I shifted my weight in line, still listening to Tobey drone on about that Brazilian model who ghosted him on the fourth date ("She said she wasn't ready for commitment but started dating a Formula 1 driver the next week," he muttered bitterly), while Kevin and Lukas debated the merits of dating actresses versus models. Typical Tuesday. Typical L.A.
Then I felt it.
Not someone looking at me—But someone seeing me.
And more than that—something surreal, something violating and intimate—I felt as if I were being read.
Not just glanced at.Not just recognized.Narrated.
And not in the usual press way—"DiCaprio, dressed in Saint Laurent, seen dining with friends."No. This was... more literary.It was like being caught in the pages of a novel I hadn't agreed to be in.
The narration arrived uninvited, and in paragraphs, no less.
There were no flowers blossoming, yet behind him it seemed there were—maybe white camellias tinted with pink, maybe ivory roses, all large and in full bloom. The golden glow of the dwindling sunlight was showered upon him, except it was deep night instead of twilight. Ordinarily, the night should have been dark, but I saw him quite distinctly—perhaps lit by the white light of paparazzi cameras, except that light lingered instead of arriving in sharp gasps.
He was wearing a jacket. One hand was running through his gold-brown hair as he chatted with his friends.
That last part made me freeze.
Because I had just run my hand through my hair.
I turned in horror—Not because I feared her—But because I knew, in the deepest recesses of my soul, that something had just tilted in the universe.
And there she was.
Ravishing. Ethereal. Unnervingly composed.Her black eyes glinted like obsidian polished under moonlight.Her cheeks looked like they'd been pinched by the breath of an orchard.Her skin—translucent, like porcelain dipped in snow.And her hair—gold-brown, drifting around her like the last leaves of October that forgot to fall.
She looked like someone I should know.Someone famous, maybe.Someone who lived in pages and posters.
She looked vaguely like... Emma Watson?I squinted."Who the hell is Emma Watson?" I murmured under my breath.And the second I asked, the narrative voice returned—like a telepathic stage whisper from another universe:
Then he turned, and I saw his eyes—blue-green, throbbing with desire, pushing and pulling, like a restless, varying tide pressing against two panes of glass.
And that was when I knew we were fated to fall in love with each other.
My jaw tightened.I glanced around, wondering if anyone else could hear the prose writing itself in the space between us.
Lukas was mid-joke.Kevin was typing something on his flip phone.Tobey was—Jesus Christ, Tobey was flirting with a barista again.
None of them noticed.
But I noticed.
I noticed how she didn't look away.I noticed how the world around her dimmed, dulled, and bent.
"Hi, Leo," said a voice beside me—One of those glittery, practiced tones, like a Hollywood cocktail party greeting dipped in pink gloss and bravado.
I turned reflexively, half expecting it to be someone from the Tiger Beat archives.Instead, it was a girl I vaguely recognized—maybe from a wrap party, or a Cannes yacht, or someone's third engagement celebration that I'd wandered into once by accident.
She leaned forward, smiling a little too widely, and gestured to her.
"This is Crittanine."
The name hit me like a lyric in a Radiohead song—pretty, strange, maybe French, maybe made-up.It fell apart in my head the moment I heard it, like lace melting in rain.
"Hi, I'm Leo," I said, holding out my hand.
She took it.
Her fingers were cool, soft like parchment left in pressed flower books.Her grip was neither limp nor assertive—just right, like everything else about her so far.
Crittanine.
I marveled. How does anyone say that?It sounded like crystalline with a ripple. Like nicotine made beautiful. Like a name spoken only in poetry and private dreams.I repeated it silently in my head, and still couldn't decide where the emphasis went.
Cri-TA-nine?CRIT-ta-nine?Critta-NEEN?
And all the while, she was looking at me.
No shriek. No autograph request.Just a quiet, dangerous stillness.
That night in the nightclub—Wasn't a nightclub.
It was a bar, technically. But it didn't feel like a bar.The bass wasn't thumping. No one was grinding on a dancefloor slick with vodka spills and ambition.There was no DJ, no flashing lights. Just soft amber glows from pendant lamps, velvet drapes, and couples at tables murmuring like they were in a novel set in post-war Paris.
It felt staged—deliberately plotted. Like some screenwriter had traded chaos for conversation.Even the drinks arrived without asking.
And she—Crittanine—was sitting opposite me.
I didn't remember how that happened. One minute I was ordering something simple—bourbon, neat—The next, I was staring across a lacquered table at a girl who looked like a ghost someone had whispered into existence.
She was smiling politely. I was not.
To my credit, I was regarding her with what I can only describe as... polished disdain.Not because she wasn't beautiful.But because she and her friends were talking about something ridiculous.
"...and then in Goblet of Fire, Snape literally—"
"No, but the Marauders are the real reason—"
"I can't believe you haven't read the fanfic where Sirius and Remus—"
They were talking about something called Harry Potter.I blinked.
Harry.Potter.
Was that a musician? A designer? A tennis player?
I looked at Tobey across the room—he was faking interest in a girl quoting T.S. Eliot—and mouthed what is Harry Potter?
He shrugged helplessly.
I turned back to her.
She was now explaining something about a boy with a lightning scar and a school named after a pig and a wart.I stared into my drink.
What the hell kind of generation was this?
But then—she looked at me again.Like really looked.And I saw her lips curve, just slightly.
"You've never read them?" she asked, tilting her head, black eyes glittering.
I wanted to say I starred in Titanic.I wanted to say I've had dinner with Nelson Mandela and been on every yacht from Cannes to Capri.I wanted to say What the hell does a wand have to do with me?
But instead, I said:
"No. What house am I in?"And when her smile widened, I suddenly, horrifyingly, wanted to know the answer.
I have been around beauty.Too much of it. Too often.
Runways. Premieres. Yachts off Capri where every woman looked like she'd stepped off the pages of Vogue Italia.I've had dinners with goddesses who couldn't spell goddess and flirted with girls whose eyes sparkled like Swarovski and bank accounts.
And yet—This girl—this delicate Crittaninewas undoing me.
She was talking—about wizards, about potions, about some blond boy named Malfoy and his complicated, twisted loyalty to a professor named Snape.Words that meant nothing to me,but she said them like scripture—as if they mattered, deeply.
And while she spoke, I… drifted.
Her lips were a deep red, the kind that left stains on wineglasses and memories.They moved with elegance, precision—not a wasted syllable.I watched them shape the word Occlumency, and suddenly I never wanted her to stop speaking.
The lift of her hand—slim fingers brushing her collarbone, gesturing lightly through the air as if painting scenes.The way her hair caught the light when she tossed her head back in exasperation—like autumn leaves flaring under a spotlight.
Her voice was—
God.
Her voice was like a stream in an untouched forest, trickling gently over pebbles worn soft by time.Not loud. Not shy.Just… natural.
And before I knew it—before I even wanted to admit it—I was leaning forward slightly, caught in her current,a willing shipwreck.
She was still speaking.I had stopped listening to the what.I was utterly consumed by the how.
And that was when it hit me:I, Leonardo DiCaprio, global heartthrob and Academy Award winner, was utterly enthralled by a girl explaining the love language of Slytherins.
I took a sip of my drink to steady myself.
And realized I hadn't tasted it at all.
Somehow—somehow in that dreamlike haze of candlelight and wizard lore, a shift happened.Like the camera panned and didn't tell the actor the scene had changed.
One minute, it was just me and Crittanine.Her words fluttering through the air like butterflies inked in black calligraphy.The next—
A group of Chinese students had appeared at the table.
Not drifted. Not approached.Appeared.
I blinked, mid-sip.
Where the hell had they come from?
They were young, polished, well-dressed—one in a sweater vest that could've been Prada, another with rectangular glasses that screamed future fintech tycoon. They smiled politely, comfortably, like they'd been there all along.
And then one of them turned to Crittanine and said,
"Your boyfriend's very handsome."
Crittanine blushed slightly—blushed—and didn't correct them.
I looked at her, startled, and she—She just gave me this small, conspiratorial smirk.
A smirk that said play along… or worse: isn't it already true?
And I—I didn't object.
Because in that moment, sitting beside her, her knee brushing mine,her perfume—subtle, like crushed magnolia and rain—floating through the air,I wasn't Leo.
I wasn't a movie star.I wasn't 23 and famous and completely out of my element discussing spells.
I was hers. Or, at least, pretending to be.But honestly?
I wasn't going to resist the promotion.
If I had to be someone's boyfriend that night—Let it be the girl with starlight in her voice and mystery in her name.
So there we were—in the strangest, softest pocket of time.
Surrounded by elegant strangers speaking Mandarin in between laughter and sips of wine,and somehow, Crittanine and I had become the main characters of a scene I hadn't auditioned for.
The table had filled with little dishes—nuts I couldn't name, glassy purple grapes, thin rice crackers that snapped like porcelain.Then came the wine.
Poured into delicate goblets with stems as fine as reeds.One for her. One for me.
I had barely lifted mine when one of the students—the one in the Prada vest—nudged his glass toward ours and said something in Mandarin that made the table erupt in soft, teasing laughter.
"They want us to drink from each other's glass," Crittanine explained, tilting her head toward mine."It's symbolic. In ancient China, newlyweds would drink from each other's goblet at the wedding banquet."
She said this lightly, like it wasn't a big deal.Like she wasn't inviting me into a centuries-old love ritual over Pinot Noir and mooncakes.
I had heard this before. Sanlu and Aglaya. The time travelers.They had joked about it once—how awkward it was to be "married by wine" in front of half a royal court in a timeline neither of them remembered stepping into.
And now here I was.
My fingers touched the base of her glass.Her fingers brushed mine.
"You don't have to," she said, smile playing on her lips like a secret.
"No, I want to," I murmured, more to her than to the table. And I lifted her goblet slowly, deliberately—watching her through it.
The wine caught the light—amber-gold, like the late sun refracted through cathedral glass.And there she was, refracted too, shimmering.Crittanine.Through crystal and alcohol and the strange shimmer of something ancient and unspoken between us.
Her lips parted—surprised, maybe—but she didn't stop me.
I tilted the glass.
And I drained it.
Not like a toast. Not like a frat party.But with the slow reverence of someone accepting a vow in liquid form.
There was a hush at the table—one of those silences that are too alive to be empty.
Her gaze met mine over the rim of the glass,and I felt it—like a chord pulled taut between us.
For a second,it wasn't a nightclub,wasn't a bar,wasn't even 1997.
It was a temple.We were newlyweds.And her wine was my oath.
My pulse pounded in my ears.Someone laughed softly.She blinked—just once—and her smile trembled, just slightly, like she wasn't sure if this was still a joke.
I set the empty glass down.Then I smiled back at her.
"Your turn," I said, my voice a little hoarse.
And maybe—maybe I didn't know what I was doing.
But I knew exactly what I was feeling.
She laughed—soft, breathy, like the chime of water over glass—and with a glint in her dark eyes, she lifted my goblet and drank it down.
Not coy.Not hesitant.She drained it, her lips pressing to the same place mine had touched,and as the last drop passed her throat, something passed between us.Not spoken. Not visible. But tangible.
And then it hit me.