The Girl Most Likely To

Chapter One

Present Day

There was no such thing as keeping a secret in LA. I wasn’t even referring to the paparazzi, who had no moral objections to sharing unsavory photos of anyone giving off the slightest whiff of fame. I was talking about everyone in my favorite coffee shop, located three blocks away from the FreeStream studio. In the first five minutes of waiting in line, I overheard the writers in front of me talk about the sitcom pilot they were working on. The woman behind me was giving someone a play-by-play of a juicy hookup with an A-list celebrity’s personal trainer.

“Rolf is massive,”

the woman gushed.

“Everywhere?”

Her companion was asking the right questions.

“Ev-er-y-where. It almost didn’t go in.”

The woman sighed like she was still drunk on this man’s dick and proceeded to go on and on and on about his stamina. At this point, it was sounding less like TMI and more like a romance novel. Surely this type of man existed only in fiction.

I continued eavesdropping because whether Rolf was real or not, hearing about him was more entertaining than my life. Dating at thirty-eight was a chore. Half of the time I matched with some guy named Seth who worked in the industry, and once he found out I worked at FreeStream he’d switch from courtship to networking in zero seconds. It wasn’t like I had much to report on the work front either. FreeStream was running on a lean staff after the last round of layoffs, so my days were long. I’d come home only to hop back on my laptop to prepare for the next day.

The woman was still going on about her sexy escapades when it was my turn to order. I was going to miss the ending of her story, but if the trainer was as famous as she claimed, there was a chance I could catch a summary on DeuxMoi. I stepped up to the counter. “I’ll have a regular matcha latte and”—browsing the display of pastries, I pointed at the croissant as big as my face—“I’ll take one of those.”

The coffee shop didn’t have the best croissants in town, but I’d needed more carbs to get through the workday lately.

Lively chatter lowered into feverish whispers when I walked to the other end of the counter to pick up my drink. The shop was frequented by FreeStream employees, and I wouldn’t have blamed them if they were talking shit about me while I stood there.

It had been three days since Variety reported the sale of FreeStream to the media giant America’s Broadcasting Network. From the public’s perspective, it didn’t make sense for any company to want the little unknown streamer that played old B-list movies. ABN had its own streaming services for its extensive catalog. But insiders knew that ABN wanted to reboot a cult classic action franchise about a renegade with a talking motorcycle that FreeStream owned the rights to. Rather than dealing with the process of securing the rights for one series, ABN bought FreeStream outright in case it wanted to stomp on any more of my favorite childhood shows.

In the press release, ABN assured viewers that there would be no interruption to their FreeStream experience and that it would continue to provide quality entertainment. But I knew better. I’d been at FreeStream since its inception eleven years ago. I considered myself an industry veteran, and I’d seen that every time a merger happened, restructuring was inevitable.

Since I was part of the team that worked on the deal, I was a target for everyone’s hate. I wanted to shout at them that I’d come into this business because I loved TV and film, but once you’re labeled a heartless traitor, no one believes anything you say. So I waited for my drink in silence.

“That’s not what I heard.”

I immediately recognized the voice of Tara Klein, the executive assistant to FreeStream’s CEO, Martin Carr. I peered over my shoulder and located the back of Tara’s brunette head. She seemed to be talking to herself until I spotted her white earbuds. She was at the drink station, swirling her beverage with a wooden stirrer. “The announcement’s going out today, and you know who’s going to deal with Marty’s angry emails? Me.”

I turned my head, pointing my ear toward Tara like a satellite. Whatever she was about to say, I wanted it to transmit nice and clear. I was morbidly curious about how they were going to “streamline”

the workflow when our company was already short-staffed. Our primary audience was older than the coveted eighteen-to-thirty-four advertising demographic, so we weren’t rolling in cash like the power players in the streaming space.

“It’s going to be bad,”

Tara said as she snapped the lid back on her drink. “I heard Marty say half.”

The barista had to wave me down. I didn’t hear him call my name for my drink. The word “half”

overtook my brain. “Half”

could refer to anything. Half of our budget? Half of the staff? Neither was good. Both would have devastating impacts. By the time I recovered, Tara had walked out of the coffee shop before I could hear the rest of her conversation.

I grabbed my drink and hurried to my car, which, of all days, I’d parked two blocks away on a narrow neighborhood street. While I’d lived in LA for over a decade, I was never brave enough to parallel park on Sunset Boulevard. Not that the neighborhood street was much better. When both sides of the curb were lined with cars, there was room only for one car to go through in either direction. Driving in LA was like a game of luck. One day you could find street parking with time still left on the meter. Another day you were sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on a five-lane freeway, reliving every mistake you ever made in your life.

Today I was going to need all the luck I could get.

I refreshed my email. Five seconds later, I refreshed it again.

“I wouldn’t be worried if I were you.”

Zoe, my assistant, plopped onto the small sofa in the corner of my office. “You know how it is. It’s always the assistants and entry-level folks on the chopping block.”

I didn’t argue with her in case I got to keep my job. It’d be insensitive of me when she was right. Her job was more at risk than mine. I’d put in the time to oversee FreeStream’s global business development. I was proud to have climbed up the ranks in my department. I worked hard for it because I was under the impression it would give me a seat at the table to take our fledgling channel to broader audiences. Now that FreeStream was folded into ABN, with its wide audience reach, there was no longer a need for me. I’d become another redundant cog in the big entertainment machine.

How did this happen? I used to be such a go-getter, but somewhere along the line I’d become complacent. I still liked bringing old TV shows and movies into FreeStream and giving them new life with a new audience. But as the years ticked by, the job was less about the movies and more about needing to keep a roof over my head amid skyrocketing rent. But who was I to complain when people came from all over the world to break into this cutthroat business? I was lucky to have gotten my foot in the door and to have a job that gave me a steady paycheck.

A notification chimed on my desktop. It was a mass email from Martin Carr, thanking me (and a slew of other employees) for my service, which was unfortunately no longer needed. As such, I was to vacate the building within the hour.

I shut my eyes and rested my forehead on my desk one last fucking time. I gave this place eleven prime years of my life only for it to end with a generic email. I’d received more personal emails from scammers trying to phish my password. Martin could’ve stepped up and shown his face over Zoom while he upended the future of hundreds of people. This fake apologetic email was a disgrace.

It was so hard to contain the overwhelming mix of disappointment and worry as I felt Zoe’s sympathetic eyes on me. She had access to my inbox. She knew.

“Sorry, Rach.”

Zoe handed me a box of tissues, but I refused it. I wasn’t going to give FreeStream my tears.

“What about you?” I asked.

“I got the email too,”

Zoe said with a shrug. She was handling the news much better than me.

“I’m sorry, Zoe. If you ever need a recommendation—”

“I’m fine,”

she said, dumping a ream of paper and a tape dispenser into a filing box. “I was going to call out next week for auditions anyway. This saved me the trouble.”

I sat up and kept a straight face. Zoe was twenty-four. She had a bright future ahead of her. I didn’t want to infect her with my jaded outlook. I pulled every drawer in my desk open, searching for my badge and key ring. Most of the facilities at FreeStream required key-card access, but not the golf cart.

“Do you want me to get you a box?”

Zoe was too good to me. She had no obligation to me anymore, but here she was, helping me off this sinking ship.

“No thanks,”

I replied. I double-clicked the company shared drive to check for any loose ends to tie up. Sure enough, I was denied access. Damn, that was fast. To think that I once thought of FreeStream as my second home. How foolish of me. If FreeStream was kicking me out, then they didn’t deserve any more of my labor. But I still had time before I had to leave the premises, so I was going to make the most of it. That included one last, fuck-you joyride.

I fired up the golf cart and zipped through the parking lot, yelling out my frustration. I must’ve been delirious, because a part of me felt relief, even though my professional life had effectively combusted. And yet there was something about the wind in my hair and the warm sun on my skin that made me feel invincible.

I pulled up to the soundstage with a screech. They weren’t filming, so I let myself in. Nat was in her chair—the one with her name on it—reviewing lines. As the star of Beyond the Dark, FreeStream’s only scripted show, Nat played Commander Justina Tan, the tough-talking leader on an intergalactic mission with a team of international scientists in search of other life-forms. It read like a Star Trek rip-off, but it was a workplace comedy.

I made a pit stop at craft services and swiped a drink.

“I have your green juice, Miss Natalie Huang,”

I said, twisting off the cap before I presented it to her.

“You haven’t lost your touch from your PA days,”

Nat teased as she happily accepted the bottle and took a sip. “What brings you on set? Are you on your afternoon walk?”

Nat laid on her dramatic actress voice, which she had even back when she was a budding starlet in our high school’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire. It was funnier hearing it now while Nat sported a serious ponytail and skintight space suit.

“No. I came to tell you that I was laid off.”

“Shut up.”

Nat put her script to the side as she stood and gave me a hug. “Those assholes.”

“I should’ve seen it coming.”

The writing was on the wall, but surviving previous rounds of layoffs had made me arrogant. “I should’ve looked for another job months ago.”

“Are you going to be okay?”

Nat let me go as she asked that loaded question.

I didn’t have a good answer. Emotionally, I was a wreck. Financially, I was going to be okay. The severance package along with my savings should keep me afloat for the next few months while I figured things out. All I could do was shrug. “I think so.”

“So, what are you going to do now that you have time on your hands?”

“I don’t know. Whatever I want.”

It came out sounding like a question. Nothing in my life, not even the words coming out of my mouth, was certain.

“Like what?”

Nat asked.

How would I know? I was laid off only a few minutes ago. Her guess was as good as mine.

“Maybe I can pick up a hobby.”

I didn’t have a routine to follow or a boss to answer to anymore. I was up for trying something new. I ran through a list of things I’d been meaning to do but never had time for. “At the café, I saw a flyer for a beach boot camp class in Santa Monica. Or I could finally clean out my closet and update my wardrobe. I hear Y2K fashion is back in style.”

Nat sipped her juice with a sour face, possibly because the juice contained a whole head of kale. “No offense, but what the hell are you talking about? The only cardio I’ve seen you do was chase after that extra because you thought he was Daniel Henney, and sorry, but you can’t pull off Y2K fashion. You didn’t pull it off when it was trendy the first time around, and you’re not ironic enough to get away with it now.”

Ouch. “Remind me why you’re my best friend again.”

“Because I always tell you the truth and I pay for half of our rent.”

Right. There was that. I was thirty-eight and still had a roommate who was spot-on about my lack of fashion sense. Hollywood glamour never rubbed off on me.

“You know, I just lost my job. You should be comforting me.”

Nat gave me a single conciliatory squeeze on the shoulder. “That’s it?”

“I don’t see you bawling your eyes out, so yeah. That’s all you get.”

I didn’t push Nat for more sympathy. People used to say I was determined, but I didn’t hold a candle to Nat. She used to go on audition after audition, getting rejected left and right. I didn’t know how she withstood the relentless punishment, but she wouldn’t be here as the lead of her own show if she hadn’t picked herself up and tried time and time again. “Does this mean you’re free?”

“Well, since you shot down my ideas, my schedule is wide open. Why?”

“I have some long shoots coming up, and I can’t keep up with my email.”

Nat motioned for me to come closer and lowered her voice. “Remember that indie I shot two years ago? The heist movie where I played a pickpocket with a heart of gold?”

“How could I forget? I couldn’t find my wallet or phone when you were rehearsing.”

“Well, it’s going to premiere at South by Southwest!”

Nat threw her hands up and shrieked as loud as a mouse.

I screamed for real, which drew dirty looks from the crew. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

Nat lowered her hands, motioning me to quiet down. “I don’t know exactly when it’ll be announced, but I think it’ll be soon. My team has been sending me emails left and right about arrangements and stylists, and I don’t have time to deal with it. I could really use a personal assistant for the next month or so. I’d pay, of course.”

Well, what do you know? I guess I did have a job lined up after all.

Nat made this sound like a temporary, mutually beneficial arrangement, but if we were being honest, Nat wasn’t the most organized person in the world. I’ve had to remind her to pay her bills, and I regularly cleaned expired food out of the fridge. I was already like her personal assistant, only this job would make it more official.

“I hope it wasn’t weird to ask,”

Nat said when I didn’t reply right away. “I don’t have the time to vet an assistant, and it’s nothing you haven’t handled before.”

Nat held up her juice to make her point. “You already know my drink order.”

“It’s true.”

If there was anything I felt confident about, it was Nat’s inexplicable love of kale. Everything else in my life was up in the air.

Getting laid off was a hard pill to swallow. In my eleven years at FreeStream, I was a manager for only one. I had finally gotten into the groove of my role when the merger threw a wrench into my foreseeable future. But if life was going to deal me this shitty hand, then what the hell. Maybe it was about time I figured out who I was without a job dictating my calendar.

“You’re taking the layoff a little too well,”

Nat commented as she gave me another once-over. “Is there something you’re not telling me? Do you have something in the works?”

“I don’t.”

For once in my life, I didn’t have a plan, not even a backup one. I’d never needed one before. “This could be good for me,”

I said, though I didn’t fully believe it myself yet. “I can take it slow before jumping into the next thing.”

Nat shot me a skeptical glance as she took a long sip of her drink. “If I didn’t know you any better, I’d think that was a cry for help. You’re always three steps ahead of other people.”

“What? I can’t try on something new?”

Nat acted like I was going off the grid or getting into crypto. I was only taking some time off. It would do me some good, or so I’d heard. I’d jump back into work when I was refreshed and ready. I could get a massage or whatever it was that people did to get some R&R these days.

“If this is your way of saying you want to become an actress—”

I rolled my eyes at Nat’s suggestion. I’d dipped my toe in acting when I was an extra, but it wasn’t for me. On camera, I was stiff as a board, and I didn’t have the stomach to withstand the comments about my appearance. When it came to rejection and unsolicited feedback, I had to give Nat credit. She was tough as nails.

“Excuse me, Natalie.”

Marcus Gray, the young Black actor who played genius astrophysicist Dr. Caleb Rhodes, threw a thumb over his shoulder. “We’re being called to set. Sorry . . . ,”

he said to me as he walked away, stretching the word because he didn’t remember my name. That was fine. We’d only met once or twice before. I didn’t care. I was busy eating up his British accent.

“How come you’re never that starstruck with me?”

Nat asked.

“I don’t get starstruck,”

I said evenly. Not unless it was Keanu Reeves or Michelle Yeoh, who once made eye contact with me at a Women in Hollywood gala and my knees turned to jelly. I took that as a sign from the universe that I was supposed to kneel before my queen. “I was looking the normal amount.”

As normal as it can be when you’re surrounded by an insanely attractive cast.

“There’s nothing wrong with looking,”

Nat agreed. “If you’re feeling shy, I can ask Marcus if he’s willing to take a selfie with you.”

Shy, my ass. Nat was saying that to get on my nerves. I’d learned quickly that I had to put myself out there to get ahead in my career. When it came to dating, though, I couldn’t argue. I hadn’t cracked the code to that part of my life, so I had to admit I’d been reserved.

Nat left to take her mark. The director made a last call to quiet the set. I scurried out of the studio before I was locked in. I still had a desk to clean out before I started the new phase in my life: funemployment.

February 2003

xxaznxbbxgrlxx: did you like the movie? I thought it was cute.

SuperxSaiyan85: we should’ve watched Cradle 2 The Grave.

xxaznxbbxgrlxx: i checked moviefone. The showtimes were way too late.

xxaznxbbxgrlxx: I love Jet Li but you can tell that movie had no plot.

SuperxSaiyan85: oh was that why we watched a romcom? For the plot? It should’ve been called how to lose a guy in 1 day.

SuperxSaiyan85: I’m picking the next movie.

Whenever that would be. There were only three more months before our AP tests.

xxaznxbbxgrlxx: hey. Are you going to show up to tutoring tomorrow?

SuperxSaiyan85: i can’t. My manager scheduled me every day this week.

I don’t know why I expected Danny to answer differently. Knowing the face behind the screen name didn’t change his situation.

xxaznxbbxgrlxx: the job at the mall?

Nat heard from a friend in Drama Club that they saw Danny at one of those kiosks in the middle of the walkway that sold keychains and accessories.

SuperxSaiyan85: yeah

xxaznxbbxgrlxx: does your manager let you study when it’s slow?

SuperxSaiyan85: my manager wouldn’t know. I’m usually there by myself.

Even better. What was stopping him from maximizing his downtime?

xxaznxbbxgrlxx: I can drop off my notes after I study or you can call me if you have questions

SuperxSaiyan85: you don’t have to.

I wasn’t sure why he was refusing my help. He’d complained to me once about how his transcripts were from a hodgepodge mix of schools, how he performed better at some schools than others so his grades came out average. I remembered the day he told me because I connected to that feeling of being so much more than what a piece of paper said about me.

xxaznxbbxgrlxx: It’s my job to tutor you. You need to get a good grade so I can look good.

SuperxSaiyan85: you look good anyway

As soon as I finished reading that message, Danny sent more in quick succession.

SuperxSaiyan85: you’re going to be a valedictorian

SuperxSaiyan85: you’re probably going to get into all the UCs you applied to

SuperxSaiyan85: and all the backup schools

SuperxSaiyan85: and if you get the Merit Scholarship, you’ll end up at Berkeley

xxaznxbbxgrlxx: when

SuperxSaiyan85: when? This fall?

xxaznxbbxgrlxx: you mean *when* I win the Merit Scholarship

SuperxSaiyan85: lol you’re so cocky Rachel