Ship It(40)

“I promise. I’m here solo.” I choose not to mention that Paula practically strung me up by my balls to get me to come, and Jamie offered me one free text to Jon Reynolds.

She studies me for a minute. “What do you want?”

This is it, my opening. I chew on my lip for effect, then say, a little haltingly, “Look, I… I know I haven’t been the best. With this stuff. But I want to learn.” I rub the back of my neck with my free hand. “I want to understand where you’re coming from. Show me what y’all are up to on Tumblr. Show me what I’m not getting.”

She narrows her eyes. How long am I gonna have to hold this damn box?

“No,” she says.

“No?” I thought for sure she would leap at this offer.

“Tumblr is”—she waves her hands—“it’s full of fanart and fanfic and gifsets…. It’s not there for you.”

“But it’s about me.” I start to falter…. Did I misjudge this? “Isn’t it?”

“No, it’s about a fictional demon hunter who happens to look just like you,” she says.

I sigh. There’s never a right answer with her. “Claire, I keep pissing people off doing what I’m doing and I don’t even know why.” This started out as an act, but this part is true. She makes me feel like an idiot all the time. “I’ve never felt as helpless as when I’m talking to you. And here you are sitting on a throne of answers and you won’t show them to me. You’re the only person I know I can ask. You’re like this small girl Yoda and I’m big, dumb Luke Skywalker, and I’m asking you to train me. Help me be better,” I say, and I actually mean it.

She bites her lip and thinks about it. “You like Star Wars, huh?”

“Yeah, who doesn’t?”

She sighs. “Okay,” she says, taking the doughnuts from me. “Teach you I will. But when you get uncomfortable, just remember, it was your choice.”

I let out a breath. “Awesome.”

“Have a seat,” she says, patting the floor beside her.

“Oh, nuh-uh. I have worked very hard to get where I am in life, and part of what that means is I don’t sit in hotel hallways. I like chairs. And rooms.”

She squints at me. “You want me to leave Jamie’s room alone so he can get in, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

She sighs. “Fine. But tell him this isn’t over.”

“I’m sure he knows,” I say with a smirk. “Trust me, no one around here is underestimating you anymore.”

Five minutes later, we’ve found an empty hotel conference room to hang out in, and we’ve already polished off a doughnut apiece. I had a maple bar, and it was so delicious I want to cry. I can’t remember the last time I had refined sugar, but I can’t eat another one or I’ll have to double my cardio tomorrow morning.

Claire flips open her laptop, and I see again the fanart of Heart and me, in a very intimate embrace, gracing her desktop wallpaper. All her documents are neatly arranged around the edges of the screen so as not to cover the image. What the hell am I getting myself into? I raise an eyebrow at her.

“Ignore that,” she says, quickly opening an internet browser. “That’s too advanced for you right now.”

She navigates to Tumblr. “Okay,” she says. “Here’s my dash.” The first post at the top of the page is a moving gif of, well, me. It looks like cell-phone footage, shot over the tops of people’s heads. I’m onstage and I’m wearing a Wonder Woman shirt. It’s Boise, I realize. The gif shows me covering my mic with my hand, leaning over to Rico and whispering. The caption below makes explicit what my lips are mouthing: “This is crazy. She’s crazy.”

It repeats over and over.

“Not that,” I say, feeling a pang of regret about that moment, and wishing it didn’t have to be giffed, destined to repeat over and over forever. “I don’t want to see that.”

“Okay, moving on.” She scrolls down and stops at the next post. It’s a series of gifs of Rico and me—Heart and Smokey—from the show. This one doesn’t have dialogue, just us staring at each other. Whoever made the gifs slowed it down so the eye contact lingers fooorever. When it reaches the end it loops back to the beginning automatically. So it’s just us. Staring. Until eternity.

Claire watches me watch the gif. “Do you know what shipping is?” she asks, taking a bite of a Bavarian cream-filled.

“That much I picked up,” I say. “SmokeHeart.”

“Right,” she continues. “You can ship anyone. When characters actually get together on the real show, the ship is considered ‘canon.’”

“Like Mulder and Scully,” I say.

“Exactly. Do you ship anyone?”

I think about it. Do I? I mean, I guess I root for couples to get together in a romcom or something…. Not that I watch that many romcoms, unless I’m dating some girl and trying to get her to think I’m sensitive. I can’t remember ever thinking about a fictional couple after the film or TV show ended. “No… I don’t think so,” I say.

“That’s okay. Not everyone does.” She polishes off her doughnut, licking the glaze off her fingers. My stomach rumbles. God, I’m hungry. I haven’t had dinner yet, and the doughnut is mixing with the bourbon in my system and giving me serious munchies. “Here’s the thing to understand, though: a lot of ships will never go canon, and that’s okay. Chewbacca and Princess Leia are never going to hook up in Star Wars, but that doesn’t stop some fans from writing fanfic or drawing fanart of it.”