“I’ll take that as a yes,” he says, flashing me a smile. “That’s super cool. I don’t think I’ve ever met a celebrity before.”

I snatch the napkins away from him and use them to try to sop up the mess on my shirt. My eyes burn as I ask, “How do you even know about that?”

“The blog?” He shrugs. “I’ve been following it for like six months, and I’ve seen the stories cross-posted on Insta too. And there’s that one person on TikTok who role-plays them. Hard not to notice a blog that cute.”

Tears spring to my eyes. “You think it’s cute?”

“Well, yeah. A bunch of people finding love on the street? It showed up on my dash one day, so I sent it to my cousin. She’s trans.”

I nod along, but my mind is racing too fast to keep up with any of this. Drew knows about the Meet Cute Diary. Drew follows the Meet Cute Diary.

“Anyway, there was this post about an ice cream shop like a week ago that sounded really familiar, and then one about a bookstore, and it sounded a hell of a lot like this place, and I didn’t want to come off too cocky by asking, but—” He shrugs again, leaning against the nearest shelf. “And, I mean, the mod’s name is Noah.”

I’m shaking. Holy shit. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would come to this.

And really, all the times I’d thought about being caught by someone, I thought it’d be one of the bigots at my old school. I always worried they might find me out, figure out that I was trans and bolstering trans love instead of denouncing it all as a sin, and then I’d get expelled or suspended or prayed for at weekly school masses.

But this is different. My heart’s pounding in my chest, but it’s excited, not terrified. It’s the moment my mask has been taken off and civilian identity revealed, but at the hands of a fan, one who’s ready to give me all the gratitude my mask has denied me for so long.

Then he says, “Does that mean all the stories are made-up? I mean, given that all the ones with me in it had alternate endings.”

And I’m deflating, the breath rushing out of me as a blush heats my face. “Yes,” I say. “They’re all made-up. Fake meet cutes.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I mean, they’re cool stories, but why go through all the hassle if they aren’t even real?”