Ship It(15)

“Do you want to trade Tumblr URLs?”

“Oh,” she says, and frowns. My stomach sinks.

“We don’t have to.” I adjust my glasses. “Never mind.”

“No, it’s fine! I just…” she says hesitantly. “I’ve never done that before. I, uh, have a lot of Demon Heart stuff on there.”

“Oh. Yeah, so do I.”

“And some of it’s kind of…”

Kind of what?

“You know,” she says. “Between Smokey and Heart…”

“Oh, yeah,” I say. “Totally.”

“So you…”

“Ship them? Definitely,” I say confidently. About this one thing at least, I’m 100 percent certain. She lets out a breath and starts to smile. Wow, she has really nice teeth. “I don’t know how anybody who’s paying attention could not ship them. I mean, come on.”

I unzip my hoodie to show her my other favorite Demon Heart T-shirt. Smokey’s holding his battle-ax to Heart’s neck, and Heart is gripping Smokey by the throat. It’s supposed to be suspenseful, I guess—men on opposite sides of an eternal battle. But to me, it just looks like two incredibly attractive guys playing a high-stakes game of Twister with props.

Tess squeals in delight. “I haven’t seen that one! Oh my god, they’re so close. If they would just…”

“I know,” I say, and I pinch my shirt between my fingers causing a wrinkle, bringing their faces even closer together.

“There it is!” she shouts.

Then, by hunching and straightening my shoulders, I’m able to bring their lips together and apart, again and again, and Tess is dying laughing and I can’t help but giggle with her. Her laughter is contagious.

“Okay, but you can’t add me until later, okay? I don’t want to see you looking at the dumpster-fire stuff I reblog.” She pulls a sketchbook out of her bag and tears a blank page from the back. Holding the paper against the wall, she writes her URL on it, then hands it to me.

“Pan-labyrinth,” I read. The paper feels heavy and nice in my hands. Her handwriting is loopy and large.

“And don’t laugh at my fanart,” she says.

“I would never!” I tell her genuinely. I take her pen, my fingers brushing against hers. It’s a nice pen, with silky black ink. I write heart-of-lightness on the other half of the paper and tear it off and I don’t even pause before I give it to her, but when she reads it and looks up at me with big eyes, I realize with a cringe that she knows who I am.

I can see her image of me changing as she looks me over brand-new.

It’s not that I’m famous, I’m not.

No, really, there are people on Tumblr who are legit famous, and I’m not one of them. But I write fic, and a lot of people follow me so they can ask when the next chapter of whatever WIP I’ve been posting will come out, that kind of thing. But I don’t really have friends online. Acquaintances, sure. Mutuals, definitely. It’s just that most of the time on Tumblr I feel like everyone else is friends with one another and I’m just around, reblogging gifsets and posting fics and trying to avoid any drama. We’re a community, for sure, but I’m kind of like the old lady in the creepy house at the end of the lane who never comes to the block parties. It didn’t even cross my mind that Tess would recognize my name.

“You’re heart-of-lightness?” she asks incredulously.

“Uh, yeah.”

“I love your fics!” She says this with, let’s be honest, far more weight than I really deserve. The line starts moving, and I feel grateful to be able to escape what has suddenly become a much more intense conversation.

“Thanks,” I say as we shuffle forward.

“No, seriously, you’re really good. Oh my god, don’t reblog any of my fanart, you probably have a million followers.”

“I don’t. At all. But don’t worry, I won’t. I’ll, ah, see you online,” I say, and slip into the hall.

Before I’m out of earshot, I hear her mutter “heart-of-lightness” to herself again. And I feel a little stuttery. I think about the look on her face when she read my name and I smile to myself, and mutter under my own breath, “Tess.”


THE CONVENTION CENTER isn’t big, necessarily, but that has never stopped me from getting lost. As I’m wandering the service corridors, peering through doors, searching for the greenroom Paula told me about, I hear a familiar voice.

“Hey, Z-Dawg!” It’s Jamie. I follow the voice and round the corner to see “Z-Dawg” is Zach Sanchez-Anderson. I didn’t even know Jamie knew him. Maybe they’re both in some secret showrunner society. He’s the creator of this show called Time Swipers that my agent tells me has “franchise potential” and is apparently “blowing up with the demo.” All I know is that three years ago he was a nobody and now he has a hit TV show and—according to the Hollywood Reporter—a very tasteful historic Spanish-style house in the Hills.

I hang back, not wanting to interfere with their little showrunner catch-up session. Looking over Zach, he has almost the same style as Jamie—sneakers, baseball cap, hoodie—but he stands a little straighter, keeps his haircut a little fresher. Jamie’s the only showrunner I know personally, so I sort of assumed he was par for the course, but I see now that slob-chic isn’t necessarily the required style.