Page 43 of Sebastian

SEBASTIAN

#Chastian is the couple’s name that fans have bestowed upon us. I don’t love it, but who am I to object. Trending hashtags are golden and let me tell you, #Chastian is trending.

The video is still raking in the subscriptions and the views are through the roof. Every time I post another photo of me and Christian together, we get another spike in numbers. The post from our completely platonic and yet utterly romantic dinner. When we went to get frozen yogurt, the mirror selfie we took surreptitiously in the Mars locker room, the afternoon we spent hanging out on the grass in the park.

Fans are eating it up and clambering for more. I’ve been updating my spreadsheets every single day just to watch those line graphs climb higher and higher. I’m blown away, honestly, by the response we’ve had. It’s bigger than anything I could have imagined, anything I ever dreamed for myself. My goal had always been to make a living, pay my bills, and be comfortable. But this has me thinking, it has me looking to the stars for what might be possible, what might be next.

And it’s all because of Christian.

We’ve talked a lot over the past couple weeks. Like, so much. About everything. His memories of his parents. My family up in Connecticut who’s been surprisingly okay with my unconventional profession of choice. Christian’s past experience in the industry and how it compares to mine. What I want my future to look like, and what he wants his to look like. I’ve never talked this much with anyone in my life—not family, not friends, not boyfriends. It feels like we’ll never run out of things to talk about.

Which is why I’m on my phone texting with Christian rather than paying attention to the guys at brunch.

“Hellooo???” Rhys wiggles his fingers in front of my face.

I drop my phone into my lap and cover it with a napkin as if they don’t all know it’s there. “Huh? What?”

“Don’t bother.” Noel shakes his head. “He’s in love.”

I scowl at him. “What are you talking about?”

“You and Chris Preacher. You’re in love.”

“I’m not in love.” Guilt wells up inside me the second those words leave my mouth. I don’t know if I’m “in love” with Christian, but I certainly feel something for him—something more than the infatuation I had when I was younger, more than the crush I developed when I first met him.

We get along well. We have explosive chemistry. I can’t go more than a few hours without checking in with him. Is this love? Or is this a comfortable pattern we’ve fallen into for the sake of public appearances?

“Are you sure?” Noel cocks an eyebrow at me.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to protest again, except I’m not sure. How much of this relationship we’ve created is an act we’re performing for the fans and how much of it is reality?

“Wow, you’ve got it really bad,” Noel smirks at me.

“Shut up,” I throw back at him.

“Are you going to do another collab?” Hayden’s question brings me up short and an unwelcome churning starts in my stomach.

I’m the type of person who likes to stay two or three steps ahead. My calendar usually gets booked up weeks and months in advance. Right now, though, I don’t have any new collabs—with anyone—on my schedule. I feel like I’m at a turning point in my career and my options are to go back to what I was doing before or… something else I haven’t quite been able to define. All those solo videos, all the collabs with the guys I’ve worked with in the past, they feel like they’re behind me and I don’t want to go backward. Except I don’t know what the alternative is. More Christian, I suppose. But how?

“I don’t know,” I admit, spinning my mimosa glass in circles by its stem. “We haven’t talked about it.”

“Why not?” Rhys asks. “You two are hot right now. You should take advantage of that.”

Rhys is right. If I’d shot the video with anyone else, I wouldn’t have hesitated to propose a follow-up. But Christian isn’t like anyone else I’ve worked with. Christian is special, and our whole situation has become a lot more complicated than I anticipated. “Our agreement was only for one video. I don’t know if he’d be willing to do another.”

“You should ask him,” Hayden says.

“Yeah…” I don’t want to though. I don’t want to put too much pressure on him and end up pushing him away. I want to keep seeing him, keep being friends with him—or whatever the heck we’ve become to one another. I don’t want to put this delicate new relationship in jeopardy by asking for more.

“He’s in love.” Noel gives me a poke in the arm that I swat away. “And we all know you shouldn’t mix business with pleasure.”

I flinch because that’s what it boils down to, isn’t it? More videos and more money or these feelings I have for Christian that look suspiciously like love. Wanting both feels a little selfish, and everyone knows that it rarely works out.

Rhys looks at Noel, then back at me. “Wait, you’re serious? You and Chris Preacher are dating?”

“No, we’re not dating.” There’s too much vehemence in my voice for anyone to believe me. “And I didn’t say we weren’t going to do another video, just that it hasn’t come up yet.”

“I thought all that hanging out was for social media promo,” Hayden says.

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