Falling Into You (10 page)

No. There was nothing there that I liked. Maybe
there was
something that could serve as a
temporary
distraction, but
there was nothing
I liked
about her
.
Not the fake hair or fake boobs or the trashy message.
I sh
ake
my head, clearing it.

All the rest
of the texts are
from my agent.

They want
u
.

Who wanted me? I
start
thumbing
through the list more quickly.

James Ross movies.
Audition.
James Ross.

This was the
part that I was sure I had never even been in the running for in the first place.
The part I hadn’t even been able to admit that I wanted. The part that would make me certifiably famous.

I call
my agent, Mar
cus, my hand shaking as I dial
.

He rushes immediately into a diatribe
.
“Chris.
Where the fucking hell were you? You need to answer your goddamn phone. Fuck.
This is James Ross. The big time, and you’re off fucking anything that breathes. No girl is bigger than James Ross.” I don’t offer a response, because I’ve learned that it’s better not to interrupt Marcus once he really gets going. “
Here’s the deal—
Alan’
s in New York at the end of the week
and he wants to get this thing cast right away
.
You used to know Alan, right? Wasn’t he a buddy of your dad’s at some point?
”

He was.

Marcus keeps going. “
Maybe we can use that.
I sent the script
in the
overnight
mail
to your apartment
.
One of the producers saw that piece of shit
movie
that you did about the submarine, so they asked to see
some of the
dailys
from
A Fairy Tale
. This is a direct quote—Someone in casting thinks that
‘
you have the right blend
of masculinity and charm
for the part.
’
They probably also think that you’ll show the fuck up
on set when you’re supposed to.
I am having serious doubts about
that part of it
after this whole fucking
I don’t
answer my phone business.
”

“
Sorry.” I wasn’t
, really
.
I had enjoyed the conversation at the diner too much to be sorry that I hadn’t picked up the calls.

There was a pause so I continue
. “
Marcus,
I know we talked about the movie, but I thought they wanted…
”

He cut
s
me off abruptly.
“They want to stick to what made the first round so successful—
a mostly unknown lead who’s
good-looking and young enough to keep pumping out these movies for another decade or so.
It’s made for you. It’s yours. And it will mean a
shitload of money
for both of us
.
You need to nail the read
. Use that fucking photographic memory of yours and blow them away.
I don’t want
you to do anything but focus
on that script for the next few days.
And answer your FUCKING phone!
”

“All right. I’ll call you
tomorrow. E-mail me the details and I’ll get on it in the morning.
”

If I got the role, it would be lif
e-changing. There would be no
more walking around the streets by myself, no more going to high school parties
, and it might even come with a tiny paparazzi army of my own
. Like Cassidy had said, I would be famous. And most of me thought, as flip flop girl seemed to, that it would be pretty cool.

But the other part
of me
, the one that had seen how Hollywood had spit my father out like a piece of trash, wanted to forget all about it and spend the next few days chasing down some girl that didn’t even think it was important enough to give me her name.

Chapter 7

HALLIE

The ringing of an alarm-like sound b
uzzes
from my phone.
Apparently, I had be
en able to fall asleep eventually
. I had spent most of the night tossing around the Egyptian cotton sheets, pretending like I had actually been
fabulous
and witty and charming enough so that I didn’t make a total idiot of myself last night.

I was pretty sure that I had failed on all counts.

I reached over
and
looked at the phone
.
Sophia
.

Get ur ass out of bed, sleepyhead. Door’s locked.

I groan
.

I unlock
the do
or and yell
out into the hallway, “
Sophia
. I need a shower, because I feel like I rolled around in a pile of someone else’s puke. It might have
actually
happened.
I might have puke on me right now. It’s not out of the realm of possibility. The drunks took over my room.
Give me 15 minutes.
”

“I don’t see puke anywhere on you
,”
a low voice responds
.

I turn
back into the hallway to see a shirtless, muscular b
lond guy laughing at me as he com
e
s
out of
Sophia
’s room. “
Sophia
said that
she needed to show her friend around. I assume you’re the friend. Thanks for the cockblock.”

He’s giving me a murderous look, so
I
shoot
him
one back
as
Sophia
’s voice co
me
s
drifting out of her bedroom. “You better be ready in 15, slow ass!
And you in the hallway, exit stage left.
”

He
flips his middle finger at me
and disappears
.

“
Jerk,” I hiss under my breath before shouting to
Sophia
. “It’s definitely goin
g to be at least half an hour!”
She was probably going to bust into my room, demanding that I accompany her somewhere.
Tyrant.
One of the most incongruous things about Sophia was her penchant for waking up early.

She would always say, in a fake British accent,
“No need to waste the day, dah-ling, when you’re entirely too young and too beautiful. There’s time for sleeping in when I’m wrinkly.”
It would be obnoxious coming from anyone else, especially given the unnecessary accent, but Sophia
somehow managed to pull it off
. I would laugh right along
with her
, usually grabbing an extra-large iced coffee to chase the sleep from my eyes.

I jump in the shower and although the water is raining down from some fancy showerhead and I could stay in it forever, I make record time. I grab
a pair of black pants and a white sweater from my suitcase, stopping
for a minute
to
blow-dry
my hair
halfway and to add
a couple of coats of mascara and some lip gloss. It didn’t make much of an improvement, but at l
east it was something.

I glance at the clock. 8:45
. I would have preferred to stay in the warm cocoon for at least three more hours, especially given the walking social disaster I had been the night before, but that was never going to fly with
Sophia. I look
at the flip flops discarded in th
e corner, and desperately pray
for a moment of foresight. Maybe I had packed something like real shoes.

I plunder
the
corners of my suitcase, and feel
something stab my palm. I pull it out and groan
again. Great. The only real pair of shoes I had brought
was
the stiletto stripper boots
Sophia
had squealed over when we had seen them in the mall.

Fan-fucking-
tastic
. Stripper boots and a broken ankle or
flip flops and
frozen toes?

Stripper boots it would be.

Stumbling a
bit over my own feet, I emerge
from the bedroom to find a perfectly clean apartment.
Sophia
’s
sitting on one of the stools at the counter, picking at a plate of fruit.

I look
around in total puzzlement.
I know she hadn’t spent the whole night cleaning, so what magical fairy had erased all traces of last night?

“Rosaria,”
Sophia
says
, laughing at me. “And her team of minions. I never wake up to a dirty house.”

Of course. I think
back to the only party I had ever thrown, where I had spent no less than eight hours picking up every last piece of trash (or so I thought). My mom had found some girl’s bra in the nook between her bed and the headboard and had grounded me for life (it had lasted exactly
seven weeks, which to a seventeen
-year-old, was life).

I grab
a banana. “What’s our agenda for the day?”

“We are going to take on New York,” she
practically sings
, throwing her arm over my shoulder. “Did you
have fun last night?” she asks
casually.

“Yep,” I respond
, forcing a smile onto my face. “Your friends were nice.”

She lau
ghs. “Come on,
Hallie
.” She grabs her coffee and pulls
me to the couch. “Of all the things that my friends are, nice is not one of them.
I can think of about a thousand adjecti
ves that would suit them, but most of them involve some combination of dirty words, and I don’t think your delicate Ohio ears want to hear about that.
”

I look
at her.
Sophia
had
been
telling me all about her friends
for months. She may have neglected
to mention that
nearly
100% of t
hem seemed to be pretentious idiots, but that was beside the point
.

When she was trying to sell the trip to me, I spent hours listening to her go
on and on about all the parties that we were going to, all of the thing
s that she loved about New York. She had even danced
around me in glee after I told her that I would come with her
after Thanksgiving and the Susan incident
. What was she saying
now
?

“I think I am going to have to
spell it out for you.” The
wistful
look in her eyes makes
her appear more like the
Sophia
that I had come to know and love than the
Sophia
-like
creature prancing around her apartment the night before.

“Are they my friends? I guess so.
When we were kids, we were friends. We had sleepovers and talked about what we wanted to be when we grew up
—
usually
some version of what our parents did.
Instead of firefighters and ballerinas, we wanted to become investment bankers and corporate lawyers. But we grew up
at the age of 13
and sometimes sooner
,
because everyone grow up quickly here. E
verything
became
a competition. Whose parents had the best house for a huge party? Who had the best view of the city or the best spot on the beach in the Hamptons? Whose parents currently had an in with the mayor or a
senator or a big-time director?
Who would get into the best school
? I envy you sometimes, you know, when you talk about your
friends and
all of your little adventures. Even
camping. The thought of crawling around on the ground holds little appeal, but at least you don’t have to constantly wonder about whether you’re going to become nothing more than a cast off
who doesn’t even have a summer share
.”