Steph’s gaze flew to me. “You. I had a feeling about you. Do you have any idea the kind of damage you’ve done to Nolan’s career? He’ll be lucky if this movie even makes it on air and—”
“Enough,” Teddy said firmly. “I cast Bee in this film. I knew all about her... because she works for me at Uncle Ray-Ray’s. Which ismyporn studio.”
She turned back to Teddy, her jaw slack. “You... you produce porn? What kind of farce is this?”
He shrugged. “It’s not so different from producing one of these Christmas movies, you know. And we have core values and everything.”
“We’re all fucked,” she declared, and then looked to me. “We’ll be lucky if the Hope Channel doesn’t level this whole fucking town once they find out their brand is connected with a porn star—a porn star, for fuck’s sake! I’m not even supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be at David Duchovny’s Christmas party!”
“Isn’t he Jewish?” Teddy had the nerve to ask.
“Half,” Steph said as she opened her purse and tore the lining aside to pull out a cigarette and a matchbook. “My emergency cigarette. Don’t tell my daughter. And some Jewish people like Christmas, you dumb shit.”
As she began to smoke, and as Teddy scrubbed his hands over his face, everything inside of me began to fall apart.
Steph was right. We were fucked. And it was all because of me.
I needed to call Nolan.
“He should have landed an hour and a half ago,” I said as I hung upside down off my bed, hoping my tits would just suffocate me already.
After we quickly ate, my moms, Sunny, and I walked back to the hotel. I said good night to my exhausted moms and pulled Sunny into my room, where I told her the gig was up. Thankfully, by the time we left the bar, none of the cast and crew seemed to know what was going on, which either meant that the story hadn’t gained a ton of traction just yet because of the holiday or they were all too drunk to care about what was happening on the internet.
I sat up, the blood rushing to my head. Whatever shot Nolan and I had at a future after all this was now done for. I was right to doubt it could ever work, but I still felt ridiculous for holding on to the hope that our friends with bennies relationship could ever turn into anything more.
I checked my phone once more. I’d called him nineteen times. No answer.
As I putzed around some more on my phone, I gasped as Irealized I had his flight number in our text thread. My thumb scrolled and scrolled until I found it. Switching over to a browser, I typed the info into a flight tracker.
FLIGHT #335: ARRIVED AT KANSAS CITY INTL 34 MINUTES AGO
“He landed,” I said, my voice wrought with confusion and hurt.
“Call him, call him!” Sunny urged.
“Half an hour ago,” I said, trying to hold back a sob. God, I hated for anyone to see me like this, but if it was going to be anyone, I was glad for it to be Sunny. “He landed half an hour ago, and he definitely knows what is going on and is choosing not to return my calls.”
“Listen,” Sunny said gently. “It might be time to think about Bee priorities. You know the moment he got off that plane, he had like thirty-seven messages from Steph. There’s no telling what kind of defense she has in mind. It might be every bisexual for themselves right now, babe.”
I shook my head frantically. “Nolan wouldn’t... he wouldn’t do that.”
She threw a supportive arm over my shoulders. “Maybe. But what I do know is that nothing is getting fixed tonight and you need to chill out and get some sleep.” She pulled a large bottle of gummy vitamins from her purse. “Try these.”
I held the purple bottle in my hand. “Your women’s multivitamin?”
She snorted and took it back from me, and then popped the lid open. “They’re edibles, Bee.”
I stared at her blankly.
“Pot gummies?”
“Ohhhh!” I might have been a total sexual deviant, but my interactions with substances started and stopped with beer and fruity drinks.
“I’m going to take a shower in my room, but I’ll come back and stay the night here with you,” she promised.
The thought of her being there for me to cuddle or at the very least stare at while I couldn’t fall asleep helped me breathe just a little easier. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“And miss your anxiety spiral? Never.”
