one of them - j.flatters

xxv. New York

NEW YORK PREMIERE - NEW YORK, UNITED STATES

"You still haven't told him?" Jack's eyebrows furrowed together, his head slightly tilted in disappointment toward Eliana. The brunette sighed. She knew that the longer she waited, the more the truth would hurt him. But what was a few more days when it had already been around three years? Eliana fiddled with the straps of her brand new dress, readjusting them on her shoulders. Heavy and stiffed shoulders that bared her secrets.

"Can we not talk about this. Not tonight, please." Eliana begged, her gaze flickering between her two friends; Bailey and Jack. They were all sitting at the back of a car, driving in a new city for the second premiere of the movie. They both nodded, understanding the ache behind her eyes. The duo proceeded talking, excited to see new faces of fans and reunite with the rest of the cast but Eliana tuned their voices out. She focused instead on the bright lights outside her window. High building, fast paced citizens, honking sounds. Distracting herself with the surroundings because she wanted to think about anything else but what needed to be done. She was already as nervous as it is. The premiere in London had went well for the majority of it. Eliana returned to the hotel with a painful headache and a slight wound to the heart when seeing Jamie and his ex-girlfriend together but other than that, it had went better than she had expected. The brunette hoped it would be the same tonight. But New York was far different than London, the complete opposite in fact and she apprehended her night.

After being stuck in traffic for more than thirty minutes, the car finally stopped and quickly, Eliana moved her eyes from the window, the flashing white lights already blinding her. She will never get used to it.
"Keep your head up, babe." Bailey gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, giving her the strength she needed for the night.
"What did I do to deserve you, uh?"
"I know, I know. I'm the best." Bailey said, exiting the car.
Eliana chuckled before following her, the chaos of outside now in front of her, overwhelming her every senses. Jack, Bailey and Eliana did the same dance as when they were in London, they reunited with the rest of the cast, greeting Sam, Zoe, Trinity and Jamie. Eliana's smile lingered slightly longer on her face when her eyes met with her favorite blue ones. He looked good, like always but something about the man you love in a suit hit different. Tonight was going to be a bit different than in London said the PR team. Everyone will had to do individual interviews while walking the carpet, by themselves. To that, Eliana's heartbeat picked up and not the exciting kind. More like the kind where it felt like her lungs were failing her, her chest slowly crushing all of the air in her body. The pressure of saying the right things was already getting her in her head and the interviews hadn't even started. During the press junket, Eliana was never alone in the interviews, she at least had someone with her who could answer, who was able to say the right things when she couldn't. The team placed them in order of their entrance on the carpet, Bailey in front of Eliana and Jamie behind her which somehow reassured her. If anything bad did happened, she would only have to look at either of her sides to calm herself down. Eliana inhaled a long but sharp breath, one that held her every worry and when they gave her her cue, she exhaled, stepping toward the interviewer and his cameraman.

"Hi, I'm Emily Foster from Entertainment Tonight. Nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you, too." Eliana smiled, gulping the anxious lump in her throat from the proximity of the microphone, almost shoved in her face.
"So, Avatar 2 is probably one of the most expected movies of this decade. How do you feel being part of that?"
"Uh." Eliana inhaled a shaky breath. "It's honestly unreal. I still can't believe it myself, it still feels like yesterday I was a quiet and naive sixteen year old. I'm just grateful to be part of this whole experience and have met so many people along the way." She exhaled, proud of her answer. One she had prepared long before the press junkets started, one her mother had made her repeat over and over just before she left Moonbeam.
"Yes, you started this project when you were sixteen and now, you're twenty one. So, what have you been doing since filming ended? We know you have no social media presence and I'm sure I'm not the only fan wondering." Emily smiled but it was nothing but a polite gesture after cutting Eliana with her questions, making her bleed with anxiety as her head spun. She needed to come up with something fast or the interviewer, the audience, the whole world will notice that something was wrong with her.
"I've been taking some time with my family." Yes, short answer. That will do the trick.
"For 3 years?" She sounded condescending, like she didn't believe one bit of Eliana's quiet girl act, like she knew there was something to dig there. "We've seen the movie, you are a brilliant actress with quite the potential. Didn't you want to pursue this career?"
"I did." Eliana shook her head. Now is not the time to let herself crumble under the pressure, not after succeeding to go through this whole month of press without breaking. She put on a strong face, one that reflected the actress she ever wished to be but wasn't. Couldn't be for some reasons. "I do. Being an actress is everything I've ever dreamed of and-"
"But being an actress is also to interact with your fans and Avatar comes with one of the largest supporters, don't you want to interact with them via social media perhaps?"

For a quick second, Eliana is stunned by the boldness of the interviewer, how intrusive her questions were and how it has nothing to do with the premiere or the movie. It was straight up questions that were meant to poke at her own persona. Eliana looked at her left, Bailey was smiling, enjoying herself while probably answering like a true actress, one that deserved all this attention. Bailey was a natural, has been since she started in the industry at 2 years old. Then, Eliana glanced at her right. Despite his shyness, Jamie seemed to be going through this interview better than her, grinning and being his usual jokester while answering the questions. Eliana frowned her eyebrows as she returned her gaze on Emily, her microphone still held way too close from her.
"I'm sorry, I'm a private person and I like to keep my life that way too. And I'm not really comfortable sharing every bits of it on social media." She softened her face, a smile tugging at her lips, wanting so bad to calm her heartbeat, masking the fact that her stomach was twirling her organs in every senses. A rollercoaster that made her nauseous, that made her vision blurred and that made her head throbbed. Nothing was according to plan.
Everything was falling apart.
She was falling apart.
And it was in front of the whole word to see.
"Plus, I'm a boomer when it comes to technology." Eliana joked, wanting to ease up the tension after calling out the interviewer. But that didn't stop her. Emily from Entertainment Tonight was a pain in the ass, persistent on making her crack on camera, on discovering the reasons behind why did the brunette had fallen off the surfaces of the earth after being in the biggest film of the year, not to say the decade. Emily asked and every time Eliana tried to answer, she interrupted her with a counter-question to make her even more uncomfortable. Eliana just smiled, blinking away the panic tears that made her eyes glossy, trapping her quivering bottom lip in between her teeth until she couldn't do it anymore.

Jamie couldn't help but eavesdrop to the conversation at his left and he hated that he couldn't just jump to put an end to it. Over the years, Eliana didn't wear her emotions on her face as well as when they were younger, she had built some locked doors to keep her feelings away, probably advised by Annie. Yet, he still had the key to read her. Read into her fidgeting fingers locked behind her back as a nervous tick. Jamie knew how much pressure Eliana put on herself, ever since she was sixteen, and how this whole celebrity thing was harder for her. After she left, he came to his own conclusion that she couldn't handle this whole life, clearly Annie did too. It broke him when she fell apart in the apartment on their last day, how she was inconsolable despite having his arms around her, shushing her cries down. But now, it broke him even more that she was at arms length, mimicking the same distress of that last night and he couldn't do a single thing about it. Until Jamie saw, in the corner of his eye, Eliana walk off the carpet before it was even over, leaving that interviewer stunned, speechless for once tonight.
"I'm sorry." He apologized before moving to his left. "If she doesn't want to answer your questions, she doesn't have to. Clearly, you're not good at your job if you make your interviewee run away." Jamie warned Emily, in a threatening tone, holding a finger up in her face. He couldn't control that anger anymore, not when Eliana had left. Again.

Then, Jamie ran after her. The cameras' flashes going off twice more, if that was even possible. Bailey, Jack, Trinity, Sam and Zoe all looked behind them, worried expression on their faces as they searched for the reason to this commotion. Jamie just waved his hand, mouthing a soft it's okay to reassure them as they proceeded to finish their interviews. As he reached the end of the carpet, he saw the end of Eliana's dress entering the bathrooms. The boy took a sharp breath, gathering the courage he needed to make his hand push that door. Which he did, eventually.

"What are you doing?" He frowned, shock plastering his traits as the door closing startled the both of them. Eliana looked up, the bottle opened on the counter as she had two pills in the creek of her palm. Her face just as shocked as Jamie's. She had played this conversation in her mind numerous times, she had every word prepared so he wouldn't find out like this. "Are you doing drugs?" Jamie slapped her hand so the pills could drop into the small ceramic sink and into the drain. Instead, she slammed her hand closed, trapping the pills. She couldn't afford to loose them, she needed it. Especially after what had happened tonight with that Emily.
"What? No!" Eliana protested, angry that he will ever think so low of her.
"Then what is this?"
"I didn't want you to find out like this." Eliana sighed, rubbing her eyes with the heel of her palms.
"Stop. You're scaring me, Lia." There was a softness in his voice that made her heart skip a beat, tendering to it.
She inhaled another heavy, shaky breath before finally confessing. "Medication."

Jamie's heart dropped to his stomach, cutting his breaths short. He couldn't believe it and yet, it all made so much sense now.
Everything that happened between them.
And everything that didn't.