by Mia Sosa
He stops tossing my orange and blows out a breath that puffs his cheeks.
I snatch my fruit back and motion for him to follow me to the staff room.
“You listened to the show,” he observes behind me.
I give him an of-course-I-did-you-nitwit sneer. “You asked me to, Mason, so I did. And it was an eye-opener.”
When the door to the staff room closes, he reaches for my hand. “It’s not what you think, baby. For whatever reason, people in this town are interested in who I’m dating. I know you hate that part of our relationship, so I was trying to throw them off your scent, so to speak.”
After sidestepping his attempt to touch me, I stare him down. He claims not to know why the local press is interested in his exploits, but he cultivates that interest with the skill of a ten-person public relations firm. Mason’s political aspirations go well beyond his current position as a Philadelphia councilman, a fact I wish I’d known before I began dating him seriously. “So you pretended not to be dating anyone to protect me?”
“Exactly. No need for me to claim you if you hate everything about being claimed.”
Claimed? ¡Mira este hijo de la Gran Puta! Sorry. I’m caught up in the moment. He’s a son of a bitch, is the gist of the point here. The man should come with a warning label: “Manufactured in a facility that processes nuts. May contain traces of asshole.” The more he talks the angrier I am with myself for dating him. How could I have disregarded the obvious? Mason’s career will always come first. “Look, I can’t begin to understand why you thought that was a good idea. Only you know that. But I do know that listening to you dismiss our relationship on air made me realize we’re going nowhere and it’s time for us to move on.”
He licks his pretty lips and massages his neck. “Tori, there’s something here. I know it. We just have to work at it a little, that’s all.”
“And by we, you mean I need to work at it, right? Because for this to work, I should be more comfortable in the public eye.” I use my fingers to tick off the list of helpful suggestions he’s made in the time we’ve dated, which weren’t helpful at all and which I now realize were largely aimed at making me a more marketable version of myself. “For this to work, I should go back to school and get a degree in nutrition counseling. For this to work, I should spend more time than I already do performing community service, preferably with organizations that you care about.”
I’m riled up now, thanks to him. I open my locker and slap my orange on the top shelf. After slamming the door shut, I spin around. “Oh, and let’s not forget that for this to work, I should be able to converse with your constituents about local politics and—”
“Okay, okay. I can see you’re worked up about this in a way I didn’t anticipate.”
I blink at him. “You expected me to be worked up about this?”
He dons a contrite expression. “I was hoping the possibility of losing me would spark something in you, make you want to be with me. Realize what’s at stake if you don’t make more of an effort to grow our relationship.”
This should hurt more, shouldn’t it? I want to be angry, but I’m too tired to care. I’m simply not invested enough in us as a couple to expend any more emotional energy on him. And oh damn, oh damn, oh damn, a small part of my spirit shrivels when I realize Carter’s lie of omission hurt me more than Mason’s machinations. “Mason, you can’t manipulate me into staying with you. You know that’s not how a relationship works.”
I’ve always known Mason wasn’t my great love. I didn’t expect to be with him forever. But he was funny and ambitious and okay, yes, good in bed. And although I was in his life, I was never really a part of it, if that makes any sense. I see now that I approached our relationship like a mediocre book I’d borrowed at the library: I enjoyed it as much as I could before its due date and was willing to return it unfinished without harboring any regrets.
“I think we got caught up in the idea of us,” I tell him.
He laughs, although his eyes are sad. “It’s a great story.”
Holy shit. Look at me. Breaking up with the guy like a boss. “Great idea. Poor execution.” I cover his hand with mine. “It was passable while it lasted, huh?”
Mason throws his head back and laughs. “I’d tell you not to change, but somehow I don’t think that’s necessary. You’ll make the right guy very lucky someday.”
I take his hand and squeeze it. “Take care of yourself.”
“You do the same, Tori.”
He pivots and strolls away, stopping a few times to shake the hands of gym members who recognize him. With Mason, everything’s a performance. Before he descends the stairs, he meets my gaze and gives me a warm smile. As he disappears from view, I take a long, cleansing breath, the weight of our tenuous relationship no longer bringing me down. Unfortunately, Mason’s departure frees me to think about other things, other people.
One person, specifically.
The computer looms in my peripheral vision. I can almost hear it calling me. Tori, come play with me. You know you want to.
It’s post-Aruba day three, and I repeat the mantra that has kept me sane thus far. I will not Google him. I will not Google him. I will not Google him.
But I’m weak. So annoyingly weak. And I can’t help myself. I scramble back to the desk and type in his name. My jaw drops at the images that appear with each click. The man staring back at me is not the man I met in Aruba. Well, he is and he isn’t. Now that I know who he is, I can see that this is a different version of the man who sat next to me on the plane.
I don’t care what Eva thinks. There are a million reasons why I wouldn’t have made the connection. This guy’s hair is fuller, his cheeks are clean-shaven, and he’s about forty pounds heavier.
Take someone out of their natural environment and they’re bound to look different. Happens all the time. Like those optical illusions where a guy playing a banjo is hidden in an elderly woman’s face. At least for me the hidden image is only obvious after someone points it out. Now that I know Carter’s secret, I can see that he’s Carter Stone through and through.
Someone clears his throat, and I look up to find none other than the man whose thumbnail-sized images cover the computer screen like wallpaper. Oh my God. Can’t I get a break today?
He’s still sporting a beard, but it’s neatly trimmed, and he’s thinned out his mustache. His eyes, although as arresting as ever, continue to be surrounded by a supporting cast of dark circles. The royal blue baseball cap he wore on the plane sits atop his head, a small section of hair escaping its hold and falling over his right eye.
Memories from our time in Aruba flash in my head, a montage of funny, ridiculous, and sexy moments that make me long for Carter Williamson’s return. Where’s that guy?
I really don’t know what to do. There’s no guide for dealing with someone who befriended you on vacation and neglected to tell you that he’s a major Hollywood actor. Carter doesn’t owe me anything. The human condition doesn’t guarantee that every person you encounter will be straight with you. But I assumed he was—being straight with me, that is—and knowing I was wrong about that hurts.
And if I’m being honest with myself, I felt small and insignificant, someone he’d decided he could play around with because he had nothing better to do. I don’t know how I’ll react or what I’ll say. I guess I’ll just see how this goes.
“Tori,” he says in a low voice.
“How’d you get in here, Mr. Stone? This is a members-only area.”
Apparently, my brain has decided to activate my all-business mode.
His eyes widen when I greet him by his stage name. “I told them I was interested in touring the facility. Ditched my tour guide in the bathroom, so I don’t have a lot of time. Tori, if I could just have a few minutes?”
I lean to the left, looking beyond him, and am relieved to see my ten o’clock appointment, Maureen Dowling. “Sorry, Mr. Stone. You’ve caught me at a bad time. I have a client to train.”
“Another time, then. I need to explain. And I’d like to try to convince you to give me a second chance.”
I stand and motion for Maureen to begin her warm-up on the treadmill, and then I gather the internal strength to resist him. “Carter . . . Mr. Stone, there’s nothing we really need to say to each other, so don’t bother. We had a fun time in Aruba up until . . . Anyway, I think it’s best if we leave it at that. We’re good. Really.” I give him a full smile to prove my point, but it gets weaker the longer he stares at it.
“Just like that?” he says.
He asked the same question on the beach when I told him I’d get over Mason. Yes, it must be just like that, because if being with my ex was a crash course in dating in the public eye, doing anything with Carter would be like embarking on a PhD in an even more demanding field.
Carter Williamson would have had a shot. Carter Stone most certainly does not. “Yeah, it’s just like that. Like I said, Siempre pa’lante. Nunca patras.”
He swallows hard, as though he’s preparing his vocal cords to speak, but he doesn’t say anything.
His tour guide, a teenager we hired to swipe IDs at the front desk for the summer, skids to a halt by the trainers’ desk. “Mr. Williamson,” he says between pants. “Thought I lost you there.”
Williamson. Is that even his real name? Or is it a fictitious name he uses with unsuspecting women he meets on vacation? It’s a potent reminder that I have no idea what his end game was, and given who he is, I really don’t care to be enlightened.
This man belongs in my past.
“Mr. Williamson was just leaving, Darryl.”
Carter tilts his head at me and presses his lips together before saying, “Take care of yourself, Tori.”
“Yeah,” is all I’m able to muster in response.
Brilliant, Tori. Just brilliant.
What I should have said was, “Have a nice life, Carter, and please, please, please stay out of mine.”
Chapter Thirteen
Carter
“MR. STONE, CAN I get you anything? Is there something you desire?”
The receptionist’s sultry voice pricks the bubble of self-pity surrounding me. C’mon, man, snap the hell out of it. Don’t let Tori’s rejection throw you off your A game. That was yesterday. Today you can change the course of your career.
I sit up in the chair and scan the waiting area of casting director Samantha Bell’s office. Unlike jobs I’ve pitched in the past, this audition doesn’t require that I sit among thirty other hopefuls sizing up the competition before we’re each called in. I’m alone with Bell’s receptionist, who lowered the neckline of her top when I walked in and who bent over to pick up several dropped items in the short time since I arrived.
“Water would be great,” I tell her.
She drops her shoulders and then hitches them up again. “Right.” She rises from her seat, sashays to the small fridge in the corner, and retrieves a bottled water. With a wink and a smile, she hands me an Evian. “There you go.”
I say thank you at the same moment the intercom buzzes.
“Hannah, let Mr. Stone know we’re going to need a little more time,” a raspy voice says.
“Sure,” she replies.
I nod at Hannah to let her know I’m aware of the delay.
Samantha Bell’s reputation precedes her like gym stench. A former actress herself, she delights in crushing people’s dreams. She’s making me wait on purpose. Because power games are very much a thing in the business.
I sigh and pull out the partial script for Swan Song. The story is layered and brutally honest about the flaws of each of its main characters. I would play Alex, a marine stationed in Al-Taqaddum, Iraq, who struggles to set aside his prejudices as he trains Iraqi soldiers for their continuing fight against militant groups. While there, he strikes up a friendship and ultimately falls in love with a widow who sends him letters as part of a military pen-pal program. But she never tells him that she’s twenty-five years his senior or that she’s battling cancer, and the latter half of the film explores their relationship after Alex returns to the United States and as they try to come to grips with their true selves. It’s not a feel-good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a meaty role that will help me escape the rom-com jail in which I’m imprisoned.
Minutes later, after a long buzz from the intercom, Hannah escorts me to the entrance of the audition room.
When I walk in, Samantha lowers her glasses to the bridge of her nose and scans my body. “Mr. Stone, it’s great to meet you. I’m a fan.”
Everyone’s a fan in this business. Just once I’d love for someone to tell me they hate my work and don’t understand why I get paid $50,000 an episode. That shit would be refreshing. “It’s good to meet you, too.”
I set my messenger bag on a chair by the door and wait in the center of the room, a drab gray curtain serving as my background.
Samantha’s sitting at a long steel table. To her left, a man is positioned behind a video camera, while a woman, presumably the casting director’s assistant, is standing next to the cameraman as she peers at the monitor that will display the audition feed. I don’t approach anyone for a handshake because Samantha’s already jotting down notes.
“Did you get the new sides?” she says with her eyes still on the papers on the table.
She changed the lines they expect me to read? Dammit. More games. “I didn’t.”
She turns to her assistant. “Jess, why don’t you get Mr. Stone a copy of the new sides?”
“Sure.” Jess lifts a set of stapled pages off the top of a stack and hands it to me.
“Take a minute to look that over, and then we’ll have Jess read with you,” Samantha says.
“Okay, great.”
Samantha picks up her phone and swipes left so quickly she reminds me of a character in The Matrix.
In the scene she’s selected, Alex, wearing civilian clothing, arrives at Pam’s doorstep after returning from Iraq. It captures the moment Alex meets Pam in person and discovers that she’s ill and that she failed to disclose this to him during their months of correspondence. An image of Tori during our final night together in Aruba flashes through my mind, but I force myself to read the words and get into my character’s head.
After a few minutes, I look up and tell Samantha I’m done reading.
“Do you have any questions about the role or the scene?” she asks.
I lick my lips and tamp down the urge to pace. “No, I think I’d prefer to just get to it.”
She nods, and Jess approaches with her copy of the lines. The advice my first acting coach gave me plays in a loop in my brain: “The papers in your hands should be your only prop. Use the sides to steady your nerves. Tighten your movement to account for the camera taping your audition. Don’t let the reader’s monotonous voice throw you.”
“Ready when you are,” Samantha says.
Jess pretends to open a door. “May I help you?”
I pretend to remove a cap from my head. “Yes, ma’am. I’m looking for Pam Larsen.”
“That’s me,” Jess says with hesitation in her voice.
The rest of the scene takes another three minutes to complete. Samantha asks me to read a few lines at various spots in the script. When I’m done, she writes furiously and ends her note taking by underlining something in hard strokes.
“Thank you, Carter. Let me ask you this. You’ve done pretty well for yourself as a situation comedy actor. Why the switch?”
I retrieve an image of my former agent, Simon Cage, from my mental file drawers. He can be found in the file marked “J for Jackass.” Cage tried to convince me that my best assets were my abs and a wicked sense of comedic timing. He’s wrong on both counts—my ass is killer when I’m properly conditioned, and I can handle more challenging roles just as well as the so-called serious actors in film. I just need the right vehicle to show it, and Swan Song could be it.
“I don’t think of it as a swi
tch, so much as a progression. All actors need to grow. It improves their craft. A role like this has the potential to take my career to the next level, and most importantly, I think I can handle it.”
Samantha angles her head and again scans me from head to toe. “Let’s dispense with the formalities. You’re in the running for the part, and we’d like you to read with Gwen Styles. But there’s a catch.”
There always is.
“I appreciate the effort you made to meet the physical demands of your latest role, but we’re interested in casting the Carter Stone who’s amassed a following among women. Swan Song is a drama, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to include several strategic body shots. Think Alex running on the base in the morning. A bare-chested Alex in bed reading one of Pam’s letters. So we’ll need you to come here with the right look. Think you can regain the weight in a month?”
“Probably not. It took me three months to lose it.”
“I can give you six weeks to show us you’re on the right track.”
“All right. I’ll do what I can.”
Samantha nods, a small smile playing across a face that’s been expressionless so far. “I’m not asking for too much, am I?”
She is, and she knows it. “My only option is to try.”
“Great. I’ll be in touch with your agent about the details. Thanks for coming.”
I’m stunned by her relatively cordial behavior. Although she gave me a semihard time, she’s not the barracuda I expected her to be. Other actors have shared stories of dismal auditions in which Samantha made them cry. I roll up the sides and slap the pages against my thigh. “Thanks for the opportunity.”
With my shoulders high and a smidge of swagger in my step, I stride out of the audition room. I grab another bottle of water from the reception desk and guzzle it.
“How’d it go?” Hannah whispers, leaning forward so there’s no way I miss her impressive cleavage.
