293Oh yes. The day has come.

The day where Emily takes being a fan to another level. And becomes a fanatic.

But d*mn, was it worth it!

Let me paint the pic­ture. As I’m busy at work ear­lier in the morn­ing, prepar­ing for a day chalk-​​ful of meet­ings and more meet­ings, I receive a phone call from Hubby.

“I know where you need to be later tonite,” Hubby tells me. And as I ques­tion him why, he tells me, “You need to be at the AMC River East tonite.”

“Because … ??”

“Because it’s the pre­mière of ‘Pub­lic Ene­mies’ and Johnny Depp and Chris­t­ian Bale are sup­posed to be there.”

“Really?!,” I just about screamed, as my cubi­cle neigh­bor looked up from shuf­fling songs on his iPod.

294“Really,” Hubby confirms.

And so that’s all I needed to hear. Hubby, the awe­some hus­band that he is, met me after work and accom­pa­nied me to the down­town movie the­atre off of Illi­nois Street in Chicago. And there, on the bar­ri­caded street, we waited along with the thou­sands of other fans.

Patience finally paid off as we started to see unmarked black SUV’s pull into the street. And a few moments later, we began to hear screams from the crowd. First Chris­t­ian Bale came out to the crowd to sign some auto­graphs. Then, after more scream­ing and a walk down the red car­pet to the media tent … my man, Johnny Depp hit the street. And walked down to greet his fans.

Lucky me, hap­pened to be towards the very end of the street where Johnny decided to begin his trip. And also lucky for me, I man­aged to be up against the barricade.

Oh yes, girls. I got face-​​to-​​face, up close and per­sonal to the one celebrity my awe­some hus­band once gave me per­mis­sion to leave him for.

295As Johnny was about three fans away from me, I tried to help this tween-​​age girl move up to see Johnny and get his auto­graph. But then the crowd around us pushed us up against the bar­ri­cade. Johnny hap­pened to notice that and paused in front of us long enough to make sure she was okay before sign­ing her book. Then as he looked at me through those blue-​​tinted sun­glasses, he reached out and squeezed my arm.

Seri­ously, peo­ple. If Johnny asked me to run off with him to a far­away island at that very moment, I wouldn’t have given a sec­ond thought. (Sorry, Hubby. But you did give me permission … )

But of course, we all know Johnny wouldn’t have done that. And in real­ity, I could never leave the incred­i­ble man that is my hus­band. Because even though he doesn’t own a Caribbean island and make mil­lions of dol­lars like Johnny does … I am absolutely in love with my Hubby; the one man who allows me to go all Stalk­er­azzi and still loves me for who I am.

And now, for your enjoy­ment (and mine) …