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I bite my tongue before blurting that I really don’t have anything else of more importance to take care of, no friends to call, no one to go to dinner with. I swallow all the words claiming that this is honestly the only thing I have that brings something akin to a sense of fulfillment. I remind myself I have a puppy to feed. I remind myself I have a me to feed. Then I nod. “If you insist.”
She does, so I shut things down and wander outside into the cool spring evening. Sunlight pours across the sidewalk as I make it to my car, put on the newly-made one hour version of “Sunshine,” and back out of the lot.
It takes about thirty minutes to get home from my office building located in a nearby city’s downtown, but I wouldn’t trade where I live now for the convenience of everything being five minutes away. These roads are empty. I don’t deal with traffic to or from. I’m no longer vividly picturing car accidents every time I drive myself somewhere.
Life is great.
In unrelated news, I want to sleep for seven years.
It is that sense of bone-deep weariness that makes me yawn as I pull past the Welcome to Mountain Vale sign, through downtown, and up to…
I snap my mouth closed as I stop at the only light by the stretch of shops and stare.
My heart rate picks up, thundering, pounding.
It can’t be…
Standing in front of the bookstore with a black cat in her basket is the alt woman from the woods. Which isn’t entirely unusual. Of course. I see her around now and again, always with her cat. Who, let’s be real, is the most well-behaved cat I have ever seen, and I fully understand why she’s rumored to be a witch.
Who else could train a cat like she has?
But across from her? Across from her with his hands tucked in his pockets stands Doliver bathed in the blinding light of the dying sun.
He is unmistakable.
A tattoo on my brain.
I stare, rub my eyes, question my mental stability.
I’m tired.
Exhausted, rather.
Am I hallucinating?
There’s no way.
There are entire hunt down Doliver creep pages on Reddit where people have theories that he’s not actually real because no one has ever seen him in person. He’s big enough now that he should be getting recognized. Grocery stores shouldn’t be safe. He should be doing shows, recording for labels, juggling sponsorships—
The light turns green.
My heart skips as I ease my car around the block, just to find Doliver still standing there, across from the alt woman in her perfect, lacy white dress complete with elegant corset and fingerless gloves.
My dress-shirt-and-slack-clad self envies her femininity. Among other things. Like her confidence. If I were standing across from perfection, I’d be having a meltdown. Sobbing. Screaming. Confessing undying love.
Is she a fan? A girlfriend? It’s been a year. Maybe she broke up with the other guy I met?
Why would she and Doliver be dating? Why wouldn’t she and Doliver be dating? She’s beautiful. He’s stunning. She gives off anything but the basic vibes I do. Incredible people find themselves among incredible people. It’s a fact.
I can’t believe it.
Doliver lives here. I’ve never met him. And he’s dating the social outcast.
She’s the one he says I love you to at the end of every video.
My stomach knots at the very idea of that as I turn the corner again and force myself to head home.
“Don’t be a fangirl, Brittny.” I swallow, hard. “Don’t.”
