Boy meets girl, girl falls in love, blah-blah-blah.
Let me be clear with you from the beginning. This is not that kind of story.
My name is Cait, and I live in the great city of New York. Okay, so maybe I've only lived here for a week and a half...
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Surprisingly enough, I wasn't late for work the next morning. I fell asleep shortly after Val finally gave up trying to get more information about Andrew and my almost-date, but I woke up at 3AM and couldn't get back to sleep. I kept thinking about him, about how I refused to give him - the guy who just wanted a chance to be normal - the opportunity to do so.
I felt horrible, and the churning in my stomach got worse even after I forced myself to get up and get ready for work. I made myself breakfast, opting for homemade avocado toast and coffee instead of my customary toasted onion bagel from the coffee shop down the street, and opened up my laptop to Google him.
My fingers hovered over the keys as I chewed on the bagel, debating whether or not this was a good idea, but - in the end - curiosity won. I opened the browser and typed "Lincoln Shepherd" in the search box, only to be bombarded with a slew of websites dedicated to him on the first page. I skipped his IMDB page since I already knew most of the films he was in, and I opened Wikipedia, Twitter, and Instagram. Everything else seemed to be a fan site or a news article about his latest casting. The last result on the first page was even a Tumblr account dedicated to him, xxlincolnshepherdxx.tumblr.com.
I clicked it, and my cheeks flushed pink the instant the page loaded. It was covered with photos and gifs of Andrew, his familiar dark hair and beard, as he smiled and laughed during interviews. My stomach panged with guilt, and I double checked Val's bed to make sure she was still asleep as I scrolled down. Interviews, screengrabs from his movies, magazine photo shoots...countless reminders that the man I met on the street was indeed an international celebrity.
And he was absolutely gorgeous.
There were even paparazzi photos of him on the street, and I felt even worse when I saw the number of reblogs and comments on the photos. Hundreds of thousands of fans hounded after him, all of them obsessed with his movie-star good looks, his charming smile, his clear blue-green eyes, and...well...everything else about him.
Switching over to Instagram, I grimaced when I saw his 2.3 million followers. The first photo had over 243,000 likes - a freaking quarter of a million - and over two thousand comments. Most were repetitive, fans proclaiming their love for him in all caps (followed by ten heart emojis, obviously), but there were a few that made me feel sick. Several talked about inappropriate situations, including one girl who wanted to "lick his abs" and "have his babies", and many were worse than that. I cringed as I read some of them, scrolling quickly past the ones with profane content, and saw some commented simply to say how much they hated him.
I couldn't understand why anyone would say those things, how they could possibly say it - publicly - so he could see it. All of it. He could read it when people were perverted, rude, and hateful. Didn't they know that he was a person too? That he had feelings? That he breathed the same air that they did? Or did they just think that because he was separate from them - that he was larger than life on the screen - that it didn't impact him the same way? I couldn't imagine having people say this kind of thing to me. I wouldn't be able to stomach it.
