I Fall Apart

Lin

The coming week was busy as hell. I was in meetings and auditions for Click, Click, Boom. I loved being a director. I had strong opinions, and I actually got to be the one with the final say. I was getting more and more excited about shooting. I had a really great team together.

As the media sometimes did, they caught wind of what I was up to. I'd posted all about it on Twitter, of course, so it's not like it was a secret. I wasn't Brad Pitt famous or anything, so I didn't often get hounded by people or the paparazzi, but for whatever reason they were super interested in what I was doing in California.

I'd never talked with the media much about Nora. Again, I posted pictures of her on Twitter, without her face visible, but I never got into where she'd been the first thirteen years of her life. I was working on set, making decisions with our set designer, when Nora came in looking upset. She looked like she'd been crying.

"Hey, will you give me a minute?" I asked the set designer, glancing at my daughter.

"Sure," she said, and wandered off to look at some props.

I opened my arm and walked Nora over to a private corner. "Hey, what's up?"

"I was trying to just chill at the beach and these damn paparazzi were all over me," she reported, and I noticed she was shaking a little bit. "They kept asking me questions and they were taking pictures."

I sighed and brought her in for a hug. "I'm sorry, sweetheart," I told her, resting my chin on her head. "That's a total invasion of privacy. Did you happen to see where they were from?"

"No," she sobbed into my shirt. "I just wanted to get out of there."

I pulled back and held her head in my hands, wishing this didn't have to happen to her. It was all because of me. I hated that she was upset and feeling violated because of me.

"Hey, let me try to finish up here early and we can order pizza in and binge-watch Netflix," I suggested. She smiled a little bit and nodded, wiping at her eyes.

"Good," I said, kissing her forehead. I pulled her in for another hug. "Why don't you hang out in my office and I'll come get you as soon as I'm done."

I rearranged a few meetings and was able to finish up in the next half hour. Nora was looking comfortable, laying down on my couch, watching TV when I came in. "You ready?"

She grabbed her backpack and purse and we were out. The studio had hired me a driver so we both got in and they took us back to the hotel. Nora still seemed a bit upset at first, but once the pizza came and I started cracking jokes at the movie we were watching, she started to relax. She thinks I'm hilarious. And I am.

We went to bed around eleven and I was up first in the morning. I hopped in the shower, then grabbed my phone. There were tons of notifications on my home screen. As I scrolled through, I began to see a pattern. There was some article about me today. I finally opened it up and my jaw dropped. It was all about my relationship with Nora.

"Shit," I muttered, as I began reading the article. Someone had given an interview about our relationship. Someone "close to the family" that wished to remain anonymous. It talked all about how I'd had a month-long fling with Nora's mother back in 2005, where Nora went to school, and what she was like. I was furious. Without confirmation, I was sure of who had given the interview.

I pulled up my contacts and stepped into the hallway, taking my room key with me. I wandered down to a lobby area of the floor and waited for Shannon to pick up.

"Hello?" she answered.

"How could you?" I demanded immediately. She sighed on the other end.

"What?" she asked.