Fangirling Over You: A Fangirl Romance

by C.M. Kars

  “It won’t,” I say, trying to reassure him in this very weird situation. “I just need to be up close and personal. I mean, in any other kind of relationship, if I was kissing someone else on the side?” I hold up a hand, forestalling an argument that begins with “it’s different.” “I know it’s different, Ayden, I know. You’re not doing it because you’re looking for someone else, you’re doing it because you’re sort of getting paid to do it. And I guess, you’re not really yourself when you kiss another character, right, just like that actor you’re kissing isn’t really themselves.” I frown, rubbing my forehead. “I think I just gave myself a headache.”

  Ayden reaches over to grab the hand that I used to rub my forehead, flips it over and plants a kiss at the center of my palm, like he’s going to make a habit of it. I freeze.

  Oh. That was sweet. Can I ask him to do it again, and maybe once more for luck?

  “It is odd, I know. The only person I want to be around, the only person I want to be kissing is you, Aria. I promise you.”

  I chew my lower lip, thinking, wanting another chip, wanting another sip of my beer, but knowing that’s not really what I want. Do I want to pursue this potential relationship with Ayden Stone? Will I let myself learn who he is and not superimpose Chrisander Gage on top of Ayden so that he always falls short of those expectations? That wouldn’t be fair at all, not to me and definitely not to him. I’ve already fallen in love with Chrisander Gage, how hard could it possibly be to fall in love with the man in front of me?

  “This is going to be weird for me,” I tell him, grabbing another chip with my free hand and mulling over what I want to say while I chew. “Really weird. I’m not going to know what to expect, how to act if this goes further than tonight.”

  “I would like that very much,” he says, planting another kiss on my palm. This could be some sort of Pavlovian conditioning, but I’m A-OK with it. “It’s going to be odd for me as well. I’m nervous about you watching me work.”

  My jaw drops. “But I would love to see you play Chrisander! I would love it so much!” I’m practically squeaking, I can’t help it.

  “Then you’ll give this a go? With me?”

  “You pulled a trump card, Ayden. That’s a line straight out of season 1, episode 7, Space Cowboy. It’s one of my favourite episodes.”

  Ayden grins, doing that kiss-thing on my palm again. I think I might actually be purring. “I was hoping you’d know where it was from, and I would love to know why you love that episode so much; the critics massacred us on it.” Ayden shakes his head. “I’ve gotten distracted again. So, will we see where this goes?”

  Time to check his memory. I use Chrisander Gage’s catch phrase with a big grin. “You bet.”

  Ayden walks me home, seeing me up the stairs with a soft touch of lips on lips that has me craving more kisses, more of him. He waits for me to close the door to my building, and waves as I step into the lobby, leaving me feeling disappointed and surprised that I didn’t feel any kind of pressure to extend an invitation for him to come upstairs. I still don’t know where this is going, and I want to take my time about it and think it over.

  Especially as I’m still trying to reconcile Ayden Stone in contrast and comparison with Chrisander Gage.

  On my way up to my condo, my phone buzzes and beeps in my purse, and it takes me a second of juggling my keys and my purse to fish my phone out and hold it up to my ear, a little breathless like I’ve done a mild cardio session at the gym.

  “Hello?”

  “Right, Aria, it’s me, Ayden.”

  “Hi! Did you forget something?” I ask, smiling at my keys as I turn them to unlock my front door.

  “No, nothing like that. I wanted to make sure that you got in okay.”

  I nod, then remember that this is a phone conversation with voices only. “Yeah, I did. Locking my door right now.” There’s silence on the other end—maybe he’s in a car headed back to his hotel (or wherever he’s staying), maybe he’s just walking around the increasingly deserted streets. “Can you call me when you get in, please?” I ask, trying to ignore that curdle in my belly at the thought of him being mugged, or worse.

  I can almost hear him smiling. “Yeah, I’ll definitely do that. Talk to you in a few.”

  There’s no real reason to rush around my condo cleaning, trying to put everything to rights—stash the dirty laundry in its appropriate place like the washer, all ready for me to load up detergent and get her going tomorrow morning. I put all my dishes in the sink along with the fourteen different mugs that litter my place because I have a tea-drinking problem, even kick at the shoes I’ve left behind in my various states of undress, trying to get my room tidy while I use a makeup wipe to start my whole skincare routine before bed. I do this with a mounting horror that there was no way I could have invited Ayden upstairs, not when my place looked like this.

  I’m just about done brushing out my hair after donning my pajamas when my phone beeps with a call. “Ayden?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. Just wanted to let you know that I made it back all right.”

  “Good. I’m glad you did.” I clear my throat, searching for something else to say. “Shouldn’t you have security with you at all times or something?”

  He snorts, and it sounds like he’s opening a fridge door, maybe looking for a midnight snack.

  I’ll be your midnight snack.

  I want to groan at my thoughts but choose to listen instead. “No, I’d rather not. Makes me feel weird enough as it is. I don’t need that.”

  “But what if something happened to you? What if you got hurt?” Careful, careful, Aria. Don’t want to show him how much you already care.

  “Thinking about my safety, yeah?”

  “Yeah. I am,” I say carefully, as if I’m not 100% transparent with how much I like him. I pull down the sheets of my bed after I’ve turned out all the lights in my place, and climb in, getting the position just right—flopped onto my belly, phone against my ear.

  “What are you doing right now?”

  “I’m snuggled in my bed. You?”

  “Shit. Is it weird if I tell you that I would have loved to be there, right next to you?”

  I throw back my covers as my body is suddenly doused in flame. Holy shit, shit, shit! Ayden freaking Stone just said that to me! Then again, if he was a guy I was really into, then I would be doing the same thing.

  Keep those expectations in check, remember, Aria?

  “I’m sorry if that was too forward,” he says, and his voice is so close to my ear that if I close my eyes, I could totally pretend that he’s right here, right next to me, a dream come true.

  I heave in a deep breath, struggling to keep my breathing even. I don’t want to know what’s going to happen to me when I have the actually real person, sleeping next to me. Maybe I’d implode, fangirl style?

  “I’m not sorry I said it, though.”

  I snort. “No, you don’t sound sorry.” I sigh. “Why didn’t you ask to come upstairs?”

  I hear a rustling, and sweet Leviathan, I think he’s getting undressed with me on the line! My whole body catches fire again, and I try to place my hand on my cheeks to stifle the burn there. No one can see me in the dark, so there’s no reason to be embarrassed, but I still feel exposed. “I don’t want to rush things with you. I don’t want to chase you away, I don’t want who I am to chase you away.”

  I flop over onto my back, hike up my sleep tank to get some air on the exposed skin of my belly. Maybe I’ve started getting hot flashes a few decades early. “You mean about the whole actor thing?”

  I swear I hear sheets being moved around, blankets, too. I think he’s finally in bed, and I’m in bed, and one of us is in the wrong place. “Yeah. I have a job that puts me under scrutiny, especially in those times when I don’t want to be. In moments when I want to kiss the girl I’ve only just met but has me twisted in knots inside.”

  Chrisander would never talk like this to Amy, and not even to Ma
ge. Never in a million years. The guy’s just not this forward or forthcoming; he’s the brooding type. You have to infer every little thing from tiny inflections on certain spoken words. Hell, half the fun is watching the longing looks and trying to figure out what he wants to say.

  But Ayden? Ayden is someone entirely different.

  “You’re making me blush,” I blurt, attempting to fan myself, but it only serves to make me hotter.

  “And it must look lovely on you.”

  I drum my heels into the mattress. “You’re only making me blush harder.” I chew my lip, and like always, charge on right ahead without thinking of the consequences. “You’re not who I thought you were going to be. Not at all.”

  Ayden’s quiet for a time, and I can hear his breathing, nice and even. “Is that good or bad?”

  Maybe it’s easier like this, talking like this when we’re not face-to-face, delaying that in-person conversation where we’re both awkward and stumbling over our words.

  “It’s good. Really good. I just feel at a loss with you, not knowing where I stand. Maybe I’m being too honest, but I just don’t have time to play games, you know? I like you. I think you’re a really interesting person with a lot to give to the world, and maybe I can get a tiny part of it—one day.”

  Oh my God. Oh my God!!!

  Fangirls like myself live in the real world, yeah, we’d just rather be spending time with our fictional significant others, fictional best friends, or the fictional people we’ve marked as our own. So maybe I’m trudging on ahead too fast, maybe I’ll regret it in the future when my heart’s shattered to pieces and everything sucks and even my favourite foods will taste like ash.

  But I’m insanely attracted, he seems to likewise be attracted to me, and if every date I’ve had is constantly being measured up to what a fantasy date with Chrisander Gage would look like, how dumb would I be not to at least see where this goes?

  “You make me want to kiss you,” he groans, his voice so close, my body responds, lighting up with sparklers in my blood, my skin tingling. I have a stupid smile on my face, alone here in the dark, phone mashed to my ear. I squirm in my bed, pressing my fingers against my lips, imagining for a second that Ayden’s mouth is back on mine.

  I also really need an ice bath—stat. “I don’t think you should say things like that to me. I might go into a meltdown.”

  Ayden laughs, a knowing laugh, a freaking sexy laugh that has me trying to remember how to swallow. “Maybe I want you to have one, and maybe I want to be there when it happens.”

  “God, you need to stop talking,” I whisper, knowing that I’m going to need a cold shower—and grumbling to myself because I could have had Ayden in my bed, beside me, doing all sorts of fun things. “I can’t handle any more.”

  “Tell me something else, then. Anything you’d like,” Ayden murmurs, and I don’t want to think about what he looks like in bed. I don’t want to wonder about what he’s wearing—is he wearing a t-shirt, or is he bare-chested? Boxers or briefs? I don’t want to think about any of that or I’ll drive myself crazy.

  I pull in a deep, deep breath, and it somehow turns into a yawn I have to bite back. “Aren’t you tired? Didn’t you shoot for, like, a thousand hours today?”

  “I want to fall asleep with your voice in my ear.”

  Shit, damn, fuck. I squirm in my bed, finally tearing off my pajama pants because it’s way too hot in here. And yeah, my heart’s melted and I can’t stop grinning in the dark. “What was it like coming to L.A. after London? Did you have a hard time with it?” There. We’re on safer ground, now. Safer for me, for him, for everyone.

  I hear him settle more deeply into his bed, more rustling of sheets, and a deep, satisfied sigh. “Fine, I guess. Lost the accent right quick, though, tried to sound like everyone else. It’s still there, in some words, and it comes back whenever I fly back home to see my parents. It sort of started the whole acting business for me, though, knowing I could slip into this other person by just changing the way I spoke. Made me want to try on different people. That’s why Leviathan has been so hard for me—I’ve never played a character this long. Sometimes, it feels like I’ll never get to shrug Chris off before I put someone else on. Sounds weird, doesn’t it? I don’t even know if I’m making any sense to you.”

  “No, no, you are.” I like that he’s talking to me about his past, that he’s letting me in, letting me see the real him. Isn’t that the whole awesome thing about dating someone, learning who they really are? “You’re making a lot of sense, actually.” I can’t help the yawn that escapes me this time, but I move my phone out of the way so he doesn’t hear it. If I can, I’d love to fall asleep to the sound of his voice, too. I think I would go crazy just from him saying my name over and over again.

  “I think you might be one of the few people I’ve really talked to these last few years since Leviathan blew up. Don’t get me wrong, I love my castmates, the crew, and I spend most of my day with them, of course, but we’re all different people when we’re done shooting for the day. A lot of them have families to go home to. And now with moving the show to Toronto, well, it feels like I’m starting at a new school and everyone’s known each other since they were little.”

  That warms me right through, like I’ve drunk hot chocolate with marshmallows after being outside on a winter’s day. “You’re a very private person.” I don’t say it like a question—he knows I’m a fangirl, and that’s not something I’ll apologize for. Although, if he were to come over, I might have to get rid of my life-sized cut out of Chrisander Gage in my bedroom, especially when it’s going to be replaced by the real thing! Cross my heart and hope to die.

  “You sound tired, darling,” he says, and my heart beats faster in my chest at the D-word. It would be lovely, I think, to be his darling. So, so lovely. “I’m going to let you sleep. Call me tomorrow, anytime. I’ll get back to you if I’m busy shooting, all right?”

  “I’m going to kiss you the next time I see you for calling me ‘darling,’” I inform him, not even embarrassed by it. I have too many feelings and they’re spilling over into our conversation—I’m not even mad about it.

  He laughs, a tired chuckle before he yawns.

  “Go to sleep, Ayden, we’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Aria, wait a second.” My heart thumps hard in the silence that follows, my brain conjuring up all sorts of imaginary professions of love. I wish, I wish so bad. “I want to see you for as long as you’ll let me.”

  “That sounds ominous, and a little presumptuous of failure.”

  I can almost feel him shrug through the line. “I know my life, and it doesn’t fit well into another’s usually. I’m hoping that these are unusual circumstances we find ourselves in.”

  I gulp. “Me, too, Ayden. Me too. Sleep well, okay? And thanks again for tonight, I could have gotten the bill.”

  “And I appreciate you trying to pay, but I wasn’t raised that way. Sleep well, darling.”

  God, that darling word again. I might actually lose it. My heart’s pumping way too hard, my skin is tingling and hot like I’m running a fever, and I have this weird skipping, floating feeling in my belly that can’t accurately be described. I really like Ayden, super-like him, even.

  Can there possibly be room in my heart for more than one man, even though they have the same face? Can that actually happen?

  This is a fangirl problem I never saw coming.

  SIX

  End of September…

  Today’s the day, the day I get to go on set, and I’m just a soup of too many feelings that nothing feels like it fits inside me just right, just sort of sloshing around.

  I took a little too much time choosing what to wear, wanting to look equally effortless and a little dressed up, but comfortable at the same time. I made up my face in a “my skin but better” kind of look, with three coats of mascara to be a little more dramatic, topped off with a dark, super-glossy lip gloss that makes me appear more confident than I feel.r />
  I always get this way at the beginning of something new, too nervous, too aware of how weird I am, of how much of myself I have to keep hidden so I don’t scare the guy off. I’m tired of keeping myself hidden; I’m tired of being nervous.

  Besides, Ayden totally knows about my biggest obsession and that he’s a serious factor in it. It’s so weird to be a fan of a person and that I’m going to be faced with that person soon, on set.

  I walk down the street, stifling a yawn after a long, tedious day of work, rolling my neck on my shoulders, working out the kinks. I’m wearing my black skinny jeans, and Chuck Taylors in the precise shade of the Leviathan main dashboard (something between a charcoal gray with an orange undertone), and a simple V-neck white t-shirt that shows off my boobs in the best way. My hair’s up in a messy bun, and I have a perpetual smile on my face, not to mention the mammoth butterflies in my stomach, making me grateful that I haven’t eaten anything since finishing up the workday.

  I pass by people on my way towards the set, fingering my phone and the pass that’s in an email Ayden sent me this very morning, wondering what I look like, half-wanting to throw my arms out and grab a random person and tell them who I’m going to go see, do something that’ll make my excitement leak out before I actually explode and fangirl too hard in front of Ayden, the guy I’m now seeing.

  Holy shit.

  I finally hit the barricade and security—guys in cargo pants, tight shirts, and wicked boots with thingies in their ears, eyes scanning everyone and everything, their gazes sticking to me as I get closer and closer. I wave, then pull up my pass on my phone after opening the appropriate email, hoping I can get through with no problem. I’m almost right up close to one of the big guys (his shirt about ready to give up the ghost and split right down all the seams) when I’m waved through, said guy moving aside to show me the space between the barricades with a smile and some directions of where I’m supposed to go.