Filmed_ An Alpha Bad Boy Romance(72)

I didn’t know who I was going to be or where I was going to end up in the future, and there were still so many questions left unanswered. But the one thing I knew for sure was that Noah Carterson wasn’t going anywhere.

He may have been such an asshole sometimes, and loved to tease me until I couldn’t stand it anymore. He may have been short tempered and tattooed. But he was a decent person, and always would be. He made me want to be better just for being around him.

The kiss ended as he pulled away from me.

“I thought you were going to Han Solo me for a second,” he said, grinning.

“I almost did.”

He laughed and started walking, holding tight to my left hand. I matched his pace, leaning against his strong frame and holding onto his bicep with my right hand.

“What now?” he asked.

“Now we finish the movie.”

“You make it sound so simple,” he said, wistfully.

“It is simple. We’ll sit in your stupid room until it’s finished.”

“My room isn’t stupid, and you’re distracting.”

“How’s that?”

He looked at me. “You know how.”

“Keep it in your pants for once.”

He let go of my hand and grabbed my ass, hard. I let out a small squeal and hit him on the shoulder.

“No,” he said, grinning.

I rolled my eyes and couldn’t wait to get back to his place.





Closing Credits: Noah


I was nervous as hell to meet Linda’s parents.

Every boyfriend probably felt awkward the first time he met the parents, but there was so much history between our two families that I think my situation was way worse than the average asshole had to deal with.

The day was a blur of setting up equipment, going to screenings, and waiting. The documentary category was showing at the end of the day on the last day of the festival, and so we had to sit through too many poorly shot and pathetically edited shorts to finally get to our crowning moment.

It was one hell of a moment. I didn’t think I had ever worked so hard on something in my entire life. I lived, breathed, and ate Miss Havisham and her story.

And Linda, of course. If someone had told me a year ago that I’d be head over heels for a girl that was a member of my father’s most hated family, well, I would have laughed and said hell yes. Because that’s hilarious and fuck my dad. But if they had said that I would also be insanely in love with her, really and truly lost for her, that I wouldn’t have believed it. But there I was, day in and day out, thinking about Linda, tasting her skin, missing her when she wasn’t around. It was pathetic and it was amazing and it was everything I had no idea that I had wanted.

So there I was sitting in a theater seat as the opening credits of a film I made with the woman I loved rolled up on screen. The Life and Times of Miss Havisham, Actress was the best thing I had ever made. Hell, it was the only real thing I had ever made, and I was beyond proud of it. Linda squeezed my hand, and I smiled at her. I would have rather watched her the whole time, since I had seen the movie enough already, but I figured her parents would find my staring a little unnerving.

They seemed like good people. We had met up a few hours before the show to grab a bite to eat. Her mom immediately made some awkward jokes about hating my dad, which we all knew weren’t actually jokes, but I diffused that situation by agreeing whole-heartedly that yes, my dad was a piece of shit. Linda’s father seemed a little weird and distance, but we got along when I let him talk to me about emperor penguins for twenty minutes.

For the most part, they were a normal family. Linda had her issues with them, but they didn’t hate each other. They didn’t use their money as a threat, or the memory of their dead loved ones as emotional blackmail.

That was just the Carterson family. We were unconventional until the end.

In the dark of the theater I slipped my hand into Linda’s, lacing my fingers with hers. Our movie was playing on the big screen in front of a pretty decent audience, and despite how cool I acted in front of her, I was nervous.

Most of all, I was afraid of how Miss H would react. She hadn’t seen the movie yet, and although I was proud of what I had made, I didn’t know what it would be like for her to see her life up there. I didn’t know if I did her justice, or if I left out important parts. I didn’t know if a half hour was enough to hit the highlights of a person’s existence.

The movie reeled through, from birth to present, showing the hours of interviews we had whittled down to a fraction of that, the images we had picked out from hundreds of candidates, and the countless hours we sunk into the project.

And at the end, people clapped.