being fired.
In the real world, ALF quarterbacks fell in love with models and actors and other athletes. I was none of those things.
I sighed and looked around my messy apartment. I needed to clean it. I needed to do my laundry.
There were so many things that I needed to do, things that had fallen by the wayside because I’d been too focused on work and writing my silly little stories. I stretched and started toward the dirty clothes laying around my bedroom floor.
I had picked up a few shirts when I heard my phone buzz across the room and saw it light up out of the corner of my eyes.
Liam
Are you busy right now?
My eyes widened as I read the words on the text notification. My heart pounded in my chest, and I felt blood rush in my ears. I drew in a deep breath, and I opened the message.
I read it again, and then I read it another time to make sure that this was real. Liam Lowe was texting to ask if I was busy right now. The Liam Lowe.
My fingers shook as I wrote my reply:
No. Why?
I looked at it and sighed. I could be so eloquent when I was writing fiction, but the moment it came to reality, that was what came out? I hit the backspace and tried again. After three failed attempts, I typed out the same message again and hit send before I could quadruple guess myself.
I stared at my phone. It was like that old saying: a watched pot never boils. Except in this case, a watched text never replies. I felt like I was watching it for ages, waiting for the tell-tale dots that said he was typing or even the little indicator that said he’d read it.
Nothing came.
Because this was the real world.
He must have meant to text someone else. Maybe that message was meant for Jonesy. That made a lot more sense than Liam Lowe texting me in the off-season. Or at all.
Liam
Do you want to get coffee?
There had been nothing to indicate he was typing. Nothing to show he’d gotten my text. It was just there, like magic. I put my phone down and pinched my arm. It hurt. I wasn’t dreaming. I pinched the same spot, and I watched as the skin turned red.
This was the real world.
And of course, I typed:
Yes.
Maybe this wouldn’t turn out like one of my stories, but for the first time since I caught my ex-boyfriend with his dick in someone else’s mouth months ago, I was feeling that small flutter of hope for something that wasn’t related to the Scorpions’ winning streak.
The End (For Real This Time)