I continue to sit here, falling asleep, for minutes, maybe an hour until loud banging against the door wakes me up.
“Milana!”
The scream is not appreciated at this moment; high decibels echoing inside my sore head causing my eyes to flinch from the repeated agony. A frantic Emerson barrels through the entrance dressed in her nighty with her hair looking like a bird’s nest.
“Oh my God. Are you okay?”
My mouth tastes awful; laced with metallic something and incredibly dry. I clear my throat, and above a whisper, ask, “Do you have to be so loud?”
“We have to get out of here…NOW.”
“Why?” I move my body, it aches all over. I recall the sangria, and the dancing. Salsa, cha-cha, and perhaps, if my memory is accurate—the tango.
“What happened?”
“Our flight got moved forward. We need to leave in thirty minutes.”
In a state of panic, all my senses are on alert. Thirty minutes? My room, suitcase, clothes strewn everywhere. My head, my eyes—the pain intensifies.
“Thirty minutes? But I thought we had four hours?”
“No we don’t. Now hurry!”
She runs out of the room, the same time I hurl into the toilet one more time. This will be the very last time I consume any alcohol—I swear. I wanted to cry. I needed someone to hold me and tell me that everything will feel better soon.
An overdramatic Milana needed to shut the fuck up and get the hell out of here.
I turn the shower on, scramble to find any clothes which happens to be a pair of jeans, my Chucks and an unironed shir
t. It didn’t matter; we would fly through the airport so quickly that no one would notice me anyway.
By the time we got to the airport, I felt slightly better having taken some Advil and Gatorade. My hair was annoying me, so I twisted it into a bun, wished I had put on some makeup since my face looked so pale and tired. The dark circles beneath my eyes made it look ten times worse.
JFK is surprisingly quiet this morning, not like the mad rush when we arrived here. Our driver unloads our bags as three security guards stand by, ready to assist us to check in.
As soon as the automatic doors open, there’s a flash of cameras in my face. Bright lights, blinding and forcing my eyes to flinch. People yelling my name. Loud noises, people crowding my personal space with microphones. My heart rate accelerates; my chest tightening from the claustrophobia. I look over to Emerson in a panic. I didn’t compute. Why were they surrounding me and not her? And then through all the noise, I hear one person shout into my face, “How long have you been in a relationship with Wesley Rich?”
Then, the others followed suit.
“Are you pregnant with Rich’s baby?”
“Is it true that you were having an affair with Wesley and left your boyfriend?”
Amongst the hysteria, I look over to Emerson again, her expression fallen as the words resonate with her. I want to talk to her in private, but there’s an onslaught of paparazzi. Our overprotective security guards fight them off, shielding our bodies while scurrying us towards the terminal and straight onto boarding the flight.
What the hell just happened?
How did they find out?
It was only when I sat down, that I noticed Emerson was not behind me. I stand up, searching, worried and confused. Hank—a younger bodyguard—answers my question before I even ask.
“She’s in a private room. They’ll board her last.”
“Oh,” I mouth, sitting down disappointed.
I stare outside the window. The rain is falling lightly; the grey sky casting above us. What happened back there terrified me. I didn’t think of myself as an overly anxious person but the anxiety crippled me. People demanding questions about my personal life, my inability to walk without being scrutinized. Even in the midst of it all, I saw their judgment. Wesley Rich, movie star, in a relationship with this ugly girl? She’s nothing like Emerson Chase.
Look at the way she is dressed, and her hair. Where did he find her?