Follow Me Back (complete first draft of the published book)

Chapter 3: The Follow Spree

Chapter 3: The Follow Spree

Eric sat on the toilet with a white hotel towel draped around his neck. He glanced at his phone, eyeing the tweet he sent out 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!

18.7K retweets 20.1K favorites

He'd already followed the first twenty fans who responded, but the retweets and replies were still rolling in by the hundreds. He flicked back over to the trending list. Oh goodie. Back up to the two spot. No doubt #EricThornObsessed would climb back to number one worldwide by noon.

The label should be satisfied, even if he hadn't followed 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 day in hell before he followed her.

***

Tessa clicked the bedroom door closed behind Dr. Regan's retreating form and dove across her bed to grab the cellphone she'd left on her nightstand. The twitter notifications had been going off like fireworks for the past ten minutes. Tessa had them 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 now and saw the cause of the commotion: a new tweet from Eric Thorn.

"No!" she exclaimed aloud as she read it. A follow spree? Now? He never did those anymore. He barely even tweeted at all 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'd seen it all over his face in the underwear campaign he'd just shot for Calvin Klein. 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'd seen 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 now she could see 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'd just done a follow spree, after all.

And she had missed it.

***

"Enough," Eric muttered to himself. "Put the phone down."

He knew he shouldn't read the replies. It would only depress him further - all those thousands of fan girls, tweeting their undying love to him. Not because of his music or his voice, of course. Most of them 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 decided to conduct a little experiment at the time, just to see.

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

4.1K retweets 10.2K favorites

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

42.6K retweets 86.3K favorites

The numbers had only confirmed what he'd already known 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 had remained unopened and untouched for weeks at a time.

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

***

Tessa eyed the timestamp on Eric's tweet with a stab of disappointment. Eleven minutes ago now - a lifetime in the twitter game. No doubt the fans he'd followed had replied within the first 30 seconds.

She couldn't believe her bad luck. Here she was, cooped up 24/7 in this self-imposed prison cell of a bedroom with nothing to do but look at her phone . . . and he'd chosen 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 heavy sigh, she began tapping out a reply:

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

Her finger hovered over the Tweet button. Was there even any point?

***

Eric let out a weary sigh. He needed to get on with his day, but the mere thought of his workout 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 tapped over to the Notifications tab and rolled his eyes in disgust as he read the first one:

Mrs Eric Thorn (@MrsEricThorn982)

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

She loved him. What a crock. He'd wager good money that she barely even bothered to listen to his music. Who had time, with all those pictures of him in his underpants to tweet about? But she loved him. Sure. He could just picture some teenager clutching her teddy bear and crying angry, bitter tears because he hadn't followed her back. If she only knew what he really thought.

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

@MrsEricThorn982 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 once and for all? Why restrict it just to that one, when there were millions of other girls on his follower list just like her?

He began tapping at his phone, 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

He read the unsent tweet back to himself. Not bad for 140 characters. He could go on, of course, but he'd reached the maximum length. . . .

He wondered what would happen if he sent it. What would all the little fan girls do? Would #EricThornObsessed grind to a screeching halt?

He closed his eyes and pictured it, his lips quirking with a crooked grin.

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{Banner Image thanks to onederstruck-}