“Isla will love them,” I reassure him, and his face brightens. I bend to grab my tote so that we can head to the lobby and hug ourstar musician. It isn’t until I straighten up that I realize the auditorium has gone strangely quiet. Even more unnerving, nearly every set of eyes is fixed pointedly on me.
It feels like that scene in the movieInception, where Ariadne realizes she’s asleep and suddenly everyone in the dream space is staring at her. But instead of looking primed for attack, these faces are twisted into the closest form of sympathy their plastic surgery can muster.What on earth is going on?
The woman to my left, the one who was studying me earlier, leans over and whispers, “I’m so sorry, hon.”
I give her a puzzled smile. I mean, the concert wasn’t the greatest musical performance I’ve ever attended, but it wasn’tthatbad. I don’t think any of us were expecting to hear the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
“It’s all good!” I reassure her. “If anything, I think congratulations are in order.”
She raises a skeptical eyebrow, mumbling something about how I’m a bigger person than she’ll ever be, but nevertheless stands and exits the row.
I take Levi by the hand and follow her, doing my best to ignore the low hum of voices, the whispers that seem pointed in my direction. Self-consciousness starts to creep in. Is this about the cupcakes I made for the third-grade bake sale last week? Because I can make something gluten-free, dairy-free, and nut-free, but I cannot make it also taste good. I’m an actress, not a magician.
But then I reach the auditorium doorway and come face-to-face with Bree Sherman. Naturally. She offers me a sympathetic smile, but I don’t miss the glimmer of delight in her eyes.
“Sooosorry to hear about Rocky and Rayna,” she coos. She reaches out to squeeze my forearm in what I’m sure she believes is an act of condolence.
“Sorry… Rocky and Rayna?” I ask slowly. Confusion washesover me, followed by a sickening certainty that I’m the last person in the room to know something deeply important. This tracks. When it comes to Rocky, I’m often the last to know something deeply important.
Satisfaction flashes across Bree’s face and her lips curl upward. She’s fully in her element right now, a house cat ready to pounce on an unsuspecting mouse. This is, after all, a town that’s built on schadenfreude. The only thing more satisfying than one’s personal success is the impending misfortune of one’s so-called friends. And Bree Sherman loves nothing more than being the bearer of bad news.
“I guess you haven’t checked your phone,” she says. “Here.”
Gleefully, she extends her screen out toward me. A tabloid photo of one of Hollywood’s buzziest couples stares back at me. Silver-screen darling Rayna Stewart is beaming at the camera, her arm wrapped around a man who’s tall, handsome, and in possession of a set of teeth so perfect that the internet is in constant debate about whether they’re veneers (they are). Rayna knows him as her former fiancé, with whom she’s recently reconciled. America knows him as Rocky Ramirez, dashing movie star slash award-winning director. I know him as the father of my children and, as of barely six months ago, my ex-husband.
There’s a pair of siren emojis at the top, bracketing a single word printed in bold, black letters. No, it can’t be. They’ve only been seeing each other again for a few weeks. It doesn’t make sense.
“Yikes!” Bree says, taking in my surely stunned expression. “I guess he didn’t give you a heads-up. What a terrible way to find out your ex is engaged!”
Turns out there is another circle of hell deeper than recorder concerts.
2MARISSA
“Hit me.” I extend my drained wineglass toward Pooja.
My best friend tilts her head and studies me appraisingly. “Hmm. How many glasses have you had?”
“Anywhere between four and forty-seven. Impossible to know for certain.”
Pooja purses her lips. “All right, then. One more can’t hurt.”
She picks up the near-empty bottle of cabernet I received from a director on my twenty-first birthday and have been saving for a special occasion ever since. Having decided that abstaining from a complete mental breakdown (and averting a potential homicide) in front of my daughter’s elementary school class was as good a reason as any for celebration, she and I cracked it open immediately after putting my kids to bed.
Pooja refills my glass, then settles back against the wall of my costume closet. The space is exactly what it sounds like: a treasure trove of the wardrobe pieces I’ve kept from movies I’ve starred in, all artfully organized by the delightful women ofThe Home Edit. Currently, I’m in my Felicia Fox costume, which I put on every time I want to embody the ferocity of a superhero. No matter how bad reality gets, I always feel strong and impenetrable when I slip into it,even if the defined muscles in my biceps are the result of sculpted padding.
“I can’t believe he’s marrying her,” I say, staring morosely into my glass of wine. “They just got back together a few weeks ago.”
“I can’t believe she said yes,” Pooja snorts, and adjusts the spandex sleeve of her own bodysuit. A true ally, she’s also dressed in a Felicia Fox costume, only hers is the slightly altered (read: more cleavage-forward) version from the sequel,Felicia Fox: The Uprising. Why costume designers feel the need to redesign a superhero’s nipples for every movie in the franchise is truly beyond my scope of understanding.
“Rayna already called it off once,” Pooja points out. “Between you, Rocky’s gotten two of Hollywood’s most beautiful and successful women to agree to marry himthrice. What is it about this guy? Is his nutsack filled with magic beans?”
I sigh. “You know how charming he can be.” But admittedly, itiswild that they’ve gotten engaged again. R&R (as they’ve been deemed by the press) were relative unknowns when they met fifteen years ago as costars of a popular YA romance adaptation. Their on-screen chemistry was off the charts and audiences were thrilled when they got engaged shortly after filming wrapped. The wedding was slated to be the event of the decade, until Rocky called things off a week before the big day. No one knows why they broke up. Not even me. Rocky never wanted to talk about it and it wasn’t something I was interested in rehashing.
When we met five years later at aVanity FairOscars party, Rocky had just directed his first movie and solidified his status as Hollywood’s Next Big Thing. Rayna was newly married to the much-older producer of her latest indie project, and I was fresh off filming the third Felicia Fox movie,Felicia Fox: The Return. Rocky and I were friends at first. But eventually, friendship evolved into something more. I got pregnant with Isla and Rocky proposed. In thatorder. I sometimes think about how different things might have been if it weren’t for Isla. Would we still have gotten married? If we didn’t have the kids, would we have stayed together for almost a decade? Then Levi got his diagnosis, and everything changed. After that, I no longer had the capacity to wonder what might have been. The only thing that mattered was what was.
“You’ve always had the worst taste in men,” Pooja laments. “Remember when you spent the entire summer of 1999 pining over Jonathan Tyler Green?” Her nose wrinkles with distaste at the memory of our former-costar-turned-boy-band phenomenon. Pooja and I have been friends since we met at age twelve on the set ofLittle LLC, a television show about a group of kids who formed their own rock band. The show was a first role for several actors who went on to become movie stars, myself included. It was also a breeding ground for teen heartthrobs whose careers peaked atTiger Beatstardom and who now do laxative commercials.
“He had a curtain cut and could play ‘Wonderwall’ on the guitar,” I remind her. “My hands were tied.”
