Page 88 of Female Fantasy
According to the ancient iPhone Roy lent me, Ryan Mare works in a glass building on Fortieth Street and Park Avenue, one of those gauche new towers that takes up an entire city block and ruins the New York skyline. There’s a hideous sculpture of a twelve-foot-tall pink balloon animal parked right in the middle of the lobby and turnstiles that remind me of going through security at the airport. The structure is cold and sterile, like the rest of the office buildings in the area.
Nothing like the warm charm of Mystic.
I station myself across the street like a certified stalker, sitting on the unassuming steps of a beautiful Gothic church, next to a Nuts 4 Nuts cart and a horde of pigeons. I’m nursing a one-dollar coffee in a paper cup that resembles a Greekceramic urn and claims to be happy to serve me. I take this second nod to the Greek gods as a sign.
There’s no doubt about it. This is what I’m meant to be doing, where I’m supposed to be.
So I sit and wait for Ryan Mare.
I flip through a few pages of a discarded old copy ofVinylmagazine before I get bored and check the Salty Girls group chat instead.
No Ryan Mare.
I take out my copy ofA Tale of Salt Water & Secretsand start rereading my favorite passages, but my heart sinks when I see the indents where Nico dog-eared pages while he was reading. I put the book away.
Still no Ryan Mare.
I read an article by Rose Aslani about socialite grifter Poppy Hastings’s recent escape from prison and their search for Aslani’s missing partner, then a newsletter by my favorite writer, Noora, about Bernhardt Academy, the secretive school for nepotism babies that Angel mentioned they attended. Then I notice that the battery on my borrowed phone is dangerously low, and I have the horrifying realization that I forgot to ask for a charger.
Did I miss Ryan Mare?
At this point, it’s almost noon. I’ve been sitting outside his building like an anxious-attached freak for so many hours, it’s almost time for lunch. My stomach growls, and even the burned smell of the nut cart is starting to seem slightly seductive. Did Ryan call in sick today or something? Does he work from home? Did I get the address of his workplace wrong?
Or, worst of all, did I misread the signs?
I’m about to get up and trek back to Angel’s apartment in defeat when the double doors fly open and a man exits the building in a hurry. His head turns ever so slightly, and I make fleeting, mindless eye contact with a familiar face. It’s not actually familiar—I’ve never seen this man before in my life—and yet I know every single one of his features intimately.
Black hair, so thick and silky it almost looks wet, falls around his head and into his eyes, flirting with his long lashes.
His ironed white button-down hugs a well-defined torso, powerful muscles, and the promise of veined forearms, all sculpted to perfection and primed for a fight.
His sun-kissed skin, a glowing tan color that makes no sense given the crisp fall air, shimmers in the late morning light.
A whisper of small indentations in his cheeks.
A strong jawline that could cut the glass of the building behind him.
And two hazel eyes, so bright they’re practically blinding, so vibrant that I swear they contain flickers of molten gold.
My breath catches in my throat.
Holy shit.
Ryan Mare does not just look like Prince Ryke of Atlantia.
Ryan MareisPrince Ryke of Atlantia.
My dream man. The subject of so many late-night fantasies. I’ve written thousands of words about the scar on the inside of his left wrist. I’ve bonded with friends over theories about which way his tail curves (I’m a right truther). I’ve broken upwith countless men because they didn’t measure up, in body or mind or soul, to the standard that this character set for me.
And now he’s standing in front of me in the flesh.
All that’s missing is an obsidian tail.
“Hi,” I whisper under my breath.
Of course he doesn’t hear me. Not only is he all the way across the street; he’s quickly weaving through the crowds, clearly in a hurry. Maybe to save the world from a dark unknown force. Maybe to grab lunch.
I wait for it to set in: the unbelievable feeling of rightness, permeating my skin all the way down to my bones. A clenching spasm in my gut and a lightness in my head. Shaking hands and sweaty palms. A pulse in my core. The unmistakable telltale markers of love at first sight as they’ve always been described to me in books.
