“And somehow our pictures ended up in the magazines anyway.” I smiled tightly. “But I’ve changed with the times.”
He gestured to Felicity and Madison, laughing. “Who are we kidding? We’re dinosaurs compared to these kids.” He threw his arm around my shoulder just as Felicity snapped a photo.
We glanced at her in surprise. “Great shot.” She showed us the picture, which was indeed a great shot, and would be even better once I removed the crow’s-feet from around my eyes. “You guys always were a good-looking couple.”
Cole threw his head back and laughed. “I was never enough for Stella, though,” he taunted. “Was I, baby?”
After the sweetness he’d shown me on set, his words were like a bucket of ice water. And just when I was beginning to imagine that perhaps we could put the past behind us. “I could say the same, I guess,” I snapped.
His smile evaporated before he turned and sauntered away, leaving Felicity and me staring after him. “What the hell was that about?” Felicity asked.
I sighed. “He cheated on me.”
“No surprise there,” she said. “But why turn it around like that?”
“He’s a dick, in case you haven’t noticed.”
She snorted. “Seems like he should be a little nicer to his leading lady if he’s the method actor he claims to be.”
“He doesn’t need to go method on this,” I said, rolling my eyes. “He is Peyton. A capricious artist who can’t stay faithful and needs everyone to love him? Jackson wrote him a role he couldn’t botch.”
Felicity brushed away a piece of hair that had found its way into my eyes. “You okay?” she asked. I nodded. “For someone who’s such a great actress, you’re really a terrible liar,” she breathed.
I watched Madison stand, smiling as Cole approached her perch. She showed him something on her computer and laughed flirtatiously when he made a comment.
I felt just like my character Marguerite, watching her husband hit on the nanny. Only he wasn’t my husband anymore, and our child had never been born.
I forced the thought from my mind and looked over Felicity’s shoulder as she thumbed through the pictures she’d snapped, stopping on one where I had a slight smile. “This is perfect. You look gorgeous.”
It was a beautiful photo, but all I could see was how much I favored my mother. The resemblance was striking. I’d always taken after her, but now I was nearing the age she’d been the last time I saw her, and looking at the picture I realized I’d unwittingly styled my hair exactly like hers had been twenty-two years ago. I shook my head sharply and grabbed the phone. “Don’t post it.”
“Why? But it’s—”
“I look like my mother,” I cut her off. She wrinkled her brow. “What?” I asked.
“It’s just—you’ve never mentioned your mother.”
I sighed. If I couldn’t even talk about these things, how was I supposed to write a memoir? Felicity had encouraged me, said it would be cathartic, not to mention instrumental in showing the world the new me. At least I’d written out the story of how Cole and I met. Though I’d probably have to completely rewrite it so I wouldn’t get sued. Anyway, it wasn’t like I had a deadline. I didn’t even have a publisher. I did want to set the record straight though, and my mother was a subject ripe for the page. “She was my manager,” I said finally. “Until I turned eighteen and discovered she’d spent every dime I’d ever made.”
She nodded with sympathy. “Gotcha.”
I kicked off and pumped my legs, the branch of the tree creaking as I swung. Felicity never pried, bless her. She sensed the subjects I was reluctant to talk about, and never pushed or prodded the way so many people did.
That was one of the strangest things about being famous: everyone felt they owned a piece of you. Your joy and pain were their gossip, to be examined and analyzed like you weren’t a real human with feelings at all, but some kind of fictional character. Everyone had opinions about who you dated, where you went, what you ate and wore—and they had no problem informing you of these opinions while you were in line for an embarrassing medication at the drugstore or in the midst of an intense fight with your partner in the corner booth of an exorbitantly expensive restaurant on Valentine’s Day. You were stalked like prey by paparazzi and vilified for having secrets, as though the public had a right to know everything about you. It was exhausting.
It all rolled off Cole’s back like water off a duck, but I was too sensitive; it was my greatest strength as an actress and my greatest weakness as a star.
There was a time, before the press that had turned me into a star remade me as a pariah, before the film offers dried up and the glowing fan mail turned to vitriolic hate mail, when I’d relished interviews with friendly journalists, photo shoots for glossy magazines, getting all dolled up to walk the red carpet. But I learned the hard way that when you’re on a pedestal, you have a lot farther to fall. And when you’re down, those who once raised you up will be the first to spit on you. At my lowest point, my entire life was picked apart, my every mistake magnified and mocked, my pain warped into madness and reflected back at me from every newsstand, and it broke me.
Most people blamed the paparazzi for how invasive the press had become, but really, those who courted them were equally to blame. I detested influencers with their instantly targetable audience and guaranteed views. They weren’t actors by trade, but they’d become our competition, their quantifiable numbers of fans trumping our years of training
