Page 4 of The Fangirl and the Playboy

“It’s a beautiful place to grow up,” I say, looking at the water and the woods and the stars up above, their glow unhindered by city lights.

“I love it here,” she says, her tone turning a bit wistful. “Most of my friends can’t wait to graduate and get the hell out of Dodge, but I’m never leaving.”

“When do you graduate?” I ask, using her comment as the perfect segue to finding out how old she actually is.

“A year and a half,” she says on a gentle sigh.

I quickly do the math in my head. If she’s in eleventh grade, that would make her, what? Sixteen? Seventeen?

“I’m sixteen, but my birthday is in a couple of months,” she says with a laugh like she couldseemy mental gymnastics. “How old are you?”

“I just turned eighteen,” I answer automatically, but my mind is racing.

I should be okay in a public setting like this, but I cannot allow myself to be alone with Willow or any of the other girls I met here tonight. I know I would never let anything inappropriate happen between myself and a minor, but the media is a fickle and ravenous beast, and there’s nothing juicier for it to sink its teeth into than an up-and-coming celebrity embroiled in a sex scandal.

“Relax, big guy,” Willow says, pulling me from my dark thoughts.

“What?”

“I’m not going to try to seduce you for my own fifteen minutes of fame,” she says, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “If that’s all I wanted, I’d go after a bigger fish, like Roger Albright.”

She hums like she just tasted something delicious, and a laugh bursts out of me.

“He’s a little old for you, don’t you think?” I ask, picturing the actor who plays my character’s father in the film.

“Age ain’t nothing but a number, as they say,” she says, her tone turning prim.

“Oh, yeah? Who says that?”

She frowns, and her scrunched little nose is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. “You know.They.”

“Well,theycertainly isn’t the police, who’d arrest him in a second. We’d have to stop filming, ruining my chances at fame and fortune.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t want that,” she teases, then sighs dramatically. “Roger’s off-limits, then, I guess.”

“You have my deepest gratitude,” I tease back, and her smile shines brighter than the fire before us.

“I think we’re going to be good friends, Gavin Reese,” she says with a firm nod like it’s already a fact.

“I think so, too, Willow…wait, what’s your last name?”

“Bardin.”

“Well, Willow Bardin, I think you’re right.”

“I always am,” she says, shimmying her shoulders and lifting her chin.

“I’ll try to remember that.”

“Be sure you do.”

I lean back in the chair and exhale a long sigh of contentment. It feels good to just relax andbe, and the company only makes it better. I like Willow. A lot.

And a real friend is exactly what I need. This is my first time away from home for an extended period without my parents, and though I’m constantly surrounded by the cast and crew, I’ve been feeling a bit lonely. Julia and I are friends, and that helps, but we mostly just go over lines and practice scenes when we hang out together.

Willow Bardin is different.

And I’m going to make sure I don’t fuck this friendship up.

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