Anonymous

Elena and I were in the middle of watching the newer Star Trek movie, the one that starred the beautiful Chris Pine as Captain Kirk, when my cell phone went off.

Elena immediately groaned. “Please tell me that’s Anna asking you a question about her French homework,” she begged, staring at the ceiling.

But when I pulled out my mobile and saw the unfamiliar number, I knew exactly who it was. “No,” I responded as I opened the message, “it’s Louis.”

hey sorry if im interrupting something but do you have school?

Elena rolled her eyes and paused the movie. “I swear to God, that boy is obsessed with you.”

“He is not obsessed,” I grumbled. “We’re just talking. We’re starting a friendship, kind of. That’s all.”

“That’s so not true,” Elena protested. “There’s no way anyone who just wanted to be friend would go through so much trouble to talk to you. He likes you. Or he likes the person he thinks you are, at least.”

I kind of got that. After all, isn’t that how fans were with celebrities? They fell in love with and admired the human being they figured the celebrity was.

Holy shit. Did that mean that Louis Tomlinson was a fan of mine? God, the irony was just too unreal.

Finally, I took a breath and answered her. “And? What if he does like me like that? Shouldn’t you be happy for me?”

The words rushed out before I thought about them, but I didn’t regret saying it. I had a point. There was no reason Elena had to be so sarcastic and irritable about Louis possibly liking me or being interested in me. Sure, she had loads of guys panting after her, but I wasn’t like her. Guys didn’t like me. The fact that Louis might even be interested in me, according to her, was a major milestone to me.

“What are you talking about?” Elena gasped. “Who said I’m not happy for you?”

“Nobody has to say anything. It’s pretty obvious how you feel. You keep rolling your eyes, you were huffing when we were talking over Skype…” I stopped and counted to five, trying to keep myself from losing my temper. “This is something I’ve been dreaming about for a long time. Why can’t you be excited with me?”

"Look, I’m happy a guy likes you, Jess. Really, I am.” She drew a long breath and sighed. “But you’re only going to get hurt.”

“Why’s that?” I tried to snap, but my voice didn’t have as much edge as I wanted, and I just ended up sounding whiny. “Because you don’t think I’m pretty enough to keep his attention?”

“What?! Jess, no. What are you talking about?”

“What are you talking about?”

Elena let out another sigh. “I’m not saying you’re not pretty. Anyone with eyes can see that you’re gorgeous.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but she kept on talking, making it impossible to get a word in.

“My issue is that he’s famous, and he’s going to be all over the world. That’s a lot of time apart from one another. It wouldn’t be a good relationship. Not to mention that he’s in the most popular boy band in the world, and he’d probably cheat on you all the time and give you some shitty excuse like he was really lonely, but you’re the one he actually loves, and it didn’t mean anything.”

“You don’t…” I tried to interrupt, but she just kept chugging through, completely ignoring that I’d said a word.

“And you don’t even know what he’s really like. You know what he acts like in front of the camera, and you know how you write him, but you don’t know him.”

My mind flashed back to when Louis said he wished he could be like the character in my story, and I bit my lip. What if Elena was right? What if getting involved with Louis, even if it did remain completely on a friend-level, was a bad idea?

But what if it wasn’t?

“I get what you’re saying,” I told her honestly, “but just think about what this could mean for me. He could be my first boyfriend. We could end up being soul-mates.”

“Think about what you’re saying, Jess,” Elena implored. “You’re letting your romantic side get to you and corrupt your reason. This is a guy that you’ve never met in person. Just because you’ve been crushing on who you think he is doesn’t mean that things are going to work out perfectly. I’m just telling you to be careful.”

“What’s wrong with falling in love with who I think he is?” I snapped. “He’s doing the same thing with me.”

“And maybe both of you are going to get disappointed.”

“That’s incredibly optimistic of you.”

“I’m not trying to be pessimistic. I’m trying to be realistic. And I’m only telling you what I think is the truth. I’m trying to protect you.”

“I’m my own person,” I snapped at her. “I can take care of myself, thank you very much.”

Elena shook her head. “You know what? Never mind. I’m sorry I even told you about this. You’re just getting offended, and that’s not what I wanted.”

“So you’re telling me that he’s going to get disappointed by who I really am, and you expect me not to get the least bit offended?! How does that make any sense?”

“I’m saying that you’re both going to get disappointed because you’re both making up who you think the other person is.” As Elena finished her statement, she got to her feet and walked toward the door. “Call me when you get your head out of the clouds.”

And with that, she slammed the door behind her and left.

Groaning loudly, I threw myself back on my bed and stared at the textured ceiling. I remembered back to when I was kid, when I’d try to connect the little bumps and lines to make them into pictures.

With a little bit of searching, I found the bit I’d deemed a dog, and then the parts that I thought resembled a guitar.

But unlike when I was a kid, the pictures didn’t make me feel any better. I still felt very confused about what I was going to do.

While I wanted to throw out everything that Elena was suggesting because it hurt to hear, I knew that she was right. I had absolutely no idea what could happen between Louis and me, or even if anything was going to happen between the two of us.

And if, to go out on a limb, Louis and I became a couple, which Elena seemed to think was a possibility, then what if we did disappoint each other with our realities? After all, I wasn’t anything like the characters in my stories, the strong-willed, beautiful women that my fan-fictions focused around. I was just boring, introverted me.

The more I thought about it, the more I justified when Elena was trying to communicate to me. There was no way the girl I was could connect with Louis on a personal level. Louis was loud, funny, a partier, a drinker. I wasn’t any of those things.

So, instead of answering the text Louis had sent me, I picked up my phone and deleted it, so as not to be tempted.

“Please,” I whispered to myself, trying to fight back the tears that were threatening the back of my eyeballs, “let me be making the right decision right now.”