So Many Somethings E-Book

Molly Dunn

• Herausgeber: 8th Note Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 453

Beschreibung

Fanfiction clashes with reality when an anonymous fic writer meets the real-life celebrity behind her stories ... who happens to secretly be her top reader, in a romantic comedy perfect for fans of Thank You For Listening and Mr. Wrong Number.   By day, Diana works as a line cook at her family's French café in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, juggling brunch service and finicky customers. She's happy to help at the café, but it's financially in dire straits, and she's not sure how much longer she can help keep things going. By night, she escapes into the Sam Raymond fandom, penning smutty real-person fanfiction (RPF) about the dreamy rockstar-of-the-moment for thousands of readers. And those readers are eating it up more than usual after a vocal injury that's sidelined Sam's tour. One of Diana's most avid followers, the mysterious "S," has even sent her a series of flirtatious DMs on Tumblr.    When the real Sam Raymond shows up at the Diana's café for brunch, her carefully separated worlds collide (and she's gotta make the best goddamn lemon crème crêpes of her life). Despite her nerves, the crêpes are a hit, and Sam keeps coming back for more; soon, the two strike up an easy friendship over their shared taste in music and love of NYC.   But Sam has secrets of his own. He's finding it harder and harder to suppress his panic attacks, with setbacks slowing his vocal recovery and threatening a potential end to his singing career. The only comfort he finds is in interacting with a clever online fic writer in, embarrassingly, his own fandom. And then he meets Diana. As Sam isolates himself away from his normally chaotic life, he becomes intrigued by this cute chef and her big, boisterous family. He can't help but spend more time at the classic French bistro they call home.   As the writer and the rockstar grow closer, Diana must balance her connection with S and attraction to Sam— and her guilt in keeping up her pseudo-Sam-themed stories, which she knows is her best chance to get out of the kitchen and become a professional writer. Meanwhile, Sam is forced to confront the anxiety threatening to break him once and for all, or he risks losing both his connection with Diana and his career. Will this end in OTP or disaster?

Leseprobe

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Published by 8th Note Press

Text copyright © 2024 by Molly Dunn

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-961795-48-8

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the publisher.

Cover Design by Alexandra Allden

Images illustrated by Alexandra Allden (man, woman’s body);© Shutterstock; iStock (all other images).

Typeset by Typo•glyphix

To Mom and Dad,thank you for supporting my dreamssince the round crib days.I love you.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Chapter One

Diana Chevalier has time to scribble one last sentence, one final note on her very nearly full page, before she is officially egregiously late.

Her phone dings.

@Fire___witch: I’m calling it now. This is your masterpiece.

Diana puts aside her Moleskine notebook, clamps a large alligator clip around her coil of thick chestnut-brown hair, and swipes into the message notification on her phone.

“A,” more widely known as @Fire___witch, was one of Diana’s first friends in her current Tumblr fandom of choice, “Samblr,” a subsect of Tumblr dedicated to Sam Raymond, YouTube cover musician turned stadium-touring megastar. Also a fan fiction writer, A’s creative process includes procrastinating by talking to Diana about her writing. She’s known in the community as a tastemaker, the go-to girl for fic recommendations. Such high praise coming from A means a lot.

Diana responds:

@DKnowsNY: omg I’ve only posted a 400 word preview!

@Fire___witch: but the ~vibes~!

@Fire___witch: any dope can drop Sam Raymond into the Connacht Academy universe as a student during the years of The Long War covered in the original series. But you! Had the vision to look ~beyond~

A is referring to the best-selling Connacht Academy book series, a young adult hero epic set in a school for magically gifted teenagers in an ancient castle off the coast of Ireland. Diana chuckles to herself at A’s enthusiasm and her overuse of the tilde. She fumbles with her clip again and continues typing.

@DKnowsNY: I’m glad you like it so far. Chapter 1 incoming. Watch this space.

@Fire___witch:*grabs popcorn*

@Fire___witch: I’m mostly here for the Professor Sam teacher fantasy

@Fire___witch: I feel like a wand is an excellent substitute for a ruler for . . . things

@Fire___witch: disciplinary things

Diana snickers and replies:

@DKnowsNY: you’re imagining his love interest, Professor Evie, in this fantasy right? Not his actual students?

@Fire___witch: YES shut up don’t make it weird

Diana glances at the time in the corner of her screen. Her eyes bulge.

“Shit!” she squeaks, gathering her errant pens and pads as she scurries off the fire escape so fast, she skids on her furry area rug upon bedroom reentry.

Diana hustles down three flights of stairs, thumbing through keys on her way until her fingers find the blue and white New York Yankees one, which she jams into her crimson-painted front door on her way out.

As Diana charges down Riverside Drive, the early September sun beats down on her bare neck. It hovers over the artificial horizon created by the brownstones on the opposite side of the street, unwilling to admit defeat to a rapidly cooling night. The passing breeze is a welcome relief, carrying crispy leaves on the sidewalk and voices she recognizes as she nears a familiar faded maroon awning on West 87th Street.

“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Halpin. How are you this evening?” she pants, hurrying to meet them as they shuffle slowly beneath the awning that’s been there for decades.

The elderly couple, both petite even compared to Diana, smile in unison. She guides them to the railing and watches them descend from the street level to the dank cool of the restaurant patio.

“Very well, dear. Here for our Wednesday usual,” Mr. Halpin croaks in a voice that’s seen decades full of Marlboro red cartons.

Diana nods as she holds the door open for them. “Of course, the croque madame, split and served on two dishes, with a bottle of the Domaine Laroche Chablis.”

Mrs. Halpin nods as she steps inside. Diana follows, right into another world.

La Vie En Rose opened in 1937. It was the first great French café to grace the Upper West Side of New York City. If you ask Diana, it remains the greatest.

The ceilings are low, the light is moody, and everything smells like butter, roasting meat, and old, dried lavender. The tables and chairs are mismatched, having been replaced piecemeal throughout the years. The lampshades are toile, dusty and yellowing. The brass sconces they sit upon contrast with exquisite chandeliers that shiver in the din of Edith Piaf’s “Milord” and a dining room full of patrons. It’s the epitome of vintage French style, old-world romance.

Diana looks away from her sister Giselle’s prying gaze back to the Halpins. “Please, you two, have a seat at your usual table. I’ll send Giselle over with the Chablis and a snack!”

Diana calls over her shoulder to them, dodging familiar waitstaff in white shirts and black vests as she bobs toward the kitchen, buttoning the neck of her chef’s jacket.

A hand grabs at her elbow, nearly swinging her into a column sporting a portrait of Napoleon. Diana grunts, grabbing the attention of another set of café regulars, the Parkers. She smiles at them manically and looks at her waylayer.

“You’re so fucking late,” Giselle spits. Her big blue eyes have gotten bigger and so bulgy they look ready to pop out and make an extra garnish in the Parkers’ soupe provençal.

Diana’s nose scrunches. “I’m a whole four minutes late, Gi.”

“Try two hours! Just because you’re the boss’s daughter doesn’t mean you can just bail on mise prep,” Giselle counters, her voice climbing with the tension in her bony shoulders.

“Papa excused me from mise. I helped him with morning delivery because Henri was hungover again, and I boned fourteen ducks this morning! Hop off my dick,” Diana hisses.

Mr. Parker snorts in amusement. Mrs. Parker shoots him a look.

Giselle narrows her eyes. With her claw-like hand still locked around Diana’s arm, she drags them both through the swinging kitchen door.

Their father, Étienne, a tall, lanky, handsome Frenchman in a Dior shirt and Gucci loafers, sits at the farmhouse table facing the kitchen staff. His legs are stretched out like he hasn’t a care in the world, despite the fact that La Vie is one of several restaurants he owns and operates. He smiles calmly up at his daughters.

“Mes chères!” he greets. “Diana, you’re late.”

Giselle opens her fat mouth to speak. Diana cuts in.

“How late am I, Papa?”

Étienne’s salt and pepper brow lifts. He glances down at his vintage Cartier. “About six minutes.”

Diana purses her full lips and looks over at willowy, irate Giselle.

“You can’t let her skip mise just because she feels like it, Papa! What kind of message does that send to the rest of the kitchen?”

Giselle’s voice has gone so high and shrieky that some of the kitchen staff glance around at them, interested but unsurprised by the antics of Chevalier daughters. Étienne pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Giselle, my darling girl, I’m sure your sister appreciates your concern, but I personally did not ask for your business advice, nor your parenting advice. Why don’t you head back out to the dining room and tend to our patrons?”

Diana grins triumphantly. Giselle’s sharp jaw tightens. She storms out of the kitchen and makes a beeline for the wine cellar. Étienne sighs and reaches for his wide-bowled glass of what Diana would bet her life is a cabernet.

“How was your afternoon, bébé?”

Diana keeps word of publishing her fan fiction series preview and chatting with her internet pal buttoned behind her lips.

“Fine. I read on the fire escape,” she lies. She reaches for an apron on the hook on the wall. “It’s starting to smell like fall for real now. Not just in the park.”

Étienne looks amused by the youngest of his five daughters. He cocks his head, swirling his glass.

“It is indeed your season,” he agrees with a wink.

Diana winks back, tying her apron with a flourish before she wades back between counters, babbling in French and pecking the cheeks of her coworkers as she takes a place among the other chefs de partie.

“Croque madame for our friends, the Halpins!” Diana hollers in her kitchen voice. Though her title and experience level haven’t earned it, the ringing response is the same, automatic from her fellow line cooks:

“Oui, chef!”

François prepares a new batch of bechamel. Kim slices the bread and preps the Gruyère and ham. Diana expertly cracks eggs into a cast-iron skillet, singing along with Edith Piaf under her breath.

The La Vie kitchen is a well-oiled machine, helmed by chef de cuisine Henri de Beque, who operates under the direction of her parents, owner and restauranteur Étienne Chevalier and his wife, Claudette, the general manager. The kitchen system is traditional French brigade de cuisine and entirely unflappable. It came over with her immigrant great-grandparents, who purchased the six-bedroom brownstone on West 87th Street and the space below when that was still a thing you could feasibly do on the Upper West Side of Manhattan without being an oligarch or a Rockefeller.

Diana and her four older sisters grew up as much in the restaurant as they did in the house above. It’ll be the same for Diana’s nieces and nephews, the children of the twins, Coralie and Sylvie, the eldest Chevalier daughters. They’re both tall and fair-haired with aristocratic beauty and very difficult to tell apart if you don’t know them. They each live a block away (in either direction), each with their husbands, each with their two kids. The twins always did do everything together. Coralie serves as the sommelier, Sylvie as the maître d’hôtel.

Emmanuelle is the middle child, the free spirit, complete with wild, coily curls, glowing smile, and a permanent tan. When she’s not stationed abroad with Doctors Without Borders, she lives in Paris with her cat, Zoëlle.

Giselle is the fourth daughter and by far the most miserable. Arguably the most beautiful of the five, her classic good looks are spoiled by an ever-present sneer. She lives with Diana, begrudgingly, in an apartment left to them in the will of Claudette’s eccentric aunt. She works as a waitress at La Vie but wants to be anywhere else with anyone else at any given time, and yet refuses to consider something like . . . moving. Or getting a new damn job. Claudette regularly threatens them both with eviction so she can sell the property in the old pre-war building that’s likely worth a bundle—location, location, location—but it would mean the girls landing back in the nest they left over a year ago and their constant bickering would once again be her problem. So they stay there, with their incredible view of the park and fights over the water bill, occasionally boxing up old burlesque paraphernalia and ethically taxidermied birds, each saving for their next steps. Whatever the hell those might be.

“Eggs up!” Diana calls, lifting the hefty pan to slide the sunny-side-up eggs, very runny just like the Halpins like, onto a dish. She places it on the steel counter above her head at eye level with Ji-young, the sous-chef.

Ji-young grins. “Thanks for joining us, babe.”

Diana rolls her eyes and glances at the next ticket as Giselle comes in with another order.

“Poulet rôti, steak au poivre, bien cuit!” Henri barks.

“Oui, chef!”

Diana can feel her phone buzzing in her pocket. Most likely it’s A, hammering her for details about her upcoming chapter or gossiping about a new fantasy series just announced by one of the fandom’s other preeminent fan fiction writers, @silkysam.

Diana goes by D on her Tumblr account, or by her username, @DKnowsNY. She’s been writing fan fiction since before she knew the term, since before she realized she wasn’t the only one sitting up at night with a notebook writing new characters and storylines into her favorite books and movies. Publishing her stories found her a home on social media’s weird, slightly sinister, and totally anarchic cousin, Tumblr. She soon knew it was exactly where she belonged.

She scoops a ladle full of chicken broth into her skillet, watching it sizzle and steam and hiss just as it’s supposed to. But soon she’s in the weeds and Ji-young is barking at the line like it’s rush hour at Le Bernardin. But, Diana supposes, to Ji-young, it may as well be.

Diana could take cooking or leave it, professionally speaking. She’s an excellent chef de partie and shows real promise with innovation and flavor. But if she could do anything? She’d write. And write. And write.

Even while she cooks, she writes. In her head, at least. She plans out future plotlines and dialogue and the cinematography of each scene and how she can describe it best. She daydreams about the best places in the Connacht Academy castle to sneak away to have a torrid affair. It helps get her through the nights when she lops off a chunk of thumb julienning carrots or accidentally makes a croque monsieur instead of a croque madame.

Étienne just says she’s his little dreamer, that she’s just thinking up her next recipe. She doesn’t have the heart to correct him.

The dinner rush finally lets up around nine. Diana takes a minute away, hovering by the door of the walk-in to check her phone, and finds a new personal message waiting for her on Tumblr.

@Connachtkid: hey ! I just read the preview you posted and I just want to say it was really really good. I actually made a tumblr just to tell you that haha. I hope you’re gonna keep writing it. I really liked it !

Diana rests back against the brushed-steel door of the enormous refrigerator and types out a response:

@DKnowsNY: thank you!! I’m definitely going to continue it, I’m actually working on chapter 2 already. If you’re a night owl, you might catch a little surprise later ;)

Diana clicks back to her open Google Doc and rereads the last few lines of her work in progress. A few seconds later, another notification dings.

@Connachtkid: you have my attention. I’ll stay up.

An unexplainable squirming sensation materializes in her gut.

@DKnowsNY: I’ll see if I can make it worth your while

Diana studies the text after she hits send. Is this flirting? It’s been so long since she’s attempted it, she barely recognizes it. For once, Diana wishes Tumblr messages showed typing bubbles to tell her when she’s gone too far.

@Connachtkid: don’t worry about me

@Connachtkid: I have excellent stamina

Diana smiles conspiratorially and wets her lower lip.

@DKnowsNY: well that is a relief

She can hear Ji-young’s voice from the kitchen and it’s clear her break needs to come to an end. She drops her phone into the deep pocket of her work pants and heads back to her station. Her hands are busy, cracking an egg with one and shuffling heavy cast-iron skillets with the other, but her mind is free, imagining the way Professor Sam Raymond might look in a too-snug tweed vest.

Diana shifts under the weight of her heavy navy comforter, sticking a delicate foot out of her makeshift cocoon. Maybe she got carried away when her weather app told her it would finally be below seventy degrees in Manhattan after sundown. She bundled up with her old MacBook and tripped back out to her fire escape to write in the brisk chill after her shift.

She definitely overestimated the cool air. As she looks down, watching quiet Upper West Side neighbors drifting in and out of the yellowing cast of the streetlamps, with her green polished toes dangling above them, she smiles.

New York has always had a way of teasing her, making her feel blissfully small in comparison. It’s a nice reminder.

She closes her eyes and breathes in. Fall is coming. New York can’t fake her out of that. She can smell it on the wind—dried leaves, old wood-burning fireplaces from the brownstones around her that have stood since the turn of the twentieth century. She cherishes it, especially when it fuels her creativity.

Diana’s presence on Tumblr has been largely nomadic, drifting in and out of fan communities as her fancies change. She’s been a Directioner, a Swiftie, even did a stint with the Supernatural stans, whose response to her Destiel fic scared the living shit out of her, so that didn’t last. A year and a half ago, when she stumbled upon his self-titled album for the first time, her fancies brought her Sam Raymond, in all his hazel-eyed, curly-haired, angel-voiced Midwestern glory. She hasn’t looked back since.

Sam came up through social media too, by posting acoustic covers of radio hits on YouTube and Instagram. He was a wide-eyed teenager with impressive guitar skills and the voice to match. When starmaker Jackson Hinkley discovered him from a clip of him singing “Make You Feel My Love” in his parents’ backyard in suburban Chicago, his following of a few thousand ballooned to a few million. He opened for acts like Ed Sheeran and Shawn Mendes on stadium world tours before he even released a full album. Five years on, he’s the one headlining the big venues, having transitioned from teenage heartthrob to a Grammy-nominated star with two platinum-selling records under his belt. He’s a respected artist now who hasn’t strayed too far from his roots, but the sweet-faced kid no mother would worry about when she lets her daughter date him has grown up. He’s growling clever double entendres in his lyrics and posing shirtless and oil-coated on magazines. The music industry’s politest panty-dropper.

Diana was finishing up a series of short stories inspired by songs on his sophomore album, Second Impressions, when Manhattan, ever her muse, brought something new on the incoming fall breeze. The idea fell into her lap alongside her worn-out paperback copy of Connacht Academy: Eternal, handed down to her from Emmanuelle, her favorite sister. Every fall, she rereads the fantasy series that fostered her love of books. Since each volume begins with the start of the school year in September, the tradition is a way to welcome the season that carries notes of nostalgia, smoking firewood, and a little bit of magic.

Diana’s story, Star Crossed, drops Sam Raymond into an “alternate universe,” or AU—specifically, the universe created by Victoria Lawrence, author of the Connacht Academy books, which have been turned into movies and spun off into TV series and stage productions, all of varying quality. The series has also inspired a fandom so passionate and expansive, they’ve taken the initiative to create content of their own in record-setting numbers.

Star Crossed is hardly Diana’s first fan fiction series about Sam Raymond, but she can already feel it’s her favorite. The response to her teaser has been spectacular, and predictably horny. She came off her shift at the restaurant to find it had gathered a few hundred more notes, including a formal recommendation from A, who referred to it as “the most hotly anticipated fic of the season.” A could have a real shot at a career writing taglines for movie posters.

Diana lets out a soft huff when she spots the clock in the corner of her screen. Time got away from her again when she logged in to gauge response. And then it got a little further away when Vibe magazine released outtakes (read: thirst traps) from Sam’s cover shoot at the start of his recent world tour.

Diana studies the photos. Sam has one of those faces. He just looks famous. Permanently tousled brown curls are his calling card, but Diana thinks his most distinctive feature is his nose. It’s just a little too big for his face in a way she finds completely charming. Everything else about him seems, at a distance at least, almost disturbingly perfect—big gold-brown eyes, strong chin, high, elegant cheekbones. He’s tall and toned, built like a soccer player with square shoulders and thick, bitable thighs ribboned in muscle. He has a handful of tattoos, tasteful ones spread out on a perfect canvas. But his nose is just a little off. Diana’s always really liked that.

As she shifts her duvet a little bit this way, a little bit that way, Diana is distracted by a ping from her laptop.

@Connachtkid: the third Connacht Academy movie is on TV right now, in case you’re like me and you’ve seen them all 400 times and it’s not enough

Diana clicks on the Tumblr handle and it brings her to @Connachtkid’s profile, which is all but bare. No sign of a Sam Raymond affinity or even references to the Connacht books or movies. The only trace of personality is in the profile photo, a generic Google image of the Empire State Building. Maybe they’re a New Yorker. She doubts it—no one originally from New York City would use a photo of the Empire State Building as a profile photo. Unless it’s ironic? Maybe they’re ironic and dry and witty. She’s not sure why she’s spending the time to go internet detective on this brand-new account, but it’s likely linked to the little twinge of something she can’t name that she felt in her gut when they first messaged her. She’s happy any time a new reader wants to engage with her, but this feels different.

After a few more minutes of clicking around the barren page, Diana heads back inside to her air conditioning and her cable TV that Giselle keeps threatening to cancel. After a quick scroll through the guide, she finds it.

@DKnowsNY: thank you!! I had a long day and this is exactly what I need

@Connachtkid: glad to be of service. How’s that surprise coming?

She likes that they’re direct, but not too aggressive. She’s never really flirted with anyone on Tumblr before. She’s also never flirted with someone whose gender expression is a mystery, not that it makes any difference to her. But it’s new and delicious, wondering what they’ll say next.

@DKnowsNY: patience.

@DKnowsNY: it’s always better when you have to wait for it

There, in the silence between messages, she feels the truth in what she says.

Then, ping.

@Connachtkid: then I guess I’d better wait

Chapter Two

Sam Raymond stares at the inoffensive light-blue wall of the observation room in the Mt. Sinai Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation. He got back to Manhattan less than twenty-four hours after limping off the stage in Bangkok, apologizing for leaving what he would later find out would be the last show of his world tour.

His eyes are fixed on the paint as his manager, Jackson, explains to the doctors what triggered the vocal meltdown: leaning too far into a vocal run at the climax of the “Expectations” bridge after a long tour with not enough rest, water, or careful observation.

The doctor makes an effort to explain the problem in layman’s terms, despite the clear signs that Sam is not absorbing anything. Jackson jots down phrases in his Notes app as Dr. Kelvin speaks.

< Notes

Polyp formed under your epithelium, the outer layer of the vocal cord.

Hemorrhaged—vocal cord trauma.

Laryngeal microsurgery.

Dividing the layer with a scalpel to pull back a flap of tissue to expose the polyp for removal and assess further damage.

Risk damaging the superficial lamina propria . . . in rare cases, damages the patient’s voice.

Sam closes his eyes. His mother’s hand cradles the back of his clammy neck. Jackson and Sam’s parents ask questions and Dr. Kelvin answers them succinctly. Sam doesn’t acknowledge any of it, just shakes his head slowly and breathes in and out through his nose.

Dr. Kelvin is the last of three Major Medical Opinions™ the team and his parents have sought out in the two weeks since his injury. Each one, Dr. Metzer at Stanford and then Dr. Ecclesfield at Mass Gen, repeats the same diagnosis and treatment recommendation. Laryngeal microsurgery. Dr. Kelvin treated Kelly Clarkson and Diana Ross. He’s the best there is. So Dr. Kelvin it is.

The surgery is booked. The team will stay in New York in the early days of his recovery, Sam at his conveniently just-closed-on apartment in an old brownstone on Riverside Drive. He was supposed to stay there after his tour ended to relax and focus on writing. It came sooner than planned.

Sam spends the rest of the afternoon watching the footage captured by a few thousand phones, the moment his voice failed with a terrible crackle and his pathetic whimpering as he tried to apologize to the crowd he disappointed. Multiple versions of the video went viral fast, picked up by mainstream media outlets all over the world.

Sam Raymond lost his voice.

Now he’s going under the knife to get it back.

“So, wait,” Greg laughs hoarsely, yelling over Cooper’s raspy cackle and Halsey on the new stereo that make the exposed brick walls of Sam’s new Upper West Side townhouse throb. “How did it end?”

Sam winces, clutching the mini whiteboard and Expo marker his friends half-jokingly forced into his hands earlier that evening to help him communicate. Greg and Cooper decided to throw him a housewarming/pre-surgery party two days before his operation. He looks to Cooper, who’s almost spraying his IPA out of his nose.

“It ended with me learning what pegging is,” Cooper chuckles, red-cheeked and bleary-eyed.

Sam tries to laugh silently in that way that still hurts but is focused more in his chest than his throat. For the first time in a little too long, Sam feels . . . fine. Maybe it’s more numbness than just “fine,” but he really needed a drink. He’s not supposed to be drinking pre-surgery, but when Greg and Cooper insisted on it, he found he didn’t want to stop them. He was desperate for a distraction. Diving into the trenches of AO3, Tumblr, and Wattpad was Greg’s whiskey-soaked idea. “The perfect distraction,” he called it, with that devilish look in his eye despite Sam’s silent, wide-eyed pleas.

Greg has his phone only inches from his face as he scrolls, squinting, swaying a little where he sits. He’s the drunkest of the three, so far. Sam has plans to show him up. He figures he deserves it—that bewildering, comforting nothingness.

“Sam . . . Raymond . . . smut.” Greg says each word carefully as he types them into the search bar, egged on by more of Cooper’s delighted cackles.

Sam’s eyes grow wide. He shakes his head fervently, but his gut reaction only aggravates the situation as Greg scrolls faster. He reaches for the phone, but he’s drunker than he realized. His tolerance is lower than usual. His head spins as he lurches and grunts softly, throat aching.

“Look at these hashtags,” Greg screeches. “What is this? Pornhub for your nerdy fans?”

Sam slumps in his armchair, which still smells like brand-new leather, and lets his cheek rest against the cool surface as he accepts defeat.

The well-intentioned humiliation continues. It takes on a new life when Cooper gets his phone out, thumbing through other Sam Raymond fic-related tags.

Sam sighs as heavily as he’s allowed and pulls up the hood of his Uniqlo sweatshirt, closing his eyes against the spinning of his living room. He holds up his sad little board with “I hate you” scrawled across it.

“Oh, hey, in this one you hire a dominatrix,” Greg says a little too loud, getting Sam’s attention. “Not safe for work. Yeah, I fuckin’ bet it’s not.”

Sam laughs this time.

“Star Crossed—Professor Sam Raymond gets off on the wrong foot with his new colleague Evelyn Fawley upon arriving to teach his first year at the Connacht Academy of Magical Arts. Fate and a small band of meddling students force them together even when they’d rather be very much apart.”

Greg and Cooper go quiet, considering, eyeing the subject of the story curiously. Sam blinks, feeling his ears get hot under his hood. He shrugs and looks down at his phone.

“Maybe he enchants her with his wand,” Cooper jabs. They both roar again. Sam throws back the last of his glass.

A few hours later, Greg and Cooper pass out on their respective couches, ignoring Sam’s newly decorated guest rooms, while Sam heads for the primary bedroom.

He’s on a high-enough floor in this building to be far from the street. It’s quiet. It’s very dark. He’s pleasantly drunk now, enough to help him sleep but not enough to make him sick tomorrow. His room is cool and he’s bundled in his duvet, so the only excuse for his inability to sleep is his brain.

Sam sighs in aggravation and runs his tongue along his dry, cracked lower lip. He rolls over again. His anxiety is a beast on any given day but lately it’s been understandably worse. His brain pulses with scenarios—good, bad, ugly. He imagines himself accepting an armful of Grammys for the album he’ll write about this trying time in his life, his voice fully restored, maybe even better than ever. He imagines his vocal cords being severed in a freak surgical accident. He imagines, somehow the worst outcome of all, the doctor’s careful words in post-op as he explains that more tissue was damaged than they anticipated.

He may never sing the same way again.

The fear of it, Sam’s worst-case scenario, brings angry tears to his eyes. He rolls over again, violently pulling the corner of his sheet up from where his mom tucked it carefully when she was decorating last week.

Singing the way he does didn’t come naturally. He’s worked his voice into disuse many times before—honing, perfecting. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he was never meant to be able to do this for long. Maybe forcing his voice to the point of a hemorrhage is his karmic retribution for taking something that wasn’t given to him.

Maybe he never deserved any of this.

Sam recognizes the opening of a downward spiral when he sees one. He huffs and rolls over once more, snatching at his phone, refusing to engage with the negativity. His phone opens to a Tumblr web page from earlier. He starts to click away when the description of Star Crossed passes through his head again.

He chews on the inside of his lip. He’s just curious. It’s not vain if it’s a mild, fleeting interest. He just wants to know what subject “@DKnowsNY” imagines him teaching. He props himself up with a pillow, snuggles down into his mattress, and scrolls to find a preview the author posted.

Introducing: Star Crossed

“Try it again,” Evie bites, fighting to ignore the way his breath cascading over her neck leaves goosebumps like razed earth. She squeezes her eyes shut in the pitch darkness and holds her breath.

Sam tries the spell again. For a moment, neither of them exhales. But again, nothing.

“What kind of classroom has an enchanted closet?” Sam grunts, huffing in a way that presses his sturdy, sculpted chest right up against her. Evie tilts her head up, struggling to breathe all of a sudden.

“The castle’s always done this. It’s like a hazing ritual. Breaking in the new teachers,” she explains, voice weak and reedy.

Sam grumbles under his breath. Evie resists the urge to beg him not to speak or breathe because every time he does, she’s forced to confront just how close they are—chest to chest, toe to toe, hip very nearly to hip. He bleeds heat all over her, an all-American furnace of muscle and discontent.

“So what do we do now?” he finally asks.

Evie can smell the ginger tea he had with breakfast on his breath. She bites her lip, hoping to stop her body from vibrating.

“We wait.”

Twenty-five minutes later, after he’s scoured her blog for more hints of what’s coming, Sam gets one last surge of pre-sleep energy. He’s enthralled. He’s enchanted. He’s desperate for more. And in a rash moment, he creates an account he calls @Connachtkid and follows the author’s blog before he drops headfirst into sleep, dreaming of Irish sprites and Evelyn Fawley’s pretty red hair.

Chapter Three

@Fire___witch: WAKE UP

Diana rolls over. Her phone rattles on the edge of the wicker nightstand that’s inconveniently out of reach. She’s usually better about remembering to turn on Do Not Disturb, but she was up late reading A’s latest installment of her mafia AU fan fiction series, What Goes On In The Dark.

Diana grunts into her pillow, flinging her arm out. Her fingertips graze the chipping braids of wood, but her phone is too far away. She blinks through a haze of rosemary-scented hair. Three inches is all she needs to close the gap. On her stomach, she shifts her weight onto her knee and flops closer. Once again, she flails for her phone, and this time manages to snatch it off the table.

It buzzes again before she can swipe into the first message.

@Fire___witch: Sam tweeted

Diana levers herself upright and immediately swipes into X, fingertips tracing familiar routes as she finds his profile and reads the latest. Just above the sanitized message from his publicist right after Bangkok is a new tweet.

@SamIAmRaymond

Surgery went well. Thank you all for your support and kind words. Gonna be laying low for a bit while I recover. Thank you again for making The Trouble Tour so special. I’m so sorry I couldn’t see and play for all of you. I’ll be back as soon as I can be well

The news of Sam’s injury ripped through the Sam Raymond fan community. Diana still hasn’t seen the clips of his voice going out, and she doesn’t plan to. Even the description from A, vivid as it was, made her almost sick to her stomach. Hashtags went up all over social media—#SupportSam, #WeLoveYouSam, #PrayForSam—but other than the tweet from his publicist, he hasn’t been heard from since Bangkok, almost three weeks ago. Diana doesn’t blame him. If something somehow took away her ability to write, she wouldn’t want to smile for any cameras either.

@DKnowsNY: that could not have been fun to hit send on

@Fire___witch: nope. God I feel awful for him.

The feeling is mutual, but Diana lets the message sit for now.

Her charming roommate is already awake. Giselle seems to be on the phone in the second bedroom next door, exchanging profanities in French with a male voice Diana doesn’t recognize. It’s definitely not one of the girls Diana met when the family went to visit Giselle while she studied abroad in Paris. And the extractor fan is on in the bathroom, so Giselle is smoking again. The moment Diana walks out of her bedroom, she will go back into the battle she knows too well by now. She ignores the rumble in her stomach and takes a drink from the ever-present water bottle on her nightstand.

Her phone buzzes again. She squints at the screen, expecting more catastrophizing from A.

@Connachtkid: sorry I fell asleep on you last night

An unfamiliar squirm shoots through her gut. She presses her dry lips together as she types.

@DKnowsNY: you’re gonna hurt a girl’s feelings doing that

What started as flirty banter about the Connacht Academy franchise with her new internet pal quickly blossomed in the hours after Diana left the restaurant. She kept her promise of a late-night surprise and released another short, sexy teaser while she sat up to wait out A’s obsessive last-moment proofreading before she published her chapter. Only this time, she had some company other than her favorite playlist and the sounds of Manhattan after midnight.

In the days since, they chatted constantly. They didn’t get into personal details, but he referred to himself as male and goes by “S.” Diana doesn’t mind the online anonymity. She’s not famous by any stretch, but if she revealed her first name and her location and occupation, that combination of Google keywords would bring up her identity with minimal extra digging. La Vie En Rose is a New York institution, and her family along with it, especially since her dad took up restaurant investment when all the Chevalier girls were young and business was booming. Sticking to non-identifying details is safer, for now.

S, like her, is twenty-one and lives somewhere in the metropolitan area. So far, they haven’t needed much more than that to stir up conversation.

@Connachtkid: what can I say?

@Connachtkid: you wore me out

Diana snorts at the way the double entendre makes her stomach roll and climbs out of bed. The hardwood creaks and cracks right along with her, a comforting greeting. If she avoids certain floorboards, Giselle won’t know she’s up and will delay tearing into her for forgetting to pick up more dish soap. It’s her first day off in over a week. Diana hops on tiptoe to her en suite bathroom, milking it for all it’s worth.

In the mirror, she finds exactly what she’s used to—a bird’s nest of russet-brown waves that, when they’re orderly, fall around her elbows; strong, prominent brows that are finally in fashion like her mother always promised her when she would get teased about them in school. The rest of her features aren’t exclusive to her. Her wide-set eyes are her mother’s, the bow shape of her mouth is her father’s. And all of it was copy-pasted onto her from Giselle anyway.

Halfway through washing her face, her phone buzzes. She risks eye suds to glance at it.

@Connachtkid: I’m about to leave for an appointment that I’m anxious about. I’m taking my copy of CA: Destiny with me. How sad is that?

Diana rinses her face and pats it dry, looking past the stuffed tufted titmouse mounted on the wall behind her to her own copy of the final volume of the Connacht series on her bookshelf. It looks like it’s been through a war plus a hurricane or two.

@DKnowsNY: not at all sad. I still don’t travel without at least one. They’re like talismans to me now

@DKnowsNY: at the risk of prying, is the appointment something you need luck for?

The phone stays quiet for a few minutes, long enough for her to slather on some moisturizer and the sunscreen her mom always reminds her to wear. Long enough to make Diana sweat a little.

Buzz.

@Connachtkid: maybe not luck, I think it’s too late for that

@Connachtkid: good vibes would be nice

@DKnowsNY: then good vibes are what I wish you. And good luck, too, while we’re at it

@Connachtkid: thank you

@Connachtkid: and later I’ll let you tease me more about my totally normal fondness for paperback books

@DKnowsNY: good, I like to tease

@DKnowsNY: bye bye booksniffer

She forgoes changing out of her pajamas for now and instead heads for the window seat with her laptop, her brain shifting gears to Professors Evie and Sam.

Diana had no idea when she hit “post” on chapter two of Star Crossed that it would be the most controversial thing she’s ever published. Of all the content on Samblr, the good, the bad, the very ugly, she didn’t expect a little hate flirting between Professors Sam and Evie while co-instructing a flying lesson to be the thing that stirred up trouble in their little corner of paradise today.

@Fire___witch: what a shitshow

Diana clicks into her messages while scrolling through the comments on her post, the one that caused such a commotion. She responds:

@DKnowsNY: leave it to Victoria Lawrence fans to be unbelievably pedantic about where exactly on campus the fucking flying lessons take place

After a few seconds of doom scrolling, another ping from A catches her attention.

@Fire___witch: did you see the poor fucker who tried to argue they should be on the Caid pitch?

@DKnowsNY: BRUTAL

@DKnowsNY: Olivia Rodrigo was writing about Samblr in that song

@Fire___witch: truly

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Last summer, when @sambell wrote Sam into a Divergent universe series and fumbled a detail about the faction-sorting process, she heard about it for almost a week after. It’s the risk you take when you bring existing intellectual property into RPF, or real person fan fiction. And Diana’s is not the first series to drop Sam into the Connacht Academy universe. Maybe she was naive not to expect something like this, but it’s annoying all the same.

@Worldwidesam: tfw you click into a Connacht AU feat. Sam Raymond expecting it to be hella and the writer says the flying lessons take place on the WEST LAWN. Instant DNF.

@Samquest7: um they literally take place on the west lawn in book 3 but if you want to be a know-it-all dick about someone’s fan fiction then okay . . .

The comments all blend together in Diana’s frazzled head after that. Every minute or two, another notification pops up as someone else jumps into the fray, either with another useless comment about their personal memory of reading the book series or with a monologue about how Samblr just isn’t the same anymore because of all the community drama. Diana doesn’t dignify those with a close read, because they’re ridiculous. All online fan communities create and perpetuate drama. That’s half the appeal for a lot of the members. And they’ll take any chance to climb up on a pedestal and yell about how we’re all adults here (which they’re not) and we should be better than this (which they aren’t). You take the good with the bad in communities like Samblr. The good being the nice people that become your friends to whom you can scream about wanting to yank Sam’s chest hair in that one paparazzi shot of him at the beach, and the talented creatives that share their work for nothing more than praise and discourse. The bad being . . . the rest of it.

Diana hopes it doesn’t scare S away. He doesn’t seem all that interested in engaging with other Samblr members so far. She’s not even sure he’s reading anyone else’s work. Diana doesn’t mind having a fan all to herself, but fandoms aren’t for the faint of heart.

Another notification pops up and she reads it before she can stop herself.

@Tomblr17: this is why I left the Sam fandom tbh. Tom Holland’s fans are so much nicer

Diana laughs and shuts her laptop with a clap.

@Connachtkid: am I mistaken or am I getting some Clueless vibes from this stuff with the students

@Connachtkid: Holliday, Midge and Rhys trying to set up Sam and Evie

Diana grins at the notifications. S is reading chapter two, which follows three students meddling in their favorite professors’ love lives. And only twenty minutes after she hit publish.

@DKnowsNY: omg!! Brownie points for you, you clever little Clan Murias member, you

@Connachtkid: my little sister’s obsessed with that movie

@Connachtkid: it’s finally paid off

@Connachtkid: also I’m Clan Gorias, obviously

@Connachtkid: brave, strong, loyal and witty

@DKnowsNY: ugh tell me you’re not one of those guys that just arbitrarily decides you’re a Gorias and ignores what all the quizzes tell you

@Connachtkid: wowwww

@Connachtkid: do u think so little of me?

@DKnowsNY: see that reaction was so Findias tho . . .

@Connachtkid: I’m a Gorias ! I took the official quiz, and so it is written

@DKnowsNY: do you have receipts

@Connachtkid: what, like I’m supposed to take a screenshot of my results?

@DKnowsNY sent a photo: ConnachtQuizResultsFalias.png

@Connachtkid: omg

@DKnowsNY: some of us have some clan pride

@Connachtkid: Falias makes sense for you actually. Clever, driven, a little edgy. I didn’t really think about it but I can totally see it

@DKnowsNY: because I’m conniving and mysterious?

@Connachtkid: because you’re confident and focused. You’re a woman who knows what she wants.

@Connachtkid: it’s that Falias ambition

@DKnowsNY: it’s cute, right?

@Connachtkid: actually it’s really sexy

Chapter Four

Writing the game of Caid makes Diana’s head hurt. She probably doesn’t have to be so fastidious about the details, especially now that she’s resorted to digging scratch paper out of one of Aunt Françoise’s diaries to sketch out the player positions, but she knows her readers appreciate the extra effort. Or at least S and A do.

Cross-legged at the kitchen table, Diana maps it out, turning the paper this way and that as she drafts plays in her head—Midge going to receive a pass, Holliday blocking, and the crowd goes wild. She chews on her lower lip and smacks her pencil against the vintage card table, studying her scene. Then the door to Giselle’s bedroom slams open.

Giselle is even more beautiful when she’s angry. Scary as hell, but beautiful, like Maleficent right before she turns into a dragon. Diana’s gaze flickers up to Giselle’s as she chokes the life out of her coffee mug and rounds the table, not bothering to look down at Diana’s work. She doesn’t care. Never has.

“We need to deal with this shit this weekend.” Giselle waves a hand at the wall in the adjoining living room, the one covered in shadowboxes full of knickknacks—old lighters, playbills, floating shelves stacked with books about lesbian erotica from the early twentieth century. “I can’t fucking look at it anymore.”

Diana glances over at it and shrugs. “I don’t mind it. Have you read Idylle Saphique yet? I think you’d like it.”

“We’re supposed to be packing it up, not playing with it. This stuff is like, priceless. It should be in a museum. Or, I dunno, Vegas.”

“You just called it shit.”

Diana wants to push the words back into her mouth. Why does she poke the bear? Giselle’s shoulders stiffen and the soft skin around her eyes tightens slightly. Diana curses her younger sister syndrome.

“I can’t this weekend,” Diana blurts, heading Giselle off at the pass. “I’m working all day Saturday and Sunday.”

Giselle huffs like she’s been punched in the gut and drops her mug into the ceramic sink with a clatter. Diana flinches.

“Do I have to do everything around here?” Giselle cries in French, gripping the counter with both hands.

This is her third outburst in two weeks. Poor Giselle, so put upon by having to go to work and clean her apartment just like everybody else. And that’s all she does. She goes to work, she comes home, and she pouts in her room with the TV on too loud or talking on the phone way too late. Diana doesn’t get out much either, but at least she’s doing something productive. Maybe right now it’s just fan fiction, but it’s good. She knows it is. More than that, her readers tell her it is, that they’d read a book of hers if she wrote it. Writing fulfills her and she thinks she could make a life out of it. When Diana looks at Giselle’s hunched shoulders, all she sees her sister making a life out of is misery.

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Diana answers quietly, anger sizzling beneath the surface of her shaking hands as she sweeps up her work and stands from behind the table. “I’m the one who spent six hours in the storage unit last month cataloguing Françoise’s crystal goblet collection. I do plenty. I know you feel like you’re stuck here, stuck with me, but it could be worse. If you hate the wall so much, start dealing with it. I’ll help you when I have time.”

Diana kicks her bedroom door shut behind her and drops her notebook and sketched Caid game on her unmade bed. As she pants, she can picture it—Professors Sam and Evie rooting for opposite teams, getting hot under their cloak collars, exchanging heavy glances as they argue about who was the better player in their day. There’s nothing like sports to jazz up an enemies-to-lovers storyline. She flips her notebook open and sits on a vintage cushion shaped like a giant tube of lipstick, ignoring the sickly tang of cigarette smoke coming from outside her door.

Her phone buzzes. A clutching feeling in her chest makes her wonder if it’s S.

New message from Emmanuelle

Emmanuelle has a sometimes annoying way of shifting Diana’s perspective. Here she is desperately wanting to move out of a perfectly beautiful apartment she doesn’t pay for in the most perfect neighborhood in the best city in the world because her sister is kind of an asshole. Meanwhile, Emmanuelle has limited access to running water, much less time to listen to Diana whine in between saving lives in disaster-stricken countries. Diana feels an ache nestled in between her organs.

She types back: All good, just missing you. And Giselle is smoking again.

That one jab, she simply couldn’t resist.

Moments later, Emmanuelle replies.

Diana puts the phone down and picks up her pencil with a smile. When Giselle’s phone rings again and the yelling recommences, Diana tunes it out, humming an old Sam Raymond B-side.

@Sambellreblogged your post: why is bickering so sexy?? Like you just know they get so hot for each other from just arguing about Caid matches

@Fire___witchreblogged your post: but who really is the better Caid player, Sam or Evie? INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW!!

@SerendipitousSamreblogged your post: three chapters in and I’m already sooooo into this Holliday, Midge, Rhys dynamic. Mischievous bffs trying to get their slightly damaged, super hot teachers together? Don’t threaten me with a good time

New message from Greg:

It’s the only warning Sam gets before he gets shown his own haggard face blown up across his phone screen. His eyes are cloudy, his skin is patchy and sallow. He looks worse now than he did after surgery a few weeks ago. He winces, runs his fingers through his frizzy curls, and looks around for a distraction that might pop out of one of the half-unpacked boxes as an excuse not to answer. The phone buzzes persistently, almost as persistent as the person calling.

Sam clears his throat as gently as possible and accepts the call.

Greg is on his couch, the ugly corduroy one that he won’t get rid of even though his girlfriend threatens him regularly with its removal. His eyes look heavy and then blow wide open when he realizes that Sam has actually answered.

“Dude, fucking finally,” Greg chirps, sitting up straight.

“Hey man, what’s up?” Sam tries for casual and falls well short. He sounds tired and anxious and like he’s maybe about to cry.

“I don’t know, you got weird over text, like one-word answers. And then you haven’t answered on FaceTime. I’d be offended, but you’re not answering Cooper either. And Caroline said you’re dodging your mom.”

Sam huffs. “You called my sister?”

“I texted your sister. I’m scared of your sister, I would never call her.”

Sam forces a chuckle. It doesn’t hurt like it used to, but it’s not comfortable or natural.

“What’s going on, man? Is your throat being shitty?” Greg asks.

Sam stands from his armchair and wanders around his spacious, mostly empty kitchen for something to do. He finds a banana from his last Instacart order that’s still too green to eat. He rolls it across the granite countertop, keeping his eyes down.

“Nah, it’s fine. I mean, it’s not great, but. Actually, I start vocal therapy tomorrow.”

“Oh shit, already? That month went by fast.”

Sam bobs his head. It was the slowest month he can remember.

“Are you nervous? Do you think you’re not ready?”

Sam appreciates Greg’s willingness to toss spaghetti thoughts at Sam’s proverbial wall to see what will stick and get him talking. For as long as they’ve been friends, Sam’s never gotten easier to deal with when he’s anxious or feels like he’s disappointed the people he loves. Thinking about how many times Sam’s put Greg in this position of prying him open with a crowbar ironically only makes him feel worse. When he feels worse, he tends to go full turtle—isolate, protect, wait for the interested party to give up and turn away.

He straightens up and tosses the banana in the air, catching it as it comes back down, trying to fight his instincts to run. “It’s not like a physical thing. My voice feels sort of okay. I haven’t tried to sing or anything. The doctors scared me out of that. But maybe I’m afraid to see how bad it really is, y’know?”

Greg puts his head back against the cushions and absorbs. He’s always been a good listener. “Yeah, it’s facing the unknown. That’s fucking scary for sure.”

Sam shakes his head. “It’s my whole life now. Like, what the hell do I do if I can’t fix this?”

“Okay, but you realize that’s not even on the table yet, right? I mean, you haven’t even met the therapist.”

Sam huffs and hangs his head, clamping his hand around the back of his neck. He doesn’t know how to answer that. The therapist he had as a teenager would agree with Greg, tell him it’s his “anxiety brain” talking. The problem is, it feels like his anxiety brain is his only brain these days.

“Have you just been hitting the gym and sleeping since the surgery?” Greg asks, voice going a touch softer. It’s an easier question to answer.

“Mostly, yeah. And catching up on reading.”

Greg’s expression brightens. “Still reading Star Crossed?”