one
Hollywood can be a real bitch.Grueling hours, judgy people. Even lonely most of the time.
Don’t get me wrong, I wanted this. Dreamt of it practically my whole life. No matter how many acting classes you take, none of them can truly prepare you for how fake this world can truly be.
I slump back against the couch.
A few months ago, I brought an idea up to my agent, something I’ve been thinking about pursuing for the past few years.
“You want towhat?!” Hank Harper barks.
Pinching the bridge of my nose is a valiant effort, but it does nothing to annihilate the migraine creeping up the back of my neck. “Take a break to write and direct. Maybe even produce.”
“Fuck’s sake, Rowan. Please tell me I’d still be your agent.”
“Of course. You’ve been with me since the beginning.”
A heavy sigh makes its way through the phone. “I’ll put out some feelers. See what the studio says and get back to you in a few days.”
“Thanks, man.”
What he’s telling me now has me irritated as fuck.
“The studio would love to make this happen for you,” Hank tells me in his gravely voice. “But they’re saying we need to discuss your image.”
I can practically see him now, pacing his high-rise office in downtown L.A., scratching at his close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard.
“What about it?” I ask, even though I have a pretty good idea where this conversation is headed.
“The execs at Paramount loved your current script. They’re seriously considering you for the director’s chair for a future film, but... there’s a catch.”
Of course. There’s always a catch. “Let me guess,” I sigh. “They’re worried about my fuckboy rep?”
“Bingo. The tabloids have had a field day with you the past few years. A different woman almost every week, sometimes two. Not to mention the incident last month where the paparazzi got shots of you and Carrie Southern coming out of the Chateau Royale at three a.m.”
Carrie is a Victoria’s Secret model I met about a year after I moved to Los Angeles. We’ve never hooked up.
“She’s actually just a friend?—”
“Doesn’t fucking matter,” Hank barks, cutting me off. “You know as well as I do it’s all about perception.” He huffs out a breath. “My point is this: The studio heads want someone reliable behind the camera. Someone stable. Not some fuckboy who gets easily distracted by some hot piece of ass or goes around blowing their budget on parties and getting high.”
“I don’t do drugs,” I mutter, running my hand through my hair.
“Iknow that. Andyouknow that. But perception is reality in this town. They need to see you as director material, not just some hotshot actor who takes his shirt off in most of hismovies.”
Rising from the couch, I trudge over to the floor-to-ceiling windows of my Hollywood Hills home. The view of Los Angeles sprawls out beneath me as a mass of twinkling lights stretching toward the horizon.
Fifteen years of hard work got me to where I am today, and now my reputation as a womanizer might just cost me the one thing I want most.
I should’ve seen this coming.
Already dreading what I know his answer will be, I growl, “Just spit it out, Hank.”
“Clean up your act. No more nightclubs. No more models. No more scandalous photos with random hook-ups. You’re going back to your hometown in a few weeks to scout locations for your next film, right?”
When I brought the script I had written to the studio big wig’s, they loved it. And when they asked where I got the idea, and I told them it’s loosely based on my experiences as a kid, they suggested we film it in my hometown. For authenticity.
My stomach tightens. I haven’t been back to Lakeside since... “Yeah,” I confirm, my voice a hoarse rasp as I shove the vision of a girl with green eyes and black hair out of my mind.
