And if people found out about her before she was ready, her leading lady chances would have been as good as mine. It didn’t matter that people loved her.
“Ward didn’t tell you?” Allison raised an eyebrow.
Ward didn’t…
Oh.Oh.
Thatwas what he hadn’t told me.
I remembered her whispering something in Ward’s ear, and Ward saying later, when I asked, that it felt like a secret. And it was. She’d toldWard, but she hadn’t told me, and he’d kept the secret for her. A practical stranger.
Why did he have to be so perfect?
“No,” I said. “No, he more or less told me it was none of my business.”
Allison laughed. “He’s so sweet. Wheredidyou find him?”
“He really is my best friend,” I said, swallowing past the lump in my throat. “He’s always been like that. He’s the best, kindest man I know.” I licked my lips, and then, “I love him,” slipped out before I could stop myself.
The look on Allison’s face changed. I didn’t want to talk about this, not right before the big, life-changing audition I was supposed to be heading to right now.
I glanced at the watch I’d been wearing since the day Ward gave it to me and saw I was already two minutes late.
“I should go in,” I said. “Big moment.”
“Big moment,” Allison agreed, pushing the door open and gesturing for me to go ahead. “Break a leg.”
* * *
“Please, call me Rita,”Ms. Mayweather said once I’d introduced myself, putting both hands on my shoulders and sizing me up like a horse she was planning to buy.
Other than playing a rancher in a movie once I didn’t actually know shit about horses, but I knew in my heart that this was what they felt like when someone checked their teeth. I was almost surprised she didn’t, the way she looked me over.
“We’re all family here,” she added, which set off an alarm bell or two. She wasn’t a director, but experience told me that directors who said things likewe’re a familymeant they expected us to work until five in the morning without a break for just one more take. And then another, and then another.
“Ryder!”
I craned my neck to see Astrid bouncing her way over, beaming at me.
I couldn’t remember her ever showing up to anything like this before. So itwasbig. Or at least, she thought it was.
It made sense that she’d want to make the most of what I now knew was an introduction to one of the biggest names in casting. She had other clients, after all.
And she’d told me when I was younger and a lot more lost and unsure I’d survive another minute in LA that she never put anyone on her books she didn’t believe in.
I’d had a bit-part in a soap opera within a week. It hadn’t paid as well as just showing up to my delivery shift would have, but it gave me my first taste of what I could do.
Now her faith had paid off.
“You know, the more I look at you, the more stunning you are?” Rita said, finally dropping her hands away from my shoulders. “Those eyes and those freckles, that hair. I’m not letting them put you in a wig for this, you’ll just have to grow it out a little.”
My hand went automatically to my hair, and a memory of Ward murmuring in my ear that I ought to grow it out so he’d have more to hang onto made my face hot. “That’s, umm. That’d be fine,” I said.
Ward would like it.
And maybe I could go home to him when this was done. Between filming sessions. Maybe it didn’t have to be goodbye, if he’d wait for me.
If I was selfish enough to make him wait for me. To leave him alone in the house he’d built to start a family in.
