Rushed (Hate at First Flight #1) ✔️

1. Sir Jerks-A-Lot

FIRST TIME READER OR...?

[ edited 2nd Dec 2015 ]

I'M GOING TO HELL.

That is, if hell was one of the few places on the face of the planet where plastic surgery was a norm and where one was shunned for being less than perfect.

Los Angeles.

Two words; ten letters that when put together made one arch their eyebrow with awe and expectations. The entertainment capital of the world.

Fast fact: four percent of people that move to Hollywood hoping to make it big, actually make it. The rest just... yeah, who knows what happens to them.

L.A. The place I'd sworn never to step a foot in thanks to my failure of a father, who dumped my mom when he found out that she was pregnant. Of course, if what he did was any indication, I was glad he'd ridded himself from our lives. But there was still the issue that we couldn't quite leave him behind us.

He was everywhere I went, his face plastered on the cover of the latest issue of Entertainment Express or Daily Celeb.

Flynn Mathers.

The name left behind a sour tinge in my mouth every time I said it. Entertainment Express had dubbed him 'a ruggedly handsome man in his early forties, with green eyes that made women swoon with delight.'

'He still outshines men half his age,' claimed Daily Celeb. 'A man that no woman was lucky enough to get, whose genes had a high probability of not being passed on.'

That wasn't true though, because here I was, owing half of my genes to him.

I stared at myself on the spotless mirror in front of me.

An average proportioned girl of seventeen years stared back at me. Red tresses flowed past her shoulder, framing a pale, round face. Her lips were dry and chapped after having been bitten relentlessly on the way to the airport. And the eyes. Those eyes that as much as I hate my father, I admired and concluded to be one of my best features, not that there was many to begin with. Eyes so green they reminded me of the first gleam of green during spring when everything was in full bloom.

"Don't think about him, Alex. Don't," I muttered to myself as the thoughts of my father brought on their normal reaction, leaving me full of raw emotions. "So what if he lives in L.A? There are millions of people living there. What are the chances of you running into him, right?"

I forced a smile, my face looking better than it did seconds before, even with black rings under my eyes from lack of sleep. "Besides," I continued, "you're not going there because of him. You're going there for James." My smile wasn't forced anymore as I thought of my boyfriend of six months, who'd gone to L.A for the summer working as a Production Assistant in a blockbuster movie being filmed.

"There you go. Everything's going to be fine. You're going to see James." After rinsing my hands in the cold water, I headed back into the crowded terminals.

Another thirty minutes until my flight, I judged as I studied the screen displaying the flights schedule.

My phone vibrated in my pockets. Once I pulled it out, I checked the screen, not at all surprised to see that mom was worried about me already. I had expected it after all. My mom was one of those typical worriers. One time during eighth grade when I had gone camping, she had made me pack three cans of bug spray, just in case the first two had run out and then made me put on nearly a half of the bottle of sunscreen even before I walked out the door. Then she had made me pack flares. Despite it being sometimes annoying, that was one of the reasons I loved her.