Child Star: Part 1

J.J. McAvoy

“There's a constant flow of child actors. It's kind of funny to watch the new crew come through. I think, ‘You poor little things. You're going to have to struggle for a long time.’”

~Tina Yothers

Prologue

Noah

One day I was going to wake up, look at myself in the mirror, and see a decent guy. The type of guy some girl would love to take home to her parents, who could smile on cue, say nice things, take her out. A guy who could make love and not just fuck.

That was not today.

Today, I was the same old son of a bitch I’ve always been. The type of guy fathers were scared to death of allowing their daughters near because they’d most likely be in the same position as this receptionist, with her skirt hiked up around her waist, her panties somewhere on the blue marble bathroom floor with her ass pressed up against the stall wall as I thrust deeper and harder into her throbbing pussy.

“Oh…Oh—go!” Her mouth dropped open and her eyes shut as she gripped the top of the stall.

Hearing gasps and whispers from the other side of the door, I grinned as I buried myself in her without mercy, gripping her thighs so hard I knew they would bruise. Leaning forward, I kissed her lips. My tongue slipped into her mouth, tasting more of her. She panted against my lips, pulling my hair and holding on to me as her whole body shook.

At my limit, with one more long, deep stroke, pleasure rippled through my whole body as I finally released.

“Oh…my…God,” she managed to say between breaths.

As I pulled out and let go of her thighs, her legs buckled. She leaned on to the wall to brace herself as I slipped off the condom and flushed it before fixing myself.

“You were…”

“Thanks, you mind moving?” I nodded to the door she was currently blocking.

Her brown eyes widened as though she was shocked I didn’t want to have a conversation about how great I was in a bathroom stall.

“Oh, yeah.” She got up quickly and tried to fix her skirt, but with the tear I made up the side, there was no hope. Retrieving my wallet from my back pocket, I pulled out two hundred and held it in front of her.

Her face lit up bright red. “I’m not—”

“Megan,” I read her nametag. “I won’t think any more or less of you.”

In fact, I won’t think of you ever again.   

After placing the money in her bra, I opened the stall and stepped out to see my own green-blue eyes staring right back at me. Looking away, I moved toward the door as she called out to me.

“Wait…can I at least get your autograph?”

Turning back partially, I smirked and gestured between her thighs with a nod. “You already have it.”

Again, her face reddened. Without another word, I stepped out. Sure enough, not only was my bodyguard waiting, but so was Austin, my agent and manager. Austin was much shorter than the average man and had a crooked nose and black hair peppered with gray. He was also old enough to be my father and glared at me with his arms crossed over his suit jacket. Before he could speak, the door behind me opened. She froze for a second, allowing my bodyguard to step forward, putting a 240-pound wall of muscle between us.  She said nothing before turning and rushing down the hall, presumably to do her job.

“Satisfied?” Austin frowned.

Never.

“I’ll be in the car—”

“The director asked us here because he personally wanted to ask you to be in this movie, Noah.”

“I don’t care,” I said. Reaching into my jacket pocket, I pulled out a cigarette and started to walk toward the exit across the red-carpeted floor. It was almost midnight in one of the most prestigious hotels in Hollywood. One would have thought that at least here, I wouldn’t have to deal with “fans.” But as I walked, I could clearly hear them.

“Oh my god! Is that Noah Sloan?”

“No way? Where?”

“He’s so fucking hot.”

“When did he get out of rehab?”

“He was in rehab?”

Daniel, my bodyguard, handed me a pair of headphones, but I refused them.

Who gives a fuck what they think anyway?

Ignoring them was simple. I just kept looking forward, and soon enough, everyone and everything faded into the background…like always.

The wind howled across me when I stepped outside to my waiting car. I was blinded by the flashes in my face.

“Noah, what drugs were you on?”

“Noah, are you clean now?”

“Noah, is it true you’re being sued?”

“Noah—”

Daniel pushed them back with his body in order to hold the door open for me as I slid inside to the black leather seats. Cracking the tinted window only slightly, I lit my cigarette and filled my lungs with nicotine before I blew the smoke from my nose, resting back against the seat. The cameras clicked rapidly until Austin sat in the front passenger seat, slamming the door. I didn’t have to wait long for his bitching.

“You just got out of rehab this morning. Do you know how hard it has been to get you any scripts, let alone a meeting with a goddamn director, Noah? You are the most self-sabotaging person I have ever met! The bad-boy angle we can always work. But I wanted to try to make over your image before you went and started fucking receptionists in hotel bathrooms. She’s probably blabbed her goddamn mouth to every last person with ears. What is wrong with you?”

Good question. Maybe it was this city. The longer I stayed, the worse I felt, but oddly enough, I wasn’t sure if anywhere was better than this. What do normal people from normal cities do?

I’ve been acting for twenty years. I’m only twenty-seven now. My childhood was spent hopping from one movie set to the other. There were no rules, there were no limits, and I could get anything I wanted the moment I asked. I was the cute, loveable, Noah Sloan on Mother’s Rules when I was seven and then on Kid Genius at twelve. At thirteen, I won my first Oscar. At fifteen, I was the number-one teen heartthrob in America, and at seventeen, when I got caught “cheating” on my then-girlfriend, fellow child star Amelia London, I became Hollywood’s new bad boy overnight. That label got less and less acceptable the older I became. But I didn’t care. So maybe the problem with me? Was just me.

“Noah!”

“What? Goddammit, what is it now?” I snapped, finally paying attention to Austin, who now had a thick script in my face.

“When I say ‘you have nothing left,’ Noah, I mean you have nothing left if you don’t do this movie. So ask yourself: do you really want to stop acting? If so, don’t bother reading it. I’ll let him know,” he replied, throwing the book onto the seat beside me.

Stop acting? As if it was really that easy. If I didn’t act, who would I be? The more I thought about the question, the less I liked the answer.

I was nothing. If I didn’t act, I was nothing. It was just that simple.

Reaching over, I lifted the script, reading the title.

Sinners Like Us.

This, I could do.

Chapter One

Amelia

I’m selfish.

I’m a liar.

I’m immature.

My life feels like it’s spinning out of control every single day.

I’m a child star. Birthdays have always meant something different to me. For normal people, getting older is a good thing. Sixteen means caring about surviving high school and learning to drive. Eighteen means becoming an adult. Twenty-one is legally getting drunk. They were all milestones for normal people. But I wasn’t normal. The first time I went to high school, I was nine and acting on the TV series Kid Genius. I learned to drive on the set of Street Kings when I was fourteen. And the first time I got drunk was in Mexico, when I was fifteen, but that was due to an accident on set. I wasn’t legal, but no one batted an eye.