Page 79 of If the World Was Ending

Colby groaned. He wanted to punch Trevor, but he closed his eyes and took a deep breath instead. Kenner tried to make it better. “It was a douche move, but that’s what people expect from Trevor. And most people don’t believe anything he posts is real.”

“Yeah. Thanks,” Colby muttered.

“Yeah. Thanks,” Trevor repeated sarcastically.

At the venue, Colby went straight to Hannah’s dressing room. She always got to the venue before them. He knocked, but the door was cracked, and he could see her sitting in a chair having her hair styled by Desi, her backup singer, who also did her hair and makeup. She caught him through the mirror and smiled. “I saw Trev’s little snap.”

“Not cool, and I got him to take it down,” Colby told her, slipping inside the stark white room with a shitty couch and a bunch of folding chairs. In the corner was a table with protein bars, fresh sliced fruit, electrolyte drinks, and a bucket with beers for the musicians who backed her.

“The bigger problem is your room number is visible, so you’re gonna have to switch rooms,” Hannah told him. He hadn’t even noticed that.

“I’ll switch with Trevor. Fuck him. He can handle any unwanted guests.”

Hannah lifted her eyebrows so high that Desi had to stop applying eye shadow. Colby read the look. “Fuck, right. He’d just invite them in and… okay, fine. I’ll switch with Ford, and he can blame Trevor if he gets disturbed.”

“Better plan.” She winked at him in the mirror, and he smiled. “I’m really not bothered. Maybe now the bad boys I usually attract will take the hint and stop hitting on me. Because I’m helpless to their shitty version of charm.”

“Bad boys?”

She nodded, and her eyes looked haunted. Colby felt his heart swell with sympathy because Hunter wasn’t a bad boy, but he was definitely someone Colby was helpless around in ways he shouldn’t be. “Knock ’em dead tonight, beautiful.”

“You too, sunshine.”

He walked down the hall to the room with his band’s name stuck to it and checked his phone. He wondered how Hunter was doing. Was he spiraling? He pulled up their text thread.

How’s things? Miss you.

He stared at the message, and then he deleted it and went to Venmo. He saw Hunter had accepted the cash he’d transferred while eating breakfast earlier. He went back to the text chain. He stared, fingers hovering over the keypad, and then he closed the text chat and shoved his phone into his pocket.

Chapter 25

Holy shit

TWO MONTHS LATER…

“Hunter. This is a non-negotiable.” Margo’s stern face stared at me from my laptop. “This is what you’ve been waiting for. This is your moment. And they require you to be there.”

“Margo, it’s not a good time.”

“They’re holding it at TIFF, so it’s not exactly a huge inconvenience,” Margo argued back. “They’ve booked you a first-class ticket, but you could hop in a car and drive home in six hours if you had to.”

“I thought only indie flicks that needed distribution went to Film Festivals,” Hunter said, not willing to commit to going to the premiere of Platonic Planet but sick of repeating his refusal. He and Margo had been arguing about this for fifteen minutes already.

“Well, yes, mostly. This is actually TIFF adjacent, meaning it’s being held in Toronto during the filming fest weekend, because Eugenie has another film in the festival, but it’s not technically attached,” Margo explained. “And there’ll be another premiere in Los Angeles, but I’m not even going to try and get you there for that one, so it has to be this one. Hunter, it’s your biggest film yet and if you don’t look like you support it?—”

“She just got out of the hospital after a complication. I can’t just abandon her.”

There was a knock on his closed bedroom door. “I’m in a meeting! Everything okay?”

“Yeah. I just have to leave soon.” It was his dad.

Hunter turned back to Margo on his screen. “I just can’t. I’m sorry. Believe me, I would love to be there.”

“I can’t take no for an answer, Hunter. If I have to fly out there and stay with your mom for forty-eight hours so you can make this happen, I will,” Margo threatened, and Hunter honestly thought she meant it. But he couldn’t leave his mom with his agent. Or anyone. What if something happened to her while he was off playing movie star?

There was another knock. “Dad, I?—”

The door opened, and his dad poked his head inside. He looked tired because he was. They both were. Hunter’s mom was six weeks post-op and in the throes of chemo treatments. The surgery went well, but the chemo was hell. She was on a break because she’d developed a hell of a fever and had been hospitalized for two days. She got home just that morning. His dad was around all the time, checking on Hunter and visiting his mom in the hospital during her treatments. He was amazing, but he looked as exhausted as Hunter felt.