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She should have been more prepared. Especially when walking around in public like this. She should have been wearing sunglasses, at the very least, but she’d forgotten to put them back on when she came out of the bookstore. She’d forgotten about everything except for Jude.

Kat had booked her first movie at the age of eleven, a minor role with one spoken line.

She had continued to book increasingly larger parts until her breakout role in Spy Pigs, a shockingly successful children’s film about a farm girl who realized her pigs were undercover spies.

After that, she had starred in five different blockbuster movies and five seasons of P.R.O.M.

, a monster-of-the-week dramedy about members of a dance committee who were also superheroes.

Now she had eight million Instagram followers, excellent name recognition, and she couldn’t go anywhere without people stopping her to take photos.

She was also completely uncastable.

Once she turned twenty-one and the network decided not to renew P.R.O.M.

, Kat’s career had ended. Three years later she was still famous, still high-profile enough to get tables at restaurants and invites to top parties, but she was a child star who had aged out of children’s shows.

Everyone from fans to casting directors looked at her and only saw Lily Carlson, the plucky superhero lead from the TV show.

Except for Jude. Kat was certain that Jude hadn’t recognized her. That for once someone was flirting with her because they liked Kat and not Lily Carlson.

But apparently, Kat without Lily hadn’t been enough.

Kat pulled her sunglasses out of her purse and put them on.

The tote bag on her shoulder seemed to grow even heavier as she realized that there was no way she could go back to the bookstore.

She’d been delusional to even consider it.

Her career was already in shambles, and she’d never fix it if a story leaked to the press about Kat begging a bookstore employee for a date and getting turned down.

It had been nice to pretend for a little while.

But that was all she’d been doing: pretending.

Even if Jude had asked for her number, it never would have worked out.

Once she found out who Kat was, she would have either gotten caught up in wanting a piece of Kat’s fame or—if she was smart—run the hell away and found someone normal to date.

It was for the best that Jude hadn’t asked her out, because at least this way Kat could pretend that if something had happened between them, it would have been magic.

She could lie awake at night and dream about how soft Jude’s blond hair might have felt beneath her fingers or what it would have felt like to have Jude push her up against those bookstore shelves and kiss her hard.

Dreams were almost always better than reality, in Kat’s experience.

She started walking back toward her newly rented apartment in Chelsea. Suddenly, the energy of the city felt suffocating. There were too many noises and too many people. She’d only been here a week, but she missed the peaceful seclusion of L.A.

It didn’t help that her stomach was starting to tighten into a hard, twisted knot as she realized just how foolish she’d been earlier.

She’d asked Jude for queer book recommendations.

She wasn’t supposed to confirm her sexuality in public like that.

Worse, she’d asked for a literal guide to being queer.

Sure, she’d given an abbreviated version of her name and paid in cash, but eventually Jude would realize who she was.

Kat could see the tabloid article now: “Katrina Kelly Is Queer Poser; Begs Bookstore Employee for Advice.”

Well, maybe they’d come up with a catchier headline. But the effect would be the same. Disastrous. What had she been thinking?

She hadn’t been thinking. She’d stopped thinking as soon as she saw Jude reading the Eileen Styles book.

Kat loved her books, and she’d never had anyone to talk to about them before.

Plus, it had felt so nice to talk to another queer person.

Jude had seemed so nonjudgmental and so excited to show off the bookstore’s queer-books display.

It had made Kat feel strangely safe, and she hadn’t been able to resist asking one of the many, many questions that she’d been worrying about for the past two months, in between binging L Word episodes with her headphones on and using incognito windows to search things like “How do you know if you’re bi or pan or gay? ”

Kat felt a flush cover her face and spread down to her neck as she remembered asking Jude if she could call herself queer.

Not only that, but she’d very obviously made up a fake friend to do it.

She might as well have rented a billboard that said, “I’m insecure and don’t know the first thing about being LGBTQ+. ”

That had been right before Jude had stopped smoldering at Kat with those beautiful eyes and turned into a cold customer-service robot.

Kat clenched her hands into fists. Now she knew what had made Jude change her mind.

Kat had been wasting her time wondering if she wasn’t pretty enough or if she’d said something wrong when the answer was obvious.

She wasn’t queer enough. Jude had decided that some inexperienced baby gay wasn’t worth her time, and she’d hustled Kat out of the store as fast as possible.

Well, fuck her. Kat didn’t need Jude. Especially not right now, when she needed to be completely focused on resuscitating what was left of her career.

Hopefully Jude would never realize who Kat was. And if Jude did decide to sell the story to a magazine, Kat would have her manager deny the whole thing.

Until something happened, there was no point in worrying about this anymore. Jude was just some random jerk, and Kat had already wasted too much time on her. She was going to forget about this whole encounter and move on.

Which would be easy, because she would never see Jude again.