Fangirling Over You: A Fangirl Romance

by C.M. Kars

  “Sushi, hands down. I can eat the stuff by the bucket load.” When he wrinkles his nose, my stomach starts to sink. How could Chrisander Gage not like sushi when he eats it all the time on the show? It’s one of his character quirks! “Do you…not like it?” Did I somehow answer his question wrong?

  “I don’t like the stuff, sorry.” He turns from me, looking ahead on the sidewalk for impending street traffic. I keep looking at his profile while hoping I don’t walk into another person—or even worse, a pole—all while my mouth hangs open, letting a draft in.

  “But you eat it on the show!” I sputter, cringing at the volume of my voice.

  I can tell I’ve said the wrong thing—it’s in the way his hands twitch their way into fists, and he shoves them into his pockets, and the way his breathing gets heavy like it’s trying to become a sigh.

  “I’m not Chrisander Gage, Aria. Nothing will change that.”

  Stung, I blurt, “I know that. That guy’s just a character.” Right, like Captain America is just a comic book hero. “I just noticed that it’s his favourite food in the show.” Man, it feels weird talking about Chrisander like he doesn’t exist when I’m literally looking at the person who shares his face and body. It’s enough to give me a headache, but that might also be because I’m starving right now.

  “I hate the stuff, actually. I don’t like the texture or the smell. Not any of it.” He wrinkles his nose, and I’ve decided that it’s the second most adorable thing I’ve seen today.

  “That’s fine. We can go somewhere you want to go. Just don’t tell me you don’t like pizza. That’s a crime against humanity.” When the corner of his mouth twitches, I swear I could blast off to the moon with the elation that swells up inside me. “Good. We’re on the same page. Let’s get some pizza.” I pull out my phone from my purse, get a GPS location on pizzerias within walking distance, until Ayden’s hand stops me from doing what I want to do. His hand’s huge on my wrist, and I just stare at it, wondering what the heck it’s doing touching me.

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. I got nervous about you going on social media.” Ayden pulls his hand away from my skin like I’ve burned him.

  “Right, sure.” It’s not right, and it’s not sure. My stomach flip-flops, and I’m thinking that maybe this whole thing was a bad idea. But how often does this chance come along? When will this ever happen to me again? Never, that’s when. And I want to see this through. If this dinner is truly awful, then all I have to do is call an Uber and forget this whole thing happened. It’s not like I’ve never had a shit date, just never had a shit date in California. “Maybe you should look up a pizzeria around here on your phone.” I drop my phone back into my purse, looking back at him expectantly.

  Ayden nods, a tight dip of his chin, and he looks down at his phone once it’s out of his pocket with a little too much concentration. “There’s a place fifteen minutes by foot. Do you mind?”

  Fifteen minutes is not that long in the grand scheme of things. A quarter of an hour. An almost-episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

  Fifteen minutes can feel like an eternity in the dentist’s chair, and it can feel like time’s slipping away from you during a final exam.

  Fifteen minutes with Ayden Stone and I don’t know how time is going to trip me up.

  “Yeah,” I say, trying to quell that nervous feeling in my belly. “No problem at all.”

  Ayden points us in the right direction, and I tailor my steps to his, even though it feels like I’m running, until he realizes it and slows down. So maybe food is more like twenty minutes away with a shorter person in tow?

  We walk along in silence for the first five minutes (I keep checking my phone, absolutely sure that it vibrated and some special notification needs my attention). We obey traffic laws, when really back home, the walk and stop signs for pedestrians are more like suggestions anyway.

  When I can’t take the silence anymore, I blurt, “Is this weird? Because I’m feeling weird.” Say what you mean and mean what you say, right? Right?!

  We walk another few steps before Ayden answers, the silence killing me slowly. “I’m sorry if this is odd for you. We can turn back any time you’d like.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” I shake my head, wave my hands around for emphasis. “It’s just that you seem on edge, and it’s kinda making me on edge. I know I’m a stranger, but we’re going to share a meal, and we have to do the standard things that people do when they share a meal together. Which is talk, get to know one another. Right?”

  Ayden shakes his head. “I’m not my character, Aria.”

  “I know that. You just said that. I do know that.” I look up at him, swinging around to make sure he sees my face and knows that I do know that.

  “I’m very different from him, actually.”

  More stomach sinking on my part. God, I hope my face isn’t saying everything I feel for me, that would suck. “Okay. That isn’t a problem.” And it’s not, it’s totally not a problem. At all. “I’m sure we can talk about a lot of other things.”

  “Isn’t it a problem, though?”

  I don’t know what to say to that, so we keep walking on until we get to the restaurant. I feel like I’ve been tricked when I’ve been anything but. Here I am again, being disappointed by my own high, and absurd, expectations. Like we were gonna bond over his character or something and ride off into the sunset.

  Yeah, right.

  Gotta fix that, Aria. You can’t keep going through life disappointed every time something doesn’t go your way.

  We’re seated in a booth in a back corner, kind of just like a repeat of the burger joint earlier today. I’m nervous and scared because I’m totally out of practice when it comes to first dates. It’s been forever since I’ve been on a date, no guy seemed to measure up to get that far, and now, now I’m sitting across from the most attractive guy ever and I’m already more than half-obsessed with him than I actually should be.

  Fangirl problem.

  Our waitress hands us the menu without much preamble, although I see her glance appreciatively at Ayden with a sweep of her eyes and a sweet smile. Now that would be a meet-cute for the ages. Too bad I beat her to it.

  “What’s your favourite kind of pizza?” I ask, hoping to start with easy questions. Again, not so good at the whole first date thing. There’s so much more to a person than the surface, but you gotta start somewhere, and I’m going to start with one of my favourite subjects that isn’t my love for Leviathan—food, specifically, pizza. “Are you team pineapple on or off?”

  He smirks, and my heart does some sort of gymnastic tumbling in my chest. “Hate the stuff. You?”

  I pretend to look affronted. “It’s salty and sweet heaven when it’s on pizza. What about stuffed crust?”

  “Definitely not.”

  I nod. “Same. Do you like dogs or cats?”

  “Dogs. Cats and I don’t get along. I feel like I’m being interviewed.” One hand moves up to scratch at the back of his neck, and he sort of looks like he wants to hide behind his menu.

  I flush, not expecting this at all. “Yeah, well, that’s sort of what happens, no? You just shoot over a bunch of information to each other and hope some of it is interesting enough that you want to learn more from the other person. A first date can be like an interview, I guess.”

  I don’t say that there has to be some kind of connection between the two people on said date, the both of them having to figure out on their own if the connection is a friendly one or a romantic one. I know I romantically like a version of Ayden Stone; I just don’t know about the guy himself.

  “Yeah, that’s true. But you’re forgetting one thing.” He stares at me with those eyes, and my mind screeches to a halt. I tilt my head at him, dragging my eyes away from the items on the menu. “I already find you interesting.”

  “What? How? We’ve barely even met,” I sputter, hands coming up to cover my mouth, voice muffled. The blood starts rushing in my veins, and I can
hear it pounding in my ears, whooshing, whooshing, whooshing.

  Ayden places his menu down in front of him, staring at me like he knows things, reading the very blueprint of my DNA. I try to keep still. “The look of disappointment on your face today after we took a picture together, it made me think. I haven’t had a lot of time to think or try to figure out what made you feel that way. When I first saw you, I thought you were striking.” He looks me over and I fight to keep myself from squirming. I know it’s a line, but shit, no one’s ever called me striking before—like you would a beautiful landscape, the star-strewn sky in the middle of nowhere at night, the way a lightning bolt forks and splits a tree in half—those are striking. “And then you looked at me as if I had ruined all your wishes and dreams. It almost broke my heart. I haven’t felt that way in a long time, like I disappointed someone so badly.”

  I frown. “Is that why you were looking for me—found me—earlier?” Is he really just doing this to make himself feel better?

  Ayden nods, unruffled, unbothered. It pisses me off.

  “It was serendipitous that I had a hankering for a burger when I spotted you. Felt like I could make amends for my shitty behavior. That was part of it. The other part of it was seeing an attractive girl and wanting to get to know her better.” He shrugs, like that’s all there is to it, and it doesn’t feel like I can trust it, yet.

  Honestly, this just doesn’t feel like it happens in real life when I know for a fact people have met at this very con, have dated and have eventually gotten married, which sounds like a fangirl fairy tale come true. But I know it isn’t going to happen to me.

  “Huh. Okay. Uh, yeah, okay.” I nod and clear my throat, coughing into my fist. “Well, I for one am ordering the Hawaiian, so do with that what you will. And also, for the record, I was disappointed in myself, for overthinking things, and for wanting more.”

  Ayden smirks, crossing his arms over his folded menu on the table and keeping his eyes glued to my face. I feel scrutinized, I feel seen. It makes my breath catch in my throat. “Would you take a chance on getting to know me better, too? I can be more than the character I play,” he says, voice threaded through with iron. “If you give me a chance. That’s all I’m asking for, one little chance. One shared meal. Like any normal two people might do. What do you say?”

  FOUR

  It’s surprisingly…effortless being a normal could-be couple, getting to know each other, even if I’m play-acting on my part.

  I never understood people who could just look at a fictional character in a show or movie and comment on how attractive they are, or how good of a character they are and not completely obsess over the ins and out of the character arc or try to find all the information they can on the Internet.

  People find me weird for doing that, but I find them weird for not doing it. I guess that’s what the Star Wars mythos means about Balance.

  I have to bite my tongue sometimes, because I already know some of the answers to the questions, I’ve asked Ayden, or the follow-up ones, but I don’t want to seem like a stalker. When everything is circulated by social media, it’s hard to keep any part of your life private, but Ayden Stone has achieved some portion of it.

  I find myself surprised at some of his answers: clipped answers about his family (I didn’t know he had siblings—not written anywhere on his IMDB profile), enthusiastic answers about his passion for food (which makes him about ten times more attractive), bored answers when it came to talking about Chrisander Gage and character motivation (which felt like pulling teeth until I dropped the subject altogether), and finally flirtatious answers that made me blush, and snort, and then finally start laughing because that’s my response to things that make me nervous or uncomfortable.

  And being here, at a casual restaurant with Ayden Stone, is definitely one of those things that makes me uncomfortable in a good way, the stepping-out-of-my-comfort-zone kinda way.

  Especially when he’s been recognized and a bunch of fans are coming up to him and asking for his picture and autograph, all for IG. He’s pretty gracious about it, carefully wiping his mouth with his napkin each time and making sure he’s utterly presentable, while I’m sure I’ve barely evaded getting pizza sauce on my jeans. I watch some of the fangirls get a little too close, which causes a weird sort of heat to trickle through my chest, but I dismiss it because being jealous at this stage of the game is just plain stupid. As if I have the right to be jealous.

  Ayden even talks with them a little, making light conversation before wishing them a good night and then returning to his meal. He apologizes to me the three separate times it happens.

  “This happens to you a lot?” I ask after drinking some of my ice water, sucking it back before it feels like I’ll die of thirst. California heat is the devil, I don’t know how people can stand to live here. The waitress has cleared our plates, and now we’re waiting for the dessert menu—she mentioned something about a Nutella-stuffed calzone that sounds amazing and something I want to get in on.

  Ayden nods, folding his napkin precisely into four without looking up at me. “I don’t mind it, usually, but it has created some obstacles in my personal life.”

  “I can’t imagine.” Because I can’t, I really can’t. If someone got in between me and a slice of pizza right before my period, there’d be bloodshed, fan or not.

  Ayden’s mouth twitches, like I’ve said something funny, and it makes me squirm in my seat, a happy little wiggle.

  “I wanted this, ever since I was little, I wanted to be famous, to be on a show that makes people think, makes them feel. I’ve worked hard to not just be the shirtless guy in at least one scene.”

  My turn to smirk at him. “Guess they totally haven’t let you stray far from that role, huh?” I’m trying to be funny, but I don’t think I make it come off just right.

  He looks a little…hurt, staring down at where his plate used to be. Shit. “We’re trying to build up tension.”

  “Absolutely, I get that.” I rush to get in, jumbling my words together. “I think everybody who watched did. It’s awesome. Can’t wait to see what happens in season four.” I blurt, frowning at myself for being an ass. “I know it bothers you how much I love Leviathan, but I’m not going to be sorry for it.” I notch my chin up, plant my elbows on the table and cross my arms. That Nutella-stuffed calzone sounds good right about now as soon as I get to see the dessert menu and actually order it.

  Ayden’s eyebrows leap high on his forehead, mouth parted in something like surprise. “I never wanted you to be sorry. I have a love/hate relationship with the show. On the one hand, it’s created some brilliant opportunities for me, our guest appearances are utterly legendary, and I’ve learned a lot from different actors. On the other, I wish I could distance myself more from the character.” He looks totally uncomfortable right now, and I almost feel bad for him.

  “I like that he’s morally gray. He’s more interesting that way, keeps me guessing, you know? Which way will Chris go? Hell, and the fan fiction has some really excellent theories, too, all of them viable.”

  He looks up and stares at me, mouth parted. I guess it’s the kind of look you would give someone who plucked the very thoughts out of your mind and gave voice to them or told you your future and it doesn’t sound so hot. “People do have some intense imaginations.”

  I wave my hand, like I’m throwing his words out the window. “That doesn’t mean it’s about you, it’s about your character. You’ve done something with your character that people can get behind, regardless of gender or sexuality. Isn’t that something to be proud of?”

  How can I, a fangirl, be so in love with this show and the actor who plays the main freaking character just…isn’t? What kind of hell is this?

  The waitress interrupts my very important question by finally bringing us our dessert menus. I spy with my little eye the calzone of Nutella-stuffed fame and see that it’s served with vanilla ice cream and strawberries. Yeah, I’m going to have to hit the gym b
ig time when I get back home, but I’m in California and I’m living a real type of fangirl fantasy. Of course I’m going to get the super-delicious dessert.

  I glance up to find Ayden studying his menu with the intensity of a college kid writing a final exam with ten minutes left on the clock and one long-answer question left. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “That’s fine. So, full disclosure, I don’t share desserts, but I’ll gladly give you a piece of the calzone if you want.”

  I get a smile for that and feel like I’ve saved the day/date. “I’ll have the apple pie, see how it compares to back home.”

  We place our dessert menus down and give our orders when our waitress comes back.

  “I made an apple pie once,” I say, putting down my menu and folding my hands across it. “Then I burnt it to a crisp and decided that baking just wasn’t for me.”

  Ayden quirks an eyebrow, and while it’s a little domineering when Chrisander Gage does it, this one is all curiosity, but still volcanic levels of hot. “All because of one bad…apple?”

  “Ha ha. Yeah. I have a bad habit of wanting to be perfect at everything, wanting everything to be perfect.”

  “Maybe what’s perfect for you isn’t what’s perfect for everyone else.”

  I clear my throat, settle back into my seat, putting some space between us. My heart squeezes inside my chest and I have this wild feeling like I might start crying. This is surreal, it’s awkward and weird, but this isn’t the worst date I’ve ever been on, but it certainly isn’t my best. Then again, I’ve always compared all my dates to the date I was never gonna have with Chrisander Gage, and now that I’m actually here with the guy that shares his face…it’s not perfect at all, and not heading in the direction I expected.

  I mean, is it too much to ask for the guy of my dreams to compliment me endlessly and give me insurmountable amounts of affection upon getting to know me?

  Keep an open mind. You’re your own worst enemy, Aria.