Page 86 of Sit, Stay, Love
She stared at him. Was he crazy? ‘A selfie here and there is a little different to this. This is terrifying.’
He looked up at the chaos swirling around them, then back to her and grimaced. ‘You’re right. Sorry! But I’ll be with you. We already made the local gossip page, might as well get a decent photo of us!’
‘What’s happening?’ Lena called over the hammering music.
‘I’m trying to talk Sera into joining me on the press line,’ Ethan shouted back at the petite woman.
Lena shook her head. ‘This is about you and the movie, not who you’re dating.’ She turned to Sera and yelled. ‘Sorry. Nothing personal.’
Sera nodded, embarrassment coursing through her. Not that she wanted to stand in front of all the yelling photographers and flashing cameras, but being sidelined again still stung.
She shook her shoulders, just wanting to shake off the entire night. ‘I was trying to tell him that,’ she bellowed at Lena. She pushed up on her tiptoes and kissed Ethan’s cheek. ‘I’ll see you inside.’
He flicked a harsh look in Lena’s direction, then bent down and lightly dusted his lips across Sera’s. ‘I’ll be in there soon. Then we’ll have fun, I promise.’
She gave him a thumbs-up and mustered her cheeriest smile.
Promotional staff lined the entrance to the club, holding trays of green drinks in dinosaur-shaped tiki cups. Sera took two, one for her and one for Toby, and wondered if anyone would notice if she smuggled them out with her. She found herself a table tucked away from the crowds and took a sip of one of the green drinks. She screwed up her face in disgust and waved down one of the waitstaff passing by with a tray of champagne. She took two of those too, then she pulled out her phone and texted Ethan with her approximate location.
Sera: I’m under the flashing sign saying dance dance dance.
She placed her phone on the table in case he tried to contact her, and settled back to people watch.
There was the super tall guy who did entertainment reports on breakfast television talking to a woman Sera thought she recognised from a reality show, or a soap or maybe just an ad? There was an actor whose name she couldn’t remember, from the crocodile movie she saw with Toby, with a title she couldn’t remember either, and another guy who might have been from theThrone of Kingsmovies. One of Lord Jasper’s court. Or an enemy. Or maybe it wasn’t even him. Maybe it was just some handsome guy. Everyone was so beautiful and sparkly, it was hard to tell which people were famous and which weren’t. All she knew was it was a room of happy, laughing strangers having way more fun than her.
She checked her phone. It’d been thirty minutes since she’d left Ethan. He must have finished with the photos by now. She craned her neck, searching the crowd, but there was no sign of him, so she waved down a waitperson and took another champagne from their tray. When there were two empty glasses on her table, she filled them with the sickly green liquid from the dinosaur tiki cups, wiped them out with a cocktail napkin and slipped them into the gift bag from the premiere, smiling as she thought about using them the next time she and Toby watched one of the Jurassic Park movies.
Then on her third champagne, she spied Ethan laughing with a young woman with a mass of blonde hair.
She tossed back the end of her drink, stashed her gift bag under her seat, and made her way towards him, fizzing a little from the alcohol.
The room was packed and the music pulsed up through her kitten heels and into her body as she squeezed her way through the throng of pretty people, yelling, ‘Sorry,’ at the occasional crushed toe.
When she finally reached Ethan, she tapped him on the shoulder.
His face lit up. ‘There you are,’ he yelled, bending down and kissing her cheek. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’
‘I messaged you,’ she yelled back.
‘Lena took my phone. It was making a bulge in my pants.’ He flashed her a smirk. ‘At least, she said it was the phone.’
She laughed, then her face dropped, her laughter dying on her lips as he turned back to the young woman and continued his conversation, blocking out Sera with his broad shoulders.
The young woman seemed to clock what had happened because she peered around Ethan, waved, and yelled, ‘I’m Jaz.’ Her blonde hair had the perfect sea spray curl, and she was wearing the tiniest dress and the tallest shoes Sera had ever seen. She was that drop-dead kind of pretty you see in magazines, shimmering under the club’s lights, with a dusting of luminous gold glowing across her cheeks.
Ethan slapped his forehead. ‘Sorry. Jaz, this is Sera, she’s helping me prep for my next role.’
‘The one that got announced today?’ Jaz asked. ‘The rom-com?’
Sera nodded.
Then Ethan turned and went straight back to his conversation with Jaz.
Tears pricked Sera’s eyes. She cursed herself for being an idiot as she angrily blinked them away. She tugged on his sleeve. ‘I’m just going to sit down again, okay?’ She pointed to her seat against the wall.
‘I’ll be there in a minute.’ He smiled and gave her a thumbs-up, then once again, turned to Jaz.
She squeezed her way back across the room with another chorus of sorrys, pulled her gift bag from under the seat, flopped down and took a swig of her complimentary bottle of water. She shifted from side to side, peering through the gaps in the crowd, watching Ethan. He was laughing, enthusiastically moving his arms about as he spoke to Jaz, his hand occasionally coming to rest on her shoulder. Two other ridiculously beautiful people joined them, and they huddled together, their radiant faces animated by the conversation she wasn’t a part of.
