Chapter 19: Bad Guy

Taylor (@EricThornSucks)

@TessaHeartsEric I swear I'm not a bad guy. Talk to me? Please?

Eric sat up in bed, staring at the message at the top of his recent tweets. He'd been tweeting at Tessa for four days straight, without so much as a hint of a reply. His account looked utterly dead now. No followers. No notifications. No messages. Nothing but stony silence.

The sight of it made him groan with frustration.

He knew it was probably hopeless. Tessa had made her decision. He should cut his losses and deactivate the account. And yet he couldn't quite bring himself to pull the trigger.

Why couldn't he let it go already?

He'd tossed and turned all night these past few nights, ever since Tessa unfollowed him. He couldn't seem to put her out of his mind. He'd grown accustomed to their nightly chats - downright dependent on them, apparently. He'd finally found a safe place to vent his worries and frustrations, and she helped him put them in perspective. She offered a sympathetic ear, but it was more than that. She also had this sixth sense for telling him whenever he was exaggerating. She called him out on his bullshit all the time.

"You're catastrophizing."

"Pretty sure that's not a word," he'd replied, the first time she said it. But it was a word - another psychobabble term he'd looked up afterward on Wikipedia - and she'd been damned good at catching him whenever he was guilty of the crime.

Now she wanted nothing more to do with him, and he couldn't shake the sense of loss. Life had felt so much less bleak these past few weeks. He'd even started smiling again. How long had it been since he'd bothered to smile without a camera lens pointed at his face?

Maybe that was why he couldn't sleep these days. Maybe it was the sinking realization that, without her in his life, he had nothing left to smile about at all.

"Come on, Tessa," he whispered to his phone. "Come back. You can't really be that mad."

With a sigh, he started entering another useless tweet:

Taylor @EricThornSucks

@TessaHeartsEric I can't sleep. I miss talking to you.

He rubbed his eyes wearily, his finger hovering over the Tweet button. What difference did it make, really, whether he sent it or not? He had zero followers. No one would ever hear him either way.

Eric set the phone back on his nightstand and switched off the lamp.

Sleep. He needed sleep. The dark circles under his eyes were growing deeper by the day. He'd heard the makeup artists whispering about it behind his back this afternoon. They could only cover it up for so long before the record label started getting on his case. That was all he needed. Did he have an insomnia clause in his contract? Did they reserve the right to render him unconscious with a blow to the head if he failed to get his beauty sleep?

He rolled over in bed again and reached to plump his pillow, but a flash of color from his night stand caught the corner of his eye.

His phone?

A notification?

He grabbed it and let out a yelp of triumph at what he saw. At last. She'd answered. A new tweet:

Tessa H @TessaHeartsEric

@EricThornSucks thanks for ruining my life.

The message probably should have discouraged him further, but he couldn't prevent the crooked grin that had popped onto his face. She was still out there somewhere. She hadn't evaporated into thin air. And he knew what she was doing. He'd learned that much from her in the month since they'd started talking.

He hastily sent back a reply.

Taylor @EricThornSucks

@TessaHeartsEric ok now who's catastrophizing?

Eric waited to see if she would tweet back, but the reply came in the form of a direct message, tacked onto the end of their long thread.

Tessa: Not catastrophizing if it's actually a catastrophe.

He crinkled his forehead in confusion at her message. What did that mean? It wasn't like her to talk like that. Something else must have happened. Something bad.

His fingers itched to DM her back, but he couldn't. She didn't follow. He could only reply by tweeting at her again.

Taylor @EricThornSucks

@TessaHeartsEric what happened??? follow me back so we can DM

Eric had gotten out of bed now. He stood, pacing back and forth across the room with his phone gripped in his hand. He held his breath as he waited, and he let out a grunt of satisfaction when the next notification came up on his screen.

Tessa H (@TessaHeartsEric) followed you.

"OK, OK," he breathed, as he flipped back to the message tab again. She had already added another new DM, but he barely paused to read it as he tapped out his reply.

Tessa: Don't think this means I'm talking to you again

Taylor: Tessa I'm sorry you thought I was a girl. It was an innocent mistake. I swear.

Tessa: Right... sure... totally innocent...

Taylor: It was!

Tessa: And you just happen to be the ONLY male Eric Thorn fan on the face of the Earth. Is that it?

Taylor: I never said I was a fan! I believe I called him a narcissistic douchenozzle. Does that ring any bells?

Tessa: And you know all of his songs by heart because... why exactly?

Taylor: It's complicated

Tessa: In other words, you're full of shit

Taylor: No. In other words, it's gonna me take more than 140 characters to explain. Take a breath, please.

Tessa: Whatever

Eric sat down on the edge of the bed, his mind casting about wildly for what to say to her next. The truth was, she had a point. He'd seen the demographics from his recent album sales, and heterosexual males didn't even make up a fraction of a percent. Not that he needed a pie chart to tell him that. All he had to do was look out over the crowds of screaming teenaged girls at his concerts. The only males in attendance hung back around the edges, arms crosses, baseball caps pulled down to hide their faces - clearly the dads and boyfriends who'd been dragged along against their will.

It hadn't always been like that. Back in the old days, building up his following on Youtube, he used to see plenty of guys' names among the comments. He wondered sometimes what had happened to all of them. Did any of them still listen to his stuff? Or had they all written him off long ago as a-as a narcissistic pretty-boy douchenozzle, perhaps?

Eric bit his lip as he formulated his explanation. Not the whole truth, of course, but not exactly a lie either.

Taylor: I used to be a huge fan. Back before he got signed. He used to be great.

Taylor: I mean, he still is. I listen to all his new stuff too.

Taylor: I just think he shouldn't need to do the Magic Mike male stripper routine to sell it. That's why I get so pissed off with him sometimes.

Taylor: And with the fan girls too. They kind of ruined everything.

Taylor: I mean, no offense to you. I know you're a real fan.

Taylor: But maybe he wouldn't parade around half-naked if he didn't have girls screaming at him to take his shirt off every 5 seconds.

Eric probably could've kept going for quite a while, but Tessa interrupted him again.

Tessa: So why did you start talking to me if you hate fan girls so much?

Taylor: I didn't start talking to you. I attacked you. Remember? You're the one who started talking to me.

Tessa: Reverse psychology

Taylor: I'm not that smart

Tessa: How do I know that?

Taylor: I'm an idiot, OK? You caught me. Guilty. I'm very, very stupid. But I'm not some kind of predator. C'mon, you know I'm not.

Tessa: You've really been following Eric since before he was signed?

Taylor: Since day one.

Tessa: Why should I believe a single word you say?

Eric scowled down at his phone as he wrote back to her again.

Taylor: I don't know, Tessa. What reason would I possibly have to lie?

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