by Jen Wilde
“So…” he says, clearing his throat.
I ignore him.
He sighs and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and looking down at the carpet. “Look. I’m sorry, okay? About, you know … But I swear, Lucy was just a one-time thing.”
I turn to look at him, narrowing my eyes. “I thought her name was Sarah.”
He squeezes his eyes shut. “Right. That’s what I meant. Sarah.”
I stand up, throwing him a disgusted look. “There was more than one?”
He just looks up at me and shrugs sheepishly.
I fold my arms across my chest. “Wow, you really are a dick.”
Before he has a chance to try to defend himself, Mandy walks back in. She looks at me, then at Reese, then back at me before mouthing, “Are you okay?”
I nod.
She gives me a weak smile. “The first interviewer is here. I didn’t get a chance to push it back, with the fan army out there converging on you. Are you both ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.” I turn to Reese. “But we need rules. We’re not together anymore, no matter what the studio or the fans say. You do not have permission to touch me, under any circumstances. If I smile at you, it’s not an invitation. I don’t care if the whole crowd at the panel tomorrow is chanting for us to kiss Wills-and-Kate style, it ain’t happening.”
I sit back down in the chair and start counting on my fingers. “No hand-holding. No hip-holding. No winking. No kiss-blowing. No bodily contact whatsoever. No pet names. And when the inevitable questions about our breakup or the chances of us getting back together come up, we just give the standard answer about that being our private business. If you’re not down with any of that, tell me now. I’d rather walk into the studio and quit the sequel right now than sacrifice my personal space or comfort over this.”
He raises his palms and nods. “Okay, okay! Jeez. I got it. No fun stuff.”
I glare at him again, wondering how I didn’t see this side of him while we were together. He was nothing but charming and sweet in the beginning, leaving flowers and notes in my trailer, running my lines with me for hours to ease my nerves, and treating my family like royalty when they visited the set. I still remember my sisters gushing over him, and my mother’s surprised smile when he gave her a box of her favorite chocolates. That’s how he got into my heart, by being kind to my family. And that’s why it hurt so much when it all ended. He didn’t just disrespect me; he disrespected the people I love most in the world. He hurt them, too.
My phone buzzes, and I see a reply:
Taylor: No way! Sorry, dude. Is he doing the interviews with you? It’s okay, you’ve got this. You’re Charlie Liang. He’s just a douche with a teeth-whitening addiction and an inflated ego. You can tell him I said that. ;)
I snort out a giggle. Taylor always knows how to make me laugh.
Mandy makes sure we are ready, then opens the door to let the first reporter and camera crew in.
CHAPTER 5
TAYLOR
QUEENOFFIRESTONE:
So … I didn’t get to meet Skyler. She had a flight to catch.
I’m devastated.
I was so close. There were only 53 people between me and her.
53!
FUCK. I don’t even know what to say.
I’m just gonna sit here and eat some fries and try to pretend I didn’t just miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet my hero.
Here’s a gif of Queen Firestone from Firestone Two, when Crystal died and she did that epic ugly cry.
That’s my feels right now, you guys.
That’s my feels.
#FuckFuckFuckShit #Heartbroken #I’mTotallyNotCryingRightNow
I hit POST and put my phone in my pocket, then commence Operation Pretend I’m Totally Not Dying on the Inside. “I hope Reese isn’t a douche to Charlie today.”
Jamie holds his camera up and snaps a photo of me, then rests his arms on the table and leans forward. “Me too. But you know him. Once a douche, always a douche.”
I tap my fingers rhythmically on my glass of Coke. “I know. But she was so looking forward to coming here. This was supposed to be her time to shine. It’s not fair that he shows up and now suddenly she’s got to accommodate him.”
“It’s more than unfair—it’s archaic.” Jamie shakes his head. “But she can handle it. She’s smart. Much smarter than Reese.”
The waitress walks over to our booth, carrying our food. “Veggie burger and fries?”
“That’s me,” I say, raising my hand like I’m in school. She places the plate in front of me.
“And double bacon cheeseburger with chili cheese fries.” She slides the plate in front of Jamie, who gazes at his meal lovingly.
“Sweet lord, have I missed American burgers,” he says, gently picking up his burger and admiring it up close.
I scrunch up my nose at it. “You’re going to have a heart attack at eighteen.”
He takes a huge bite and moans theatrically. Then he slowly raises his eyes to mine, deadly serious. “And it will be absolutely worth it.” Grease runs down his chin, and he licks at it with his tongue. “Besides, I’ve been eating fish and chips and shrimp on the barbie for the last four years. I deserve this.”
“First of all”—I cross my arms—“you know we don’t call it ‘shrimp.’ It’s prawns. Second, I have never eaten prawns, let alone put them on a barbecue. And last, we have plenty of good burgers in Australia!”
He raises his eyebrows and waves his burger at me, dripping mustard on the table. “It’s not a burger if you put pineapple and beet on it. Weirdos.”
Before I have a chance to defend my country’s culinary preferences, he places his burger onto the plate. His eyes trace the table, and then the tables around us. He wipes his meaty mouth on a napkin and looks at me. “You don’t have ketchup. I’ll go find some.”
He slides out of the booth and walks to the other end of the diner, on the hunt for tomato sauce.
A young couple walk in holding hands. The girl is in Queen Firestone cosplay, just like me. She slides into the booth in front of ours, and her boyfriend goes to the bathroom.
I look down at my fries, smiling to myself, feeling so lucky to be here at SupaCon, surrounded by people who are just as passionate about Queen Firestone as I am.
I contemplate eating a fry, but I decide to wait for Jamie. It’s not right to eat fries without sauce.
I look up to see him walking back toward the booth, a full ketchup bottle in one hand and his iPhone in the other.
He’s so distracted by something he’s reading on the screen that he stops at the booth in front of ours and scoots in across from the other Queen Firestone cosplayer.
The girl is so surprised, she just stares at him. My hands cover my mouth as I try not to laugh.
The boyfriend walks out of the bathroom then, and approaches the table with a perplexed look on his face.
He stands over Jamie with his hands on his hips and clears his throat.
Jamie finally drags his eyes away from his phone and looks up at the guy, confused.
“Can I help you?” the guy asks.
Jamie lowers an eyebrow. “No?” he says, like it’s a question, and I can’t hold back my laughter anymore.
He looks at the girl sitting across from him, and his head moves back in shock when he sees she isn’t me.
He jumps out of the booth so fast, anyone would think he had superspeed like the Flash. “Sorry, wrong booth. My bad!” He holds his hands up innocently before spinning around and sliding sheepishly into the correct booth.
I can’t stop laughing.
“Why didn’t you tell me I was in the wrong booth?”
“Couldn’t.” I gasp for air. “Laughing … too … much.”
He narrows his eyes at me, but his mouth twitches. “Still, you could have texted me. Tweeted me. Sent a smoke signal even.” He’s trying hard not to laugh. “That poor girl probably thinks I’m a creep.”
He smiles smugly and stretches his arms, resting them on the seat. “Well, you know, sometimes a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do to ensure a lady has all her condiments.”
“The lady is grateful.” I tip the bottle upside down and slam the bottom of it, letting the sauce fall over my fries.
He bows his head dutifully. “I am but your humble servant,” he says in a terrible British accent. “Do with me what you will.”
He raises his eyebrows suggestively and pairs it with a brazen grin. I feel my cheeks heat up and my heart somersault in my chest. My whole body tingles when he looks at me like that. I drop my eyes to my plate, hoping my face doesn’t look as pink as it feels. I hate when he does that. I never know if he’s flirting or kidding around, but either way it makes me feel foolish.
And hopeful.
And then foolish some more.
“You know,” he says quietly. I think he’s going to say something serious, so I lift my head and lock eyes with him. But something makes him change his mind, and he smiles again. “If you weren’t so hopelessly addicted to ketchup, I could have avoided that entire ordeal.”
I pick up a sauce-covered fry and hold it in front of my mouth. “If I’m a ketchup addict, then that makes you my enabler. And if you weren’t glued to your phone, you would have known you were sitting in the wrong booth. What were you looking at anyway?”
“Oh!” he says, pulling out his phone. “Skyler tweeted something interesting. I was going to tell you, but Boothgate distracted me.” He holds his phone over the table, and I look at the screen, reading the tweet.
@SkylerAtkins: Sorry SupaCon! Had to race to the airport:(But I’ll be back to have dinner with the winner of the Queen Firestone SupaFan Contest on Sunday!
My eyes pop out of my head. “What’s the Queen Firestone SupaFan Contest?”
He pulls his phone back and starts tapping at the screen. “That’s what I was just about to find out.”
I take a bite of my veggie burger while he googles. It’s the best burger I’ve ever tasted, but I decide not to give him the satisfaction of telling him that.
I watch him as he reads intently. His dark eyebrows pinch together. “It seems,” he says, his eyes flicking up to me, “that it’s a surprise Firestone event being held this weekend. They just announced it. It’s a contest to find Queen Firestone’s biggest fan.”
My heart leaps into my throat. “That’s me! I’m Queen Firestone’s biggest fan!”
“Well, there are two rounds. Round one is a cosplay contest. Round two is a trivia quiz based on the Firestone books and movies. The winner gets to have dinner with Skyler, be her date to the SupaCon After-Party, and go to the premiere of the next Queen Firestone movie.”
I lean back in the seat, my stomach doing queasy flips.
“Oh.” My voice is just a whisper. If it was a fanfic or a fan art contest, I’d rock it. But a public competition? In front of actual humans?
No chance.
He tucks his phone back into his pocket and watches me carefully. “I think you should enter.”
My jaw drops. “Me? No way. I can’t do that.” My glasses slide halfway down my nose, and I anxiously nudge them back up with my knuckle.
He leans forward, stretching his arms toward me over the table. “Why not? You know everything there is to know about Queen Firestone. I hear you quoting the books and movies every day. And your cosplay is kick-ass. You could win this, easy.”
I shake my head, eyes glued to my half-eaten burger. I’ve lost my appetite. “I can’t. What if it’s on a stage? All those people looking at me? What if I make a mistake? I wouldn’t even be able to breathe, let alone answer trivia questions.”
“But this is your chance to not just meet Skyler, but have dinner with her. Party with her. Go to a premiere with her!”
I imagine myself standing on a stage, under the bright lights, all those faces in the crowd. Competing with other people.
Even the idea of winning is scary. Dinner with my hero? What would I say? What if she didn’t like me?
No, this is all too much, too fast.
I shake my head again, this time more intensely.
“I’ll go with you,” he says, trying to convince me. “I’ll be right there through the whole contest, cheering you on.”
I feel him watching me, and the pressure is suffocating. My foot starts tapping the tiled floor, and I trace my index finger in a circle over the shaved left side of my head. Little movements that no one else in the diner will notice, but that bring me comfort.
“No,” I snap at him. “You know I can’t do stuff like that.”
“You came here,” he says. “To SupaCon. Even though it’s a big deal for you. Even with the crowds, the noise, and everything, you haven’t seemed overwhelmed at all.”
I breathe out a long sigh, knowing he doesn’t understand. “That’s different. I planned this. I prepared for this. I knew this was coming for weeks. And coming to SupaCon is something I’ve always wanted to do. Just because I made it here doesn’t mean it was easy. And just because I don’t seem overwhelmed doesn’t mean I’m not.”
I feel guilty for snapping at him, but I don’t know why he is pushing me like this.
My eyes burn with tears, and I stand up. “Can we just stop talking about this?” I sidestep out of the booth and head to the bathroom. “I’ll be back.”
Rogue tears trickle over my cheeks as I lock myself in a cubicle. I’ve hardly slept. Hardly eaten. Flown fourteen hours to a new country. I’m surrounded by people and noise and nonstop newness. I didn’t meet Skyler. Jamie thinks I’m an idiot for not wanting to enter the contest. Everything is out of place. I’m imploding, warping like steel under a searing flame. Tightening. Shrinking. Collapsing in on myself. Choking on tears and words I want to say but can’t.
Most people think of anxiety as panic attacks. That’s not entirely accurate.
I haven’t had a panic attack in years. I started to recognize the signs and learned what I needed to do to stop it from spiraling. I learned how to internalize it to avoid public embarrassment. Anxiety isn’t an attack that explodes out of me; it’s not a volcano that lies dormant until it’s triggered by an earth-shattering event. It’s a constant companion. Like a blowfly that gets into the house in the middle of summer, flying around and around. You can hear it buzzing, but you can’t see it, can’t capture it, can’t let it out. My anxiety is invisible to others, but often it’s the focal point of my mind. Everything that happens on a day-to-day basis is filtered through a lens colored by anxiety. That nervousness that makes your palms sweat and your heart race before you get up and make a speech in front of an audience?
That’s what I feel in a normal conversation at a dinner table.
Or just thinking about having a conversation at a dinner table.
The fear that other people feel on rare occasions, reserved only for when they jump out of a plane or hear a strange noise in the middle of the night—that’s my normal.
That’s what I feel when the phone rings.
When someone knocks on my door.
When I go outside.
When I’m alone.
When I’m in line at a store.
Everything feels like I’m on a stage, spotlight on me, all eyes on me, watching, judging. Like I’m one second away from total disaster. It’s invisible, it’s irrational, it’s never-ending. I could be standing there, smiling and chatting like everything is totally fine, while secretly wanting to scream and cry and run away. No one would ever know. In my mind, no one can hear me scream. I hide it because I know it’s not understood or acceptable—because I’m not understood or acceptable. So here I am, hiding it. Standing in a toilet stall, trying to remember how to
breathe.
I find my phone and headphones in my pocket and plug them in, turning up the Queen Firestone soundtrack and closing my eyes.
Breathe in. One … two … three … four … five. Breathe out.
I close the lid on the toilet and sit down, rubbing my palms over my gray-denim-clad thighs as I focus on the music.
Breathe in.
CHAPTER 6
CHARLIE
My stomach rumbles as the interviewer begins to ask his final questions, and I hope the microphone hovering above us didn’t catch it.
“So, Reese,” he asks, “your character goes through a lot in this film. He loses his parents, his siblings, his home, and eventually his whole country. How did you prepare for that kind of emotional journey in this role?”
Reese leans back in his chair, nodding slowly like he’s really considering his answer. “It was tough. Obviously I’ve never experienced anything so horrible, so I had to get into a really dark headspace.”
I listen as he goes on and on about his acting methods, catching glimpses of the guy I once thought I knew. Even after all this time, I can’t figure out where the performance ends and the real Reese begins. Maybe he doesn’t even know anymore; he spends so much time on show for the world.
He finishes his answer, and the reporter turns to me. “Charlie, doing a movie with such intense action sequences must have taken a toll on your body. How did you stay in shape?”
I see Mandy rolling her eyes at the question, and I try hard not to do the same. This is the third interviewer in a row who’s asked Reese an in-depth question about his job as an actor, and then asked me about my workout and diet regimen. I want to tell this guy to ask me something else, but I don’t want to look like a bitch or get in trouble with the studio, so I grin and bear it yet again.
By the time I leave, I’m starving.
Charlie: Survived interviews with The Douche. YES! Where r u?
I send the text to our group chat, but Jamie replies in a private message.
Jamie: @ diner across the street. I think Tay’s panicking. She’s been in the bathroom for 10 mins.