IMAGINES: Celebrity Encounters Starring You (7 page)

“Oh, hey,” Kendall says abruptly. She turns the engine over and the car hums to life just as a woman in hospital scrubs and a hoodie pulled low over her face opens the passenger-side door and quickly slides into the front seat. Kendall pulls away from the curb as soon as the door shuts, easing the SUV out into the road. The car has gone eerily silent, a delicate bubble of hope encasing us for the next few minutes.

“Hi, everyone,” Kylie whispers from beneath her hood.

“Hiiii,” Kendall and Kim whisper in return. They both reach out and put their hands on Kylie. Kendall reaches over and touches her leg. Kim reaches up from the backseat and places her hand on Kylie’s shoulder. They both hold their hands on their sister for a moment, silently acknowledging her presence with physical contact.

The mood in the car remains tense and quiet as Kendall executes a few more turns, and then you’re on the highway, speeding away. No one followed you, no car chase, nothing bad happened. It’s done. Kylie removes her hood, and everyone instantly relaxes.

“We did it, yay, wooo!” Kendall says, laughing.

“OMG, that suuuuuuuuuucked,” Kylie says, slumping down into her seat.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Kim says cheerfully. “But we reeeeally appreciate you!”

Kylie lightly punches Kendall in the leg. “Next time
I
get to fake my death and
you
have to eat hospital food and have group therapy about your egotism.”

“Hmm, we’ll see,” Kendall replies.

“That sounds awful,” Kim says. “We missed you so much; are you okay?”

Kylie sighs. “Yeah, just tired, hungry. I’m so relieved you got the message my contacts sent you. I was worried you wouldn’t be able to decrypt it.”

“Nope, no problem!” Kim says brightly, giving you a look like
She doesn’t need to know how close we were to not decrypting it in time
. “So did you get the info we needed?”

Kylie nods. “Yeah. Our contacts were correct. There was a very helpful woman who’d worked for the government in there. I got all kinds of information about how to bypass their system and take it offline. A lot of it was over my head, though. I took serious notes, but we’re going to need someone who’s pretty awesome at networks and electronics hacking to pull this off.”

“WELLLLL, it just so happens . . .” Kim says happily, leaning over to nudge you with her elbow.

Kylie turns and sees you in the car for the first time.

“Hi there,” you say, waving and introducing yourself. Kylie just stares at you for a moment. Even just out of prison, in her drab hospital scrubs and her messy hair going everywhere, she’s amazing to look at. So comfortable in her own skin. Kylie is looking at you like she recognizes you from somewhere. Like you’re painfully familiar to her, but she can’t quite place you.

“Is that my shirt?” she asks finally.

“Yyyyeah, sorry, Kendall loaned it to me.”

Kylie turns to Kendall. “And do you have clothes for me to change into?”

“Well, we did, but then we were under attack and kind of in a hurry at the last safe house, and they miiiight have gotten left behind.”

“Kenny!” Kylie says, making a fist.

“Sorry, sorry! We’ll get you clothes at the next stop, I promise.”

You feel horrified that you have Kylie’s clothes on, and she’s stuck with nothing to wear. These are very unideal circumstances for you to be meeting Kylie Jenner.

“I’m really sorry,” you offer. “We could trade?” You say the
words, but honestly, the idea of wearing her hospital scrubs turns your stomach.

Kylie shakes her head and smiles. “It’s okay. The shirt looks good on you. And if you’re riding with these two, then we must be family. It’s really fine. If that’s the only thing that goes wrong today, it’s really fine.” She turns around to face the road, and smiles, relaxed.

“Oh, sure, you let
her
borrow your clothes,” Kendall says.

This is insane. How is this happening to you? You’re hanging out with Kim and Kylie and Kendall and they, like
, want
you to be there. They’re not getting bored with you. They’re not going to ditch you by the side of the road when they realize how boring you are. They seem to actually want you here. You belong in a way that you have not felt like you belong anywhere, ever—not at home, not with your boyfriend, and definitely not at your job. You are somehow exactly where you’re supposed to be, and it’s here, with them.

Why does your face suddenly ache? You reach up to touch your face and realize you’re smiling. You’re smiling for, like, the first time in forever.

You look over and notice Kim noticing you smiling. “Not how you thought this week was going to go, is it?” she says.

“Definitely not,” you say, blushing.

“You’re hacking the government, you’re on the run with some of the coolest chicks ever, you’re single . . .”

“Wow, I guess I am single,” you say. “I never had any real closure about it with my boyfriend, though.”

“You ditched him—that’s better closure than he deserves,” Kim says.

“You should send him a selfie!” Kendall calls from the front. “Like, ‘Bye, hater.’ ”

The car erupts in laughter, the sisters agreeing that this is, in fact, exactly what you should do.

You laugh too, but more nervously. “I don’t know about that.”

“Come on, what do you say, electronics expert?” Kim asks. “You ready to change the world?”

“Um, I’m not really sure,” you say. “This plan sounds much bigger and more complicated than anything I could ever accomplish.”

“Listen, come here,” Kim says. She slides across the seat, sitting right next to you. “I need to show you something really amazing.”

She puts one arm around you, pulling you in close. With her other arm she holds her phone out, with the camera on, so your faces appear together on the screen.

“What?” you ask.

And Kim says, “You.”

O
n your flight home for Christmas, the pilot comes over the loudspeaker: “Folks, unfortunately it looks like we’ll be landing a little bit earlier than planned. This weather turned faster than anyone expected, and for your safety we’re being rerouted. I’ll update you as soon as I know more.”

Not exactly the kind of message you want to hear halfway through a cross-country flight. Still, at least no oxygen alerts are involved, which, you know from experience, induce the kind of panic necessitating assistance from a neighbor to successfully don your (potentially) lifesaving mask. And seeing as your current seatmate is a sorority girl in snowflake-covered leggings and sequined fluffy boots—who has spent the better part of eight hundred miles sighing dramatically every time your elbow so much as touches hers on the armrest—your chances of dying from oxygen deprivation are fairly substantial should the flight go pear-shaped.

A flight attendant with a company-approved smile appears at the front of the cabin to direct passengers on connecting flights, and you try to remember whether the pilot mentioned where you’re being diverted to; she’s awfully chipper for it to be someplace good. You glance at sorority girl and wonder if it’s worth interrupting what appears to be an entertaining read (if the heaving
bosom on the paperback’s cover is anything to go by), but decide self-reliance is a noble endeavor and peek out the tiny window instead. Unfortunately, it’s dark, the edge of the glass is etched with a crystalline layer of frost, and geography never really was your strong suit.

Maybe I can finish up my Christmas shopping in the airport,
you think. There’s absolutely no shame in buying gifts at the airport when it’s your only option. Never mind all the procrastinating you did before you left—you were too distraught over losing Agatha the Cat.

Gosh, you miss her. It doesn’t even matter that technically she was never your cat. You’re the one who fed her and bought her catnip toys and a halter and took her for walks so she could jump in the leaves and bully the prissy little dogs you met in the park. You’re the one who knit her tiny sweaters when the weather turned chilly. Cheating Slimeball (also known as Jeremy) would
never
knit her sweaters. Hell, he left all of her toys and her little blue leash on the kitchen counter when he left, right beside her monogrammed porcelain dish. Scumbag.

It’s occurred to you more than once since he left that you don’t miss Cheating Slimeball at all. That’s probably significant.

Poor kitty
. It wasn’t her fault she wound up a casualty of your latest failed attempt at a grown-up relationship.

Lost in thought, you’re caught off guard when you realize you’re taxiing to the gate, surrounded by brusque and harried cell-phone conversations with airline help desks. While you wait for your turn at the overhead compartments, you wonder what people would do if you just burst into song; defusing a stressed crowd with Christmas carols or show tunes has long been a personal fantasy. Of course, in these close quarters (and with your sketchy singing voice) it would probably violate some sort of flight ordinance, and you’d wind up spending Christmas locked
in the windowless back room of an airport in a state whose location you could only describe as east of the Pacific.

You quietly follow the grumpy line of passengers up the aisle instead.

Inside, the airport is in chaos. Babies are crying, people are arguing, and when you glance at a nearby gate monitor, the standby list is twenty deep.

First order of business: ladies’ room.

Once that’s accomplished, you feel ready to find a gate agent who can (
Please, God
) put you on a flight home as soon as possible. Your mom is baking, your personal life is a mess, and you deserve to wallow in sugar cookies and homemade noodles for at least a month.

“MA’AM, I UNDERSTAND,
I do. But this is the last flight out tonight. We’re boarding now, and”—the agent points to the monitor—“as you can see, there’s simply no way I’m going to be able to get you on it.”

You smile when sorority girl stomps her little sequined boot in response. While on the one hand you
completely
understand her frustration, on the other it’s nice to see the playing field has been leveled. While sorority girl was apparently fixing her hair and makeup (because seriously, no one looks that adorable mid-layover), you had had your own futile turn at the airline counter.

Air travel: the ultimate equalizer.

A tall figure approaches the desk, hitching a backpack over his shoulder, and your eyes widen as they travel from a well-toned backside to a familiar, handsome face. You know you need to mentally recant your assumption of equality, but you’ll have to find the thinking part of your brain first.

Because Captain America is standing right in front of you.

“Holy shit,” you whisper.

“A-fucking-men,” mutters the lady on your right.

Oblivious to the complete standstill he has brought the gate to, Chris Evans (!) smiles beatifically at the gate agent behind some stupidly appealing scruff, his charcoal henley shirt straining across a pair of insanely defined biceps. He’s charming the socks off the girl behind the counter, you can tell, as she blushes profusely under his five-hundred-watt grin.

“Damn, I never have my phone out when I need it,” the woman next to you says as she rummages through the kind of colorful quilted bag you only see in airports. She throws you a wry smile. “My daughter will never forgive me if I don’t get a picture.”

Oh,
you think,
same,
mentally substituting your best friend Olivia for her daughter, and then you too are digging through your (slightly more chic) Michael Kors knockoff. A subtle shift in the room’s energy gets your attention and you glance up, figuring someone has asked for an autograph or maybe a selfie with him, and you’ve probably lost your shot (just like you’ve apparently lost your phone). But what you find instead is a solemn and respectful Evans shaking the hand of a young soldier in fatigues. The younger man’s hair has been sheared so close you can see the unevenness of his skull.

“Well, would you look at that,” your neighbor murmurs before dabbing at her eye.

They’ve moved to the open jet bridge now, the soldier and the superstar, and Evans hands his ticket to the agent at the door. He clasps the kid’s shoulder, and you think he says, “No, thank
you.
”

The soldier gives Evans a spontaneous hug, and now
you’re
the one dabbing at your eyes, and a distinct sniffle comes from
somewhere behind you when the soldier tosses a duffel over his shoulder and starts down the tunnel to board.

The waiting passengers burst into applause when Evans turns around, and he blushes a lovely shade of rose, one hand coming up to swipe across his mouth. His self-consciousness is palpable, he’s obviously forgotten he has an audience, and somehow that makes his generosity even more touching, and you want nothing more than to gather him up and give him a hug.

You suffer a profound and paralyzing panic when he looks right at you and beelines for the empty seat on your left.

“Sweet merciful heavens,” your neighbor gasps, echoing your thoughts.

His big, gangly legs are a distraction all their own, but they become doubly so when one brushes against your thigh, and not for the first time (damn it to hell and back) you wonder why you chose comfortable black sweater leggings over something cute and fashionable. Then his biceps (
Holy Jesus
) knocks into your arm when he abruptly sits back.

“Oh, sorry,” he says softly, trying in vain to squeezehimself into a space meant for a normal-size man.

“Thank you,” you reply, and your eyes meet his in horror when you realize that was totally not a sane response. No, that was you, your stupid brain thanking its lucky stars that
Chris fucking Evans
is sitting beside you, thigh-touching you like your thigh is worthy—
your thigh is worthy, and apparently your elbow too!

“I mean, it’s okay,” you add with a grimace.

He snorts, mouth twisting in amusement.