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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By the time I'd gotten off work, I'd been sneaking text messages to Andrew all day. I don't know what happened, but once we started talking I didn't want to stop. I told myself that I wouldn't be pushy, that I would only continue the conversation if he pursued a conversation with me. I didn't want to be the driving force, asking him questions and shooting him texts without any real initiative on his side to keep it going, but sure enough he stayed interested.
He asked me about my family, moving from Texas, my job, my hobbies, my love of music, my favorite foods - anything and everything. It was all superficial information, but he seemed to drink it up en masse.
Everything was natural between the two of us. There was no point when it felt like a weird round of twenty questions, because the conversation flowed from one point to the next. He teased me relentlessly about my headphone addiction, claiming that I needed to 'find the music in the world around me,' while I poked fun at his jetset lifestyle and the few rumors I'd heard about him through Val.
I learned that he was from Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his parents still lived. He was an only child, and he joined the local community theater at a young age. After high school - during which time I was tickled to discover he was in show choir - he went to UCLA to double major in theater and history. After he was cast in the show, he decided to drop out of school in the off chance that the show would be a success.
Turns out his gamble paid off, because the show lasted four seasons before it was cancelled, and his career took off at that point.
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I didn't know what to say to that. It wasn't something I'd thought of before, the struggle for identity when you're in the spotlight, especially when the world sees you in a certain way. For Andrew, being Lincoln Shepherd meant being the guy every girl dreamed about. He was funny and charming, two traits that came naturally to him, but he was also outgoing and very put together. The real Andrew wasn't anything like that, I was rapidly learning.
He hated crowds, and he suffered from horrible stage fright. He'd been invited to present at award ceremonies in the past, and he'd turned down every opportunity except those the network insisted he take. Even then, he tried to minimize the amount he had to say by joining a cast member on stage who did most of the talking.
