When Fangirls Cry by Marian Tee

it.” Staffan glared at her.
                Edana giggled. “It rhymes with Daffy Duck, though.” Her giggles turned into laughter. “Staffan’s baby will be named after Daffy!” Her parents and Cairo joined in.
                Saffi glanced at Staffan with an innocent look. “You don’t like it?”
                “He-eck no,” Staffan growled.
                “Then how about… Stapphire ?”
                His younger siblings were doubled over with laughter. “Ah, yes,” Conrad murmured, straight-faced. “Your first name is Sapphire, isn’t it? Stapphire has a ring to it.”
                Seeing that everyone was ganging up on him, he smiled at Saffi and said in a velvety voice, “I have a suggestion, too, koukla mou . How about we call our baby H because---”
                “---ah, on second thought, my suggestions sucked,” Saffi said quickly, red-faced at Staffan’s threat to share anything about her other persona.
                It was Staffan’s turn to look all innocent. “But baby, I think it’s great. We can combine Stapphire with H because---”
                “Because?” Elvira asked eagerly.
                “Because H…is…umm…my favorite letter since most of my favorite fish start with the letter ‘H’,” Saffi blurted out.
                Everyone was staring at her now.
                “Fish?” Edana finally repeated blankly.
                Ignoring the way Staffan’s shoulders were rocking with silent laughter, she said weakly, “Yes, fish. I study fish in my university so…umm…I have a lot of favorite fish.” Before anyone else could say anything, she looked at the turkey before her. “Umm, I’m hungry. How about we eat dinner now?”
     
    ****
               
                Staffan was still grinning as he led the way to his old bedroom. Throughout the entire Thanksgiving dinner, which Elvira had insisted on celebrating in advance while they were all together, Staffan had constantly tried bringing up stories about H, which Saffi had desperately counteracted with stories about her fish. At the end of the day, she had a feeling that the Aehrenthal family was thinking they had welcomed an eccentric fish-obsessed member into their circle.
                “It’s not funny,” she grumbled to him as he opened the door. Walking past Staffan, she only managed three steps before freezing and then completely melting into a puddle of fangirl goo.
                This was Staffan’s bedroom when he was young, and it seemed that Elvira hadn’t changed a bit of it. She half-ran to the shelves, running her hands on the spines of Staffan’s books, which were a mixture of music and business. His desk was extremely neat, with framed photos of his family lined up. His walls had framed limited-edition posters of his favorite musicians, a number of them legends in the Swedish music scene.
                Staffan’s chest clenched as he watched Saffi run around the room like a kid that had been let loose in a toy shop. She looked so innocent, so fucking innocent that he just wanted to goddamn bury his head in the sand and pretend that the world outside never existed. It would be so fucking easy, so fucking better to pretend that Saffi was the same girl he had fallen in love with.
                She was smiling and sighing at the same time, letting her fingers drift over every surface. And then she was throwing the doors of his closet wide open---
                “Wait, dammit---” But it was too late.
                “Oh. My. God.” She slowly took the costumed outfit out. “So it’s true,” Saffi breathed.
                “No, it’s fucking not.”
                “I thought it was just some kind of hoax, I mean, you know, like you’ve been Photoshopped – but