Follow Me Back by A.V. Geiger (3)

3

THE FOLLOW SPREE

Eric sat down on the toilet with a white hotel towel draped around his neck. He glanced down at the tweet he’d sent ten minutes ago before stepping into the shower.

Eric Thorn @EricThorn

Wow! Thanks for the #EricThornObsessed thing. How bout a follow spree? Retweet for a follow!

He’d immediately followed the first twenty fans who responded, but the retweets and replies were still rolling in by the thousands. He flicked back over to the trending list. Oh goodie. Up to the number-two spot. No doubt #EricThornObsessed would climb back to number one worldwide soon enough.

The label should be satisfied, even if he didn’t follow that one fan in particular: Tessa H, the most obsessed one of all, who’d managed to get the rest of them whipped up into this latest frenzy. Frankly, they could kiss his ass with that idea.

It would be a cold night in hell before he followed her.

“Enough,” Eric muttered to himself. “Put the phone down.” He knew he shouldn’t read the replies. It would only irritate him further—all those thousands of fangirls, tweeting their undying love to him. Not like in the old days, when they used to praise him for his music or his voice. He still appreciated tweets like that, but they were few and far between. Most of these fans had never even been to one of his concerts. They’d made it all too clear what they loved about him when he released his most recent album a few months back. He’d conducted a little experiment at the time.

First, he’d tweeted a link to buy the lead single on iTunes:

Then he tweeted a selfie, shirtless, from the set of the music video:

The numbers only confirmed what he already knew in his gut. His so-called fans would much rather stare at silent pictures of his body than listen to any song he bothered to record.

Ever since then, he hadn’t sent a single tweet unless commanded by his handlers. His Twitter app remained unopened and untouched for weeks at a time.

And I should close it again right now, he told himself. He’d done his duty. Move along.

Eric let out a weary sigh. He needed to get on with his day, but the thought of the workout looming before him kept him planted to the toilet. Just a few more minutes, he thought. They couldn’t give him a hard time for being late, right? Everyone needed to take a dump once in a while. Even pretty-boy pop stars.

He switched over to the notifications tab and rolled his eyes in disgust as he read the first one:

Eric Thorn Lover @EricLuv982

I LOVE UUUUUUUUUUUU ERIC PLS FOLLOW ME I’M CRYING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She loved him? He’d wager good money that she barely listened to his music. Who had time, with all those pictures of him in his underpants to tweet about? But she loved him. Sure. If she only knew what he really thought.

It was so tempting to tell them. He could just imagine how that tweet would read:

@EricLuv982 You don’t love me. You don’t even know me.

Yes, he thought. How amazing would it feel to get it all off his chest? But why restrict it to that one when there were millions of others just like her?

Eric punched at his keypad, embellishing as he went:

Attention fans. You don’t love me. You don’t even know me. I’ll never, ever love you back. So put down the phone, go outside, and get a life

Not bad for 140 characters. He could go on, of course, but he’d reached the maximum length.

Eric wondered what would happen if he sent it. What would all the fangirls do? Would #EricThornObsessed grind to a screeching halt? He closed his eyes and pictured it, his lips forming a crooked grin.

Pure fantasy, of course. There’d be hell to pay if his finger slipped and hit the Tweet button. His publicists would rake him over the coals—and that would be the least of his problems.

Eric shifted his weight uneasily against the cold, hard surface of the toilet seat. He couldn’t risk it. He couldn’t antagonize the fans. He only needed one of them to flip out and come after him with a butcher knife. How many were hovering on the brink, just waiting for one wrong move to push them over the edge?

He tipped back his head and ran his hand up and down his throat, rough with stubble. Did Dorian see it coming? Eric wondered. Or did that girl surprise him from behind?

No, he could never tell his followers what he really thought of them. Way too dangerous. In fact, he should probably tweet the opposite right then, just to be on the safe side—something to soothe the raging disappointment for all the ones he just passed over.

He hastily wrote a new message and hit Tweet.

• • •

Tessa clicked the bedroom door closed behind Dr. Regan’s retreating form. She dove across her bed to grab the cell phone on her nightstand. The Twitter notifications had been going off like fireworks for the past ten minutes, and Tessa had watched helplessly out of the corner of her eye, waiting for her therapy session to end so she could read them.

She looked eagerly at the screen and saw the cause of the commotion: a new tweet from Eric Thorn.

“No!” she exclaimed as she read it. A follow spree? Now? He never did those anymore. He barely even tweeted these days. People said he must be too busy with his hectic promo schedule, but Tessa didn’t buy it. It only took a moment to send a tweet. Something else had changed with him lately, although she seemed to be the only one who thought so. She saw it all over his face in the underwear campaign he just shot. He’d tried for his usual smoldering stare, gazing straight into the camera as he lounged around a bowling alley in nothing but his boxer briefs. But in his eyes she saw only a mixture of anger and sadness—and fear.

Projecting. Just projecting. Dr. Regan probably knew what she was talking about. Tessa hadn’t felt totally convinced during the therapy session, but she saw now that it must be true. He wasn’t avoiding Twitter on purpose, out of some deep-seated inner turmoil. He was just busy, like everyone said. He just did a follow spree after all.

And she had missed it.

Tessa read the time stamp on Eric’s tweet with a stab of disappointment. Eleven minutes ago now—a lifetime in the Twitter game. No doubt the fans he followed had all replied within the first thirty seconds.

She couldn’t believe her bad luck. Here she was, cooped up twenty-four-seven in this self-imposed prison cell of a bedroom with nothing to do but look at her phone…and he chose the one hour she had therapy to do a follow spree. It would probably be days, if not weeks, before he had time to tweet again.

With a groan, she began composing a halfhearted reply:

@EricThorn FOLLOW ME! I LOVE YOU! I’m so upset I missed this! Grrrr :(

Her finger hovered over the Tweet button, when another notification flashed onto her screen:

Follow spree complete. Don’t be upset if I missed you. I love each and every one of you more than you could ever know.

She couldn’t help but smile as she read the words, soothing her disappointment like a…like a healing balm on a nasty burn after falling asleep in the sun…

Tessa chuckled softly to herself. She really was obsessed with him, wasn’t she? That whole metaphor came from his latest single, of course. He called it “Aloe Vera.”

Come on and soothe this sunburn.

Baby, take away my pain.

The light, it lured me under

On a perfect, sunny day.

He’d supposedly written it while vacationing in Cozumel at some fabulous beach resort. And he made the same self-deprecating joke about it, over and over, on all the late-night talk shows afterward: Yes, Jimmy. I wrote a love song to my skin-care regimen. I’m working on another one about my aftershave now. Not that I’m obsessed with my looks or anything…

Tessa had felt a bit worried about him when she first heard the song. He could joke all he wanted, but she knew that song wasn’t really about a day at the beach. It was about getting burned.

She flicked on a bedside lamp. If only better lighting could chase away the gloomy thoughts. Obviously, she was reading way too much into things. There was nothing wrong with Eric Thorn’s mental state. This tweet just now didn’t come from someone dealing with depression and anxiety. No, those words came from a guy who was sensitive. Thoughtful. Someone who really cared about his fans’ feelings. Most celebrities wouldn’t have bothered.

She could just picture him typing it out and then watching his phone light up with the replies. All those words of love pouring back at him. No doubt he wore that crooked grin of his plastered on his face as he basked in the adoration. He deserved it too. Every word.

Tessa wondered where he was right now. Maybe lounging in the backseat of a limo with cushy leather seats. Was he watching his phone, right at that moment? Her cheeks flushed at the thought. She abandoned the tweet she’d been composing and hastily wrote out a new one:

@EricThorn You sweetie pie. SMILE IF YOU SEE THIS! #EricThornObsessed

With that, Tessa flicked over to her music app and slipped in her earphones, unwilling to let her mental image die. She closed her eyes with satisfaction at the sound of Eric’s voice singing the catchy opening hook to “Aloe Vera.”

Come on and soothe this sunburn.

Baby, take away my pain…

She could almost see him now—looking at his phone when her reply came up. The grin on his face growing a shade brighter as he read it.

• • •

Eric scowled down at the tweet he’d just sent. Did they actually buy it when he put on his sugary-sweet I-love-my-fans act? Apparently so, by the looks of his notifications tab, lighting up with thousands of new replies.

His scowl grew a shade deeper as he watched them rolling in.

Maybe he should write a song about it, he thought bitterly. A nice, sappy ballad about how much he loved his fans. Call it…“Snowflakes.” Yeah, that was good. “Special Snowflakes.”

I watch the snowflakes falling,

Too many for me to see.

But I know each one is beautiful,

Special and unique.

God, that was awful. The label would probably love it though. They could release it in time for Christmas, and the fans would eat it up with a spoon. Well, assuming anyone actually listened to his music anymore…and had the mental capacity to understand a simple metaphor.

He snorted. Who was he kidding? Anyway, a song like that would only serve to spur their obsession further. Just like this tweet of his. He ran his eyes over it again with a trace of regret.

I love each and every one of you…

Why had he just sent that? It would only egg them on.

But he had to do it. It was a matter of survival at this point. No telling what kind of homicidal tendencies they might be harboring out there. He had to keep leading them on, telling them what they wanted to hear—even if it meant lying through his teeth.