Fan Service

by Rosie Danan

Today’s headline was tomorrow’s hamster-cage liner or whatever.

Devin grunted. Fuck. He was hard in Ben Affleck’s favorite coffee chain.

He’d been almost too pretty when he was young, those full lips and high cheekbones, ridiculous cow eyelashes, and honest-to-god freckles in the summer. Now he had that full tawny beard threaded with a few gray strands, fine lines at his eyes and across his forehead (despite the Botox rumors; nature must be healing). He was still the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, but this time he looked real.

Alex accepted that there was no way out of this situation where she retained her dignity, the rest was easy. It was a strategy she’d invented one night during her freshman year of college, when she’d been walking home alone from the library after dark. The approach relied on a simple cultural truth: no one wants to mess with the weird girl. The first time she barked, the three grown men just stared at her, uncomprehending. The second time, when the animal sound she made was louder, more urgent, they jumped back involuntarily. “Dude, what is going on?” either Greg or Chip said, tripping over his loafers, looking to Pete for instruction.

That was the trouble with fandom. Spend enough time thinking about a fictional character and you started to believe that your version of them was real. That they belonged to you in some small, private way.

Devin’s nose itched. The smell he’d recognized on her at the coffee shop wafted from what looked like a homemade cleaning solution in a spray bottle. “Oh thank god.” Relief washed over him. She didn’t smell bad naturally. He hadn’t been able to tell last night when she was shrouded in stale beer and smoke. Alex raised her eyebrows. “…you don’t use Clorox,” Devin supplied, lamely. “I’m very against that brand. Morally. Due to their impact on…fish.”

As much as she might want to pretend to be grown up, above it, her fangirl heart had always secretly hoped for something like this to happen. Who wouldn’t want to be the one who was clever and brave enough to rescue the damsel in distress (in this case, Devin)? Real life had been difficult at times, had called for sacrifice or courage, but taking care of her dad never once felt heroic. Maybe she deserved this, even if Devin didn’t. One chance for adventure in her small, boring life. The opportunity to bring at least one man who’d once disparaged her to his knees.

Fuck his head hurt. He massaged his temples as another wave of tone-deaf wailing came from the corner. God, Alex was the worst singer he’d ever heard. And he’d once run into the Situation doing “I Will Survive” at karaoke on the Las Vegas strip.

It was probably intrusive and weird, and Devin made a little vow to himself that he wouldn’t do this all the time just because he could, but he found the particular metronome of her pulse soothing. How come they didn’t put human heartbeats on white noise machines? Wait a second, should he go on Shark Tank?

“So, assuming this thing works the way we think it will, the cycle is gonna repeat every twenty-nine days,” Devin counted. “No rest for the wicked, huh?” “Now you know how people who menstruate feel.” Whoa. Devin never really thought about periods before, but dang, what a scam.

He’d done a lot of drugs in his life, and nothing held a candle to huffing Alex Lawson straight from the source.

“You should quit your job,” he said, closing his eyes and ignoring other, more feral instincts. “Become, like, an air freshener model.” “That’s not a thing,” Alex said, but her breath against his chest was uneven. Her heartbeat hectic in his ears.

Devin Ashwood was exactly what she’d imagined. Thanks to his ego, Alex was now living her very own version of She’s All That. Except in this case, the popular guy didn’t even pretend he found her fuckable.

Devin didn’t know what he’d expected when he walked into the vet’s office for his first trial, but it definitely wasn’t a forty-seven-slide PowerPoint presentation, he could tell you that much.