“Ohhh, okay, so you were the cool photo art blog side of Mumblr.”

“Photos, yes, but definitely not cool ones. Just recipes and stuff.”

“Sounds pretty cool to me,” Emily said and, again, that smile, like she had a secret I didn’t mind her keeping.

“But, I will admit to never having heard of the other one,” I said, feeling hot under her gaze.

“AO3?”

I nodded.

“It stands for Archive of Our Own. It’s a fanfic site.”

“You write fanfic?” I asked.

“Yeah…” She winced. “Is that the dorkiest thing you’ve ever heard?”

“No, not at all!” I blurted. “I think that’s really cool!”

“You do?”

“Yeah!” I nodded enthusiastically, as if it would convince her more. “I mean, I don’t know anything about it—I’ve never read any fanfic before—but you want to be a writer, right?”

“Yeah…” Her face softened, her smile turning into one I hadn’t seen so far, one that felt like waking up naturally with the sunlight. “I do. You remembered that?”

“Of course,” I said, and the wattage went up in her smile.

We just sat there for a second, smiling like total goofballs, both of us leaning closer and closer to stare at each other across the table. When I couldn’t stand staring directly into the sunlight of her smile for a moment longer, I cleared my throat.

“Can fanfic be poetry?” I asked. “That’s what you want to be, right? A poet?”

“I mean, yeah, that’s the big dream.” She rolled her eyes at herself. “But it’s kind of a hard career path.”

“Right … not a lot of professional, full-time poets these days, huh?”

“Not really.” She laughed. “But fic is a good way to stretch my wings. I study mostly poetry and nonfiction prose in school, so it’s nice to dip my toes into fiction from time to time. And yeah, sometimes poetry and fanfic overlap, but mostly I’m writing narratives.”

“What do you write it for?” I asked. And then, realizing I had no idea what I was talking about: “Wait, that’s how it works, right? You write for something? A fandom?”

“Yeah, that’s how it works.” She chuckled. “I write for the MCU—the Marvel Cinematic Universe.”

“Oh yeah, my brother loves those movies!” I said. “I’ve seen bits and pieces of it before with him. It’s fun!”

She laughed a big laugh.

“You don’t have to say you like it, it’s okay—”

“No, really! I’m more of a fantasy over superheroes person, but all the actors seemed good.”

“Have you seen the Captain America movies?” she asked.

“I think so? Maybe the first one,” I said, vaguely remembering Chris Evans in a WWII costume. “Is that the one about the two guys who are, like, childhood friends in love with each other and then one of them dies?”