Bad Reputation

Chapter 1 INT. CROWDED FAN-CONVENTION HALL

Chapter 1

INT. CROWDED FAN-CONVENTION HALL

Cole James had a lot of regrets. Enough to field a Little League team. Enough to pack a Costco-size case. Enough to fill a keg ... which made sense because several of those regrets featured kegs. But behind a signing table at Aughties Con, Cole would’ve put playing his doppelg?nger, Cody Rhodes, on Central Square at the top of the list.

Sure, the part had made Cole famous in a star-of-a-soapy-teen-drama way. The kind of famous that landed you on the cover of Us Weekly and at the People’s Choice Awards. The kind that had him in demand for fan conventions two decades later.

But Cody was the Halloween costume that Cole could never get off. Their names even sounded the same.

Take right now. The woman at the head of the autograph line stumbled forward. She was about Cole’s age, in her early forties. From her Team Cody shirt to her reluctant giggles, she was clearly psyched to meet him and mortified to be so clearly psyched.

Sympathy mixed with the coffee in Cole’s gut. That morning, he’d gotten on the elevator with Park Chan-wook, one of his dream directors to work with, and Cole had nearly forgotten his own name. Celebrity was a hell of a drug.

With the smile the fan expected, Cole extended his hand. “Hey, how are you doing? I’m Cole.”

The woman blinked, hard.

“It’s nice to meet you ...?” He trailed off, hoping she’d supply her name. It was so much better when they gave Cole their names. It made this feel more like a conversation and not an appointment, which, okay, it was .

The woman was still doing an ice-sculpture impression—and the people behind her in line were growing impatient.

“I’d love to sign that for you.” Cole pointed to the poster she was clutching.

Without speaking, the woman pushed a poster from Central Square ’s second season at him. Ah, the year when MIT had kicked Cody out because they thought he was running his sometime girlfriend Madison’s cheating ring. Falling on that grenade won him her eternal love ... until he lost it by sleeping with her best friend. Again. Things had ended with a cliff-hanger when Cody fell asleep while his joint lit his duvet on fire. In those twenty-two episodes, Cody had made some bad choices.

Life imitated art, he supposed.

Cole held up a sparkly gold gel pen. “Should I sign as Cole or as Cody?”

At that, she regained the power of speech. “Oh, please sign as Cody.”

Of course. It was always Cody.

Because no matter how many times the character had kissed the wrong girl at a party, fought with his grandfather about his inheritance, or gotten sucked into a Lithuanian crime syndicate, fans forgave him. They got Team Cody tattoos and had his vow to Madison— through thick and thin, baby —engraved in their wedding bands. Through all ninety-two episodes of banana-pants drama, they loved Cody Rhodes. And for almost twenty years now, they had shared that same devotion with Cole.

“Of course.” With a smile, Cole wrote Cody Rhodes across the tight black T-shirt he wore on the poster. The color had varied, but it had always been tight. The shirt was almost as much of a draw as the biceps under it. “Thanks for coming out today.”

“I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

Cole’s career would’ve withered if that hadn’t been true. He hadn’t been much of an actor in his Central Square days—he wasn’t much of an actor now—but things had come easily to him then. And the combination of stardom and being twenty had been corrosive.

Showing up to work drunk after all-night parties in hotel rooms? Yeah, he’d done that a few times—and he’d had to live with his terrible performances, tabloid coverage, and pissed-off coworkers. His first agent talking him into investing in an RPG adaptation that had gone way over budget and bombed? That was a rite of passage for jackasses. Being so clueless and self-obsessed that he’d missed the showrunner being garbage to the female writers? He’d discovered that after Central Square had gone off the air, when Cole had been broke, unemployed, and without an agent at twenty-four. Exactly where he deserved to be.

Two things had gotten him through: the enduring popularity of Cody Rhodes, and Drew Bowen, the agent who’d agreed to sign Cole when he’d been lying in the gutter. Everything that had come afterward, Cole owed to them ... and Cody wasn’t even real.

The fan gave Cole a sheepish grin. “These things must be awful for you.”

“Nah. I really enjoy them.”

Cole had stayed in the business because making television and movies was fun. Filming was about relationships, about people. Cons were for the last and most important link in the chain: the fans.

“Who else are you here to see?”

No one else from Central Square was at Aughties Con, as far as Cole knew. Lexi Harper, Cole’s longtime on-screen love interest, was doing some play on Broadway. His on-screen bestie, Glenn Stokes, was filming a fantasy movie in Poland. He texted Cole sometimes to complain about the Dodgers. And Ben Hayes, who’d played Cody’s rival for Madison’s affections, wasn’t acting anymore. The last Cole had heard, Ben was flipping houses—and not even on television.

“Just ... you,” the woman admitted. “It’s been almost two decades, and I know the show was cheesy. But all through college and my first marriage, and my babies who wouldn’t sleep, and awful coworkers, and quarantine, Central Square was there for me.”

This was something Cole heard over and over again, and for the kazillionth time, he was walloped by guilt that he’d been such a prick on the show. He’d been so casual, so thoughtless about work that meant a lot to so many people. Trashy television —trashy according to who?

“It meant a lot to me too.” He left out I’ve never messed up so bad, and it made me grow up . People didn’t want that from him, he’d learned. They wanted him to smile, to be the good-time guy. They wanted him to confirm their experience of Central Square , not his own.

Trying to be that guy, the one the fan wanted to meet, Cole asked, “What’s your favorite episode?”

“Oh, the one where you propose to Madison.”

“The first or the second time?”

“The first time. So romantic.”

A popular choice. Cole wasn’t going to ruin the illusion by explaining that back then, Lexi Harper couldn’t stand him. He’d made things better by apologizing, taking full and complete responsibility for being basically a frat boy with a TV contract. It helped that Lexi had moved on to bigger and better things, like acting in sad Norwegian plays. It was easy to be generous when you were winning Tonys.

Meanwhile, Cole made the streaming equivalent of direct-to-video movies involving explosions and drug kingpins and sand. So much freaking sand. Cole had gotten really good at looking concerned and running while holding a bazooka. At acting in front of green screens and with people in motion capture suits. There’d been commercials, too, and even supporting roles in kids’ movies. Cole had never gotten close to fatherhood in real life, but he’d played it on television.

They’d been lean, humiliating years, but Cole had stuck to Drew’s rules and developed his own too. Hand over hand, role after role, he’d made himself into a professional.

Cole wasn’t talented. But in this business, showing up, doing the work, and being gosh-darn disciplined made up for a lot. Drew had managed to convince everyone Cole was a well-meaning himbo who’d let youth and fame go to his head but that he was better now. That wasn’t far from the truth, but Cole was ready to leave the himbo designation behind and just be ... Cole.

This year, he was finally going to emerge from the hole he’d dug, and Waverley was the ladder he was going to use to climb to the top.

“Well, if you like romance, you’re going to dig Waverley .”

Waverley had burst onto Videon two seasons ago. It sounded like Masterpiece Theatre , being adapted from the novels by Sir Something or Other. Pure class, at least before you got to all the sex. Sure, the show had an old-timey Scottish setting, and there were fancy speeches and poetry. But the characters fucked, and they fought with swords, and they plotted revolution. Add in a soundtrack that blended bagpipes with contemporary pop hits, and it wasn’t like anything else. Quite frankly, Cole had to stop himself from fawning over the showrunner during his auditions.

And this season, Cole was going to play Geordie Robertson, a nobleman turned smuggler and revolutionary, and his BFF, Tasha Russell, was going to play his lover, Effie Deans.

While Cole might’ve limped along on the B- and C-lists for years, Tasha was a verified movie star, and they’d basically stopped making those. Getting her to do the show was a big deal for Videon and a bigger deal for Cole.

The woman’s bright smile flash froze. “I saw that.” A strained pause. “I love the show. And you and Tasha Russell together again? That’ll be ... great. Tasha will be amazing.”

Oh.

Oh.

The blood went chunky in his veins. This woman, along with the jerks at Variety and the Hollywood Reporter , wasn’t sure if Cole was right for the show.

She looked almost as sick as Cole felt about it. “It’s just that it was a book first, right? And you haven’t done a lot of book shows.”

Cole had done more video-game-to-film adaptations than book-to-film ones, sure. But Waverley was going to be his new start. It had to be.

“You’re right,” Cole said gently. He wasn’t mad, not at the woman. He was annoyed with himself—that he had messed up so badly that, two decades later, people were still acting as if Cole might get grubby fingerprints all over anything classy if he touched it.

All Cole could do was stick to the rules, his and Drew’s, and do the part well. That was the only way to change anyone’s minds.

“Me wearing breeches? Country dancing?” Honestly, Cole was looking forward to those things, but he knew that wasn’t his reputation.

The woman barked out a laugh—a real one—which seemed to shatter both her fear that he was going to be mad and her cocoon of awe. “You’ll look good.”

Right on cue, there was the other thing people brought up at cons.

Cole wasn’t going to pretend that his face and his transverse abs hadn’t been the major driver of his career so far. Heck, if everything fell apart, his backup plan was to become a celebrity trainer. He’d certainly spent enough time working with one to qualify.

“Well, see, there’s that,” he said.

“And I bet you’ll have fun.”

But she didn’t bet that he’d be good .

Everyone trusted Cole to get the party started, but they thought he was about as deep as a mirror—all flash, all reflection, and nothing else.

Trying to hide his wince, Cole gave the fan a sad smile. “It was nice, meeting you today.”

“Oh.” She must’ve just realized their time together was over, and it brought her up short. Trying not to look disappointed, she fished her phone out of her back pocket. “Can we get a selfie?”

“Of course.”

The eighteen inches of folding plastic table between them eliminated the possibility of physical contact, for which Cole was grateful. He knew many fans saw him as a commodity, one they’d paid thirty dollars to meet. But that fee didn’t include pinching his butt or squeezing his biceps. Cole had always struggled to find a nice way of saying Please don’t .

After the woman snapped a pic, Cole sent her on her way with a wave, and he finished up with the rest of the people in his line. When the last one was done, Drew materialized with Brett Vaughn, Cole’s PR guy, in tow. Cole’s agent had an almost magical ability to show up at precisely the right moment. Make a big appearance and melt away —it was one of his rules.

Fifteen years ago, what Cole had needed most was a plan, and Drew had one, along with enough confidence to fuel a rocket ship to the moon. Cole had followed every syllable of Drew’s advice. The few times they’d disagreed, Cole had quickly deferred to Drew, and now he was on the edge of what they both hoped was going to be a great comeback.

Brett strung the red velvet rope across the end of the aisle while Drew strolled up to Cole’s table. “How bad was it?”

“Not very.” Having to spend a day marinating in Cody Rhodes was not Cole’s favorite thing, but seeing as how Cody had given Cole everything—even the golden parachute out of the mess he’d made of his own life—it was hard to dislike the guy.

Drew’s nose wrinkled as he regarded the coffee that Cole was gratefully finishing. “I thought we talked about caffeine. Your pores.”

Cole’s pores looked fine to him, but he knew Drew meant well. “Needed an afternoon pick-me-up.” Whatever else these days were, they were exhausting.

“And now you won’t sleep tonight.”

“I’ll put in a few extra miles on the treadmill.”

Drew pursed his lips. “Hmm. How’s the training going?”

Learning to sword fight had been a multimonth commitment, and it was kicking Cole’s ass. “I thought my thighs were in decent shape”—excellent shape, actually—“but this is an entirely different thing. Listen.” Cole leaned his forearms onto the table. “I’m not saying I’m feeling insecure, but can I do this? Can I really play Geordie?”

“What are you talking about?” Brett said, laughing. It was as if the question didn’t make sense to him, because it probably didn’t. “Of course you can.”

Brett was nicer than Drew, too nice for Hollywood. It was why Cole liked him—well, that and the fact that every entertainment reporter in the world was his bestie. Cole knew Brett believed in Cole. But his belief was a penny: easily given and not worth much.

Drew looked up from his phone, lines of disbelief crinkling across his forehead. Someone had missed his latest Botox appointment. “This is what we’ve worked toward for years,” he said. “I wouldn’t have put in all that effort if I didn’t think you could.”

That wasn’t an answer about Cole at all, but it was comforting. Because at the end of the day, Drew wasn’t lying. He didn’t represent clients who didn’t make money for him.

Years ago, at a party in Los Feliz, Cole had met a caterer who Drew had dumped as a client. “He’ll only keep you around as long as you’re useful to him,” he’d warned.

It had spooked Cole until he’d realized ... of course that was how this worked.

“I always did wonder why you took me on.” It was clear what Cole had gotten out of the relationship, but it had taken a long time for Cole to be worthwhile for Drew. Even now, even with Waverley , the big payoff wasn’t quite there yet. It would come with the next projects—if it came at all.

“I wanted to see how good I was,” Drew said, shooting the cuffs of his shirt. “You were like this undeveloped mountain, and I was fairly convinced there was gold in them thar hills.”

“Jeez, Drew, that’s mercenary,” Brett said. “I don’t think you’re supposed to say that part out loud.” Brett certainly wouldn’t. He was far more careful about his words and much gentler with people’s feelings.

Drew’s look of disdain expressed how little he thought of that. “Cole’s a pro. He knows the score. And besides, it’s worked out. It’s only rude to say it if it fails—you can write that down.”

There it was: another Drew Bowen maxim. He ought to put together a book of them, a Hollywood version of The Art of War .

Cole wasn’t much for battle himself. These days, he preferred to step lightly and carefully. But he understood where his agent was coming from, and he had benefited from Drew’s ruthlessness.

“Just don’t go telling the press that Cole’s your gold mine,” Brett said. “That’s not the line we’re going for.”

“Cole and I understand each other.” Drew locked eyes with his client. “Don’t we?”

“Yup, boss.”

It was too late to abandon the strategy that had gotten them this far. At the end of the day, if Drew thought Cole was going to be worth the investment, one that he’d paid into for almost twenty years, then Cole’s career was going to take off.

It had to.