by S. K Munt
‘Oh crap!’ Leigh stuffed the iPad back into her handbag and continued to walk along the footpath, lowering her head to her feet and slipping off one of her mittens so that she could feel around for the wet wipes she was never without. Leigh Dallas-Hone prided herself on looking as put together as possible at even the worst of times, only she was the girl who got lipstick on her teeth, runs in her stockings, coffee drips on her blouses and almost always had smeared eye-liner or a tag showing regardless of how hard she tried to look svelte. Wet wipes were a mandatory handbag item, as were tiny scissors, a notepad and pen, lens cleanser towelettes and spearmint gum. She pulled her travel wallet out of the way, plucked out a wipe from its crushed packet and gently swiped at her skin, hoping to remove some of the lint without taking her make-up off with it, and then dug through her bag for a second time, looking for her sunglasses, tucking her reading Tiffany’s back into their blue case. Leigh hated sunglasses- the polarised sort she’d bought made it almost impossible to read her iPad, but she needed them desperately for the photo, or people would be more excited to see how much of her smoky eyes had ended up on her now sooty cheeks, than they would be to read the blog entry she planned on writing the second she got back to her gorgeous, budget-blowing hotel room.
Good thing that I wasn’t actually hoping to bump into a true-to-life Ryan the moment I stepped up to the railing, like Kylie in the book, because fictional Ryan would run screaming if his soul mate had looked like this!
Once her sunnies were in place, Leigh took out her iPad again, smiling as she imagined what she’d write about the purple-haired dragon with the Kleenex. And then, when she realised that the song that the musician was playing was ‘Livin’ Doll’- one of the songs referenced in The Hardest Fall, (which was filled with references to jukebox hits) -her eyes welled again.
Could this be more perfect? Really? I can just pretend that the ugly crying and hair thing never happened, can’t I? I don’t want to have to play up the funny part of this experience- they need to get just how amazing it feels to be in this place! How it makes even the most ball-busting bachelorettes like me, long for a love that the earth will stop spinning for!
And Leigh had never felt more at harmony with the universe than she did right then. She could imagine that the busker singing in that gravelly voice was THE Ryan Weaver, that his eyes were as neon blue as a lit sign, that he would prowl like a panther in leather jeans, that he’d look up and see her and start walking towards her for no reason, but because the universe had dragged them together like magnets…
Only it would be me that he’s drawn to- me that he’d write songs for, me that he’d die for, me he’d leave his organs, and his wishes for happiness with his best friend for… only unlike Kylie, I wouldn’t accept! I wouldn’t go on to live- I’d throw myself over the railing and join him! I think. Hmm… Justin was sort of dreamy too...
Leigh’s heart flopped about like a fish out of water, and she giggled at her maudlin fantasies. The Hardest Fall was a wonderful novel because of one simple fact; no man on the face of the planet could compare to the hero that Kathryn Praser had penned when she’d written Ryan Weaver. Men like that didn’t exist and even if they did, they went for enchantresses like Kylie: raven-haired beauties who didn’t need to carry wet wipes- not economically-challenged, overgrown and glasses-wearing book geeks who were too loud to work in libraries, too dumb to write books of their own, and too unfocused to care about their own lives as much as they did fictional ones.
‘Yes readers I came here hoping to find a fling to live up to my book-boyfriend fantasies, but alas, you only have to stand here and look around for a few minutes to realise that no one comes to Niagara Falls alone, and if I go home with a guy, it’ll either be some dude playing up on his honeymoon, some old widowed micawber who got lost on the way to the casino, or an underage college student trying to sneak across the border to drink! Am I disappointed by the fact that I cannot see one man walking around solo? Yeah, I admit that I am. But it’s not my love I’ve come here to feel- but theirs, and I can feel it, so it’s worth it!’
And even though she’d only been off the bus for five minutes, Leigh knew that she’d be speaking the truth when she got around to typing that. Oh, she’d gotten just as teary-eyed in Georgia the week before when she’d done her Gone With The Wind tour, and her Nicholas Sparks fans on her subscribers list had commented like crazy on her snapshots of the Carolinas, just as her Stephen King fans had lapped up the stuff in Maine. She’d personally been moved the most by Salem for The Crucible, and Prince Edward Island just two days’ before for the Anne Shirley tribute… but Niagara Falls, and The Hardest Fall, were going to be the highlight of the tour for her, which was why she’d allowed herself a week there, but only three days in New York City afterwards. Most of her fans thought that she was a nut of course, given how many great books had been set in NYC. But the three or four fans who she knew were online at that very moment, waiting to see her in the place where Ryan and Kylie had fallen in love were her soul-mate fans, and she was going to do her darndest to make the story come to life for them, as it was for her.
Her reflection on the screen blurred and then focused and Leigh’s reflex smile to her more composed appearance was a genuine one. She had herself on one edge of the frame with the falls peeking out just behind her, but the rest of the shot was of the footpath stretching towards the best viewing positions and included a lot of pedestrians. The busker has snuck into the shot too, beneath the shadow of a tree Leigh could recognize after two weeks in North America, but could not name.
Ha! The busker is playing one of the tunes from the novel’s playlist! That’s just too epic a photo op to pass up! I’ll get him in this shot, then one of just the falls and then maybe get a little video while he’s still doing that song…? Yeah he’s tall and has dark hair- talk about perfect! My readers will go BESERK!
Leigh took a few steps backwards and zoomed out, trying to get more of the musician in the shot without losing the falls, a dreamy smile evoked upon her lips for the singer’s soulful, yet hard and husky voice, which would have sounded perfect against a Pearl Jam track, yet suited Cliff Richard’s song perfectly too. But just as she was about to hit the camera snap button, the musician looked from the falls in the distance and towards her. His smile was the slow, creeping kind at first, but when he seemed to realise that she was trying to get him in the shot, he wriggled his eyebrows and grinned a grin that could have shattered the lens for its brightness.
Only Leigh wasn’t looking at his smile- but at the electric blue shade of his beautiful, magnetic eyes.
It was Ryan, in the flesh.
The iPad slipped and clattered against the pavement before shattering.
One
It was Ryan. It wasn’t Ryan of course because Ryan Weaver was made of paper and ink and in many cases, pixels, not flesh and blood, but it was Ryan and even after the iPad had fallen, Leigh’s limbs continued to brace the air where it had been while her memory flashed his face before her over and over, like a skipping record.
Oh, sweet tuna on a cracker! What’s afoot here?!
‘Hey!’ The instrumental had vanished, but the melody of the man’s rich, husky voice remained. ‘Are you okay?’
Okay? Am I okay? No! No I am NOT okay, I’m hallucinating! Dad was right! One book too many and you end up in mental Narnia! And oh my god… my iPad! Nooooo!
Leigh lowered her eyes with a sinking heart and when she saw her tablet-shaped life shattered on the concrete walk, the anchor of grief sank it all the way to her ballet flats. She dropped her face into her mittens and sobbed, not even caring that she was going to get her Muppet-face on again. All of her work was on that! All of her trip! Gone, and why? Because she’d hallucinated a Ryan where there was a penniless dark-haired guitarist. Feeling like the world’s biggest dunce, she knelt, pressing one hand to the ground for balance while picking up her iPad with the other. The screen was still lit from behind, though what it was lighting resembled
neon spider webs and nothing else. Her heart broke for the very first time in her life as she calculated the cost of a replacement, the odds that iCloud had yet to receive any of the photos she’d taken that morning against her remaining budget, and came up broke and down at least seventeen memories. The tears welled, but before she could let them loose, she realised that Greta was probably still lurking around somewhere, and would come flapping to her assistance to mock and scold her if she didn’t pull herself together first.
Just get it, get back to the hotel room and lose it there. This entire five minutes is a write-off, we’ll just come back when you have a new iPad and a hairband… your readers will never have to know that this happened and with enough tequila, you can forget it too! Oh hang on… you can’t AFFORD tequila now! Oh no…!
‘Heyyy… you didn’t answer me,’ a hand settled on Leigh’s shoulder and squeezed gently. ‘Are you okay love? Was that my fault?’
Oh great, THIS guy!
Leigh shrugged off the guitarist’s hand and began picking up the pieces of her shattered tablet. ‘I’m fine,’ she mumbled, sliding the device into her handbag. ‘I… I just lost a lot of stuff from today I think and so...’ she sniffled, and when she scented a sweet, heady fabric softener, spearmint gum and cigarette smoke, her heart began to race wildly.
Now I’m imagining that he smells the same way as the author described Ryan’s scent? Oh come ON, Leigh, pull it together...
‘But I startled you, didn’t I?’ the guy insisted, and when Leigh realised that he was speaking with a trace of an Aussie accent in his tone, she grit her teeth together. Okay so THAT she wasn’t imagining. Who the hell was this guy?
‘I’m sorry, I really am. I saw you taking the shot and thought hey, why not pose for once? All my promo shoots have me looking all gloomy or contemplative you know? And then-’
‘It’s fine,’ Leigh got to her feet, wanting to cut him off before the familiar accent melted the tears she was trying desperately to freeze in place. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You don’t seem fine,’ he pressed, trying to turn her around. ‘Do you have insurance at least?’
‘Yeah, okay dad?’ she said testily. ‘I have traveller’s insurance and iPad insurance but the thing is- I’m supposed to be working while on this holiday and I’m going to have to find cheaper accommodation now to buy a new one and-’ Leigh turned around and looked up into his face and she couldn’t help but slam her mitten down over her gasp as she stumbled backwards, keeping the curses inside.
It’s HIM! It’s bloody well HIM! What is going on?!
The guy’s eyes widened, absorbing the sky and shifting the shade to an autumn-blue. He got to his feet slowly, pushing his slung guitar around his back. ‘What? What is it?’ he asked, looking nervous. ‘You look like you’re sort of… um…’ he bent his head towards hers, his dark brows knitting together, and his eyes were so brilliantly blue that Leigh felt as though she could have dived into them and never hit the bottom. ‘Lady- seriously, are you okay?’
Leigh was most definitely not okay. His pulchritude made the falls looked blah in comparison, and he was so unbelievably Ryan, that Leigh’s fingers were tingling to reach out and touch him, just to see if stroking his skin would feel like turning a page. She probably would have too but in flats, she felt like a dwarf compared to him and didn’t think he’d fancy her using the rips in his jeans as footholds so she could climb up him and bat at his face like a toddler.
I’m seeing things, right? This guy can’t be for real. No one that beautiful could possibly be for real…
Once, for fun, Leigh had had a bunch of Ryan fans upload pics of models and celebrities to her blog, to see who came up with the very best likeness for them to jointly drool over, and Leigh had been surprised by how the photos had differed from one another. They were all of tall, lean, dark-haired blue-eyed gods of course, as per the description in the book, but none of them had nailed the finer details to suit Leigh’s fantasy, and not one image had sated every Ryan fan. Some of the models had had too much facial hair, some had forgotten the eyebrow piercing, some of the guys’ eyes had been too dark or too narrow, or the skin too fair or way too tawny… only a few had been alike and most of the guys had been too preppy for Leigh’s approval, missing the whole rock-god look altogether. That was a given of course because when girls imagined their book-boyfriends, they altered the given descriptions to best suit their own tastes as she had done, or so she’d supposed.
But this guy- this living, breathing, musician, had been scraped from her imagination, leaving nothing behind. The height, the posture, the ambrosial scent, the accent, the slight shadow to his strong jaw, the way his hair fell sloppily and sexily across his right temple- it was Ryan. If they really were going to make a movie adaption of The Hardest Fall, as the rumours said, then the god standing before her would be a shoo-in for the role.
So did he know that? Was he some creep who hung around the falls because he’d been told how much he looked like the world’s most coveted book boyfriend? Or was it just a fluke? The author lived in a region nearby- so what were the chances that she’d spied him busking one day, and then gone home and recreated him? Anything was possible, Leigh supposed, but the most plausible explanation was simple: the tenth re-reading of The Hardest Fall had broken her brain and now, she was seeing fictional characters where there was only a tall brunet.
The guy’s expression grew tighter. He stepped closer the way would step up to a bird with a broken wing, looking more nervous than apologetic now. ‘I’m sorry but… but have we met before?’
That was the line: Ryan Weaver’s first line in The Hardest Fall, and the heroine, Kylie, had responded by stretching up and planting a soft kiss on his lips before running away, so moved by his voice she had been. Leigh had been moved by his voice too and Leigh was so overcome with attraction for him that she could barely breathe, and reaching up and kissing the guy seemed like the best idea she’d ever had.
But Leigh wasn’t romantic, spontaneous or beautiful like Kylie, so she turned on her heel and scuttled off back along Falls avenue, even though she’d never been so tempted to kiss somebody before in her life, just to see if he’d vanish when she did, or take her between the pages.
*
Leigh’s day only got worse from there, and by the time she finally managed to get into the hot tub in her hotel room, she was so exhausted that she didn’t even have the energy to weep over her shattered fantasies.
After the incident with the faux-Ryan, Leigh had jumped into a cab and had it take her to her hotel. Only it wasn’t until she’d gone to check in and inform them that she’d be downgrading, that she realised that she’d misplaced not only her novel, but also her travel wallet. She must have taken the latter out when she’d been rooting through her bag for wipes, back by the falls, and then had left both in the cab after. That was no surprise, for the run-in with the Ryan hallucination had made her go catatonic, but it had naturally caused a little nervous breakdown of sorts. Being without her iPad was bad, but being without her passport was terrifying, and she’d dissolved into tears right there at the counter while hundreds of guessed had strolled past her and stared or offered foreign condolences, tissues and in one case- a coupon for fifteen percent off a plate of Buffalo Wings at TGI Fridays.
The young receptionist had let her check in regardless, because Leigh had still had her purse with her Australian driver’s license and cash and cards to prove her identity and put a tab on the room. However, Leigh had paid for the Whirlpool room in advance, and had had to do some fast-talking (blubbering) to get the girl to refund the money that she’d forked out on the swish room, and find Leigh more modest accommodations for the duration of her stay.
But thanks to the affable concierge, Bruce (and probably due to Leigh’s tears and their desperation to get her out of the lobby before someone had to follow her out with a mop) the receptionist had agreed, and had even allowed her to keep the fancy room for that night. Leigh would still have to m
ove in the morning if someone else requested it, but the gesture had been a lovely one and of course, it had made Leigh cry even harder. She was missing her itinerary, her passport, two hundred Canadian dollars, her iPad and any chance of accessing the online world- but at least she’d met two people kind enough to sweeten the sour taste that Greta and the musician had left in her mouth.
After they’d sorted out her accommodation, the concierge, a young, outdoorsy-looking and bubbly guy in his early-twenties, had put in a call to the local cab company, and apparently her belongings were being searched for. But though Bruce had seemed upbeat about the chances of her things being returned, all the head-bobbing and positive reassurances in the world weren’t suffice to ease Leigh’s vexation. She didn’t know what she was going to have to do to replace her passport on foreign soil, but she had a feeling that it was going to involve a lot of long, expensive phone calls, an excess of airport dramas and a bushel of wasted time. And she only had a week to organise a new passport before she’d be in need of it to cross back to the border and conclude her journey, and that freaked her out! What if she were delayed? What if she missed her Australian flight home, the following Sunday?
But, Leigh was nothing if not an optimist, the staff had been wonderful and the hotel suite they’d given her for the night as a complimentary upgrade was so charmingly elegant that she’d decided to make the most of a ruinous situation, by indulging herself in her first night ‘in’ since her plane had touched down in Texas, nine days before. The entire day had drained her, and she knew that her most watchful blog readers were probably going nuts, waiting for her to update her site, but there was nothing she could do without her iPad and the data chip inside it, so she’d re-read one of her other copies of The Hardest Fall and convince herself that the beautiful face she still saw every time she blinked was nothing like the ‘real’ Ryan Weaver was supposed to be.
