1
Planes and Paps
Sage has a thing for weird deaths.
She isn’t quite sure when she started becoming obsessed with the wild ways people can die, but she knows enough tales to rattle them off without batting an eye. She can bring an entire dinner party to a screeching halt without having to mention politics even once.
She’s done it before.
It was at a stuffy affair for the fintech company she used to work for, and her misogynistic coworkers were being a unique flavor of awful, and . . .
Well, next thing she knew, she was telling them about this man who died when a cow inexplicably fell through his roof while he was sleeping.
Can you imagine?
One minute you’re fast asleep and dreaming, and the next thing you know, a fucking cow is hurtling toward you. It’s not even her wildest death story, but having a vast repertoire is useful when she’s stuck in a shit situation—as she is right now.
Because honestly, right about now, Sage would take a cow dropping through the ceiling and ending her misery. Though, she’s probably going to die on this plane anyway, thanks to her own dumb choices.
She knew she had an early flight, but did that stop her from throwing back mid-shelf tequila with Emerson at their favorite West Hollywood bar last night?
It did not. And while it may have been in celebration of this very trip, and despite her current downing of two cups of shitty airline coffee, nothing is going to change the fact that she’s running on fumes.
There’s also a baby crying.
That usually doesn’t bother her. But her head is pounding and her eyes are blurry and the cursor on her laptop screen is blinking at her mockingly and . . .
Yeah.
She probably doesn’t need the cow.
She’s probably going to die anyway.
Sage pulls the brim of her navy Dodgers hat down further, as if that will somehow stop her head from spinning. She’s pretty sure its only effectiveness is in hiding how messy her hair is; the waves are untamed enough that she can see dark brown strands in her peripheral.
Emerson lets out an undignified snort from beside her, and Sage digs her elbow into her best friend’s ribs, the point slipping between her bones. It had been a surefire way to wake her up in college, when her snores would ring out through the dorm room and have Sage shucking off her covers and stomping over to her bed to quiet her.
Now, Emerson just grunts and turns away, platinum bangs plastered to her forehead as her head lolls dangerously close to the woman dozing against the window. Maybe the reason Emerson can sleep through anything now has something to do with all that growth she was on about last night.
“We’re thirty! This is our prime, babe! Thirty, flirty, and thriving! We’re doing the shit!”
Sage had given her a pointed look as Em raised up yet another shot, but growth isn’t linear, she supposes. Though for all the hype 13 Going on 30 has garnered over the years, Sage isn’t quite sure the quote fits. Not when Sage’s doctor recently grilled her about whether or not she planned to get married, or wanted kids, or if she was okay with her eggs dying, as if Sage had suddenly arrived at that phase of life where she needed to know everything. Sage feels like she’s just starting to learn some things.
Or more realistically . . . question everything.
It was only a year ago when she looked at the progress she had made as a data analyst climbing the ranks, set it all on fire, and promptly quit, grad school and her parents’ wishes be damned. There was the whole she wrote a novel and got a book deal thing, so it worked out, but still. Throwing away a stable career?
The horror.
Her parents still haven’t recovered.
All of that is to say, Sage is very unsure of “the shit” Emerson thinks they’re doing so successfully, but she’ll go with it. She often does where Em is concerned.
“Can I get you anything else?” The flight attendant’s voice cuts through Sage’s reminiscing, but it’s syrupy enough that she knows she’s not addressing her. Sure enough, the woman’s attention is fixed hungrily on the man across the aisle from Sage, his blond hair falling slightly into his eyes as he scans a thick stack of papers. He glances up, gives the woman a kind smile, and says, “Another tea, please.”
He’s beautiful in that classic kind of way, all cheekbones and jawline and long limbs that look sort of ridiculous back here in economy where the space keeps getting smaller and smaller. He’s dressed casually—black T-shirt, dark blue jeans—but something about the way his clothes fit him perfectly, the way they highlight the cut of his biceps and the dip of his waist, makes him look entirely too put together for a transcontinental flight at . . .
Sage glances at the clock on her computer.
Ten AM.
God, she really regrets the tequila.
He also has an accent: English and curling aristocratically around his words. The flight attendant is blushing as she recalls he likes “two sugars, isn’t that right?” and Sage is having secondhand embarrassment as the man’s cheeks tinge pink beneath the attention.
It’s not like the attendant is the only one staring—Sage had clocked several people doing double takes as they shuffled down the aisle during boarding.
The baby’s wails increase in volume, and the man’s gaze flicks to Sage. Her mind registers blue and of fucking course, her pulse fluttering as her face heats from being caught staring. But he just grins, as if they’re sharing some sort of inside joke.
Or maybe he just wants Sage to know he knows the flight attendant is hitting on him, because, well, look at him.
The best Sage can offer is a tight smile that’s more of a grimace, because she’s tired and hungover and stressed out about the draft of her sequel that looks more like a murder scene.
There’s also an 80 percent chance he’s an asshole, based on the data she’s collected solely from her dating history. Correlation is not causation, etc. etc., but Sage does—did— have a track record of dating pretty people who turned out to be pricks.
Her Finance Fletcher era is shameful proof.
Anyway. She can connect the dots easily enough, and Prince of Grins and Poor Beverage Choices is triggering a straight line in her head from pretty to danger.
“Anything for you?” the flight attendant asks Sage, her cart clipping her shoulder.
“Um, a coffee with cream and sugar, please,” Sage responds, rubbing hard at the spot. The woman doesn’t spare her a second glance as she plops the drink down, throws a cream and five packets of sugar across Sage’s keyboard, gives Emerson and the other sleeping woman a look, and pushes off down the aisle.
Sage forces a slow inhale through her nose as she brushes three of the packets aside. She can practically hear her friend Margot’s scoff of disgust as Sage dumps the remaining sugar and cream into the cup. Her friend is quintessential LA: all green juice and no added sugars and Pilates, or whatever fitness craze has caught her fancy for the month.
She’d single-handedly ruined Sage’s love of pop when she’d sent her the latest study on why it was killing her.
(“Soda,” Emerson’s voice corrects in Sage’s head, as if she doesn’t call everything that fizzes “Coke,” thanks to her Atlanta roots.)
Sage, ever the analyst, even now, couldn’t ignore the data.
She’d ditched the soda. But Margot could pry sugar out of Sage’s cold, dead hands.
She takes a deep pull of coffee, nearly gags, and stares resolutely at her screen. She’s seven words into her draft when she hears, “Sorry, do you mind if I have one of those?”
It takes her a moment to realize Tea Guy is talking to her, and she scans her tray table to see what he could possibly want. He juts his chin toward the discarded sugar packets and adds with a teasing grin, “Unless you needed all five?”
Is he joking?
She thinks he might be joking.
“Oh, um, sure,” Sage says, scooping up the remaining packets and handing them to him. And then, because as her mother likes to point out, Sage can never leave well enough alone, she adds, “Not just two sugars, then?”
She immediately regrets it, but really, Sage only knows how he takes his tea because the attendant wouldn’t stop thirsting, so maybe it’s net neutral.
The man lets out a low laugh. “Usually, yes, just two. But this tea is objectively awful. Need something to cut it further.”
“You’d be better off with whiskey,” she mutters as she turns back to her computer.
“Is that what has you funneling coffee? Late night?” His voice dips with the final syllables, and Sage’s stomach swoops right along with it. She feels that tug she gets when she’s challenged, and her gaze follows where it leads—right back to the smirking stranger.
So the pretty boy has teeth. Interesting.
“Early flight,” she retorts slowly.
“Of course, of course.” His tone is airy, but there’s still that teasing edge just beneath it as he says, “Hence the coffee.”
“Sorry, what’s your point?”
“No one downs that rubbish unless they need it mainlined.”
Sage doesn’t consider herself particularly picky when it comes to her caffeine—not after Margot destroyed her one sliver of joy. As long as she has something fueling her brain, she’ll take it.
Sage keeps her finger on her trackpad, but her brow arches as she cuts a glance at his tea.
“Should someone who’s gulping down a sad excuse for stale water be harassing someone else about their beverage choices?”
The man barks a laugh, the sound deep and smooth, and Sage bites down on her reluctant grin as she forces herself to focus on her laptop.
“How you can get any work done is beyond me,” he muses.
And that simply won’t do. Hinting at her hungover state is one thing but openly mocking her for it is entirely another. She has a retort ready on her lips, but she catches his smile as he nods back toward where the baby is still wailing.
“The baby,” he adds, as if he knows Sage is one breath from launching into a verbal sparring match that straddles the line between flirting and . . . decidedly not.
“It’s your superpower,” Emerson told her once. “You fling insults and people fall in love with you.”
He doesn’t seem as bothered by the prospect as he should be.
“Right,” she finally says, rather stupidly. “The baby.”
His grin inexplicably widens, and he motions toward her laptop. “What are you working on?”
Now she really wishes that cow would fall through the plane ceiling and crush her to death.
Sage loves her job. Obviously Sage loves her job, because she threw away an entire career she had been steadily working toward for years on the hope of fulfilling a dream. Ever since she was a child, she’s been scribbling prose on scraps of paper, losing herself in the tangle of her mind only to find her way out by jotting it all down. To be able to do this for a living? It’s . . . well, it’s more than she ever dreamt of, and especially when she considers that she was raised in a house where your value was tied to how high up the corporate ladder you climbed.
Her creativity was admirable, but it wasn’t viable for a career.
And yet . . . the world seems to disagree.
Because now, she’s a full-time author, her first book an instant New York Times bestseller, and according to her entire publishing team, that’s a feat that simply “doesn’t happen often. Or, like, ever.”
It’s what secured her a place at Comic Con, what has her on this plane headed for New York, her best friend and entertainment lawyer tagging along “just because,” what has a film studio mulling over movie rights with her agent.
It’s amazing, a dream come true, and she wouldn’t trade it for anything, but now . . .
Well, now she wonders if that’s exactly what it is: a dream. A dream that she’s waking up from, because now she’s staring down the sequel, and it’s not working.
What if she has only one good book in her? What if all of those scraps of paper and abandoned notebooks weren’t a sign of talent but of the limitations of her mind? What if this whole thing just . . . vanishes tomorrow?
What if my parents were right?
She doesn’t have time for a self-induced breakdown, so she shoves the thoughts away and evades his question with a brief “Nothing exciting.”
She eyes his stack of papers. She may not be in the mood to converse with a stranger, but she’s not above using him for deflection. “What are you working on?”
He glances down, his lips twitching at the corners. When he looks back at her, his eyes—god, they’re like . . . rom-com blue—are glinting with something that rivals mischievousness. “Nothing exciting,” he parrots.
Sage can’t decide if she wants to stick her tongue out at him like a child or flip him the bird—you know, like an adult—but suddenly he’s ripping open a sugar packet and she’s mildly distracted by his long fingers.
(She’s hungover—give her a break.)
He takes a sip, then promptly chokes. “Ugh, Christ, this is still horrid.”
Sage bites back a smirk as she turns to her work. She can feel his eyes on her, but she stares pointedly at the blinking cursor and forces herself to focus. She can do this. She just needs to start.
And stop letting him distract her.
“You wouldn’t happen to be writing your own obituary, would you?” the man asks.
“What? No?” She turns to see him grinning at her, his head lolling back against the seat in a way that looks disarmingly at ease.
“You look like you’re contemplating death.”
“Maybe it’s because some people never learned proper plane etiquette.”
“I’m English. We invented etiquette.” He straightens and punches the flight attendant call button. “I’ll prove it.”
“Please don’t,” Sage warns. The last thing she needs is the overly friendly flight attendant coming to—
“Well, hello again!” The attendant giggles, reaching the man’s seat in no time at all. Sage can’t help the way her eyes bug, and she can tell the stranger is swallowing a laugh.
“Terribly sorry to be a bother, but could I trouble you for two glasses of whiskey?” His English charm is turned up to ten, all round vowels and quick syllables, and Sage is so distracted for a moment that she misses the flight attendant’s question.
“Ice?” he repeats, head cocked as he waits for Sage to answer.
“It’s ten AM,” she replies with a blink.
“It’s five PM in London.” Then, to the attendant, “Ice for both of us, thanks.”
The flight attendant shoots Sage a conspicuous look, and she’s still eyeing her when she drops off the whiskey and waves off the man’s attempt to pay. Sage has enough good sense to wait until she leaves before she snorts incredulously.
“What?” The man asks as he hands her a cup and clinks his own against it.
“She must really like you.”
“Or,” he says, clearing his throat against the burn of the liquor, “she’s just being kind. I hear some Americans are capable of it.” He shoots her a pointed look.
“I mean, I didn’t ask you to buy me a drink, but thanks . . .” She trails off, waiting for him to fill in his name.
“Theo,” he supplies with an amused smile. “And I didn’t buy it.”
For some inexplicable reason, Sage feels her face heating at that. She can’t tell if he’s flirting or simply bored and desperate to annoy her until she self-destructs.
“Anyway,” he says as he fishes around his pocket and pulls out an AirPods case. He slips them into his ears and holds up his cup once more. “Cheers.”
Then he’s turning back to his stack of papers, as if Sage were the one pestering him. She can feel her lips part incredulously, so she snaps her mouth shut as she turns back to her computer in a huff.
It takes her a moment to notice Emerson’s eyes are open and her brows are raised as she looks between Sage and the man. “Who’s your friend?”
Sage rolls her eyes. “Theo, I guess? You were snoring, by the way.”
Emerson merely swipes the whiskey from her tray table and gives her a grin. “Good,” she says, before she downs the entire glass. “Cheers.”
•
Sage knows three things with absolute certainty:
1. The first five minutes of Finding Nemo are a guaranteed cry-fest.
2. Pineapple doesn’t belong on pizza.
3. Emerson is and always will be the better half of them, despite the many times Sage has wanted to murder her.
They’ve operated as a unit for so long that Sage honestly struggles to remember what life was like before Emerson threw a crop top at her face, shoved her off the tiny twin bed in their shared dorm freshman year at UCLA, and demanded Sage come out with her lest she wither away “like a sad, Victorian woman locked in a tower.”
Emerson had held Sage’s hair back that night as she threw up Taaka. They’ve been best friends ever since.
They just fit together. Sage is chaotically caught up in her brain, and Emerson is decisive and a magnet for a good time, and together, they make mostly goodish decisions and force one another to be the best they can be. Emerson reminds Sage to live in the moment, and Sage keeps Emerson from taking that moment and making it one that lands them both in jail.
And sure, sometimes Emerson takes on the role of doctoring Sage’s life a little too much, but Sage loves her anyway. At least, that’s what she reminds herself as Emerson strikes up a conversation with Theo as they taxi to their gate. She’s doing that thing where her tone is sugary, her Southern accent thick like honey. If it hadn’t been for the years living together through under-and postgrad, Sage might think her friend was flirting.
But Sage knows she’s actually meddling, and given she’s currently seated between Emerson and Theo, she can’t very well shoot her a look that tells her to stop. So instead, she occupies herself with her phone, ignoring both of them entirely. Emerson allows it until they disembark.
They’re off the jet bridge, and Sage is squinting at her screen as she tries to read the instructions her publicist, Taylor, sent about where to meet their driver when she hears Emerson say, “Doesn’t it, Collins?”
Sage’s surname rolls off of Emerson’s tongue pointedly, her shoulder bumping hers as they make their way toward baggage claim.
“Um . . .” Sage manages to say, phone still gripped in her hand as she blinks up at Emerson. Theo is walking on Em’s other side, looking bemused from beneath the plain black ball cap he’s pulled on.
It does absolutely nothing to make him look less devastatingly attractive, and Sage sort of hates that.
“Yes,” she answers decidedly.
“Sage loves a good club,” Emerson explains to Theo with a wicked grin, and dammit, what did Sage just agree to?
“Excellent,” he retorts, his lips pressing together to fight off a laugh. “It’s on Friday. You can just give my name at the door, they’ll show you to our area.”
A noise that sounds a lot like an objection builds in Sage’s throat, because she’s finally putting the pieces together and realizing that Emerson has somehow invited them to some club that Theo has special access for, but Emerson is speaking before she can.
“Great!” She snatches Sage’s phone out of her hand. “I’ll pull up the car information. That’s my job.”
“Technically, your job is making sure I’m not breaking the law. Or getting screwed over. And you’re not here in that capacity.”
The irony that it was Emerson who became the lawyer isn’t lost on Sage. But she’s incredibly talented. Yet despite having thoroughly reviewed every single one of Sage’s contracts, this week, she’s here as Sage’s friend. Emerson needed a break after a tough few months at work, and Sage needed the moral support.
But Emerson gives her a dismissive wave and puts her full focus into Sage’s phone like it’s going to tell her the winning lottery combination. She punches her thumb against the screen and brings the phone to her ear, stepping out from between them and leaving Theo and Sage side by side as they continue toward baggage claim. “
A lawyer?” Theo guesses, glancing at Emerson as she pulls ahead of them. “I could use one of those.”
“She’s in entertainment law.” Sage uses the tone she’s perfected when she, Emerson, and Margot are out on Santa Monica Boulevard and turning down a proffered drink. Theo’s lips part, as if he’s on the verge of saying something, but then he’s shaking his head instead.
“Right,” he says with a breathy laugh. He holds her stare for a long moment, and it’s enough to have Sage slowing her pace before she can even question what she’s doing.
“Look,” he finally murmurs, ducking his head toward hers. His voice is low, so she has to lean in, and something that resembles nervousness flickers in his eyes. “This might be—”
Sage never learns what this might be, because several things happen in rapid succession as they round the corner.
First, Sage trips, the toe of her Dr. Martens catching on the linoleum floor and sending her stumbling forward. Theo catches her around the waist, pulling her toward him to steady her, his arm firm and secure and so warm that it sends a rush through her veins. Before she can thank him, there’s a sudden burst of noise that’s so overwhelming Sage’s first instinct is to flinch further into Theo, her hand coming up to grip his shirt as she lets out a startled laugh.
Theo’s eyes widen, and he whips his head toward the noise—is it shouting?—with a soft “Christ.” Sage promptly realizes then that she’s clinging to him like some sort of damsel in distress and jerks away before following his gaze, her mind rapidly placing people and cameras and flashes.
She looks around to see what poor celebrity the fucking paparazzi are here to accost, not that she’d recognize them because she’s notoriously bad at that sort of thing, and . . .
“Theo! Over here, Theo!”
“Theo! Are you excited for your time in New York?”
“Look over here, Theo!”
It takes Sage a moment to realize Theo has moved a few steps ahead of her. He tosses an apologetic look over his shoulder, says, “See you Friday,” as if it’s a fact, then he’s lifting a hand in a brief wave for the cameras as he walks past them and then he’s just . . . gone.
Sage can feel the flabbergasted look on her face as Emerson turns back to her, looking smug.
“Oh, you didn’t know?” she says in a way that makes it perfectly clear she knew Sage was making a fool out of herself. “Yeah, that’s Theo Sharpe. He’s, like, the next big actor on the scene. He’s here for Comic Con, too. Promoting his movie. You know, the one I’ve been obsessed with for the last three months. The one I’ve been begging you to watch.”
For a moment, Sage’s mouth just . . . moves.
No sound.
Total gaping fish.
Sage is a writer. She’s not naive to the happenings of the world. But the thing is . . . she’s not a film buff by any means, and pop culture isn’t really her thing. Her Instagram feed is mostly bookish posts and fashion trends and latte art (one caffeine addiction replacing another, she supposes). She’s aces at trivia when it comes to history and literature, but celebrity gossip?
That’s all Emerson.
Sage reads Vogue, Emerson reads People, and that’s how it’s always been.
So, no, Sage didn’t know Theo had just been in some movie—and that it had launched him into the type of fame that has paparazzi wanting to take pictures of him.
Suddenly, the flight attendant is making a lot more sense. As are the passengers who were sneaking glances. Sage thought she’d noticed someone snap a picture with their phone, but she just thought the person was being creepy.
“But . . . he was in economy,” Sage manages to say.
“Don’t be a snob, S,” Emerson scolds as she hands back Sage’s phone and steers her toward baggage claim. “He’s, like . . . newly famous. Besides, remember that time we ran into Nicolas Cage? He was flying economy.” Emerson is grinning, and Sage is just . . . following her toward their carousel, like she didn’t just let her make a complete ass of herself.
“If he’s newly famous, what the hell are the paparazzi doing here?”
Emerson shrugs. “They didn’t follow him out. Probably waiting on one of the other Comic Con guests. I hear Chris Evans is coming.”
“He’s probably flying private,” Sage grumbles.
“As if you’d recognize him if he wasn’t.”
She would, thank you very much. She doesn’t live under a rock. “You’re a fucking nightmare,” she mutters.
Emerson rolls her eyes and buries herself in her phone. Sage follows suit, flicking through the slew of emails she’s been avoiding since this morning. “You know,” Emerson muses, “he really is quite handsome.”
“Who?” Sage mutters distractedly as she opens yet another email from her publicist. She’s already checked in and wants to meet to go over the schedule. She’s added a few things since they last spoke.
“Theo,” Emerson drags out his name, her exasperation with Sage evident.
“You’re not seriously stalking his Instagram right now, are you?” Sage hisses, glancing around baggage claim from beneath her hat, as if Theo is lingering anywhere in the vicinity.
“No, I’m stalking his IMDb. And stop looking around like that, he’s long gone.”
“You don’t have his filmography memorized?”
“I figured I’d brush up on the finer points so I can help you not look like a total dork when we go to his party later this week.”
Sage clicks her phone off. “First of all, rude. Secondly, we’re not going to that.”
“Are you kidding? Why the hell not? When else are we going to be invited to an A-lister party?” Sage opens her mouth, but Emerson cuts her off. “Don’t say when your book gets made into a movie. Obviously that will be glamorous and wonderful but you will be working.”
Sage motions to the city beyond the airport. “I’m working now, you disaster.”
Emerson isn’t swayed. In fact, she looks all the more indignant, her brow furrowing the way it does right before she doubles down. “I’m surprised I even have to point out that attending that party is very much a work outing. Do you know how many connections can be made at an event like that?”
Sage bites back a curse. Arguing with a lawyer is notoriously a bad idea, and arguing with Emerson, specifically, is absolutely pointless. And if the way she straightens is any indication, she’s just getting warmed up. “What if someone from a production company is attending the Con and happens to go to this event?”
Someone from a production company is attending the Con. And not just someone—a production manager from the studio Sage is hoping bites at the option, Jaylen Hammel, will be here in the flesh. Sage’s agent, Anna, is flying in from London specifically for the dinner she somehow managed to talk him into.
It was just a few weeks ago that Jaylen had let them know they had an actor in mind for the project, and now he’s agreed to dinner. Sage, against Anna’s urging to keep her hopes low, has her hopes sky-high that the meeting is the moment she gets the good news. The thought makes her stomach twist.
Sage wants the film option.
She isn’t sure if it’s the whole Moving Goalpost Conundrum she’s struggled with her entire life where she’s always chasing after the next thing, or if it’s because this is the first time her parents have ever shown this much interest in her author career and she’s pre-programmed to care about that no matter how hard she tries not to.
When she hit the bestseller list, their reaction was distilled into a simple congratulatory text. It had been clear the accomplishment did nothing to stop their ever-growing concern that she’s made a massive mistake. But it seems even they can’t argue with the clout of a movie. Or the income it could bring her.
But what about financial security, Sage? Her dad’s voice echoes in her head.
She doesn’t need them to approve, but silencing their constant disapproval would make her life a hell of a lot easier. So . . . it’s both, she guesses: the goalpost and the need for them to see she’s not floundering.
All in all, Emerson has a point. She knows she has a point, and Sage does, too. But her pride is still smarting, and it smothers her reason. Facing a celebrity that she didn’t recognize—even if he is a newly minted one—feels like a specific kind of torture, especially given she was also sort of an ass to him.
“Fine,” Sage sighs. “You’re right. But can we just . . . see how this week goes first? There’s a lot going on.”
She can’t afford distractions.
Emerson’s jaw is set, but Sage can see the hint of a smirk threatening to break through. “Fine,” Emerson parrots. “But can you say that first part one more time? About me being right?”
“Nope, I said I hate you and you give me heartburn.”
“That’s the spirit.”
Copyright © 2026 by Kate Dramis