Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
S unny handed the keys to her Mercedes to a valet standing in front of her parents’ Bel Air mansion. Cars lined the long driveway, and a few vans parked on the side lawn. “Is there a party?”
“Nah, just setting up for tomorrow’s filming.” The kid winked at her and slid into the driver’s seat.
“Filming?” She handed him the last couple of bucks from her wallet and snatched her suitcase out of the back seat before he drove off, leaving a cloud of desert dust behind on the pristine circle drive.
She trudged past the tinkling three-tiered fountain and up the steps. Without knocking, she pushed open the heavy carved-wood door, bumping a guy in a black T-shirt and jeans standing just inside, unspooling cable.
“Sorry—”
“Susan! There you are.” The cloud of Chanel No. 5 reached her a second before her mother’s gym-sculpted arms encircled her shoulders.
“Mom, what’s going on?” She dropped her suitcase on the marble tile in the foyer.
“It’s for the show,” her mother said, raising her eyebrows like it wasn’t odd that strangers traipsed through the house with camera bags, lighting kits, and miles of cable.
“Our house is one of the sets?”
“Our house is the set, silly. Where else would a show about the Lafortunes take place?” She stepped back and pursed her lips. “You look terrible, Susan.”
Sunny wiped under her eyes to clear away the flaked-off mascara. “Sorry, I—driving into the sun, you know.” She wasn’t about to unburden her broken heart in front of all these people.
Her mother pinched Sunny’s chin between two manicured fingernails and tilted her head to the left, then the right. “You look older than twenty-three.”
“Twenty-three? I’m twenty-seven!”
“That can’t be right.” Gwen Lafortune released her chin. “I’m only forty-five.”
“You’re—” Sunny clamped her mouth shut. Growing up, it had been a joke that her mother was perpetually thirty-five. Had she actually lost track of her own age?
“Rey!” Mom raised her hand in an elegant wave, and a young woman with a perfect cat eye and a makeup train case scurried up. “Make her look eighteen.”
“Eighteen?” Sunny and Rey gasped it at the same time.
Gwen Lafortune flounced off, her perfume lingering behind.
“Come on,” Rey said, her sharply lined lips set in a grim line. “I need better light for this.”
Half an hour later, Sunny emerged from the first-floor powder room, her face stiff from the layers of foundation and makeup Rey had applied to make her look dewy.
“There you are, Susan.” This time, it was her dad. A spray-tanned man with a thick shock of white hair stood next to him. “Meet Argus Sanderson, the showrunner.”
Showtime. Sunny drew herself up and stuck out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Sanderson. Please, call me Sunny.”
“Hello, Sunny. Call me Argus. Rey!”
Rey emerged from the bathroom, her train case repacked. Her head snapped up at the showrunner’s summons. “Yes, Argus?”
“She needs more dramatic makeup. Vampy. Sunny is playing the bad girl.”
“About that. What, exactly, am I auditioning for?” Did Argus mean she’d already gotten the part?
Her father patted her shoulder. “We’ll see you when you’re out of makeup.” He and Argus turned, stepped over a snaking cable, and walked toward the kitchen.
“Vampy.” Sunny shrugged.
“More eyeliner and a dark-red lip,” Rey said.
Twenty minutes later, Sunny reemerged from the bathroom. Rey had teased her hair into a cloud around her head. Her eyelids were heavy from the layers of mascara, and her eyes burned.
Her mother scurried toward her. She’d changed into a white pantsuit with a black bustier underneath. Sunny tried not to hunch her shoulders. She wished her boobs looked as good as her mother’s.
“What’s all this?” Mom pointed a French-tipped nail at Sunny’s face. “Now you look thirty. At least. Scrub all that?—”
“No time, Gwen.” Gene Lafortune threw an arm over Sunny’s shoulder, and she breathed in her father’s familiar cedar cologne. “Argus needs to brief us.”
Finally, Sunny could get off the merry-go-round of confusion and figure out what was going on. She slipped an arm around her dad’s waist. “It’s good to see you, Dad.”
Her father didn’t break stride. “I’m glad you made it. We were worried.”
Happy fizzes filled her chest. No matter what Gabe and Cata said, she’d been right to trek across the country to answer her parents’ call. They’d worried about her. And now all three Lafortunes were together again. They’d be a real family.
“Remember,” her father said, “this is a fantastic opportunity for you to rebrand yourself. Make people forget what you did in New York.”
Her stomach dropped with the reminder. “I’m really sorry about that. I hope you didn’t get any blowback from it.”
He chuckled, but it sounded forced. “Don’t worry about me. My reputation can handle it.”
Sunny’s reputation couldn’t. She needed this project.
She let her father guide her past the busy living room, through the main wing, where a few techs were setting up lights in her mother’s bedroom, and finally into the housekeeper’s suite.
Sunny had spent so many evenings in that room while her parents had been on various sets. When Nadia had been their housekeeper, she’d come in here after school to do her homework, to run lines from her latest play, or just to talk. But Nadia had left them when Sunny went off to college. Maybe she’d been lonely, too.
It didn’t smell like the orange-scented furniture polish Nadia used anymore. The room was barren, containing only a bed with a navy comforter and a pair of coordinated plaid wing chairs. No photos lined the dresser.
Most important, there were no cameras in this room.
Her father released her and stepped back. “This is a great opportunity for you and for all of us to refresh the Lafortune family brand. Remember this.”
“Okay.” Sunny scrunched her eyebrows, then relaxed them. Had she creased her makeup? “Can you tell me more about the project? What’s my role?”
Argus paraded into the room with her mother. “Just waiting on Kai and Bryce,” he said.
“Who are they?” Producers, perhaps?
“The rest of the cast.” Argus turned to survey the pair of techs outside the window as they wrestled with a massive lighting reflector.
Sunny turned to Gene. “While we wait?—”
“Yeah, yeah. Gotta go. Love you.” An impossibly tall, impossibly broad guy with sun-kissed skin, wavy dark hair, and dark, soulful eyes shoved his phone into the back pocket of jeans so worn, frayed, and tight they were in danger of exploding off his muscular thighs.
“Kai.” Argus nudged Sunny forward. “Meet Sunny.”
“Hey.” He held out his hand, and Sunny let it envelop hers. He was built like Gabe, though with more muscles. And she bet Gabe’s skin tanned as well in the summer. His eyes were the same rich brown color. But he was all wrong. He smelled like cologne and not fresh air and motor oil. He winked. Something Gabe would never do. “Looking forward to working with you.”
She had to stop thinking about Gabe. In the end, he’d rejected her, too. That part of her life was over. “What role are you playing?”
He grinned, showing blindingly white, straight teeth. “I’m your boyfriend.”
“My…what?”
Argus clasped her shoulder and one of Kai’s. His thin hand didn’t go all the way around Kai’s massive deltoid. “Market research said your character would be more popular in a relationship. At least at first.”
Right. Her character. “Maybe you can tell me a little more about the project.” Like, did she already have the part? She hadn’t auditioned yet, and even her family name had never gotten her past that hurdle.
Argus rubbed his hands together. “As soon as Bryce gets here.”
Sunny hoped Bryce had some answers.
Her father had settled into one of the wing chairs, and her mother fluttered nearby like a well-toned moth in her white suit.
Sunny remained next to Kai. He seemed to know what was going on. “Mom, Dad, maybe you could prep me a little.”
“This will be good for all our careers,” Mom said. “Though, Gene, really, who’s going to believe her as my daughter? She looks so old.”
“But I am your daughter.” Was Sunny dreaming? Had she fallen asleep at the wheel and drifted into a ditch, and this was one of those coma dreams? Or maybe she was still snuggled warm in bed with Gabe, and they hadn’t fought, and she hadn’t stormed out of their hotel room.
No, from the ache in her heart, that had been all too real.
“Here’s Bryce.”
Sunny turned and saw a blond guy who couldn’t have been older than eighteen. His light-blue T-shirt matched his eyes and skimmed rangy muscle tapering down to a vee at his hips. His jeans weren’t as tight as Kai’s, and his thighs weren’t as muscular, but he looked like a centerfold in a teen magazine. Fifteen years ago, Sunny and her friends would have drooled over him.
“Okay.” Argus clapped his hands. “Now that we’re all here, let’s set the stage. Gwen, please.” He indicated the second wing chair.
Pursing her lips, Sunny’s mother perched at the edge. Sunny could tell she was trying to minimize creases in her white suit pants.
“You two are the loving, doting parents. Obviously, Gene will be in and out due to his filming schedule. But, Gwen, you are the matriarch. You’ll hold everything together at the center.”
Matriarch? Sunny almost snorted. Did a family of three have a matriarch?
“Sunny,” Argus barked, “you’re the bad girl. Do you know how to drive a motorcycle?”
“Um. No?”
“You have a sports car? Or a convertible, at least?”
“I drive my grandma’s old Mercedes. But what does that have to do with anything?”
“The production can rent something appropriate,” her father said.
“Dad, I still don’t follow.”
Argus frowned at her father. “Gene, didn’t you explain all this to her?”
“I must have. Didn’t I?” His rugged brow lowered when he looked at Sunny.
She cringed. She’d screw this up if she made him look bad in front of Argus. “I’m sure you did, but maybe explain it to me again?”
His lips pursed before he let out a humorless chuckle. “That’s our Susan. Beautiful, but not the brightest bulb in the box.”
Heat washed up from her chest and set her face on fire. Tittering, she fell into the tired, old role. “That’s me. So what’s going on?”
Argus rubbed his chin and squinted one eye at her. “Maybe we should go for a Jessica Simpson vibe instead of Kim Kardashian.”
Her father said, “Your mother’s been on a bit of a…hiatus from acting. So when Argus approached us about doing a reality television show, we agreed. It’ll get her name back out there. The Lafortunes will create demand for more Gwen Lafortune films.”
“A…reality show?” Her parents were film stars, not television. And they’d always sneered about people who let TV crews poke around in their private lives. Their marriage would never hold up under the glare of the TV lights.
“It worked for the Kardashians. And the Osbornes,” her mother said.
“So my role is just acting like myself?” She blinked hard to unstick her left eyelashes.
“Think of it as a persona. A heightened version of yourself.” Argus raised jazz hands into the air.
The pieces snapped into place. “The heightened Sunny Lafortune is a bad girl. With a boyfriend.” She gestured at Kai. “Can I still go to auditions?”
Argus scratched his jaw. “We were planning to spend a few episodes establishing the characters and their lives at home. But I think mid-season, we could plan an arc where you decide to follow in your parents’ footsteps and go to an audition.”
“Decide to follow…? But I’m already an actress.”
“Susan.” Her father stood and stepped in close, laying a manicured hand on her shoulder. “This show is a vehicle for your mother. We’re all side characters here. We can figure out a way to get you an audition off camera, if that’s what you decide to do.”
“Of course, of course.” Argus’s voice boomed through the small room. “We can worry about that later. Now, let’s all sit down and talk through the script.”
Her father waited until Sunny met his gaze. He gave her a slight nod, and she knew what it meant. This show was important to him and her mother. She was a Lafortune, and she needed to go along. They were family. She returned his nod.
Sunny squeezed onto the edge of the bed between Kai and Bryce.
When everyone had taken a seat, Argus said, “The first episode will center on Gene and Gwen’s reaction to Susan’s return from New York.” He chuckled. “I wish someone had thought to film your outburst on New York Bomb Squad. But we have a few eyewitness accounts that will help set the scene.”
“You—what?” If they made public what Sunny had done, she’d never get another audition, not in Los Angeles, not in Toronto, not in flipping Timbuktu. Heat rushed again to her cheeks.
“All part of your persona. We can fit in a redemption arc if we get a second season.” Argus flipped his hand like her reputation was nothing.
Her father gave her an almost imperceptible headshake like he knew how much she wanted to resist. To stand up for herself this time. She clenched her fists next to her thighs.
“So am I her New York boyfriend or her LA boyfriend?” Kai scrunched his brow.
“You dated in New York, and now you’ve come back to LA with her. It’ll give you an excuse to move in here.”
“Move in?” Sunny’s voice went squeaky. “Like, with me? Into my room?”
“Exactly.” Argus smiled at her for the first time, like he was proud of her for finally catching on.
“But I’m…but we’re…” Sunny’s throat closed. She’d left Gabe’s bed only that morning. And now they expected her to jump into bed with Kai.
“It’s just a role, Susan,” her mother’s voice was thin, waspish. “What am I doing while we’re centered on her?”
Argus turned his back on her to reassure her mother, and thoughts crowded into Sunny’s head. What would Gabe think when he saw it? And what about Mary? They’d think it was real. Perhaps even that she’d been dating Kai all along. That she’d led Gabe on. They’d hate her.
She unfisted her hand and stared at her palm like she could see the invisible marks of Gabe’s kisses. They might not be together any longer, but part of her—hell, maybe all of her—still belonged to him.
She looked up to say something, she didn’t know what, and found her father watching her. He nodded at her again.
Right. She was an actress. Her father had kissed dozens of women who weren’t her mother in his various roles. Her mother had kissed dozens of men. It meant nothing. They were still together. In name, anyway, if not in spirit.
Though she’d never seen her father look at her mother or any of his on-screen love interests the way Gabe had looked at her.
“Right.” Argus clapped his hands again like there were more than six people in the room. “We’ll start with Sunny and Kai walking up the front steps and through into the living room, where Gene, Gwen, and Bryce will already be seated?—”
“Wait. Who’s Bryce?”
Argus’s nostrils flared with impatience. “He’s your brother.”
* * *
Now she knew she was dreaming. “My brother.”
“The focus groups preferred a show with two children. And Bryce appeals to the 18 to 24 age bracket, particularly among females,” Argus said.
“But he’s not a Lafortune. Don’t people know how many of us there are?”
“We have a backstory prepared if it’s needed. But Gene and Gwen’s private lives have been out of the spotlight for a few years. If we present him as part of the family, viewers will accept him.”
“Mom, Dad.” Sunny couldn’t be the only one who thought this was insane. “Did you know about this?”
“I approved it. The viewers want what they want. Besides, I always wanted a boy.” Her mother smiled fondly at Bryce, the way she hadn’t smiled at Sunny since she’d come home. The way she couldn’t remember her mother ever smiling at her.
He blew Gwen a kiss.
“No.” The word burst out of Sunny.
“Hey.” Kai rubbed a circle on her back. “It’s okay. We’re all just playing our parts here.”
“No!” Sunny jumped up. “I came all this way. For you. I left Gabe in Vegas so I could come here.”
Gene stood and flashed a smile at the three other men. “Excuse us, gentlemen. We need a few minutes with Susan.” He took Gwen’s hand, then guided her and Sunny into the housekeeper’s bathroom. He flicked on the light and shut the door. The room wasn’t much bigger than the interior of Sunny’s Mercedes. Her mother leaned a hip on the vanity. Gene stood in front of the door, hands on his hips. Sunny took the remaining spot on the bathmat in front of the tub.
He crossed his arms. “Who’s Gabe?”
Sunny rubbed the flare of pain in her chest. “It doesn’t matter now. I gave him up. I thought you needed me. That I could finally win your affection.”
“Our affection?” Her father’s eyebrows tried to rise. Failed. “We love you.”
“Do you know I spent more time in here than I ever did in either of your rooms?”
“In the housekeeper’s bathroom?” Gwen asked. Her forehead couldn’t frown anymore, but her lips pursed.
“In her room. Nadia cared about me.”
“We care about you.” Her father put his hands on his hips. “We all went skiing together last Christmas.”
“I spent last Christmas with my friend Cata in Columbus. I haven’t been skiing with you since I was in college.” Even then, her parents had stayed inside the lodge, signing autographs and being worshiped by their fans, while Sunny had hit the slopes. She’d made some friends, and it hadn’t been awful, but it hadn’t been the family vacation they’d promised.
Did her parents know what a family was? What Gabe had with his adoptive parents and what he’d already started to build with the Forzas? Or did they only know how to play one on film?
“Oh.” Gene drummed his fingers over his mouth. “Who did we take skiing over Christmas?”
“Your costar from I’ll Die Tomorrow. She’s about Susan’s age.” Gwen stared into the mirror and smoothed a line beside her mouth.
“Ah. Right.”
“It doesn’t matter, Dad. It wasn’t me. I was never part of your lives. I was only ever a—a prop.” Her voice broke on the last word. She cleared her throat. “Like Bryce and Kai.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’re our daughter.”
“But I was never a priority for you. Not like your work.”
“Our work made all this possible.” Gene gestured at the tiny, outdated bathroom. “Well, not all this, but the house. The vacations. That big party on your sixteenth birthday.”
“That party was full of studio executives and actors. It wasn’t for me. And it wasn’t what I wanted. All I wanted was time with you.”
“You know our lifestyles make it difficult—” her mother began.
“I know. But I never felt important to you. Never good enough.”
Her parents’ expressions were blank. Did they not understand, or was it the Botox?
Gwen smiled, the bright one she used to use on her love interests in her movies. “But here we all are, together, now. You can have all the time you want.”
“In front of cameras?”
“The cameras won’t be here every day.” Gwen tilted her head.
Disappointment settled onto her shoulders like the winter coat she didn’t need in LA. “And neither will you.”
“Susan, I think you have an overly romantic notion of what families are like. This is your family. We spend time together when we can. We care about each other.”
“Do we, though?” Her lip trembled. The Forzas would have been hugging by now. Lafortunes didn’t hug. When they were together on the red carpet, sometimes her father would put a hand on her mother’s lower back. They rarely held hands. She couldn’t remember ever seeing them kiss other than a peck on the cheek for the cameras.
None of it was real. And she wanted real.
“I want more.” She mumbled it the first time, and then she repeated it, louder and more clearly. “I want more.”
“But you never asked for anything,” her father said. “You’ve always been so self-sufficient.”
Sunny tried to smile, but her face felt too heavy. “I had to be. I think you gave me everything you could. I mean, I want more from my life.”
“Argus said you could go on auditions,” her mother said. “And you should. You should take advantage of your youth. Your good looks.” She frowned into the mirror and plucked at a silvery hair at her temple.
Suddenly, she felt like she was on one of those rotor amusement park rides and the floor had just dropped out. Nothing she’d thought she cared about—success, recognition from her family, even getting her next role—seemed important. She’d give it all up for one more of Gabe’s hugs. To hold his hand across her Mercedes’s console again.
“That’s not what I want.”
“What do you want, Sunny?” Her father leaned back against the door.
The answer was at the tip of her tongue like a line from a play she’d performed every night for a month. “I want to go home.”
Her mother turned from the mirror. “But you are home.”
“No. I’m not.” Cata’s apartment with its shabby velveteen sofa and the pipes that banged in the winter seemed more like home than the giant mansion. She’d had more fun singing with the high-school kids at Beach Island than she’d ever had on the set of New York Bomb Squad. And safe in Gabe’s embrace, she’d felt more love than she’d ever felt growing up.
She hoped he could forgive her for failing to see it. For failing to accept everything he’d offered. For thinking there was anything else she could want as much.
“I need some cash. I’m going back to Ohio.” She had the money she’d saved for the car repairs, but last-minute airfare for a cross-country flight was expensive.
“You can’t leave now. What about the show?” Gwen flung out her arms.
“You can manage the show without me. I imagine Argus has a Plan B based on his focus groups.”
Gene stepped forward and put a hand on her arm. “You’ll be all right?”
Sunny smiled. “I think so.” She’d done a lot of things on her own before, but this time felt different. Like a kite with a cut string. But the string had been her own creation. Now she was free to do what she wanted. And she wanted Gabe.
As she stepped outside the mansion to meet the crewmember assigned to drive her to the airport, a one-way ticket to Columbus saved on her phone, and cash from her father’s wallet in her purse, a white convertible screeched to a stop on the driveway.
A tall blonde a few years younger than Sunny flipped her hair over her shoulder and tossed her keys to the valet. She tugged down her tight miniskirt and strode up the steps on tanned, svelte legs. Her eye makeup was almost as perfect as Rey’s.
She stuck out her hand. “You must be a production assistant. Can you take me to Argus? I’m his new Susan.”
Sunny laughed. Argus must have called her as soon as Sunny had stepped into the mansion earlier. “Nice to meet you, New Susan. I’m sure you’ll be perfect for the role. One of the PAs inside can take you to Argus. I’m on my way home.”