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Maggie pressed her hands to her cheeks and tried not to look at Rylee, who was stage-whispering to her makeup person about how everyone on the panel wasso mean. She might have thrown the wordfloozyin there too.
Maggie wouldn’t mind being a floozy, actually. It sounded fun. But instead, she was going to have to settle for a double order of fries.
If only Maggie were better at this. More charismatic. More persuasive. More like her parents wanted her to be. But there would never be any convincing the Rylees of the world—Maggie knew that for sure. You couldn’t give facts to someone whose argument was built on a foundation of bad faith. They didn’t want them.
Besides, there weren’t going to be many more moments like this one. Interest in the lawsuit and in Maggie was fading, and she’d soon have to decide what to do with the rest of her life and how to pay her bills.
And that was probably the scariest thought of all.
“You can get some air if you want,” Grace said. “Local affiliates have a few minutes for headlines.”
With a grateful sigh, Maggie stood and slipped behind the cameras. The temperature dropped at least twenty degrees once she was on the other side of the set. She truly had no idea how the hosts ofHear Hercould stand it. She was slick with sweat. She listed against the wall, where she was out of everyone’s way, and took a few deep breaths.
But someone else clearly had the same idea. “Maggie,” Zoya Delgado called. “I’m glad I caught you. It’s great to finally meet you.”
It was as if the mall Santa told you he was excited to meet you when you went up for a picture. “Um, I’m pretty sure that’s my line. I’m a big fan of the show.”
If Maggie weren’t still feeling green from her confrontation with Rylee, she would’ve had a zillion questions about the upcoming season. At some point, she was going to regret not asking them—after all, how many times was she going to meet Zoya freaking Delgado?—but she was too wiped at the moment.
“AndI’ma big fan of the stuff you’ve been saying about how art should represent human experiences—all human experiences. If you’re not going back to teaching, I have to ask: Have you ever thought about working in Hollywood?”
Maggie was grateful for the wall under her shoulder; otherwise, she might have fallen flat onto her tailbone. The months she’d spent suppressing her gag reflex let her keep her voice even when she replied, “What did you have in mind?”
Chapter 3
INT. POSH TOWN CAR
Three Months Later
London made Cole feel like a hick. The mix of massive stone buildings and modern skyscrapers and intersections called circuses was dizzying. When the English called a building old, it was, like, actually old. And then there were the British accents.
It was just soclassy, it made Cole feel like a dirty lumberjack. He kept wanting to apologize for the Boston Tea Party or for not going to college.
“Stop fucking fidgeting.” Tasha was sitting next to him in the back of the town car on the way to a rehearsal space. With her blonde hair in some kind of perfect twist and in white from head to toe, she looked as if she belonged in London. Tasha absolutely didn’t have a class problem ... except for the part where she swore like a pirate. A perfectly arranged, foulmouthed pirate.
Cole ought to be swabbing the decks. It hadn’t occurred to him before he’d gotten into the car with Tasha that jeans and a leather jacket weren’t fancy enough for this meeting. He probably shouldn’t have brought them to England at all. It should’ve been all frock coats, all the time. “This was a mistake.”
“Not taking separate cars? Yes. I’d forgotten how jittery you get before filming.”
“No, me taking this part. I can’t play the son of a baron. Who am I fooling?”
“No one. You’ll be fine. They hired you for these.” She poked him in the stomach affectionately.
“Ouch.” Cole was pretty sore. It had been an abs day.
It was always an abs day.
“See? You’ve been working your ass off to prepare for this part in the ways that matter. You have to walk in there as if you own the place. Like you’re going to win an Emmy.”
“But I’m not.” He might hand Emmys out, but he didn’t win them.Hot frat boyandaction heroweren’t the kind of roles that raked in golden statues, but those were what Cole had spent the bulk of his career playing. The truth was, it didn’t even make him sad. He knew he wasn’t that kind of actor.
Tasha rolled her eyes. “Then you have to project the attitude that you not winning was a goddamn oversight. You’re doing them a favor. You have to believe that.”
For Tasha—beautiful, bankable, and with multiple Oscar nominations—Waverleywas a detour. While she’d denied it up and down, Cole knew she’d taken the part to help him. It was maybe the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him.
But for Cole, this was the mountain peak he’d been climbing toward, and he wasn’t sure he could summit. Just look at this place, at the rows of creamy stone houses and the literal palaces and the warehouses converted into hip museums. He didn’t belong here.
His doubt had him breathing hard, as if the oxygen in the car was slowly depleting—which sounded like a scene in some crap movie he’d make.
