ShowYouTheDor5
“Snapchat?” Eric’s eyes narrowed. He’d never bothered to make an account himself. That was the last thing he needed—one more social media account for his fans to stalk. But it might not be the worst idea. “That’s more private than Twitter, right?”
“In theory,” Tessa said slowly. “Everything you share on Snapchat is automatically deleted, so there isn’t any record.”
“But Dorian would still have to follow me back, wouldn’t he?”
Tessa pressed her lips together, thinking. “Maybe not,” she said. “I can use this thingy MET tweeted to add Dorian as a friend.” She kneeled on the mattress beside him, bending over the phone. A small crease formed between her eyes as she concentrated. Eric couldn’t quite follow the stream of social-media-speak that tumbled from her lips. “It’s called a Snapcode. Kind of like a QR code. See the random dots around the edges? A lot of celebrities use Snapchat with secret usernames, but the fans find them eventually. I can’t believe MET just shared it publicly!”
Eric leaned back and rested his weight on his elbows. He didn’t need to know the details. Tessa would figure it out. He brushed his hand idly across the faded coverlet they shared at night, waiting for her to reemerge from whatever fangirlish rabbit hole she’d fallen down.
He had to admit, sleeping with a fangirl had its perks.
Not that they were doing anything other than sleeping. Tessa had made her boundaries clear, and Eric could respect that. They’d only been together for a month, and it felt right to take things slow. He’d fallen in love with Tessa’s words. Her mind. He could wait for the rest.
He glanced at her heart-shaped face. A lock of brown hair had come loose from her braid and dangled by her cheek. In a different mood, he might have reached out and brushed it back behind her ear, but he didn’t want to distract her.
“Got it!” A triumphant grin spread across her face. “Done.”
“What? You made us a Snapchat?”
“Yup, we’re Snowflake734, and we added Dorian as a friend. Now we can send him a Snap.” She flashed the screen in Eric’s direction. “If he notices it, we can open up a Chat.”
Tessa pointed the phone at Eric’s face, but he held up a hand to stop her. He could only imagine the flood of other accounts adding ShowYouTheDor at this very moment. They needed a pic that would grab Dorian’s attention, and Eric knew exactly what to do. He clutched the collar of his T-shirt with one hand and peeled it over his head.
The phone blocked most of Tessa’s face, but he could see the way her eyes went round. “Um. OK. Why are you taking your shirt off?”
Eric chuckled deep in his throat. “Force of habit.”
Tessa lowered the phone. “Eric, you’re doing it again. Stop deflecting. This isn’t a joke!”
“No, I’m serious. This way Dorian will know the picture is legit.” Eric pointed at his bare chest. “See?”
Tessa didn’t look so pale now. A flush of color spread upward from her collarbone as her eyes came to rest on his well-sculpted pecs. He hadn’t followed his daily workout regimen since they ran away, and he’d lost a touch of muscle tone, but he still had some decent definition when he flexed.
“How does that prove anything?” she asked. Her color deepened, and she flicked her eyes back toward her lap. “Pretty sure there are a few million other shirtless photos of you floating around the Internet.”
Eric grinned. “Not like this.” He lowered his head to view the coating of soft fuzz that grew darker every day. “There’s never been a published photo in which I was not fully waxed up top. PR wouldn’t allow it.”
Her eyes went far away for a moment. Eric knew what she was doing: mentally reviewing the catalog of Eric Thorn pics she’d once kept on her camera roll. “I guess that’s true,” she said. “It never occurred to me before, but you were always…”
“A life-size plastic action figure?”
“And you think Dorian will notice the difference?”
Eric nodded. “Chest waxing,” he explained. “It’s the universal curse of the male celebrity.”
Tessa looked doubtful, but Eric had his mind made up. Before she could protest, he took the phone and snapped the picture himself. He only paused to add a quick caption before he hit Send.
It’s me. This is real. Let’s chat.
• • •
Tessa took the phone from Eric. She flicked the home button to prevent the screen from going to sleep. The account displayed their recent activity: one sent Snap with a solid red arrow to indicate its unopened status.
ShowYouTheDor
“Now what?” Eric asked.
“Now we wait and see if he opens it.”
She could sense Eric’s nervous energy from the way he drummed his palms against his thighs. Tessa wasn’t holding her breath though. She’d never been much of a Snapchatter, but she knew how it worked. Celebrities had filters in place to weed out random fans. God forbid they saw something illegal, like a nude from an underage teenager, and ended up in trouble for viewing child porn. The filters meant that fans were essentially on mute. They could scream and yell and send selfies every day for a year with zero chance that their idol would ever notice them.
There was a time when that reality might have hurt her fangirl heart. Now, Tessa clung to it like a security blanket. No one would ever see it, she chanted inside her head. The pic Eric had Snapped would never be opened. No one. No way. Not ever.
Not by Dorian.
Not by Eric’s record label.
And certainly not by Blair.
At the thought of Blair’s name, Tessa felt the automatic spike in her heart rate. She recognized it for what it was. A chemical reaction. Nothing more. Lately, she’d been reading about the body’s fight-or-flight response. She could pinpoint the exact sensation when her adrenal glands kicked in and released a dose of hormones into her bloodstream. Epinephrine. Norepinephrine. They were the same kind of chemicals used in EpiPens to treat people with allergy attacks—but to her brain, it felt like fear.
Tessa closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. Her pulse rate had returned to a tolerable level when she felt Eric’s hand close around her wrist.
“What happened?” he whispered. “Something changed.”
Tessa’s eyes sprang open. She blinked at the Snapchat icon on her phone. No more solid red. The little arrow had turned into a hollow outline.
ShowYouTheDor
“What does it mean?” Eric asked. “Did he open it?”
Not only that, Tessa thought. Her jaw went slack as a new icon appeared in the arrow’s place.
ShowYouTheDor
The little blue speech bubble could only mean one thing: an incoming message.