Just an ad...

It’s just an ad – just a stupid ad, the same trailer they’ve been showing all year for Beauty and the Beast – except this time they’ve tacked on a SPECIAL PREMIERE SHOWING card at the end. Apparently Emma and the rest of the cast are going to be at the El Capitan Theater on Saturday night, which would be great if you weren’t on a shitty enforced break right now.

A shitty, , possibly permanently-enforced break.

The knot in your stomach twists again.

Sometimes, especially after you’ve just woken up, the whole thing feels like a dream. A fever dream, a fantasy; and maybe it was always too good to be true, you catch yourself thinking sometimes. Maybe it was doomed to evaporate the moment you opened your eyes.

Days pass, and sometimes you’re not sure you’d even believe it yourself, if not for the stupidly-expensive new phone, the faint-but-visible pizza stains on the back seat of your car and the fact that you’ve never missed anyone as much as this in your entire life.

Well. Almost anyone.

But you miss Emma at least as much as your ex; and you recognise this feeling like an old friend, this shitty, knife-edged, helpless feeling that creeps up and grabs hold of you whenever you’re too tired or too miserable to fight it off. It’s your body screaming at you to go and find her, go and get her, go and work this out, and the fact that you know that’s probably the worst thing you could do right now doesn’t make it any easier.

Once or twice you think about texting her, just to see if she’s okay; but something always stops you, always sticks in your chest before you can type the first word. It’s the look on Emma’s face; the guilty, uncomfortable way she avoided your eyes in the car, and the way she didn’t deny it when you asked whether you’d taken advantage of her.

You have to do something, though, or you’re going to go insane.

And in the end, it’s the internet that comes to your rescue. It’s stupid, probably masochistic and definitely pathetic, but you end up scrolling through YouTube, searching for the daily uploads of footage from Emma’s press junkets and interviews leading up to her premiere.

This stuff isn’t hard to find. Emma’s a popular girl.

You lie on the bed, watching silently, as Emma – looking stunning as always – enthuses about her movie, and laughs at the interviewer’s crappy jokes, and flirts a little with the camera. She’s a pro, you know that, and her job is literally acting – but you still can’t help feeling a stab of jealousy every time she smiles prettily at the guy sitting across from her, or laughs out loud at a question, or gives every impression of being on top of the world.

Maybe we were just a fling, you catch yourself thinking, dully. Maybe I was just the guy she needed to get under to get over someone else.