Dedication
To my parents, Pearl and Arnold Oberweger, for prizing playfulness, culture, intelligence, and family—and for giving me my first typewriter.
I love and miss you every day.
—LO
For my Muses—Donna, Katy, Talia, Bret—with all my gratitude.
—VR
Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Noelle August
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
Grey
Grey, wake up.”
I swim through the blue water, following my leash to my surfboard, wondering why I hear my brother’s voice. Adam sounds pissed. Maybe this dream is going to tip toward a nightmare.
“Get your pathetic ass up!” he yells, and shoves my shoulder.
I move closer to consciousness, and wish I hadn’t. My head feels like a shaken soda can about to explode. I’m drooling, my neck is bent at a painful angle, and my eyes are welded shut.
Adam keeps badgering me to get up. I should face what I’ve done wrong. What have I done wrong? But right now breathing without getting sick is taking my entire focus.
“Is that how you want to do this?” Adam asks.
I listen to him stalk away, then I hear the faucet run in the kitchen before he stalks back. This can’t be good.
“Are you sure?” That’s Ali’s voice—his superhot girlfriend. “You’ll ruin the couch, Adam.”
“Already ruined,” he says.
Forcing my eyes open, I see him standing over me with an ice bucket. I shoot off the couch, but it’s too late. The entire bucket comes down on me. The cold shock stops my heart. Every muscle in my body goes tight.
“What the hell, Adam! What was that for?”
Water drips down my arms and chest and puddles at my feet. I peel off my soaked shirt and drop it in the bucket.
“What was that for,” he repeats. “Is that a serious question, Grey?” He sets the bucket down. “Are you really asking me that?”
In the foggy morning, the living room has a blurred, gauzy look, but my brother’s immune to it. In his tailored sport coat, white-button down, and dark jeans, he looks sharp, like he has his own personal hi-def photo filter. Even his hair, which he’s been wearing longer since he started dating Alison, is styled perfectly. Ali stands beside him in a tight red dress and tan heels. Way hot. Together, they’re like a living Burberry ad, except classier.
“What are you guys doing here?” I’m still trying to make a full adjustment from dead asleep to freezing and awake. “I thought you were coming home Wednesday.” They were in Colorado for a long, long weekend.
“I had to come home early for work,” Adam says. “It’s this crazy thing mature adults do.”
That begs for counter on what “mature adults do,” but this doesn’t feel like the time. “Right.”
“What the hell did you do to your head?”
“Tequila shots. Five, I think.” He’s giving me a funny look, so I reach up and touch bare scalp. “Oh, you mean this. Titus and I shaved our heads last night.”
“Then someone drew on them with Sharpies?” Ali says.
“No, we did that ourselves. We wanted to beat people to it, so we drew skulls on our skulls. Funny . . . Right?”
Ali fights a smile.
Adam looks like he wants to choke me. “No. Not funny. Are you blind? Can you even see what’s happened here?” He gestures around him, at the living room.
Finally, I do start to see.
His house is ridiculously swag. At the end of a private cul-de-sac right on the sand in Malibu, it’s mostly glass, leather, and expensive wood from Bali or Nepal or something. It oozes style, sexiness. It’s the kind of place that’s all over home decorating magazines, and what you’d expect from a guy who starts successful businesses as casually as he drops into a wave on a surfboard. Except his house looks a little different this morning.
A girl in a short black skirt is asleep on the leather chair to my right. Nice legs. A coating of party debris—cups, crushed chips, peanuts, and beer cans—covers the coffee table and floor. Over on the kitchen island, heaps of liquor bottles, beer cans, Solo cups, and—what the hell is that? A person? Okay. Someone’s asleep on the counter. That’s bad.
Floor-to-ceiling windows give me an unobstructed view of the patio, which is crowded with more passed-out people. Four lucky girls took the chaise lounge chairs, and they’re huddled under . . . shit. That’s Adam’s comforter. On the deck, more people, piled up like it’s a refugee camp, and . . . oh, man. Is that homeless-looking dude wearing Adam’s blue Armani?
It’s only then I notice I’m not looking through glass. The door is gone. Just . . . gone.
“What happened to the glass door, Grey?”
In a flash, I remember what happened and cringe. This isn’t going to go well, but honesty’s the only real choice here. “It’s in the trash. We were dancing and it got crowded. The dancing got, um . . . Enthusiastic? And the glass broke. But I cleaned it up. No one got hurt.”
“How would you know, Grey? How could you possibly know that?”
No blood? No police report? No ER visit? Not good answers. Adam’s not waiting around for one, anyway.
He disappears down the hall and comes back a minute later with a shirt, which he throws at me. “Put that on. And pull your goddamn shorts up.”
Whoops. I’m almost giving Alison a look at the family jewels. “Sorry, Ali,” I mutter. I shrug into the shirt and tie the drawstring on my basketball shorts.
Ali gives me a quick smile back. “It’s okay, Grey.”
“Walk.” Adam motions toward the hallway. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
What happens next is a tour of the house, Adam leading, Ali and me following. A damage assessment, basically. There are cups all over the place. Crushed chips. Spills. I mean, the mess is pervasive. It’s everywhere. But there are highlights, for sure.
In Adam’s room, we discover six people asleep on his bed. Four girls, two guys. In his bathtub, which is padded with towels, we find a couple—not so asleep. In my room, there are no people but somehow Adam’s stationary bike is on my bed, which makes me laugh, which is the wrong thing to do, judging by the dark glare my brother gives me.
The weight room looks bad. Another broken window. The theater room looks worse. His fancy TV has some kind of drink splattered down the screen. Or, actually, that could be puke.
Adam sends people home as we move room to room. Ali peels away and comes b
ack with a trash bag. It breaks my heart a little when she starts to pluck cans and cigarette butts off counters and floors.
“Ali, here. Let me do that,” I say, taking the bag. We’re back to the living room now, and everyone is gone. The house is empty except for the three of us.
Adam stands in front of the missing glass door, the Pacific steel-colored behind him. He looks from me to his beautiful girlfriend, who’s picking up party funk in her dress and heels, his expression going through a cycle—exasperation, anger, and disappointment.
And I finally get it. I screwed up. Big time.
“It was just supposed to be the guys in the band,” I say.
It’s the truth. With Adam and Ali gone, I had my band, Welkin, over to practice last night. Which was what we did for a few hours. We sounded amazing; it was one of our best jam sessions to date. Maybe our best.
That’s what got me so fired up—kicking ass. Feeling like something special was happening, like I was born to be the front man of a band—and not just any band. This one. These guys, who’d showed up in my life by accident. A few months back, they lost their original singer to appendicitis for a couple of weeks. I’d only partied with them before, which was how they heard me sing. I was drunk off my ass one night when Titus strummed the opening riff to “L.A. Woman,” just messing around, and the spirit of Jim Morrison possessed me.
Their original singer lost his job that night.
And I became a difference-maker.
Welkin’s a hundred times better with me. And they’ve become my saviors. I was drifting before they came around. I mean, I always knew I could sing. I’ve always loved it. I just never knew I’d love to sing with a band. Because of them, I’ve discovered that I love performing. They’ve given me direction, a dream: land a contract with a record label. And after last night’s practice, I felt unbelievably inspired and positive we’d make it happen. So when Titus, my lead guitarist and best friend, asked if he could invite a few people over for some beers, I said sure. When Shane, our drummer, asked the same thing, I said definitely. How could I say no to Emilio and Reznick?
An hour later, a hundred people, almost all strangers, filled the house. And this morning-after disaster is the result.
Adam shifts his weight. “I don’t care what it was supposed to be, Grey. I don’t give a shit.”
“Adam,” Ali says, her eyes pleading with him to calm down.
He sighs and gives her a small nod back, like, Okay, I hear you.
That actually worries me, the effect she has on him. Ali is the sweetest girl I know. She’s great for my brother. The first girl he’s been serious with in years. But I wonder if she’s moving in, which’ll probably happen soon, if it means I’ll have to move out. I don’t want to move out. He was my brother before he became her boyfriend. I need him more than she does.
Adam slips out of his sport coat and looks for a clean place to set it down. There isn’t one, so he slings it over his shoulder. “You’re paying for all this.”
I knew that was coming. “Okay. I have a gig in about a week—”
“No. You work for me now.”
“What, like, a real job?”
“Yeah, Grey,” he says, sharply. “Like a real job.”
A wave of dizziness rolls through me. What are my options? He lets me live here. He’s always been there for me. Always. And I trashed his place. Completely. I can’t say no.
I adjust my grip on the trash bag in my hands. “Okay. I’ll work for you. But only until this is paid off.”
He rolls his eyes, which I don’t understand. I just told him what he wanted to hear, didn’t I? “Ali, do you mind calling a cleaning service?” he says.
“No problem. I’m on it.”
“I’ve got it, Adam,” I say. “I’ll clean all of this up.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll pay for the cleaning service, because your new boss wants you at work on time. Get your ass in the shower. We leave here in ten minutes.”
I head for my bathroom, sure of one thing. This arrangement? Me working for him? Not a good idea.
Chapter 2
Skyler
Just call me the yes girl, the go-along girl, the one who can be counted on to dive in first, ask questions later.
Tattoo my high school boyfriend’s name on my ankle? Of course. What could go wrong?
Six days at Burning Man with a dude I just met? Sure. It’s an adventure.
But this, I think, as I look in the bathroom mirror, might be my last impulsive hurrah.
Because this morning, I have pink hair.
At first, it scares the pee out of me—like one of those horror movie moments where a girl looks in a mirror, and a completely different person looks back. Luckily, my brain fills in the missing pieces as I lean in and examine my new look, a gift from my best friends Beth and Mia, who talked me into it last night after my million-and-tenth complaint about needing a change.
It’s a change, all right. One in a series initiated over the last six months.
Step one, completed last week: break up with my semi-boyfriend-person Brian, who is absolutely sweet as vanilla but just doesn’t make my strings quiver, if you know what I mean.
Step two, planned for today: take the six months of acting lessons Beth talked me into for a trial run with a real-life audition.
Step three (apparently): pink hair.
I have to admit, the color is somewhere between adorable and alarming, which suits me. Not quite cotton candy, not quite flamingo. It punks up my bob and gives my usual pale skin a rosy glow.
I brush the pink strands back from my face and decide I can live with it—at least for the few weeks it will take to grow out. Unless I get a part in the movie that’s going to make Beth a star. I don’t care what it is; I’ll take “third cocktail server from the left” as long as it pays a few bucks. Anything to keep the lights on and help me get my second cello out of hock.
Beth comes into the bathroom and stands behind me, resting her chin on my shoulder. “What do you think?”
“I’m not sure,” I tell her, mostly to bust her chops. In reality, I’m starting to love it.
“You wanted to do something different,” Beth reminds me. “And you have to stand out from all the other BLTs who’ll show up today.”
“BLTs?”
“Blond, leggy, tan,” she says with a cheesy smile. “You’ll see.”
“Well, I’ll definitely stand out,” I say. “Assuming my acting’s on par with my hair.”
“I’ve seen you,” Beth says. “You’ll get something. They won’t be able to resist your look.”
“Here’s hoping,” I say. “I’ve got until the end of the month before they put Christina up for sale.”
“I told you I’d get her out of hock for you,” Mia says from the next room. The walls are thin as tissue around here, so we don’t even pretend our conversations are private. “Beyonce’s lonely.”
True. My poor acoustic cello’s just standing in a corner of my bedroom, missing its electric buddy. Turns out that a couple of club gigs a week and busking on the streets of LA—a city where no one walks—does not a rich girl make. Christina is the only thing I own that’s worth more than a few bucks, but it slays me to think of her gathering dust in some pawnshop.
On the other hand, there’s no way I’m borrowing more money from Mia or anyone else.
Beth wraps a pink strand around her finger and holds it up to the dark skin of her cheek. “What do you think? Should I go for it too?”
“I think you’re perfect the way you are,” I tell her. And she is. Gorgeous high cheekbones, wide-set brown eyes, perfect glossy black hair—chemically straightened into submission for this role. “You ready for your big day?”
She pushes back the shower curtain and turns on the water. It takes about ten minutes to warm up from tepid to less tepid, but we’re in a drought in California and can’t waste a drop, which means a lot of cold showers. Then she strips out of her t-shirt and underwear and puts o
n a plastic shower cap.
Usually, I’d tease her about how ridiculous she looks, but something in her expression stops me. Something I rarely see there: doubt.
“What’s that look?” I ask.
“What look?”
I wave my hand in front of her face. “That one.”
She climbs into the shower, so her voice comes back to me muffled by two layers of vinyl, which are probably leaching fumes into the tiny bathroom and curdling our brains.
“I’m worried they’re not going to cast me now,” she says. “Lead’s white.”
“Are you kidding me? They’re in love with you! That Brooks can’t stop salivating.”
“Oh, I know. Directors always love me. Everyone does.”
“So, what’s the matter? You’re in, and you know it.”
“I thought so until they cast the guy.”
“Who’s the guy?”
“Garrett Allen.”
“Don’t know him.”
“He did that thing with the magical library, remember?”
I think I do—vaguely. Mia and Beth can deconstruct a film to shrapnel, but usually it’s the soundtrack, more than anything, that stays with me.
“Looks like the guy’s a shoe-in for a Spirit Award this year,” says Beth. “And he’s, like, twenty-four.”
“Well, that’s great,” I say. “It helps the movie, right?”
“Right.”
“And when you get the lead part, that’ll mean even more attention for you too, right?”
No answer.
I poke at the shower curtain, and she yelps. “Right?”
“I really don’t know,” she tells me. “They cast these roles on type. Like who looks good with who. When Jon Ayers was in the lead, I had it nailed. He’s a big guy. Part Hispanic. We had mad chemistry.”
“Well, just go and have mad chemistry with Garrett.”
She snorts.
“What?”
“Nothing. Let’s just say I’m not his type.”
“Well, be his type,” I tell her. “You’re an actor. Anyone who can’t see how beautiful and talented you are is a dumbass, and these guys are not dumbasses.”
“That’s true,” she says, and cuts off the water.
“Who’s not a dumbass?” Mia asks, peeking around the doorway. Her dark curls fill the narrow space like her own personal storm cloud.
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