Stuck Landing

by Lauren Gallagher

  “You’ve been really quiet the last couple of weeks. You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Just a lot on my mind. Studio’s putting pressure on us about . . . um . . .” Jesus. I couldn’t even fire off one of my ready-made excuses, which usually wasn’t a problem because the studio was nearly always putting pressure on me about something or other.

  Silence fell again. After a few miles, as that coma was starting to creep in and claim me for the ride, Jeremy gently spoke again. “You mind if I ask something personal?”

  “Is it about me and Natalya?”

  He hesitated, then nodded.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Another long moment of hesitation. Then, “What happened?”

  “What happened is that Natalya is bisexual.”

  “And . . .?”

  “And, what?”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “I’m not getting involved with a bisexual woman.”

  Jeremy glanced at me. “Why not?”

  “Because every lesbian I’ve known who’s gotten involved with a bi woman has eventually been burned?”

  “Burned, how?”

  “Either the woman left her for a man, or wanted an open relationship which ultimately ended with the straight couple deciding to be monogamous.” I shook my head. “I’ve seen a lot of women get involved with bi women, and it never, ever ends well. It hasn’t ended well for me, either.”

  “To be fair, most relationships don’t end well. Think of how many people most people date, and how many of those relationships end badly. The odds aren’t exactly in anyone’s favor.”

  “So, what?” I watched him from the passenger seat. “I should compromise on something that really bothers me just because most relationships are doomed to fail?”

  He shot me a quick look, then shook his head. “That’s not what I said. I do think you’re making a lot of assumptions about bi women.”

  “Assumptions that have been backed up time and again by reality.” I shrugged as much as I could with all this exhaustion seeping into my bones. Between my job and losing sleep over Natalya, I had nothing left. “Maybe it’s fair, maybe it’s not, but I don’t date bi women anymore.”

  His lips pulled tight, but he just stared straight ahead.

  “If something’s on your mind,” I said, “just say it.”

  He tapped his thumbs on the wheel. “Okay. Look, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last few months, it’s that if you make a rule, someone’s going to come along and break it.”

  “Except somehow I don’t think you would’ve hooked up with Scott if he’d been a woman, right?”

  “That’s not the same.” He shook his head. “I’m not attracted to women any more than you’re attracted to men. You’re attracted to Natalya, though, just like I’m attracted to Scott. The part that’s hanging you up is who else she’s attracted to.”

  “Yeah. She’s attracted to men. And for a woman, being with a man is a hell of a lot easier than being with another woman. I’d just as soon not set myself up for the inevitable.”

  “Is it inevitable, though?”

  “It . . .” How the hell was I supposed to explain it?

  He glanced at me, and his lips tightened. Voice gentle, he said, “Look, I don’t know. Just don’t let something good pass you by because you’re still hung up on something bad. Trust me on that one.”

  He did have a point—he and Scott had both nearly torpedoed their own relationship because they’d still been carrying years-old baggage—but this was different. Wasn’t it?

  Jeremy shifted a bit, resting one hand on top of the wheel and the other in his lap. “By the way, I’ll be in LA next weekend.”

  I barely resisted the urge to release a relieved breath at the subject change. “Visiting the kids?”

  He nodded.

  “How is that going, anyway?”

  “It’s . . .” Jeremy exhaled. “It’s a process. Haley’s speaking to me now, but she’s still pretty cold.”

  “Still, sounds like an improvement.”

  “It is. The therapist has helped all of us a lot.”

  “You seem a lot more optimistic than you were when you started.”

  At that, he smiled. “Yeah. It’ll take some time, but we’ll get there.”

  I managed a tired smile too, though it took work. “Well, good luck.”

  “Thanks.” He glanced at me, and for a moment, I thought he might bring up our earlier subject again, but he didn’t. In fact, he stared out the windshield even more intently now, as if he were too caught up in thoughts of his upcoming therapy session with his estranged kids to worry about my hang-ups with bisexual women.

  I, on the other hand, obsessed even more than I had over the last couple of weeks. Was he right? Had I fucked up with Natalya rather than dodging a bullet?

  But I didn’t say anything. He didn’t say anything.

  And all the way home, I wished he would.

  My house was empty, and despite my bone-deep exhaustion, I couldn’t sleep.

  Jeremy had left an hour ago. Though Leigh had been gone for a while now, her absence was conspicuous tonight. All the boxes had been cleared out of the garage, the kitchen, the hallway.

  This place was well and truly empty. Devoid of any human presence besides mine. I’d spent countless nights alone over the last few years—when Leigh needed to stay somewhere else, when I’d kicked her out, when we’d finally called it quits—but it felt different tonight.

  I’d always thought it was an eye-roll-worthy cliché when someone described silence as deafening, but sitting there in my living room, I was starting to get it. The silence itself made my skin crawl, but it also made the room—the whole damned house—echo with the sounds that had been here before. Leigh screaming at me. Me screaming at her. Natalya moaning on my couch. The door slamming behind Leigh, behind Natalya, behind me.

  I tried turning on some music, but that didn’t help. I tried to watch a movie but didn’t have the brain for it.

  And the part that made me itch the most—knowing this silence wasn’t ending anytime soon. No key was going to click in the front door. No one was going to knock. It was just me, with no reason to believe that would change in the foreseeable future.

  I didn’t have time for relationships. I didn’t have many prospects either. As Levi had so helpfully pointed out, there weren’t a lot of options for me on the set. Going out and meeting women required spare time, not to mention being able to shake off my bodyguard for a few hours. I wondered if I could get my doctor to write me a prescription for some time alone to find someone who could give me the orgasms I needed to keep from committing homicide at work.

  Maybe I needed to get a pet or two. Levi’s cats seemed okay with him coming and going, though I understood Zelda made her displeasure known if he was gone for more than a few days. At this point, I would have welcomed a few cat-related disasters if it meant some company besides bare walls and a security system.

  Except I worked obscenely long hours. I was away more than I was home. That wouldn’t be fair to even the most independent critter. A couple of opinionated cats like Levi’s would never stand for it.

  Downsizing, though. That was an idea. I’d bought this house thinking Leigh and I were going to stay together, knowing we both needed a hell of a lot of space. Even when we weren’t fighting, we both liked some elbow room. Now that she was gone, did I really need this many square feet? There was so much breathing room now, it was suffocating.

  It was time to talk to a realtor. Get rid of this house. Get rid of some of this stuff.

  Except my work stress could go from bearable to oh my God in a matter of hours and stay that way for weeks. Months, even. Did I really want that plus the stress of moving?

  There was always the option of tossing a match in the place.

  That thought made me laugh, which sounded borderline hysterical in this empty room. Of course I’d never actually commit arson on my property or anyone
else’s—not even Finn’s—but the thought of throwing a match over my shoulder and walking away in slow motion was satisfying in its own morbid little way.

  Being trapped here tonight didn’t help. As soon as Jeremy was gone for the night, I was on lockdown in my own house, kept safe by studio-approved security systems, corralled by the insurance company’s need to protect their assets.

  Going to sleep wasn’t happening. Though I was wiped out, I was restless, and I needed a distraction. I needed to do something other than lie in my bed and stare up at the ceiling and think about what Jeremy and I had discussed.

  There were escapes. I could always see if Levi and Carter were busy. Then again, Alfonse was probably gone for the night too, so they’d be stuck at home like I was.

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket. There had to be someone I could chat with for the evening, so I scrolled through my contacts.

  Nope. In New York—too late to call.

  Nope. Somewhere else on the East Coast.

  Not even sure where she’s living now. Better not risk it.

  Who the hell is that?

  Nope.

  Nope.

  Nope.

  And then my heart stopped.

  Natalya Izmaylova.

  I couldn’t delete her because she was a professional contact. And I couldn’t scroll past her because . . . because . . .

  I couldn’t get her out of my phone, but why the hell couldn’t I get her out of my head?

  Because she was amazing. Obviously. She’d caught my eye from day one, and that wasn’t changing. Watching her in the role of stunt coordinator was almost as hot as watching her lift at the gym. She ran that department like a conductor in front of an orchestra—everyone’s roles were on paper, but she kept them in sync with each other, kept the whole system running so smoothly, the rest of the production seemed to be in chaos all around them.

  She was totally the wrong woman for me. She was . . .

  She was hot. Smart. Took crap from no one. Knew how to please a woman. Made the sexiest sounds imaginable when a woman pleased her.

  Blowing out a breath, I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall. Okay, so maybe I’d fucked up by calling things off with Natalya. I still wasn’t comfortable dating a bi woman—I wasn’t all that comfortable dating anyone right now—but Natalya seemed like exactly the type of friend I needed right now. Sane and fun and just the right kind of crazy.

  I needed her. Not as a lover, but as a friend. If she was willing to forgive me, maybe we could give that a try. I couldn’t offer anything more than friendship. It would be way too complicated. And being friends would make things easier at work.

  So tomorrow, I’d find her on the set. And I’d ask her to come into my office so we could talk. Like . . . actually talk this time.

  I just hoped like hell she’d be willing to hear me out.

  And in the meantime, I hoped I didn’t lose my mind in this quiet, empty house.

  I couldn’t sit still. Another meeting had commandeered the soundstage office where we usually did script readings, so mine was in one of the more cramped rooms at the edge of the production company’s Bluewater Bay compound. At a gleaming table in the too-bright, too-warm room, I struggled not to tap my pen on the table. My nerves were shot. My stomach was turning itself inside out. I hadn’t slept for shit. Not that I’d been sleeping well lately anyway, but the empty house, and all my thoughts of Natalya, and that conversation with Jeremy . . .

  God. I could’ve killed him. As if I hadn’t had enough on my mind, he’d tweaked my nerves just right to make sure I was up until nearly dawn, and now I was a tired, twitchy mess.

  I desperately needed to talk to Natalya. Maybe we would have been doomed to fail if we’d even thought about dating. The sex may or may not have been a bad idea. At this point, I didn’t know which way was up, so I wasn’t much of an authority about whether a relationship—casual or otherwise—was a bad idea. The one thing I was absolutely sure of was that things shouldn’t have ended the way they had. I had to fix that much.

  But she wouldn’t even be here until later, and for the moment, I was stuck in a meeting anyway.

  Meetings generally drove me batshit, but I had to admit, I enjoyed the ones with Hunter Easton and his boyfriend-slash-coauthor Kevin Hussain. They were knee-deep in the next Wolf’s Landing book, and Hunter insisted on working closely with me to make sure what went on the page would translate well to the screen.

  But even a meeting with Hunter and Kevin was more than I could handle today. How could everyone keep dragging this conversation on? Couldn’t they see that I needed to be somewhere else? That I needed to handle a thing? Before that thing drove me out of my ever-loving mind?

  My pen flew out of my hand and sailed over Kevin’s shoulder, narrowly missing his head.

  He ducked, glanced back to where the pen had crashed into a box of printer paper, and then he met my gaze with wide eyes.

  “Sorry.” I cleared my throat as heat rushed into my cheeks. “I . . . didn’t realize I . . .”

  Hunter threw his head back and laughed. “Impressive throw, Anna.”

  “Impressive?” Kevin squeaked. “She almost hit me with it!”

  Hunter patted Kevin’s arm. “Being assaulted with office supplies is part of this job. Didn’t you read the fine print?”

  “No,” Kevin said dryly. “I was too busy dodging projectiles.”

  “Sorry.” I grimaced. “I was just distracted. I really didn’t mean—”

  “It’s okay.” Kevin smiled. “Just busting your chops.” He twisted around and retrieved my pen. As he handed it across the table, he added, “I figured if you were going to start using pens as weapons, they’d be flying at people like Finn Larson first.”

  “I’m saving the weaponized toner cartridges for that bastard,” I muttered.

  Kevin’s eyes widened. To Hunter, he asked in a playfully scared voice, “Is she serious?”

  “Don’t know.” Hunter stroked his chin. “But it sounds like a really good idea.”

  “Right?” I laughed. “Okay, okay. Come on, boys. Focus.” Uh-huh. Pot, kettle.

  We all fidgeted and shifted, as if releasing a little bit of nervous energy would actually allow us to concentrate. Not likely—those two were as squirmy as I was, especially during meetings, and usually I was the most focused of the three of us. So this meeting was probably doomed to failure.

  Furrowing his brow, Hunter absently ran his thumb along his jaw. “I’m just worried that whole parallel-dimension story line is going to blow the budget out of the water. Especially if we modify the story to keep Slade Lupin around.”

  I smiled. “Honey, if The World Tree story doesn’t kill us financially, I’m pretty sure that won’t either.”

  Kevin smothered a sheepish laugh. “Sorry.”

  “As well you should be.” Hunter sighed dramatically. “That portal could’ve just been a pool or something, but nooo. Somebody had to go and make it so complex and—”

  “The runes were your idea.” Kevin jabbed him playfully in the side. “Don’t even try to pin all that on me.”

  “Um, Kevin.” I clicked my tongue. “The runes may have been Hunter’s idea, but I seem to recall making the whole damned thing light up and levitate was yours.”

  “See?” Hunter elbowed him. “Your fault.”

  “Well,” I said, “either way, we’ll make it work. It might cause a few gray hairs among the finance guys, but we’ll make it happen.”

  Kevin patted Hunter’s leg and smiled. “I told you it would be fine.”

  Hunter laughed. “Yes, you did.” Kevin shot him a playful glare, but didn’t say anything. To me, Hunter said, “So we’ll keep going the way we’re going, then?”

  “Yep.” I closed my folder. “Just keep me posted on which direction you want to take the parallel-dimension line. That’ll mean some of this season’s talent will be coming back later, so I want to make sure everyone has a heads-up. I especially want to know if you�
�re killing off Slade Lupin for good, or if we’re bringing him back. I need to let Conner’s agent know if his role is going to turn into a recurring one.”

  “I definitely want to keep Conner around,” Hunter said. “As hard as we worked to get him, we should hang on to him.”

  “Assuming his character fits the story, right?” The way Kevin arched his eyebrow, and the little sheepish look on Hunter’s face, told me this had been a topic of intense discussion lately.

  “Just let me know,” I said.

  Hunter nodded. “Will do.”

  We all got up from the table and headed out of the conference room. On the way, Hunter wrapped an arm around Kevin’s waist and kissed his cheek. As they walked away, they exchanged a few words I didn’t hear and laughed. Oh hell, they didn’t just laugh. They looked at each other and giggled like a couple of schoolkids.

  I smiled as I watched them go. God, those two were painfully cute. There’d been some speculation that Kevin was just Hunter’s boy toy, or that Hunter was Kevin’s sugar daddy, but that was such bullshit. These days, Kevin could’ve made his own fortune—and rumor had it he was negotiating a book deal on a solo series, which would probably have him rolling in money until the end of time—and anyway, no one could be around the two of them for more than five minutes without seeing how much they were wrapped around each other’s fingers. They were adorable, and I envied them.

  While the cute pair made their way to the parking lot, Jeremy fell into step behind me and we went to one of the soundstages to check in with Corrie, who was directing. She’d put in for some fairly expensive equipment and effects, and she’d run into a number of walls. Her vision notwithstanding, the other producers were certain there were more cost-effective ways to film those scenes. Of course the male directors never had quite so much trouble getting things like that approved, but for some reason, she and I had to practically retrieve the head of Medusa and present the Holy Grail brimming with our tears to get what we wanted. Neither of us were backing down though—we pushed back, and in the end, got what we wanted.

  I found her standing on the sidelines, a dog-eared script tucked beneath her folded arms as she watched the camera crew arrange the three cameras for the scene.