Under the Lights (8 page)

“Well, I'm doing it to help Liam get a lightened schedule so he can film the Lassiter movie, so you might wanna think about him before you try—and fail—to get my ass booted from the set.” He smiles smugly. “Besides, you haven't even given me a shot yet. Wanna practice before the table-read next week?”

“I am literally gonna hurl all over your overpriced shoes right now.”

He laughs. I don't.

“I'm going for a walk,” I declare, grabbing my phone from my purse and not even caring that I'm not being subtle about it. Then I march outside and immediately call Jade; she's always the first to know everything.

“Did you know Josh was joining the show?” I demand as soon as I hear a voice on the other end.

“Vanessa?”

My stomach tightens. Of course Brianna's answering Jade's cell phone. “Is your mother there?”

“Jade's at a meeting right now.” Brianna's voice is pleasant and professional, smooth and confident, and that only annoys me more. Acting should be left to actors, not to publicists—or their interns—who pretend to be friendly for five seconds. “Is everything okay?”

“As if you care,” I mutter, and then immediately regret it. God, this girl is worse than Josh at making
me drop my nice Vanessa guard. “I was just looking for more information on something,” I add, making sure my voice sounds sweeter now.

“On Josh Chester joining the cast of
Daylight Falls
?” Brianna asks. “It's just a three-episode arc. Shouldn't be too bad. You can handle yourself just fine. I've seen it.”

I can hear the smile in her voice as she says this last bit, and despite everything, my lips curve up a bit, too. She may be a manipulative sneak, but there's some actual sincerity in there. It makes me tingle with a little pride.

After a few beats, she asks, “So, should I have Jade call you?”

“Please,” I mumble, because it seems way too awkward to admit that she just made me feel better about the whole thing with a few words. “But, um, no rush, I guess.”

“Okay.” We're both silent again, and then she says, “Come on. Are you really so pissed about me being at Josh's party? I was just doing my job.”

“I'm not pissed,” I lie, because I shouldn't really care enough to be. “I just think it's weird that you showed up and pretended to be”—
Nice, and funny, and the only person who actually thought to see how I'm feeling about Ally leaving
—“a waitress.”

“Of course it's weird. Jade is weird. You know this already.”

“I don't like feeling deceived.” My voice is stiff, and even I want to laugh at myself. Why do I care what my publicist's freaking intern thinks or does? “Whatever, it's—”

“I'm sorry,” she says, cutting me off and surprising me. “I won't do it again.”

“Okay. Thanks, I guess.” This conversation has definitely taken a turn for the strange, and I don't really know what else to say. “I should go. I left Josh and Zander alone in my trailer, which seems like a terrible idea.”

She laughs. “I'll tell Jade you called. And hey, listen, if you wanna take a few bites of an onion or something before your spit-swapping scenes with Josh Chester, I swear, it'll be our little secret.”

“I appreciate that,” I reply, feeling a full, genuine smile creep onto my lips for the first time that day. “Bye.” She says goodbye, and I hang up and stare at my phone for a minute before heading back to my trailer, where Zander and Josh are, unsurprisingly, giving each other shit.

I leave the door open behind me to give Josh easy access to leave and surprise them both by dropping in Zander's lap. “Don't you have
anywhere
else to be?” I narrow my eyes at Josh.

“Nah, I think I'll just watch.”

“You know what? Go ahead.” I pray Zander's somehow become a better kisser in the last five minutes, and then I press my lips to his. If there's one thing I've learned being an actress, it's to fake it 'til you make it.

And if there's another, it's that sometimes, you'll just have to kiss with an audience.

“It's been one week of filming, and already he's a royal pain in my butt.” I put the phone on speaker so I can set it on my dresser while I trade the clothes I wore to the
Daylight
set for the sports bra, tank top, and cropped yoga pants I'll need for my nighttime
Bikram session. “I don't understand how you dealt with him for a
year
.”

Ally laughs. “He's not so bad once you get to know him.”

“I
know
him,” I remind her. “I still don't like him.”

“That's what you thought about Brianna, and you seem pretty okay with her now.”

Do I?
I hadn't realized I'd even been talking about her to Ally much. But things with her are definitely better. The e-mails that used to be short and kinda formal are way friendlier now. She'd even sent a few texts that week—things like,
It's only 3 eps!!
and
I haven't seen a single news story on the murder of Josh Chester, so I hope that means it's not so bad!
It's been nice having her support, especially with Ally gone.

“Yeah, she's cool.”

“Well, given that she's the spawn of Satan, that's actually pretty impressive, isn't it?”

I laugh. It's pretty amazing to think that she's Jade's daughter. Unlike her mother, she's actually sweet, and thoughtful, and she smiles every now and again, dimples and all. “Very.
And
she's a fan of
Sherlock
. Like, every possible incarnation of it.”

“Aw, that's cool, Vanny. You guys should hang out. Hey, hang on one sec.” There's a crackling sound as her hand covers the receiver and then her muffled voice as she yells something to someone. Whoever it is responds, and as their conversation continues, I let my mind wander.

Would it be weird to ask Bri to hang out? Would she even want to?

I could ask her to come over for a
Sherlock
marathon, maybe. Or go shopping. Ally used to go with me, but now that she's gone, I haven't been in, like, forever. Or maybe to Pinkberry…Would that be
sacrilege without Ally? Does Bri even like Pinkberry? Will she think that's dumb?

“Van? Yoohoo! Are you still there?”

Whoops
. “Hey, sorry. Didn't realize you were back.”

She laughs. “I gathered. Sorry—just trying to figure out what movie we're seeing, but I've got another few minutes. Have you been looking at any apartments since I left?”

“Not really,” I admit, feeling a little twinge at the knowledge it's not the answer she wants. I don't even know how to explain to myself, let alone to Ally, why I'm dragging my feet on moving out, now that I'm eighteen. It's not like I have a cute little sister or family movie nights, like she did. But the fact is, I am so, so scared at the prospect of fully leaving my parents. Which I will never, ever admit to another living soul, not even my best friend.

“Did you check out that place in Liam's complex? It sounded good, and they've got such a nice pool.”

“Not yet.” I pull my hair into a ponytail and determine to change the subject. “Speaking of which, how's
your
new place? Boys walking around in towels everywhere?”

She laughs. “Not quite. Anyway, kind of hard to get excited at the sight of shirtless men, given my boyfriend. I think he's ruined me.”

“Pretty sure that's been his plan all along,” I tease. “How about the roomie? Is she your new bestie?”

“As if. She doesn't even
like
The Beatles,” she replies in a mock-whisper.

“Sacrilege!”

“Right? And she insists on going to this fro-yo place that's
not
Pinkberry, just because it's closer. Like, who cares about a couple miles when it's
Pinkberry
?”

I know she's partly kidding to make me feel better, but it works. And at the same time, I sort of hate that she already has a new fro-yo buddy. When she was here, she barely hung out with anyone but me, Liam, and Josh. Now that she's over there, she's making friends a whole lot more quickly.

Meanwhile, I've got Josh—an actual hemorrhoid in human form—and Liam, who spends every spare moment working out for his stupid new movie role and smells like a walking protein shake at all times. Jamal's great, but when we're not on set, he's with his girlfriend, Theresa, like, a zillion percent of the time. I guess Carly Upton, who plays my best friend on the show, is okay, but she's a little boring. And needy. And okay maybe I don't like her that much.

So maybe I
should
ask Bri if she wants to hang out. Worst that can happen is she says no, right?

“How are classes going?” I ask, because I don't want to talk about her roommate, or the fact that New York City has Pinkberry too, or Liam, or the apartment I'm not renting.

Apparently that was the right question, because she launches into a whole thing about her core classes and how they will or won't matter for her eventual law school applications. I do my best to listen while I put on my bare makeup minimum—essential in case of a paparazzi run-in on the way to yoga, but not enough to turn my face into a melting mess in the sweltering heat of the Bikram Yoga studio.

We chat for a few more minutes and then hang up, promising to talk again this weekend. I still have fifteen minutes before I have to leave, so I quickly check my Instagram and “like” some of Zander's recent pictures, leaving a mushy comment on a selfie of the two of us from a premiere we went to last week. Then I flip
through Ally's pictures and “like” a bunch of those, too, even though the sight of her sharing fries and doing makeovers with people who aren't me is more than a little depressing.

On a whim, I check to see if Bri has an account. There are about a zillion Brianna Harrises, though, and I don't have time to look through all the little icons to see if any of them feature light-green eyes behind black-rimmed glasses, framed by red waves. I switch over to Twitter instead, respond to the few tweets from people I actually know, plus a couple from random fans, and then toss my phone into my purse.

My mother's in the kitchen, and I pass through on my way out to give her a peck on the cheek and accept an apple in return. I've told her a million times that I get queasy during yoga if I eat right beforehand, but she's afraid I'll pass out if I don't. As usual, she won that argument, the same way she's been winning every minor battle since she and my father allowed me to go on my first audition when I was a kid, on the condition I prove myself “responsible enough to handle it,” whatever that means. The major fight—to continue on this path or to go to college—is still a quiet, passive-aggressive push-and-pull…for now.

But for all that my parents infuriate me sometimes, I know they love me and want to make sure I'm well taken care of. And if I move out on my own, who knows how long it'll be before I find someone else who'll feel that way about me?

I show up to yoga a few minutes late for the eight o'clock class, my rolled-up mat stabbing me in the butt as I try to let myself into the chokingly hot room
as quietly as possible. Raoul, the teacher, just twitches his nose when he spots me; he's used to me showing up late, even if he's not terribly Zen about it. I roll out my mat and move quickly through the two poses I missed before catching up to everyone else at the tail end of Awkward Pose.

“Calm” isn't exactly the word anyone would use to describe me, but the whole ninety minutes of chill-out time kinda works for me, even if the room is a bajillion degrees. I like having to clear my head of all the drama and obligations that fill it during the week. And as attached as I am to my phone, I'm even kinda glad Raoul would kick my ass if I so much as favorited a tweet under his watch.

So it's pretty unsettling to look up during Standing Bow and see a familiar pair of light-green eyes making contact with mine in the mirror.