Behind the Scenes

Chapter Nineteen

To fly from New York to Toronto normally takes about an hour and a half--which is about ten hours too short for me to process my newfound celebrity before touch-down. Actually, if the pilot could run a couple loops around the earth, that'd be swell. The only thing better would be a crash-landing over Lake Ontario, everyone survives but one. Put me out of my misery. 

          "Which one?" I'd asked Millie breathlessly before hanging up to board the flight. She audibly spluttered in response. 

          "Just how often have you been kissing him in public?" she asked. I bit my lip and closed my eyes. 

          Deep breaths. Count backward from five. 

          "What were we wearing?"

          "You were in my jumpsuit."

          "The premier."

          "Bingo." A pause. "But it wasn't the red carpet. This looked like it was later. In a lobby somewhere. Some of them said--"

          I didn't like that she cut herself off.

          "Millie..." I said in a warning tone. "Don't do that. Don't leave me guessing."

          "Some people said you'd gone back to a hotel together."

          My hand shook as I yanked the charger out of the wall.

          "In other words, speculating about my sex life. Great."

          "And his."

          "That's not new," I ground out through gritted teeth. I pinched the bridge of my nose between my eyes and willed myself not to cry. 

          "I have to go," I said. 

          "I'll meet you at the airport," Millie said, which was news to me. I'd originally planned to take a taxi by myself back to the apartment. Clearly, she thought I needed a wingman. "Livi? I love you. It'll be okay."

          "Yeah."

          "It will."

          "Sure."

          That may be true up here, suspended in a no-man's-land of time and space some 36,000 feet above the ground. But I know that as soon as I land and enter back into the real world, it will most definitely not be okay.

---

Millie's hard to miss, dressed like a cross between an extra from a Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen movie and a Barbie from the early 2000s. Her fuchsia crop-top gives me borderline anxiety, trying to get from Point A to B without drawing attention as I am: the blood rushes to my face and I'm branded with my own shame. Suddenly I'm six years old, standing at the front of the classroom in a new school, being asked to ingratiate myself into the hive. I thought the years of therapy had subdued my social phobias to stage fright or being the put on the spot.

          I was wrong. 

          In the books I've read, characters often describe moments like this as feeling like everything is moving in slow motion, but my experience is the opposite. I pass through the doors, spot Millie, and freeze. She closes the distance in what feels like a split second and wraps me in a hug. Then I blink, and we're in a taxi. I blink again and we're home. 

          Our apartment is in the West Queen West neighbourhood, on the second floor of an old red brick building a stone's throw from the famous Gladstone Hotel. I don't really register my surroundings, though, until I'm sitting on our old blue couch in the dark.