Scandalized

I have to tune them out once they pull out their phones and start opening their favorite photos and gifs. I’m sure he’s shirtless in more than half of them. I have a weird dark shadow in my mind thinking about them looking at his naked body.

“Is this weird for you?” Eden asks quietly, reading my mind.

I laugh at her timing. “Very.”

“Fangirls are intense.”

“I don’t mind that,” I tell her, honestly. “I love seeing you get excited about things. I just feel like a fish out of water. I’m aware these women probably know more about him than I do.”

I feel her watching me, agreeing silently, and my mood sinks further into discomfort. I want to see Alec in his element, but there’s a part of me—even though I know he doesn’t operate this way—that worries that I’ll disappear in this crowd. That he’ll see me here and realize I’m nothing special. I never felt that way, never worried about it for a second until I was surrounded by hundreds of his fans. Why are we mixing our lives like this?

But it’s too late to bail: Eden is vibrating next to me.

I would never dream of dragging her away from this. I think, Just get through it.

At one, I finally text Yael, We’re here.

There’s no response, but a few minutes later a door opens and she pops her head out, meeting my eyes for only a second before she’s gesturing for us to come in. I catch the grumbling of some women behind us, the loud cries of some farther down in the line—“Take us, too!”—and then the heavy steel door seals us up in a long, bare hallway.

Yael and her mile-long legs march us quickly down the hall, and she stops at a blank door. “Just hang out, okay?” she says, her words clipped. “Alexander will come say hello when he can.”

I think that’s code for Don’t pester the talent, but she doesn’t have to worry, regardless. As soon as we step into what I realize is the cast greenroom, I immediately regret coming. There are maybe forty people milling around, talking, and they all look like they’ve been professionally groomed since birth. Eden is unironically wearing a My Lucky Year T-shirt with Alec’s face on it, and I am dressed for obscurity in black jeans and a black tank top. My hair is twisted up on top of my head; I went for minimal makeup, figuring no one would be looking at me anyway.

I couldn’t be more wrong. Everyone looks up as we enter, gawping in silence for a second at the entrance of two women who are clearly Just Fans. Conversation hiccups awkwardly until they decide we are uninteresting, and we are immediately forgotten. Somehow this makes me infinitely more self-conscious. Any movement we make could bring attention back to us. I recognize a few faces from film and TV, including Alec’s on-screen girlfriend, Elodie Fabrón. Finally, I spot Alec near the far wall, engaged in conversation with someone I don’t recognize. Alec is so engrossed, in fact, that he and the other man are maybe the only people who didn’t look up when we entered.

Skirting around the edge of the room, Eden and I try to find a space to occupy where we aren’t in anyone’s way. My best friend is clearly in fangirl heaven and looks like she hasn’t lived a minute before today, but I am so uncomfortable I might as well be naked in the middle of a foreign city. I am aware that everyone in this room is somehow connected to the show—everyone but us. We hover at the edge near a snack table, but then someone wants to grab something, so we shift to the far wall, but it’s where the cast have left their personal items and we’re asked to move. Alec is still busy talking with the man who looks vaguely director-y and hasn’t even seen us yet.

Why are we here? I want to text him from the Batphone, which, coincidentally, felt like a fun secret-agent gadget before but now makes me feel vaguely sleazy. I’d be so much more comfortable hearing about this event from him later, in the privacy of his room or my apartment, but I know if I tried to tug Eden’s Alec shirt and coax her to the door, she would burst into flames and burn me alive.

Suddenly there is a commotion near the door, and a woman stands on a chair, clapping her hands.

“Hey, everyone,” she calls. “Give me your eyes for just a second.” The room slowly settles into a rumbling quiet. “They’ve started letting people into the venue. We’ll head in there in about ten minutes. The order is: Dan, Alexander, Elodie, Ben, Gal, Becca, then Dev. The format is a moderated Q&A and your host is”—she points to the side and grins—“this guy right here.”

I can’t see The Guy Right There, but everyone breaks out in loud applause, whistling and catcalling, so I have to assume he’s someone interesting. Only when Eden leans over and whispers, “Trevor Noah,” do I actually start to feel the impact of how much celebrity is in this room with us.

When the woman is done with her spiel, she gets off the chair and everyone returns to the conversations from before, but there’s a new energy in the room. I can hear vague sounds coming from down the hall: applause, screams, the vibrating cacophony of a lot of bodies in a small space. I look around, and just as my eyes pass over the corner where Alec had been, his scanning gaze catches mine.

I watch his mouth form a surprised There you are, and he immediately excuses himself to push through the room toward us. He’s wearing a slim-fitting black button-down shirt and dark jeans, but his best accessory is his face-splitting, eye-crinkling smile. My heart drops to my feet.

A few people notice us again, and my skin itches at their attention. I resist the urge to hide behind Eden. Alec comes up to us, shaking our hands—this, too, is very weird—and smiling warmly at us. “You two made it!”

Eden utters something high-pitched and unintelligible in response, and Alec whisks her away to introduce her to a few people nearby. Great. And now I’m alone.

But only a minute later, she is enthusiastically engaged in conversation with a hugely famous American actress, and I am watching Alec return to me, wearing a different smile now. One that feels like a private gift just for me.

I ignore the eyes on him as he approaches, wanting his expression and this secret between us to be the only thing I see and feel. He stops a foot away and, with his back to the room, has the luxury of giving my body a long, seductive once-over.

“Hey.”

I try to plaster a polite smile on my mouth. “Hi.”

“Why didn’t you text me that you were here?”

“You’re…” I flounder. “You’re in famous-person mode.”

He pulls his lower lip into his mouth and narrows his eyes, studying me. “You hate this, don’t you?”

“A normal amount.”