I look into his eyes and whisper, “Thank you.” He nods and I wonder if he felt what I felt.
Magic.
As if to punctuate it, he gives me another kiss, this time on the cheek, and I have to bite my lip to keep from grinning as we turn out to face the audience and wave as the crowd goes absolutely bananas. I look over at Claire, and she’s just staring at us, mouth literally hanging open. I wave her over, and she joins me on my other side like she’s in a daze and it makes me laugh.
It feels like the three of us, arm in arm, could do anything.
I HAVE SO much love in my heart for Forest Reed right now. That is, I would if I still had a heart, which I don’t, because my insides have completely liquefied and are pooled at my feet. I don’t even know how I’m still standing—it’s possible that I fainted and hit my head and this whole panel has been one long fantasy dreamed up by my subconscious.
But on the off chance this is real, I am going to die remembering this moment. I am going to watch the YouTube videos of those thirty seconds every single day until I am old and withered. I will make my children and grandchildren watch them. And they won’t be impressed because in the future everyone will be gay, but I’ll tell them of a time when it was different, when kissing another guy onstage at Comic-Con meant laying your job on the line, and put tears in the eyes of every queer and maybe-queer person in an entire enormous auditorium. When a gesture like that could make a difference.
This whole time, I thought the only person who had any influence on this issue was Jamie Davies. And it’s true, he’s the only one who can make it real on the show. But you know what else is nice? Being seen.
Today Forest finally sees us. Today we ship it together.
The panel goes on a little longer as Forest and Rico answer as many questions as they can get to before their time is up and the con organizers have to actually come onstage (to no small amount of booing) in order to tell us to stop. Jamie never returns, and Forest doesn’t get any more questions about Red Zone—maybe the gamers left, or maybe they just read the room and realized this was not their moment. I’d like to think they were quietly moved by what happened, and they all went on their phones and added Demon Heart to their Netflix queues.
I keep catching Tess’s eye in the audience. She is honestly glowing, and she’s smiling this smile that’s a mixture of pride and wonder, and she is so cute I want a poster of the expression she’s making to hang over my bed in my bedroom because I never want to stop looking at it.
When the time is finally up, I end the panel, and there’s a standing ovation that makes my heart swell because I couldn’t be prouder of Forest and Rico. They wave and wave and wave and finally make their way off the stage, and instead of following them, I jump right down into the crowd, pushing my way through to get to her.
Tess pulls me into her arms immediately and I’m kissing her and I don’t care that there are a thousand people watching us and pushing past us and clapping for us, I am just so happy. And then there’s a flash and I pull away and Mom just took a freaking picture of us.
“Mom!”
“What, honey bunny, you looked so cute!” She’s standing next to my dad, who is clutching Mom’s purse to his chest and looking like his heart might explode. What a sap.
“Do not post that anywhere,” I say.
“Hi, Tess!” Mom says, ignoring me.
“Hi, Trudi; hi, Claire’s dad,” Tess says.
Dad looks like he’s too choked up to answer, so he just lets go of Mom’s purse with one hand and reaches over to shake her hand.
“His name is Chuck,” I say.
“We’re so proud of you,” Mom says, bringing the phone back up to take another picture as people bump past us, streaming up the aisle toward the exits.
“Mom, stop!”
So she lowers the phone and looks at me with these big eyes. And Tess goes, “Awww,” because Mom’s antics still work on her.
“Good job, heart-of-lightness!” a random audience member says as she passes. I wave at her and smile, then look back at Mom.
“Okay, fine, you can take one more, but that’s it.”
I put my arm around Tess’s shoulders and—flash—Mom takes another one.
“Claire!” someone hollers. I turn to see Caty waving at me from the front of the auditorium.
“Sorry, I’ll be right back,” I say, leaving Tess and my parents at the mercy of each other.
Caty gives me a big hug. “Oh my god, girl, that was like, historic! And you were amazing!”
“Hey! Was it okay?”
“Okay? That was epic! As long as I work in social, I’ll never see anything else like that. The numbers are currently spiking through the roof. Not that you care about the numbers right now,” she says, grinning at me. “What a way to go out with a bang.”
“Go out?” I ask.
“Oh, yeah, next week Paula’s moving me over to Time Swipers. Says it would be a shame not to spread my talents around.” She shrugs. “I met with the team last week, there’s some good stuff coming up in season two. You watch it?” I shake my head. “You should check it out. They have a femslash ship people seem to like….”
“Canon?” I ask.
“Not yet.” She winks at me, then lowers her voice. “Can’t say anything on the record, but you know I wouldn’t steer you astray. This one’s no bait.”
“I was just thinking I should be getting into more femslash….”
She laughs. “I’ll be honest, a lot of stuff came into focus for me when I started reading lady fic,” she says, and holds my look. Caty reads fic? “Hey, I gotta get going, but it’s good to see you. Keep in touch! You have my number. And give Forest a big wet one for me if you see him before I do. He was a star today. Really, iconic.”
“I will.”
I wave good-bye to her, then I look back at my parents. My dad is showing Tess something in his notebook—probably a poem he wrote about something that happened today. And Mom’s taking pictures of them. It gives me these gross warm and gooey feelings. Tess catches my eye and smiles, and I head over to join them. What a day. What a freaking day.
“OKAY, I’M DONE for a year,” I say, flopping backward onto a couch in one of the endless greenrooms I find myself in these days and letting my arm cover my eyes. After our big splash at San Diego, Paula asked Rico and me if we would mind hitting a series of conventions before the new season of Demon Heart airs. This is our last one for a while and Rico flies out in the morning to North Carolina to get back to shooting season two.
Yes, Demon Heart got a second season. Yes, Jamie is still showrunning it. Yes, I’m still dead. No, SmokeHeart is not canon. That’s how Hollywood works. It’s not fair, it’s not equal, it’s not representative. At least not yet. But hopefully we made a difference. There were a couple hundred people who talked to me today who said we did. So, maybe.
“Put your hands out,” Rico says, standing over me. I pull my arm off my eyes and squint up at him, and he’s holding a Costco-size bottle of hand sanitizer. I sigh and he pumps an excessive amount into my hands.
“Whoa, dude, relax.”
“Trust me on this, bud. You just shook hands with two hundred and fifty people. Guaranteed, you have like six different strains of crud growing on your digits right now.”
I rub the sanitizer into my hands until it starts to evaporate. “I don’t need to see another fan for the rest of my life,” I say. Rico gives me a look and I crack. He knows I don’t mean it. “I know, I know. It’s amazing, leave me alone.” Seeing an endless stream of people looking you in the eye, voices cracking, hands shaking, telling you what you mean to them—it’s wild and unbelievable and it fills you up, but it also sometimes overfills you. Afterward, I’m always happy I did it, but I’m also exhausted. Taking in other people’s joy and fear in a concentrated period like we do during signings and meet-and-greets and photo ops, I always end up with an emotional hangover. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
“How can you
get tired of it?” Rico says. “The endless love and devotion, the repeated cries of ‘Kiss, kiss!’” Rico cracks up. I roll my eyes.
They always want us to kiss again. We are never going to kiss again. (Unless the Demon Heart cameras are rolling, in which case, sure. But I’m not holding my breath.)
“C’mon, what do you need,” Rico says. “You want a burger? Corn dog?”
“Something green,” I say to him, and Rico nods and goes off in search of someone who can bring us some grub. This is our dynamic after these things, now. I lie flat on my back until the energy comes back to me, and Rico, who is always hyped up and ready to rock-and-roll after signings, goes off in search of something for us to eat. By the time he’s back, I usually feel human again. It works.
I pull up my phone and shoot a quick text to Caty. Signing over. Dead. Then I use the emoji with Xs for eyes. She writes back right away, Purell immediately, you will NOT get me sick with your weird mutant fangirl diseases. She follows it up with, Meet you at the bar at 9. Bring your abs.
I smile to myself and flop my arm back over my eyes. Caty and I have been seeing each other a little bit. She’s one of the few people I know who doesn’t constantly poke fun at me for making out with a dude at Comic-Con. She understands what it meant. Plus, now that she’s not bossing me around, telling me what to tweet, she’s actually really chill.
Maybe if Claire were here she’d be pressing me to figure out what the hell I was feeling during that kiss with Rico, but she’s not here and I’m not worried too much about it. Maybe someday I’ll figure it all out, but for right now, I’m just gonna live my life, and maybe get a drink with the cute girl with the out-of-control fashion sense once in a while.
“Is that a Forest Reed under there?” a voice says. Our greenroom at this con is in this big open lounge-y area that anyone with a VIP pass can wander into. Cautiously, I remove my arm from my face.
“Hey there. Zach.” It’s Zach Sanchez-Anderson, the Time Swipers showrunner. I only met him the one time, standing in the hallway back in Boise, with Jamie. I’m surprised he remembers me.
“Hi,” I say, and sit up to shake his hand.
“Didn’t mean to interrupt your nap,” he says, and takes a step back like he could give me my space if I wanted him to.
“No, no, it’s fine. Just, talking to fans, it kind of takes it out of me sometimes,” I say. And then quickly add, “In a good way.”
“Been there,” he says, and I remember that this guy’s writing resume goes back to Star Command… which means he knows Rico.
“Yeah, I bet you do.”
“Hey, look… I know how fraught the conversation between talent and fans can be sometimes. And I know nobody’s perfect. But I just wanted to say, I think you’re doing a great job out there. You really know how to connect with people.”
“Thank you,” I say genuinely. Rico tells me this shit all the time, but it means something different coming from a stranger, and someone who really knows this world.
“And, hey, by the way, we have a guest arc on Time Swipers coming up that I think you would be perfect for. Guaranteed eight episodes, maybe more if the audience responds. You interested? I mean, I’m sure your schedule is bananas right now.”
“It’s… actually, it’s not,” I say. My agent is laser-focused on getting Red Zone to come back to me, but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen. They got one whiff of my performance in San Diego and hightailed it.
I squint at him. “Is this Caty’s idea?”
“Who, Caty Goodstein? No, I just love your vibe.”
Good, I’d hate to think I got this job because my maybe-future-kind-of-girlfriend pulled strings for me.
“I’ve been watching you for a while, actually. I thought you were doing great work on Demon Heart, really nuanced stuff. It’s a shame they let you slip away,” he continues.
Seriously? “I’m definitely interested,” I tell him.
“Lucky us! We’ll be in touch, then,” Zach says, and shoots me a finger gun. I wave as he moves off. I just got a new gig. Maybe my career isn’t in the gutter after all. My god, I need a new agent. Why am I having to get all my jobs myself? I want a cookie.
I climb to my feet and wander over to the snack table in search of sugar and a sparkling water. As I reach for a chocolate chip cookie, my hand brushes someone else’s.
“Sorry,” he says, and my stomach zips because I know that voice. Carefully, slowly, I raise my eyes to confirm that yes, indeed, I am standing at a snack table next to Jasper Graves.
Suddenly all the air is gone from my lungs, my eyesight is fuzzy, my forehead starts to sweat. But I can’t not say something.
“Cookies, huh?” I say stupidly. Jasper looks at me.
Jack Tension is looking at me.
“Love ’em,” he says.
I can’t quite make direct eye contact. I keep trying, but… I take a deep breath. Just say it, Reed. “Mr. Graves? Sir? I love your work, it means a lot to me, it’s basically what got me into acting.”
He turns to me, then. Looks me over. “Oh yeah?”
“Yup.” Then I don’t have anything else to say, so I go, “I don’t want to bother you, I just wanted to say that.”
Jasper squints at me, and I am frozen under his gaze. After a moment, he leans in, furrows his brow, and says, “You want to take a photo?” Not short, or rude, but like he actually wants to take a photo with little old me. And obviously little old me wants a photo, are you fucking kidding me?
When Rico arrives with our lunches, he sees me and Jasper Graves, posing for a selfie, and he cracks up laughing. “You’re such a fanboy, dude.”
It’s true, I am.
MY MOM KEEPS coming in with trays of snacks, even though Tess and I are seriously no longer hungry.
“Mom, please stop,” I say after she hands us a tray of cashew cheese kale chips and a bowl of masala-spiced roasted chickpeas. More internet recipes.
“I just want to make sure you ladies are taken care of,” she says.
“Thank you, Trudi,” Tess says like the suck-up she is, and I elbow her under the blanket we’re sharing on the living room couch.
When Mom disappears again, I shoot Tess a look. “Stop encouraging her.”
“Oh, she just wants to be supportive,” Tess says, grabbing a handful of chickpeas. “I think it’s nice.”
She settles back into me, and I hit RESUME on Netflix. I pulled the TV out of the closet when she arrived and we haven’t put it away since. We’re shotgunning season one of Time Swipers so we’ll be all caught up before the premiere next week. The show, it turns out, is really fun and action-packed, and yes, there is a juicy interracial femslash ship that we have been absolutely squealing over.
Tess has been here visiting me for four days and we’ve barely left the couch. Not that there’s anything to see in Pine Bluff anyway, but it’s been nice to spend this time talking and getting to know each other better and—when we’re absolutely certain Mom and Dad are out of the house—making out like crazy.
But Tess has to leave tomorrow to get back home before school starts, and I don’t know what’s going to happen next year, except that that I’ll have Skype open almost constantly so we can video chat. And Tess keeps telling me I should apply to UCLA with her, and every time she says that, I can hear Caty’s words about getting me an internship in LA ringing in my ears. But I haven’t decided where to go to college. I haven’t even decided whether to watch season two of Demon Heart.
My phone buzzes with a text, and I almost don’t want to move in order to look at it because the way I’m situated across Tess’s side right now is just too luxuriously comfortable to get up, but I do.
When I open the text I bust up laughing and hand the phone to Tess. It’s from Forest, and it’s a selfie of him with Jasper Graves. Forest looks so glow-y and delighted that I can’t look away from his big, dumb face. He finally met Jasper Graves. I hope it was everything he dreamed it would be.
His text
reads: EVEN MORE HANDSOME IN REAL LIFE.
I fall back into Tess, giggling.
“I kind of ship it,” she says.
“Oh my god, I can’t ship him with anyone anymore. He’s too real now.”
“Well, he’s not texting me selfies, so I’m gonna go ahead and ship it.”
I smile at the thought of Forest and Jasper finding a secret love together, but I know it’s not real. It’s just not Forest.
She nudges me. “You know what time it is.”
I do. We haven’t talked about it. I still don’t know how to feel about it.
“It’s almost nine,” I say.
“Are we going to watch?”
I burrow my face into her shoulder. “I don’t know,” I mumble into her. “Do you want to?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “On the one hand, I’m mad at Jamie for being a jerk, and I don’t think I’ll like the show without Smokey. But on the other hand…”
“I want to know where they’re gonna go from here,” I say. I’ve had these same arguments with myself for weeks now.
“What’s gonna happen to Heart?”
“Will he be emotionally destroyed after Smokey’s death? Will he cry?”
“God, I hope he cries.” She tips her head back against the couch and stares at the ceiling. I hope so, too. That’s such good fic material.
“If we don’t watch,” I say slowly, “how will we know what the fanfic is talking about?”
Tess looks at me seriously. “That is a good point.”
“Gotta eat your broccoli before you can have dessert.”
“So true.”
I look at the Demon Heart print hanging over the TV. It’s the hand-screened one Ms. Greenhill gave me when we were on the road. Mom framed it and hung it up, and it looks perfect there, and not just because it took the place of one of my mom’s nude portraits. Looking at it reminds me of all the feelings I once had for this show, and all the feelings I might still have for it.
It’s 8:59. Decision time. I look at Tess. She smiles. Who am I kidding? I need to know.
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