she doesn’t follow his fan pages. not really. but sometimes, late at night, she clicks anyway. scrolls past photos of his smile on red carpets, edits of him laughing in interviews, tweets that say “he’s literally my husband” and a million comments calling him single, perfect, available.
she’s never in the frame. never tagged. never named. and some nights, it feels like she doesn’t exist at all.
they’ve been together for a year. quietly. intentionally. she met him at a PR launch party for a skincare line—he spilled a vitamin C serum on her blouse, they laughed, and that was it. he texted her that night. asked if she wanted to “get revenge on overpriced eye cream” together.
he was charming. genuine. not the version of himself the internet knew. with her, he was soft t-shirts and takeout, forehead kisses and sunday naps. but in the world? he was Drew Starkey™. and she was just… invisible.
⸻
she didn’t mind at first. they had their own world—quiet dinners, shared playlists, inside jokes about serums and stans. she told herself the privacy was sacred. until it started to feel like erasure.
until her best friend showed her a fan Q&A clip where he smiled and said, “i’m focusing on work right now. dating’s not a priority.” until she heard the laugh he used with her—used onstage, for everyone else. until she realized she’d never posted him, and he’d never once asked why.
then she found it. not by snooping—by accident. his manager emailed a contract revision while they were watching a movie. she glanced at the screen. saw her name in the subject line. and froze.
no public romantic affiliations until further notice. brand alignment. fan perception. demographic strategy. he agreed to it.
he agreed to hide her. to lie. to smile and shrug when interviewers called him “everyone’s internet boyfriend.”
she walked into the kitchen, hands shaking, and said, “how long have you known?”
he didn’t pretend. didn’t deny. just looked at her with the kind of regret that says everything and fixes nothing.
“i thought it’d protect us,” he said.
she nodded. because it did protect something. just not her.
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she didn’t yell. didn’t cry. she just walked out the door, into the night air, and felt herself exhale for the first time in months.
because love isn’t supposed to feel like a marketing strategy. and she deserved more than being a secret in someone else’s spotlight.
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