Chapter 15: Exposed

"OK, thanks everyone. Take ten."

Eric gingerly disentangled his limbs from the pair of red-headed identical twins playing his love interests in this latest music video.

Music video, he thought with a wry smile. What a joke. They should dispense with the pretense and call it what it was: soft-core porn. Ever since the Billboard charts started counting Youtube views in their ranking system, the music video business had turned into footrace to see who could expose the most flesh without getting banned by the FCC. All of a sudden, you had Britney breaking out the whips and chains . . . Miley swinging around like a naked, one-woman demolition crew . . . and don't forget Nicki, with her groundbreaking exploration of butts and bananas and spurting whipped cream.

The whole business left a nasty taste in Eric's mouth. It all seemed so unnecessary. Not that it was anything new really - record labels pimping out their stars. Sex and music had gone hand in hand for decades, ever since Elvis Presley first gyrated his hips on the Ed Sullivan show.

It was just so overt now. Didn't the fans ever get tired of it? Didn't all that nudity start to run together after a while?

Eric slipped a robe around his shoulders and ran a towel across his face to rub away the lipstick stains. Make-up would have to touch him up before the next scene, but they could wait. Right now, he had more pressing matters to attend. He'd passed the last several hours shooting the threesome scene with his lovely co-stars, and he'd spent the entire time with his mind on someone else.

Had she seen it? Had she responded?

Eric hadn't had a chance to check twitter since he tweeted earlier, asking his fans for selfies. Now, he eagerly pulled out his phone to check the replies.

The response was overwhelming, of course. His notifications overflowed with pictures of girls in their bedrooms, making faces at their phones. Kissy faces. Duck faces. More kissy faces. . . .You'd think one of them would try giving him the finger or something, just to stand out from the crowd. But no. Just kissy faces by the thousands, each one interchangeable with the last. He scrolled downward past all of them, scanning with his eyes for the username that he was seeking.

Where was it? Hadn't she sent one?

He didn't have time to wade through all the noise. With a grunt of exasperation, he quickly tapped her name into the search bar to pull up her profile.

Ah, there it was at the top of her recent tweets. She'd sent it two hours ago. Eric couldn't prevent the wide smile of anticipation that curved his lips as he read her reply:

Tessa H (@TessaHeartsEric)

@EricThorn Here's a kiss from someone cute. Have a great day!

pic.twitter.com/aiG9hbc3lx

He tapped the link to open up the picture, and he couldn't help but laugh at what he saw. "What the hell is this?"

She must have taken it in her bedroom. She'd arrayed a mountain of Eric Thorn fan paraphanelia next to the foot of her bed: posters, t-shirts, coffee mugs, CD cases. . . . The only sign of her own presence in the photo were her feet, decked out in a pair of fuzzy pink bunny slippers. She had one bunny positioned next to the poster, kissing his image on the cheek.

Eric shook his head as he looked at it. So frustrating! He couldn't see anything. Hell, he couldn't even tell how big her feet were from that!

Still, he couldn't erase the grin he had plastered on his face. "Here's a kiss from someone cute." She was awfully cute, wasn't she? Even if he couldn't see what she looked like, at least she made him smile.

Look at all the fan gear she'd accumulated there. Was that a pillowcase with his picture printed on it? Where did she even buy some of that crap? And the CDs were all there, too, of course - all four of his albums. But that didn't come as a surprise.

"It helps me relax," she'd explained to him once when he questioned why she listened almost exclusively to Eric Thorn music. "His songs kind of put me in a trance. I can listen to the lyrics and imagine what he was doing when he wrote it. What it all meant to him, you know? It helps me to stop thinking about my own problems."

Honestly, she must be the only fan left who actually listened. Sometimes he thought she understood his song lyrics better than he did himself. 

Eric sighed now as he thought back to the conversation. He'd always assumed that the fans tweeting shirtless pictures of him only saw him as a piece of meat, but Tessa had proved him wrong. He wished now that he'd followed her when he did the follow spree last month. Why hadn't he? For the life of him, he couldn't remember.

What would happen, he wondered, if he tapped the Follow button now? A fresh smile quirked the corners of his mouth as he imagined her reaction.

***

Tessa lay on her stomach, bopping her feet in time to the music and glancing once again at her phone.

It had been hours now since Eric had sent out the selfie, and the fans were all still buzzing about it. Everyone kept asking each other questions - would he look at all those pictures himself? would he retweet anyone? - as if any of them had the slightest clue what he would do next.

So far he hadn't made a peep. But he must be busy shooting the music video.

At least he'd tweeted, Tessa thought with a satisfied smile. He'd barely been active at all since the follow spree last month. It was nice to see his face.

Tessa tapped to bring up the picture again now. She'd saved it to her camera roll, of course. Not that she needed more pictures of him. She'd have to delete some of them soon, or she'd run out of memory on her phone. But it almost came as a reflex to save a new picture of Eric. She couldn't help herself.

Honestly, maybe Taylor was right to make fun of her. She really did need to get a better hobby. But it was just a hobby, right? Some people collected stamps or baseball cards. She collected shirtless pictures of Eric Thorn.

It wasn't even his exposed torso that captured her attention with this one, she told herself, as she gazed down at the picture. His body looked perfect as usual. Almost too perfect to be human, she sometimes thought. But it was the look in his eyes that arrested her. He called it a selfie, but he clearly hadn't snapped that photo himself. The angle wasn't right. It looked like someone had surprised him from behind and taken his picture just as he turned his head to look. And in his eyes, once again, she saw that whiff of something that no one else ever seemed to notice. That glimmer of fear - like a hunted animal, frozen in place as it looks down the barrel of a gun.

Tessa felt a shiver run down her spine at the thought. "Projecting," she whispered to herself. "You're just projecting."

She was about to put the phone away, when a notification flashed onto her screen.

Eric Thorn (@EricThorn) followed you

It was Tessa's turn now to freeze like a deer in the headlights. She must have stared at her phone for a full minute before she could even process the words.

Eric.

Eric Thorn.

Eric Thorn  followed. . . .

"Oh my God" she whispered. "OH. MY. GOD!"

***

Eric stared at his phone in frustration. "Come on, Tessa," he muttered.

Hadn't she seen the notification yet? What was taking her so long?They were going to call him back to set any minute now. "Come on! You must have seen it!"

As if in response to his words, a new message popped up on at the top of her recent tweets.

Tessa H (@TessaHeartsEric)

OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!

He laughed aloud as he read it. "There we go," he said to his phone.The standard fan girl response - only a slight step up from when they tweeted random strings of capital letters.

He wondered if she would DM him something now. The fans usually did after he followed them. Not that he ever really read their messages. He usually followed a stroke of the Follow button with a stroke of the Mute button, so he wouldn't have to see a single thing they said. But he hadn't muted Tessa. He waited now to see if she would write.

Nothing.

Silence.

Dead silence.

Eric glanced at the time impatiently. The director would be calling for him soon. He could only hide out here in his trailer for so long.

"To hell with it," he muttered, losing his patience once and for all. He couldn't make it through another round of filming without hearing more from her than "OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!"

With a flick of the finger, he switched accounts.

No more @EricThorn. Back to @EricThornSucks.

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