Child Star: Part 2

by J. J. McAvoy

  “If it isn’t the couple the world is talking about,” he said, lifting a magazine cover. There was a photo of Amelia and me making out in front of the Chicago police department, the words “Unconditionally in Love” captioning the picture. It wasn’t just that; apparently the premiere date of Sinner Like Us had been pushed up.

  “December?” Amelia noticed too, taking the magazine from me. We were already stressing, trying to get it ready for Valentine’s Day next year.

  “Midnight Empire Studios wanted to capitalize on your growing fame. I’m sure your agents will explain more when they are done screening your calls.” He put a hand on my shoulder and one on Amelia’s, saying, “Thank you for proving me right. Today, we will be doing a few interviews for the DVD before filming.”

  When he let go, clapping his hands for the rest of the cast and crew, Amelia sighed, turning back to me.

  “December?” she repeated again.

  “What’s life without a good challenge?” I asked. I honestly didn’t care, as long as I was coming in to work with her every day.

  “Mr. Sloan, Ms. London?” The executive producer, So Jim Zhang, stepped in front of us, extending his hand to shake ours. We all knew who he was, yet we had never really crossed paths before now. “I know it wasn’t intentional, nor was it under the best circumstances, but I have a feeling that this movie is about to blow up even beyond our expectations. My assistant will be the one asking you the questions for the DVD.”

  “I’d rather count my money after the movie is released,” I replied, shaking his hand.

  “We’re ready,” someone called, motioning to the chairs set up right in front of the Russian roulette table.

  Amelia lifted the bottom of the long-sleeved backless black gown she wore in order to sit down. A slit on the side opened all the way to her mid thigh, as if being beside her wasn’t already tempting. When she smirked at me, I knew she was aware of what she was doing, and to push me further, she crossed legs. Since we had started filming, I had noticed a change in her: she was bolder, more comfortable with her own sexuality, and it turned me on to no end.

  Sinners Like Us was the metamorphosis of Amelia London.

  Unbuttoning my jacket, I sat down beside her, lifting my chin for the makeup artist and the hair stylist to finish their final touches. I was tempted to mess up my hair just to screw with them.

  “Let’s start with you, Noah, and, Amelia, you answer afterward,” said the man in front us, looking at me. His voice would most likely be cut out in the final version. He was just there to help prompt us to speak.

  “What did you first think of when you saw the script?” he asked.

  “I thought, ‘I could do this.’ I didn’t even read it. I just remember seeing the title and knowing that if there was anyone in Hollywood fit to play Damon Shaw, it was me…unlike someone,” I coughed, and Amelia smacked my shoulder.

  “Hey!” she said, making a face. “When I saw you right before casting, wasn’t I glowing with confidence? It was you who wasn’t sure if I could do it.”

  “Touché,” I nodded. “I’ve been proven totally and completely wrong, though.”

  “He might be biased, but never mind,” she said, focusing on the camera. “Truthfully, I was intrigued by the movie, but being so well-known as a child actress, I was initially worried about how this would affect my career. The day the cast list went up, I remember reading a petition to have me replaced, and under the worst photo they could possibly find of me were over ten thousand signatures.”

  “Jesus, really?” I frowned, not remember hearing anything about that. “I do my best not to Google or read anything with my name on it.”

  “Such a smart idea,” she laughed.

  “What do you guys actually think of your characters, Damon Shaw and Blair Hawthorne?” the assistant asked.

  “They’re fucking crazy,” Amelia answered.

  “Are they, though?” I questioned.

  Her eyebrow rose as she looked at me. “Scene nine,” she said.

  I thought about that for a second, grinning, and nodded in agreement. “Okay, so they are fucking crazy, but that’s just part of their charm. I mean, to me, Damon Shaw is the epitome of the three Cs: cool, cunning, and confident. He’s always thinking about the big picture in order to get what he wants.”

  “Meanwhile, Blair Hawthorne,” Amelia added, “is just this fiery volcano. She’s always active and is a creature of her passions. She may think she knows it all and oftentimes gets herself in trouble. But the thing about Damon and Blair’s relationship is that they always have each other’s backs no matter what. If Blair were to kill someone, Damon—without question—would hide the body.”

  “On the flip side, if Damon were to go to prison for that murder, Blair would work out a full-scale prison break,” I replied

  “Oh, if that happened, where do you think they’d run to? They’d be hunted all over the world?” the assistant questioned, sitting on the edge of his chair.

  “Kazakhstan,” Amelia and I said at the same time, forcing us to look at each other and break out laughing.

  “Why Kazakhstan?” I asked her.

  “You first,” she shot back.

  I shrugged. “I remember seeing it on a documentary called—”

  “… No Extradition! I watched that same one!” she finished for me.

  “Was Kazakhstan the only country on the list?” we were asked, forcing us to look away from each other for a second.

  “No,” Amelia answered, glancing back at me. “Croatia was on the list, but I figured Damon would grow bored there.”

  “Dubai was also on the list, but I thought Blair would drive Damon crazy complaining about the heat. So…”

  “Kazakhstan,” we both said again.

  “You both are so in tune with your characters. Is that just your skills as actors, or is there something about these characters specifically that captures you?” the man asked.

  “I think they’re just fun characters that the writers did an amazing job presenting us with,” Amelia responded.

  “Honestly,” I agreed, “the ease of the dialogue, the situations presented, even small comments from the director all make it amazingly easy for us as actors to step into Damon and Blair’s shoes and get carried away. They feel real.”

  He signaled for us to close.

  “I think the reason we all love Damon and Blair is because we relate to them. After all, there is a sinner in all of us,” she said, winking at the camera.

  “Brilliant, thank you both.” He gave us a thumbs up, and Austin appeared beside me, a smug look on his face.

  “What?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I was just listening, and I think that’s the most you’ve spoken in one of those interviews ever. You looked comfortable, too. It’s like a brand-new you.”

  “Don’t you have calls to be making?” I tried to ignore his comment, though I did feel different.

  “I made them all. The bad news is that you don’t have another day off until next year, but the good news is that your face is going to be everywhere.”

  “Your eyes are becoming dollar signs again,” I said, snapping my fingers in front of him.

  “Let me enjoy this. Three months ago, I was wondering how I was going to live.”

  “I’m going to get back to work now,” I said with a laugh, glancing over to see Amelia laughing at something one of the crew members said.

  You would never be able to tell that before Sinners Like Us, we were on the brink of disaster both emotionally and career-wise.

  Moving to my position at the head of the craps table, I fixed the cuffs at the ends of my sleeves when Amelia joined me. She reached up to adjust my tie, neither of us speaking to each other. The extras stood around us.

  “Remember, this is right before the climax. You all are completely at ease. Since we are redoing this scene, I’m sure we can capture it in one take,” Director Zane instructed not only us, but the extras as well, then took a seat behin
d the camera. He then raised his hand as if he were a conductor in front of his orchestra.

  “And…action.”

  “For luck,” I said, lifting the dice in my hand to Blair’s lips.

  She rolled her eyes at me but leaned in, her breasts pushing up against my chest. But instead of blowing on them, she kissed my hand.”

  “The moment you need luck, it disappears. So I’ll just bet on you,” she replied.

  “Only with you is that a safe bet.” I never looked away from her and threw the dice down the table without bothering to watch.

  “Twelve craps twelve come away triple!” the stickman exclaimed, the group around us shouting out in amazement at the pair of double sixes.

  “What did I say?” Blair grinned as the stickman pushed the chips to us.

  But before I could get a word in, the staff nearest the doors screamed, “RUN!”

  But it was too late. I felt it, like a sonic wave of fire. The explosion threw me off my feet and backward.

  My chest burned.

  Blood—mine? I wasn’t sure—was on my face, mixed in with the ash.

  I tried to stand, but my body screamed in agony.

  Each time I tried to open my eyes, the world spun, and all I could see were blurs of red, orange, and black.

  My eardrums were ringing—no, scratching—in my ears, and in between the pain was screaming ... screaming from all over.

  “Help!”

  “Someone please!”

  “My leg!”

  “Help!”

  “AHH!!!”

  “Oh God! Oh God!”

  Rolling onto my side, I once again tried to open my eyes, again rubbing my ears. As I did, my body ground onto broke glass, tiles, and casino chips. When I finally could see, it felt as if I were staring into hell. The bodies of the guests were piled on each other in a bloody, ash-covered mess. The fire spread over the top of them, over everything in sight. As I pushed myself off the ground, my heart stopped when I realized no one was beside me.

  “BLAIR!” I screamed, ignoring the pain and rising to my feet to look around the rubble. “BLAIR!”

  My screams blended with the screams of everyone else. Everything was spinning. Wiping my nose with my hand, I noticed the blood.

  “BLAIR!” I called again, turning to search through the rubble. Then I spotted a black heel—Blair’s heel.

  My hands shook as I reached for it.

  “This can’t be real. This can’t be real,” I whispered.

  “Blair?” I started to clear the parts of the broken table with a bare hand, quickly. Throwing rubble to the left and the right of me, I crawled on my hands and knees as I searched, hoped, and prayed.

  There was large gash across her head, blood coating the side of her face.

  “Blair, can you hear me?” I checked for a pulse. It was faint, but it felt like it was slowing down. Taking off my jacket and using it as a towel, I held it to her head. “Blair, can you hear me? I need you to open your eyes, okay? Baby, open your eyes for me, okay? You’re fine. I’m here. You’re fine.”

  I coughed as my lungs filled with ash and glanced around for anyone, anything that could help.

  “Da—Damon?” she groaned, trying to lift her head, lifting her hands to where mine were trying to stop the bleeding.

  “Thank God,” I whispered, kissing her forehead. However, her breathing quickened, her chest rising and falling. “Breathe, Blair, breathe.”

  “Damon—”

  She was in shock, and so was I, I but I needed her to focus. “Blair, I swear if you bleed out here and abandon me, I will never forgive you. And I will curse you at your funeral.”

  She somehow managed to smile, reaching up to hold her head. “Don’t make jokes like that. They aren’t funny,” she said.

  “I know,” I said as I brushed dust from her eyes.

  “Damon.”

  “What?”

  She didn’t answer, her eyes wandering down to her stomach, my eyes following, and there we saw the piece of wood impaling her, the blood soaking through her black dress.

  “If I die—”

  “We are not having this conversation today,” I told her. “Let’s postpone it for another eighty or so years.” I pulled the wood and she bit her lip to stop from screaming when I tried to move her.

  “It hurts!” she yelled.

  “I know. I know. Baby, but we got to get out of here. I’d rather neither of us be cooked alive.”

  “Ugh.” I coughed again, turning my head to the side.

  “You need to get out,” she whispered, brushing the blood from my nose again.

  I shook her hands away. “I will leave when you leave,” I told her.

  “I can’t—”

  “Blair! When I say I’m not leaving you, I am not fucking leaving you, do you understand me? Just keep thinking of tomorrow. We are getting a tomorrow.” Even my voice wavered at that. “The paramedics will be here any second.”

  As if they heard, I turned and saw firefighters, the beeping from their jackets growing louder as they drew closer.

  “What did I tell you?” My body felt so heavy.

  “Damon!”

  The last sight I saw was of her blue eyes wide, panicked and scared, tears falling from one eye over her nose and onto the ground.

  “Damn, you’re beautiful.”

  “And…Cut! Perfect! Amelia, Noah, we’ll be heading back to the hotel to wrap up one more bedroom scene.”

  The moment he said it, I opened my eyes again, coughing as I sat up, as did she.

  “If we are ever in an explosion, ‘damn, you’re beautiful’ is the perfect line,” she joked, but I didn’t even want to think of it.

  In my mind, just like Damon and Blair, we always had a tomorrow.

  Amelia

  “Act—ion!”

  “I didn’t want to get out of bed. All of my muscles burned, and I swear to God, Damon, if I have to spend another day smiling and laughing with the rest of those goddamn elitist bitches, I will lose my fucking mind,” I muttered, burying my face into the red pillow on the amazingly soft king-sized bed.

  “It’s noon, Blair. You can’t stay in bed all day.” I felt his hands softly brush against my bare back.

  “Oh no, you don’t—”

  Ignoring me, he brushed my hair to the side and kissed down the back of my neck. With one hand, he pulled the sheet covering my naked body away.

  “Jesus Christ, Damon, do you have an off button?” I whispered, wiggling underneath his lips. I was still recovering from our last session together. The man could bounce back in ten minutes flat, and I was going to die from too much sex. They were going to have to put “Here lies Blair Hawthorne, Happily Fucked to Death,” on my tombstone.

  He stopped, only for a moment, flipping me onto my back. Gazing up at him, he smirked, leering at my body. I knew that look. His eyes glazed over with lust, and my nipples reacted without him even saying a word.

  “Damon…”

  “I want nothing more than to fuck you until your eyes roll back, but … we have a lunch with a group of elitist bitches to get to. We need their help if we want to get in to see the private Botticelli art collection.”

  I sat up in front of him and grabbed his chin so that he could look me in the eye and not at my breasts.

  “I’m not going,” I said.

  Again, he ignored me.

  “Pick a dress, and be downstairs in an hour,” he demanded, getting off the bed.

  Grabbing the red sheet off our bed, I stood up, wrapping it around myself. He raised his eyebrow, a small smirk on his lips.

  “I don’t know why you bother,” he teased.

  “It’s cold, and I’m not walking around naked for you because you piss me off. Nor am I going to your fucking charity lunch,” I said.

  He stepped forward, and I took one step back. It wasn’t long before the backs of my legs hit the bed frame. Brushing his hand softly down my cheek, he stared into me, not at me. It was like he was see
ing everything, and once again, I felt as though I couldn’t walk.

  “Drop the sheet Blair,” he demanded, and I did.

  “You see, Blair, I own you,” he whispered, thumb pressed to my lips, “which means if I want you to walk around naked, you will, whether it’s cold or not. And if I ask you to come to my fucking charity lunch, you say ‘yes.’”

  Leaning in, I kissed and bit his lip. “You can use your superpowers to undress me, Mr. Shaw, but there is no way you are getting me to flounce around like one of those society sycophants.”

  “Is that a challenge?” he asked.

  Pushing his chest, I stood straighter. “Damn straight.”

  He looked down as if he was in shock that I had pushed him before backing up and walking toward the double doors.

  Click.

  The moment those doors closed, I knew I had sealed my own fate, yet I couldn’t help but get excited. The pain between my legs was gone, and I wanted him badly. Fuck.

  Turning to me, he unbuttoned his shirt slowly.

  Fuck.

  “Get on the bed.”

  “If I did that, Mr. Shaw, where would the challenge be?” I whispered, stretching and brushing my hands through my hair.

  He smirked and then charged me.

  “Oh no!” I laughed, jumping on the bed and rushing to the other side.

  “Really now, Ms. Hawthorne?” he asked from his position on the other side.

  “’Really now, Ms. Hawthorne?’” I mocked with my hand on my hips. I couldn’t help but grin. “Don’t you have a lunch to get to?”

  Instead of speaking, he just jumped on the bed. I tried to run toward the door, but he grabbed ahold of my arm, pulling me back to the bed and pinning me under him.

  “Why must you always fight me?” he asked.

  “Because you like it,” I whispered.

  He didn’t say anything, pinning my hands above my head with one of his and kissing my neck as his other hand traveled down my chest and between my legs.

  I was just waiting for the right time. I wanted to catch him off-guard. I wanted to tease, have him at my mercy, to control his pleasure. I wanted to play him the way he was currently playing my body.