Flirting With Fame (Flirting With Fame) (4 page)

I
forced my face to remain neutral and glanced up, relieved that Reggie gave no indication she’d heard me cry out. She sat with her head bowed, focused on detangling what looked like a sailor’s knot of polka-dot socks.

Staring at Dag and Thora caught in an embrace on the cover of the book, I tried to think of the best way to approach this. Maybe she hadn’t even read it yet. No, the dog-eared pages and worn cover said otherwise. In fact, the loosened binding when I flipped through the pages told me it had been opened and closed many times over. She’d even highlighted passages in pinks and yellows. I rose from the floor and balanced on the edge of my bed with the book, noting that some of her favorite passages were also my own.

A hand waved in front of my face, calling my attention from my Viking heroes. “That’s my favorite book ever,” Reggie said. “Have you read it?”

I swallowed. Telling her I was a fan could lead to late-night talks about the books, which might make it harder to keep my secret. I glanced down at my nails and focused on the putrid pink polish the bottle insisted was “Rose” but looked more like “Pepto-Bismol” on my actual nails.

Reggie rounded up onto the balls of her feet as she waited for an answer.

I shook my head and handed the book back to her. “No. I haven’t.”

There. That should put an end to that.

Reggie grabbed my wrist, her fingernails biting into my flesh. “Oh my God! You
have
to read it! In fact, it’s a series. You have to read all of them. You’ll love them!”

She rifled through her suitcase, tossing objects over her shoulder. I ducked as a book whizzed past me and connected with the wall. It left a gray mark in the beige paint.

More book missiles flew my way, and I somehow managed to catch one of them. It was the second
Viking Moon
book,
Rocky Shores
.

Reggie watched me with eager eyes, as though she had just served a dinner she’d slaved over and couldn’t wait for me to take my first bite. I flipped the book over and pretended to scan the brief synopsis I had memorized ages ago. When I finally looked up again, my roommate still stared at me.

“Well?” she asked.

“It . . . uh . . . it looks great,” I mumbled. I gestured to the books surrounding me on my bed. “I’m just not sure I’ll have time to read all these with my classes and stuff.”

“Oh, you
have
to,” Reggie said, replacing the book in my hand with the first book of the series. “But start with this one.”

“Sure. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Awesome!”

I couldn’t hear it, but the way she bounced in front of me, I couldn’t help but assume her voice currently rang at a pitch that would make dogs come running.

Heat pulsed in my cheeks as I realized Reggie was the first real fan I’d ever let myself talk to face-to-face. My publisher had tried to set up book signings for me over the years, but seeing as how they thought I looked like a contestant on
America’s Next Top Model
, I always found a way to get out of them. Other than Jin and my parents, I’d never had to talk to someone about my books before. I’d always had the option of walking away. Reggie wasn’t going to make it that easy.

She pulled the last of her T-shirts out of her suitcase and threw them in the empty dresser.

“Have you eaten?” she asked as she shoved her empty suitcase beneath her bed. “I’m starving. I think I might see what they have in the cafeteria. You wanna come?”

I pictured the throngs of new students assembling around tables and standing in line to fill trays with food and shook my head.

“I’m good,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”

Reggie pouted. “Really? Well, okay. But I’ll bring you back something.”

“Okay,” I said with a bob of my head and a grateful smile. “Thanks.”

She disappeared out of the room, and I breathed a sigh of relief as the door closed behind her. Grabbing my laptop from under my pillow, I propped it on my lap and flipped it open. I scrolled through the outline I’d created for the final book, then opened a new document in Word.

The cursor blinked its usual welcome at me, and I smiled back at it. This was always the most terrifying and most exciting part of writing. A blank page sitting before me that I would soon fill with words. My words. Words to take me and my readers away from the real world and into a place that could make us laugh, scream, and cry together. That was, if I could get started.

I typed
Chapter One
, immediately filling the void on the page. Or, at least, the top part of the void. There. Now all I had to do was write the rest of the damn book.

Something vibrated under my leg and I jumped, almost dropping the laptop onto the floor. I set it on the bed, on top of one of Reggie’s
Viking Moon
books, and grabbed my phone from underneath me.

A smile slipped onto my lips as I saw a message from Jin. I slid my finger across the screen.

JIN:
Hey, Ellie-Bellie! How are you doing, beautiful? How’s college treating you?

I grunted at the phone and typed a reply.

ME:
College is fine so far. First day. Roomie is a huge VM fan. O__O It’s gonna be a loooong year. And I told you to stop calling me that.

JIN:
I’m not allowed to call you beautiful?

ME:
Not that. Ellie-Bellie. I had to give up jellybeans so people would stop calling me that. Thanks to you.

JIN:
I think it’s cute, but whatever. So, tell me more about this roommate. Did you tell her who you are?

ME:
Are you crazy? She’d probably tie me up in the closet or something. Not kidding. She seems to like the books a little too much. But her name’s Reggie, and other than that, she seems sweet. How’s NYC?

JIN:
Amazing. I still think you should come here. The people, the lights, the MEN. Oh, God, the men.

I laughed and shook my head at the screen.

ME:
Yeah, sounds exactly like my kind of place. I’m good staying here in little old Fernbrooke, okay?

JIN:
Too bad. You’re missing out on life. And love. You know, I was thinking, you should try to get to LA and at least watch them tape an episode of VM. It’d be good for you. Also, Gavin Hartley.

My screen filled with heart and kiss emojis. I swallowed the anxiety that crept up my throat as I thought of the last news I’d received from my agent.

ME:
Actually, they changed their minds. They want to film in Fernbrooke now. They wanted to be close to me so I could consult. And apparently our town looks ancient.

JIN:
WHAT?! That’s amazing! That’s it. I’m definitely coming home and visiting the set with you.

I licked my lips and glanced up at the books on my bed. One had fallen with the back cover up, giving me a glimpse of the perfect, full-lipped smile of the girl who was supposed to be me.

ME:
Yeah. There’s just one problem.

JIN:
What could possibly be the problem?

ME:
They think I’m a gorgeous brunette, remember?

JIN:
Fuck.

ME:
My sentiments exactly.

JIN:
What are you gonna do, El?

I exhaled. I’d been wondering the exact same thing all week as I paced my bedroom back home between packing sessions.

ME:
I don’t know. Any ideas?

JIN:
You could come clean. Tell your agent what happened.

ME:
Not an option.

JIN:
Okay . . . well, I suppose you need to find her, then. We already know she seems to have no problem pretending to be you. Track her down and see if she’ll visit the set in your place.

I sat back on my bed and digested his words. The pillow pressed into my lower back and I shifted it higher. He was right.

I had to find my imposter.

The problem was, how would I find someone when I didn’t even know her name?

W
hen my dad had insisted I go to college and learn to become a somewhat normal adult, the one thing that made me eventually give in to his pleas was Fernbrooke U’s Intro to American Lit seminar. It was taught by Duncan Creed, an author I’d admired since I was old enough to sneak his books off my mother’s shelf. His novels were always fantastical, set in other worlds and full of words I wasn’t allowed to say and scenes I wasn’t supposed to read. But I devoured them all the same—usually while huddled under the covers late at night, with only the light of my phone to read by. He hadn’t written a book in years, but I still clung to the hope that he’d release something else soon. Though the fact that he was now teaching literature to a bunch of college kids wasn’t exactly encouraging.

Monday morning, I made it to class early and scanned the empty room, trying to decide where to stake my claim for the semester. I knew logic dictated taking a seat front row, center. That would give me a good view of the professor’s lips and I could be sure I wouldn’t miss anything. But that would also make me a target for questions and class discussions. People always noticed the kids who sat in the front row. Ignoring the voice that told me I was being an idiot, I made my way to the back. I chose the seat in the far corner, where I could see Duncan Creed, but wouldn’t actually have to talk to him—or to anyone else.

The room was theater style, with plastic chairs sporting a flap of desk on one side. I shimmied under the desk portion and grimaced at the hard plastic beneath my bottom. It was a good thing I actually had some interest in this class.

As students filled the remaining seats, I pulled out my laptop and phone. I opened my dictation app and pointed the microphone to the front of the room.

My parents and the school had wanted to hire someone to trail me to my classes and sign for me, but just the idea of that made me want to crawl in a hole, grab some tacky throw pillows, and retire there. I suggested trying to read my professors’ lips, but I wasn’t sure how I’d manage to do that and take notes at the same time. That’s when I found a dictation app I could download to my phone. It picked up voices and translated them into text for me. I could then turn the transcripts into e-mails or Word documents and save them. Sure, it was missing punctuation, never quite knew the spelling of every word, and sometimes got things wrong, but it was better than being “that deaf girl in class.”

I hit the Power button on my laptop and waited for it to boot up. My gaze wandered around the room and stopped when it got to the front. I inhaled sharply, my cheeks warming.

Professor Creed stood at his desk, pulling papers out of a leather briefcase. He looked exactly like he did on the back of his books, with sandy-brown hair and dark-rimmed glasses hooked on the crook of his nose. He was more than twice my age, but the only giveaways were the spots of gray peppering his sideburns and the scruff of his beard.

I found myself sinking lower into my seat as his eyes met mine. He smiled and my heart faltered. I gripped the desk to stop myself from jumping out of the chair, running out of class, dropping out of college, and moving to a nunnery to live a life of solitude.

Instead, I stared at my computer’s desktop wallpaper. Since it was a picture of Gavin Hartley sweaty and shirtless, it was of little help. I shifted in my seat as a bead of sweat slithered down the back of my neck. When had it gotten so warm in the classroom? I clicked the mouse button to open a blank sheet in Word.

There, better. Now, maybe I could breathe.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I jumped, bumping my knee against the desk. I cried out as pain rippled up my thigh, and turned to see what had caused it in the first place.

A cowboy. There was an honest-to-God cowboy beside me. Like, with the giant hat and boots and everything.

He tipped his hat and I wondered if everything that had happened since the boy hit me with his beanbag chair the day before had been a product of my imagination: a
Viking Moon
fan as a roommate, my literary hero smiling at me, and now a cowboy tipping his hat to me in American Lit class. If that didn’t scream beanbag-chair-induced coma injury, I didn’t know what did.

“Howdy,” the cowboy/obvious figment of my imagination said. His body was long and lean, with his legs pulled up high. His knees pressed against the chair in front of him. At least, at a few inches over five feet, I never had to worry about legroom.

The length of his legs was matched only by the breadth of his chest. He looked like a guy who spent time on a farm, picking up bales of hay as though they were made of tissue paper. His toned and tanned arms indicated his skin soaked up sun as easily as mine repelled it. I watched his mouth as he formed words I could only assume were paired with a Southern drawl. “I’m mighty sorry about that. I didn’t mean to frighten you, ma’am.”

Ma’am. He called me ma’am. If I wasn’t already in a hospital, I should probably head to one.

I creased my brow and stared at him, willing my comatose self to wake up. When nothing happened and he only stared back, I finally spoke. “Um, that’s okay. Can I help you?”

“I’m Clint,” he said. He gave another tip of his hat. “Clint Harrison.”

The corner of my mouth twitched. “Elise. Nice to meet you.”

I turned back to my laptop only to feel the row of attached chairs shift as Clint moved out of his spot—which was a preferable two seats away—and into the space beside me. My back went rigid as a ruler, and the air of the classroom grew thin.

I spoke through a clenched jaw. “What can I do for you, Clint?”

He didn’t seem to catch the annoyance in the words as they tumbled out. Giving me a smile the size of Texas, he pointed at my book bag. “You wouldn’t happen to have an extra pen, would you? Mine appears to be plumb outta ink.”

He shook the pen in his hand and we watched as it escaped his clutches and flew across the room, smacking a girl sitting across the aisle in the cheek. She grabbed her face and turned in our direction. I quickly returned my gaze to my laptop. Holding my breath, I felt Clint’s body tense beside me. I waited a few moments before risking a glance up. The girl had returned to her computer, but her shoulders remained tight, in a way that made me suspect she wouldn’t excuse a second pen to the face.

Without warning, a giggle erupted from my mouth. Clint’s shoulder vibrated against mine as he wiped a tear from one of his spectacularly clear blue eyes.

“Oops,” he said when he’d regained his composure. “So, I guess that means now I
really
need a pen.”

“Wait. You mean you didn’t actually need one before?”

“No.” His face reddened and he gave me a half smile. “I just wanted to talk to the pretty girl in the corner.”

“Oh.”

I tried to form something more cohesive than that one word, but my brain had trouble conveying any sort of language to my mouth.

I turned back to my computer and Clint nudged my shoulder. “So . . . do you have a pen?”

“Oh. Right.”

I reached for my bag. The leather strap slid through my damp palms and the bag crashed onto the floor, spilling the contents across both my and the cowboy’s feet.

“Dammit.” Bending over to grab everything off the floor, I was grateful that, with my head bowed, Clint hopefully couldn’t see the heat creeping up my cheeks.

I stiffened as I spotted a tampon between the boots beside me. Holding my breath, I tried to determine how to get it back without Clint noticing me reaching between his legs.

Walking my hands across the cold floor, I shifted until my butt was almost off my chair and my fingers grazed his leather-clad toe. I swooped to grab the offending article, but Clint beat me to it. The bright pink packaging disappeared into his palm and I watched, wide-eyed, as he lifted it to his face.

Without a word, I snapped up in my chair and whisked it out of his grasp and into my bag in one move. I returned for the rest of my possessions on the floor, avoiding meeting his eyes. If he said anything, I decided I’d rather not see what it was.

After a few more moments of scraping the floor, I emerged with the rest of my stuff and a dirt-tinged hand. Shoving the items back in my bag, I grimaced at my palm before wiping it on my jeans. I handed Clint the pen, sure my face had to be redder than that of a prepubescent kid in sex ed class.

“Thanks,” Clint said when I finally gathered the courage to look in his direction. “What’s this?”

I groaned when he held up Reggie’s copy of the first
Viking Moon
book.

“It’s a book.” I grabbed it and shoved it back into the bag. “If you don’t know what one of those is, American Lit might not be the class for you.”

My chair shook with his laughter. “I meant, what’s it about?”

“You’ve never heard of the
Viking Moon
series?”

He shook his head and I settled back in my seat, my breathing finally returning to some semblance of normalcy.

“It’s a series of books for teens. About Vikings.”

“Vikings doing what?”

Clint leaned back in his chair, his eyes never leaving my face. I glanced at the front of the room. Our professor was talking to a perky blonde, her head bobbing and her hand on his wrist. He shook her off and rubbed his neck, but she slid closer.

Turning back to Clint, I released a sigh. “It’s about two feuding Viking families. And a teenage boy and girl from each family are in love with each other. It’s like
Romeo and Juliet
. But, you know, with Vikings.”

Clint wrinkled his nose like I had dragged a bag of rotting garbage across his lap. “There’s no cowboys, or horses, or duels at dawn?”

“Well, they’re Norsemen from, like, the 800s, so no.”

“And people read this crap?”

I crossed my arms and huffed. “Yes, they do.”

I returned my attention to Professor Creed. He guided the blonde back to her seat, a hand against the small of her back. Her mouth continued to move, even as he backed away to his desk.

Clint pulled a ball of lined paper out of his pocket. As he unfolded it, I saw it was covered with messy writing. He flipped through the creased pages till he found a blank one and proceeded to flatten it with his palm.

I looked at the sea of laptops around us, then back at him. “You’re taking notes by hand?”

“Yup.” He nodded. “No one appreciates the written word anymore. Everything is computers and machines. I believe there’s something beautiful about handwriting.”

He scrawled the date at the top of the page and I held my breath to suppress a giggle. There was nothing beautiful about
his
handwriting.

I opened my mouth to reply and sensed a shift in the room as everyone faced forward. Following their lead, I aimed my gaze at Professor Creed, who had already started his lecture. I hit the Record button on my app before turning back to my computer. Making sure the cowboy was lost in the lesson, I closed the blank document and flicked through pictures of Gavin Hartley online.

I stopped on a still from his last movie, in which he’d played a firefighter. His pants hung low around his hips, with only red suspenders keeping them up. Over his shoulder he carried an ax, much the same way I’d imagine Dag would carry one. He had a boyish face—the product of being only twenty-one—with deep blue eyes and chiseled cheeks.

Obviously, he visited the gym more than my annual treks that were required to maintain the façade of using my membership. His well-defined chest sloped into a ridged stomach. The sweat glistening against his torso accented each and every curve, including the V that extended along his hips and beneath the waist of his pants.

I fanned myself with Reggie’s book and crossed my legs. Chewing my lip, I clicked through photo after photo of the movie star.

In one month, I would have the chance to meet the man of my dreams—literally. Except he’d be expecting someone else entirely. And I had no idea how to be her.

One month wasn’t nearly enough time.