Noah

I managed a chuckle. "Yes, ma'am."

*

Exhaustion kicked in halfway to LA. It offered a blanket of numbness, but the roller coaster of emotions was never far away. I had to do my best to think of anything other than Emma looking freshly fucked by someone else.

I failed most of the time, but that was what booze was for.

I'd left everything behind that reminded me of her. An hour was all I had needed to box up personal belongings from my childhood and the few awards and memorabilia items I'd collected from film sets throughout my career. The rest, I couldn’t care less about.

Closing my eyes, I struggled to get comfortable in the luxurious leather chair. I tried to come up with shit I could distract myself with while I got over Emma. Work would probably suit me best. I'd been somewhat of a casual player before her, but women were the last thing I needed in my life at this point.

I was single.

Kinda difficult to comprehend. Four years wasn't that long in comparison to many, yet the fact remained: I'd thought I was done. Re-fucking-gardless of recent issues in our relationship, I'd considered myself off the market for life.

No, I would simply go back to being married to my job. Perhaps it was time to listen to Tennyson. He was only in his late forties, but he'd accomplished a fuckload, and he'd been a mentor to me in many ways. He liked to tell me I should get out of the shadow of being an AD and direct something on my own.

Directed by Noah Collins.

Maybe.

It could be the perfect time for me to step out of my comfort zone. A new challenge, a more time-consuming one. There'd be more publicity and pressure, but I'd deal.

I stood up and walked over to the liquor cabinet to pour myself a drink. It was five o'clock somewhere, right? Then I figured I could use social media as my next distraction. It was a plan. Moving from one distraction to the next. No stopping.

Sitting down again, I took a swig of my drink and punched in the WiFi password on my iPad. The pilot announced we'd be landing on time as I dicked around on Twitter a bit. There was a hashtag about some plane crash that was trending rapidly, so I muted that one. No need to fucking jinx myself.

Sophie, Daniel, his husband Zane, and Brooklyn weren't online as far as I could see, so I moved on to Facebook where I mostly had my family.

And Emma.

I rolled my eyes and ignored the stab in my chest at her juvenile change in her relationship status.

It's complicated?

Nah, I don't think so, toots.

I had half a mind to change mine to single, but it felt ridiculous. I moved on instead and was thankful when Brooklyn called me.

"Hey, gorgeous. I have no interest in talking about Emma, but anything else goes," I told her.

She didn't laugh, as I'd expected. She was married to Tennyson's brother, and I'd known her since she was a makeup artist to soap opera stars and I was a lowly PA. We'd come far in fifteen years, but I hoped she hadn't lost her sense of humor along the way.

"You're in the air, right?" she asked.

"Yeah." I didn't like the edge in her tone. As if she was hiding something upsetting. "What's up?"

One of the ladies in Peter's cabin crew joined me briefly to say we were about to land. I nodded in response.

Brooklyn cleared her throat. "Tennyson and Daniel are on their way to meet you at the airport—"

"I'm not a fucking child, hon." I got a bit impatient. I needed my friends to distract me and be there, not coddle me. "If something's happened, tell me right now, Brook. Don't assume what's best for me or whatever. Just spit it out."

She was mumbling something to someone else. I couldn’t hear what it was, and I was getting more and more frustrated. The flight attendant came in again and smiled apologetically, saying they were shutting off the WiFi for landing.

"Sweetie," Brooklyn said, "I need you to turn on the news. And please wait for Tennyson and Daniel to get to you. Stay on the plane."

I frowned, confused, and I was out of time for now. It couldn’t be so important that it couldn't wait until I got to the loft. With Emma's recent Facebook change, maybe she'd done something dramatic elsewhere on social media. Much like she'd grown fond of expensive things, she'd also developed a flare for diva antics. They were mild in comparison to what was out there, but for a laid-back Pittsburgh fucker, I disliked the smallest amount of drama.

"I'm about to land," I told Brooklyn. "We can talk later."

I disconnected the call and set it on airplane mode, then buckled my seat belt and spent the following twenty minutes nursing my drink. Vodka was my buddy, too.