“And then you all grew up to be movie stars,” I said, shaking my head. “What are the chances?”
“Technically, we didn’t all end up as movie stars. Holden’s a director. Derek’s more of a theater guy, although he dabbles in movies. Only Peter and I are ‘movie stars’ in the traditional sense.”
“You know what I mean.”
He smirked. “I do. It’s weird. I know it’s weird. We’ve really got our uncle to thank for that. We all spent our childhoods pretending to be him, waiting for our chance to move to Hollywood and become him.”
“Your poor mom must have been exhausted.”
His frown fell off his face and the light in his eyes went out. “Well, she dropped dead of a heart attack before we were all even out of the house, so I’d say so.”
I gasped in horror.
“Sorry,” he added, looking at my expression. “It was just a joke, although not a very good one. Blame Derek, he came up with it. The sarcasm helped us all deal with it, I guess.”
“What happened to her? Just a random heart attack?” The thought was terrifying. “Can that happen?”
“It definitely can. She had an undiagnosed heart problem. It never caused her a moment’s discomfort until the day it killed her.” He paused. “The doctors said she didn’t suffer at all, which is good I guess…” he trailed off, looking pensive.
“That’s terrible, Tommy.”
He frowned. “Yeah, it was. But it was a long time ago.” He shook his head as if to banish the dark thoughts away. “How did we get here? The French menu? I can translate for you…”
Our conversation moved on to other topics, and I managed to order a chicken dish that sounded pretty tasty, but something Tommy had said stuck with me. At the next pause in our discussion, I worked up my courage and asked about it.
“You said that your dad was obsessed with improving the family pedigree just now. And when we first met you said he wanted you to marry a socialite, if not royalty. Why does he want to do that again?”
Tommy sighed. “I think the only way to describe it is as the world’s biggest inferiority complex. He was born from poor Polish immigrants and seems to have spent his entire life proving that it never held him back.”
“How’s the whole marrying off his children to royalty plan going so far?” I asked, wondering what he would think of me. He’d probably be mortified.
“Not great. My brother Peter just married an actress named Lucia who got her debut role by pretending to be a Swedish princess.”
“Pretending to be a princess?” I asked, wondering how she managed that. “That’s impressive.”
“It was,” Tommy agreed. “It was a very elaborate con job. I really like Lucy. She’s mortified by the story now, but I bring it up as much as possible just to watch her squirm.”
“What about your other brothers?” I asked. “Are they all dating real princesses?”
Tommy laughed. “Not as far as I know. My dad is holding out hope though.”
“That just doesn’t make any sense to me,” I told him. “I mean, hasn’t your dad already proven that it doesn’t matter, and you don’t need to have, um, immaculate breeding or money or anything like that to be successful?”
Tommy smirked at me. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? I don’t really understand it at all. But he’s always had this insane obsession with improving his line.”
“My dad wanted to improve his line, too,” I told Tommy, thinking it was weird that this was the one thing our fathers seemed to have in common. “He was disappointed that I wasn’t a boy.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you aren’t a boy.”
I laughed. “Yeah, me too. Having a penis seems horrible.”
A nearby waiter paused, and I rolled my eyes at him while blushing furiously. Tommy laughed at my embarrassment.
“Horrible?” he asked when the waiter moved off. “Do tell.”
The wine must have been getting to me. It was too good. I took another sip of it, figuring it was too late now. I was already tipsy.
“Well,” I told him, since it wasn’t really possible to walk that statement back now. “It seems very inconvenient, to say the least.”
“Inconvenient?” Tommy asked. “I can go pee standing up and you can’t. That’s pretty convenient in my book. Plus, I don’t bleed for a week a month. That sounds tremendously inconvenient to me.”
“I’m not insulting your penis,” I promised him. “It’s great. I just don’t want one. It seems like it would get in the way a lot.”
“You mean, when I think with my dick instead of my brain?”
I giggled. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t not say it, either.”
“I’ll say it,” a new voice to our left interjected. I turned to see a tall, svelte brunette approaching our table. She was beautiful and she looked rich. And angry. Her expression was resolute, and she covered the six or so feet in just a few, stiletto-stomping steps. Her legs were a mile long. “Tommy Prince, you need to stop thinking with your dick before you burn your whole life down.”
“Oh, hello Elaine,” Tommy said, frowning deeply. “What a surprise.”
33
Tommy
“What are you doing here?” I hissed at Elaine. I’d asked Cindy for a moment and dragged Elaine out in front of the restaurant, unwilling to subject Cindy to my argument with my agent. “I’m on a date.”
Elaine smoothed her already very smooth hair and stared at me uncomfortably. She shifted from one stiletto heel to the other like they were hurting her, although I knew far better. The woman lived in super high heels. She liked to tower over her enemies.
“I’m here to save you from yourself,” she hissed back at me. “You shouldn’t even be surprised. It’s my job to protect you.”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” I snapped angrily.
She laughed in my face.
She was being rude, and I wanted to be furious at her. How dare she just show up in the middle of my romantic dinner date with Cindy? I’d begged her for a few days off. Was that really so much to ask for? She was supposed to work for me. Instead, I was being managed into insanity. That couldn’t be the way this was supposed to work.
I felt like I deserved a couple of days break from my crazy life. The Oscar race would still be there in LA when I got back. Surely there was no harm in taking a little mental health break with a beautiful, charming woman. Especially considering that I was in love with her.
“Apparently you do need a babysitter,” she replied. “Because you’re acting like a fucking child. I can’t even believe we’re having this conversation. You’ve been single-mindedly attacking this goal of yours for the past eight years. Then you meet one pretty girl and you forget everything? You start making choices that put eight years of work and effort at risk? I wouldn’t be doing my job well at all if I just let you throw your dream away.”
“I’m not throwing anything away,” I argued. “Cindy isn’t the enemy. She has nothing to do with this mess on TV.”
“No, she’s not the enemy,” Elaine agreed. Her expression seemed torn. “At least, she doesn’t seem to be so far.” I didn’t have the opportunity to dispute that statement because Elaine was already moving on. “If she were obviously the enemy, I wouldn’t feel like such a jerk. But she’s enemy adjacent. She’s related to your enemies in a way that’s more intimate and more nuanced than I think you realize. And believe me, at this moment the Beauty Queens Go West are your enemies, regardless of where Cindy Brown stands. Their interests are opposite to yours and if you don’t do some damage control right now, they might win.”
I sighed and dragged a desperate hand through my hair. This isn’t how this night was supposed to go. I had a whole night planned for Cindy and me, culminating in me confessing my love to her. It was going to be romantic and perfect. There was chocolate and wine and flowers involved. Now that fantasy was being taken away from me, and by Elaine of all people. She was supposed to b
e my friend. She was supposed to be on my side.
But my righteous anger at being interrupted wasn’t enough to fuel me through this entire interaction. There was a large, elaborate fountain in front of the restaurant, and I sat down on the edge of it, staring into the water and wishing that throwing a penny over my shoulder into it would really grant me a wish. I’d wish to be anywhere but here.
“Tommy,” Elaine told me, touching my shoulder and making me look up at her. Behind her thick, cat-eyeglasses, her dark eyes were tired and sad. “I’m not doing this to hurt her or you. I don’t want that. You have to know I’m not that much of a monster. But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t give you a reality check right now.”
I took a deep breath and counted to ten. It was Elaine’s trick, but I could do it too. By the time I reached ten, I was a modicum calmer. But I wasn’t convinced.
“Elaine,” I said firmly. “I’m sorry that you drove all this way for nothing. But I’m not going to leave Cindy just because of who her family is.”
That was something my dad would do. He’d always wanted me to choose someone who’d improve the family pedigree. Although I’m sure he’d come around to Cindy in time, I knew that he wouldn’t be immediately pleased to learn that I was dating someone who didn’t come with a title or a trust fund. He’d made his preferences plenty clear to me over the years, and I’d made my position—that he was absolutely nuts—just as clear.
Elaine sighed and sank down next to me on the fountain. “Tommy, I’m sorry. I really am. But this isn’t a situation that can be fixed without immediate, deliberate, conscious action by you. You can’t ignore it. You can’t run away from it. You have to confront it. At this moment, the Wilson family wants to use you, or your relationship to Cindy, to slingshot them from the D list upwards. They’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain. You have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Think.”
“The only thing I want to think about right now is how I’m going to tell Cindy I’m in love with her,” I confessed to Elaine. It felt good to say it out loud. “She’s sitting alone in there, probably wondering who the fuck you are and what my relationship to you is.”
Elaine rolled her eyes.
“She knows I’m your agent,” Elaine said, glossing over my confession of love. “I’m clearly not your lover. And she isn’t alone. I sent my assistant Paulina in there to talk to her.”
Great. I could only imagine that Cindy and Paulina were having a great time together. Paulina was probably poisoning her against me. “Elaine, I want Cindy more than I want—”
She hissed in her breath in horror and cut me off. “No. Don’t you even say it. You’re Tommy Prince. You’ve spent the last eight years becoming the man you are. And I’ve spent eight years helping you do it. You’re not throwing it all away tonight. I know you wouldn’t let me, or yourself, down that way. I know you wouldn’t do that.”
She stared at me, horrified, and the guilt sank in. It percolated down through my anger and frustration and it started to erode it. I wanted to keep it out, to continue on the path of my righteous anger, but it wasn’t possible. I’d never been motivated much by anger, righteous or otherwise. It was guilt and obligation that motivated me when competitiveness wasn’t enough. And it worked now just as well as it ever had.
Eight years was a long time. Elaine wasn’t wrong about that. She wasn’t even half wrong. Elaine had spent eight years helping me build and sustain a career that would make me a leading man. And not just any leading man. The highest paid, undisputed king of leading men. She was paid too, sure, but she was also my friend. I trusted her. I’d structured my entire life since coming to Hollywood to get exactly where I was right now, and she’d helped me do it.
“If I didn’t know better,” Elaine continued. “I’d think that you were afraid to succeed now that you’re so close.”
I winced at that. It fucking stung. But was it true? Was I shying away from my success at the final hour because I feared that I wasn’t worthy of that success?
I’d just told Cindy about the bet I made with Derek when we turned eighteen. I’d never told anyone about it before, mostly because I was embarrassed. Who in their right mind spends their entire adult life trying to win a bet with their twin brother? I’d wanted to go to college and study freakin’ math. Instead, I’d spent the last fifteen years becoming an A-list actor.
Derek had probably forgotten about the bet a long time ago. I never had. Maybe my dad wasn’t the only one in the family with a raging inferiority complex. In my moment of indecision, Cindy walked out of the restaurant to stand in front of me. Her expression was sad.
“Tommy,” she told me. “I think we need to go.”
34
Cindy
When Tommy got up from the table and left me alone to go talk to his agent, I watched them go with a heavy heart. I took another nervous sip of my bubbly, pink wine. It tasted too sweet now. Cloyingly. I set it down and drank water instead. I needed to clear my head.
“You’re Cindy?” a woman asked, sitting down in Tommy’s vacated seat. “I’m Paulina. Elaine’s my boss.”
I blinked at her, shocked at the intrusion.
“Hello,” I stuttered. “I’m not really in a chatting mood.”
Paulina was about my age, but better dressed, and more poised than I’d ever thought about being. Her posture made me feel like a hunchback. I sat up a little straighter to stare at her across the empty dinner plates.
I’d been so happy just a moment ago. Now I wasn’t sure what I was meant to be feeling. Sinking dread wasn’t what I wanted for dessert, but it appeared to be the only thing on the menu tonight.
“You’re prettier than I expected you to be,” Paulina said, perhaps interpreting my silence as an invitation to continue, despite my request not to chat. “Your family chose really unflattering pictures of you on their awful show.”
I frowned at her. “Oh?” I managed. My voice sounded high and tight in my own ears. “I didn’t realize they put pictures of me on the show.”
Paulina nodded her head. Her dark hair shone in the candlelight and her eyes were unusually bright. She wanted something from me. I could feel it. “They used a bunch of pictures from your high school yearbook.”
I winced, glad I hadn’t seen it. “Great.”
I’d only figured out how to deal with my super curly hair within the last eighteen months. I’d been a frizzy-haired, chubby, pimply mess in high school. It was just cruel to use those pictures of me now, in my mid-twenties.
“Your stepsisters seem like genuinely horrible people.”
I laughed at that. “Imagine living with them.”
I could deal with a thousand rude Paulina’s. Compared to Marigold, Quincy, and Greenlee, she was easy to deal with. A bit unpleasant, a bit pushy, but harmless. I could survive conversation, uncomfortable as it was. Tommy would be back soon and then everything would be okay. I took a deep breath and made a conscious decision not to tell off Paulina.
Meanwhile, she wrinkled up her nose in disgust. “I can’t imagine. They seem like grade-A narcissists. Have you watched the show?” Paulina asked. She seemed curious and I didn’t know how to politely tell her to go away. I could do it impolitely but didn’t want to be rude to someone who worked for Tommy. It was better to suffer her invasive questions.
I shook my head. “I saw a couple of minutes of the pilot. It was enough.”
“I can’t imagine what you must be feeling right now,” Paulina said. “It must be horrible to have your private life beamed out into millions of people’s living rooms.”
“It’s not the greatest,” I told her. “I’d prefer to talk about just about anything else.”
I was naturally a private person. The fact that my family drama was now public, even if it was a fictionalized version, was utterly repulsive. The fact that Paulina, a stranger, felt comfortable enough to come up to me and start talking about it was even more repulsive. Paulina didn’t seem to notice or care.
What the fuck? I guess I had asked her to change the subject. But I didn’t expect her to choose something more incendiary.
I took a deep breath. “That’s ridiculous.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe. But Elaine’s a pretty good agent. The best, actually. She’s never been wrong, at least that I’ve seen. And I’ve worked for her for three years.”
“I don’t see how my family’s dumbass reality show will make any difference at the Oscars.” I was a bit drunk. The filter was off.
“Elaine says the Oscar race is super political,” Paulina explained. “It’s not like a talent show or something. The best man or woman rarely win. You don’t win because your performance is the most inspired. According to Elaine, the winners have to campaign, like politicians. They have to win over all the voters. And the voters are these big, Hollywood people who care way more about what things look like than how they really are.”
“So?” I asked.
“So, the academy members want to see someone win best actor that reflects well on them, the voters. They want somebody classy. Somebody that epitomizes what they think an actor should be. It’s not all categories that are scrutinized this hard, either. Nobody cares who wins Best Song. But the big ones? Best Actor, Best Director, Best Picture, those are political.”
“I’m still not following how Tommy being near me will mean he won’t win.”
That seemed awfully petty.
“Your family is toxic,” Paulina said. “And you’re toxic by association.”
Jesus. Don’t pull your punches. I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat. This was pretty much my worst nightmare—someone telling me to my face exactly what I always suspected to be true.
I was bad. And it wasn’t even my fault, and there was nothing I could do about it. It was just because of where I came from. I was born bad.
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