vanilla and orange blossom. The heat of her, pressed against me, is disarming. Something blooms inside me: When was the last time I was hugged? (For that matter, when was the last time I was even touched? I’ve barely even masturbated in months.) The embrace goes on for a half second longer than I expect—Am I supposed to pull away? My God, what’s the protocol here?—and when she finally draws back, I feel flushed and hot and a little bit dizzy.
“Ashley, right? Oh wonderful. Oh thrilling! You made it!” My voice is shrill, almost squeaky, and far too gushy. “Was the drive just awful? All this rain. It’s been relentless.” I hold up a hand above us, ineffectively shielding her from the drizzle.
“Oh, I love the rain,” she says with a smile. She closes her eyes and inhales, her nostrils flaring. “It smells so fresh here. I’ve been sitting in a car for nine hours, I honestly could use a bit of cleansing.”
“Haha!” I trill. (Oh for God’s sake, stop it, I tell myself.) “Well you’ll get lots of that here. Rain, I mean. Not cleansing. Though why not both, I suppose?!”
She looks a little baffled by this. I’m not quite sure what I mean, either.
There’s a clatter in the driveway, the sound of suitcases being dragged across paving stones and then bumping up the stairs of the portico. I look over Ashley’s shoulder and suddenly I am gazing straight into the eyes of her boyfriend.
Michael.
It’s startling, the way he’s looking at me. His eyes are a pellucid blue, so pale and transparent that it feels like I’m seeing clear into the center of his mind, where something glints and shines. I flush: Am I staring again? Yes. But he’s also staring intently back at me as if he can see inside me, too, and is seeing things that I didn’t intend to reveal. (Did he know I was just thinking of masturbating?) I feel the blush rising up through my neck, and I know that I must be the color of lobster bisque. I wish I’d worn a turtleneck.
I recover, extend a formal hand. “And you’re Michael?” He takes it, responding with a little bow of his own and a funny wry smile.
“Vanessa.” It’s a statement, not a question, and once again I have that strange feeling that I have just been identified, that he knows something about me that hasn’t been spoken at all. Do I know him? It seems unlikely—isn’t he an English professor, from Portland?
But then—does he know me? It’s quite possible. I am, after all, a little bit famous, and being Internet-famous is the opposite of traditional fame: Instead of being put on a pedestal, like a rock star or movie star, being an Internet star means that you must always be just within reach of your fans. Special, yes, but approachable; giving the illusion that your life is within clawing distance if one is just ambitious enough. That’s half the appeal. In New York, strangers would often come up to me at restaurants and speak to me as if we were old friends, as if a few liked photos and a handful of comments meant we were besties. (Of course I was always gracious and friendly no matter how unnerving the encounter, because: approachable.)
But Michael, in jeans and flannel, hair a little unkempt, doesn’t strike me as someone who would follow fashion social media. In fact, when I looked him up online, I couldn’t find his Instagram account at all. He’s an academic, that’s what Ashley’s email had said; so, perhaps not surprising. Academics don’t go in for that thing so much. In person, too, he gives off an air of sober intellect; and so I feel the need to check myself. I don’t want to come off as frivolous.
(Maybe I’ll tell him I’m reading Anna Karenina?)
And yet. I’ve learned over the years to reserve judgment about what goes on underneath the surface of other human beings. How many times have I stood and chirped giddily for the camera, flipping my hair around like I’m in front of an industrial fan and grinning like a circus emcee, when inside all I wanted to do was drink a