Chapter 18
Olivia
T he kids are in bed and finally asleep. Candace and I are settling in to finally watch Wicked when my phone chimes with a text from Liza, Quantum’s publicity manager, who’s now mine, as well.
People mag wants you for their cover, too.
I gasp.
“What?”
I show her the text.
“Holy. Shit. Liv.”
“I can’t believe all this.”
“It’s really happening. How do you feel?”
“Excited, nervous, scared of what it’ll be like to lose my anonymity.”
“You get recognized all the time.”
“This’ll be a whole other level.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“I mean, Flynn’s parents were just on the cover of People for their fiftieth anniversary, and now I’m going to be, too? How’s that even possible?”
“You’ve worked your ass off for years to get to this moment. You deserve it.”
“Someone on Insta called me a nepo baby the other day. They said I never would’ve gotten the part if I wasn’t playing my sister in my superstar brother-in-law’s passion project.”
“That’s a revolting thing to say.”
“It’s true, though.”
“So what? You still had to deliver on the performance, or they would’ve replaced you. As much as Flynn loves you, and he loves you a lot, he wouldn’t have risked the success of such an important project if the actress playing Natalie didn’t nail it. You totally nailed it.”
“You really think so?”
“I was there every day. I know so—and so do Flynn, Hayden, Kristian, Jasper and everyone else who worked on the film. You dazzled them. Flynn used that word. Repeatedly.”
“I sorta felt like he had to say that because of who I am to him.”
“He could’ve said you were good, great, excellent even. He used the word ‘ dazzling’ because that’s what you are. And before you tell me I have to say that, too, I don’t. If I didn’t think you were amazing, I would’ve said so a long-ass time ago. Flynn would have, too.”
“He promised me he’d keep it real with me.”
“And he did, the whole way. You saw him in tears several times during the filming as you brought to life scenes from his life and did it so beautifully. Please stop with the crisis of confidence. You’re going to get all the awards for this movie because you slayed .”
“Thank you.”
“Can we watch Wicked now?” We’ve been trying to get to it for months and promised each other we’d finally watch it tonight.
My phone buzzes with a new text that has me sitting up from the slouch I was in.
“What now?”
“Teddy Abrams.”
“What about him?”
“He… He just texted me.”
“How in the hell did he get your number?”
“Who cares? He texted me!”
“What did he say?”
“That he’s been following my career with interest and would love to hang out sometime.”
Candace does this weird twisting thing with her mouth.
“Say something!”
“Eh, he doesn’t impress me.”
“Come on! He’s one of the hottest guys in the world.” I appreciate him reaching out to me. I needed that after nursing a fierce crush on Larkin Wilder, the actor who played Flynn in Valiant . The chemistry between us was unbelievable, so much so that Hayden said once that we reminded him of Flynn and Nat at the beginning. I know Larkin felt it every bit as much as I did, but he’s engaged to his childhood love, so that’s not going to happen.
“But is he a nice guy?” Candace asks. “You don’t even know him. Before you reply to him, find someone who knows him and get the lowdown.”
I tune back in to realize she’s talking about Teddy while I’m thinking about Larkin. Nothing new there. “Who do I know who knows him?”
“If you don’t know someone, Flynn will.”
“I’m not bothering him with this.”
“He’d want you to.”
I start typing my reply. “It’s just a text. I’m not about to marry the guy or anything.”
“What are you saying?”
“Just, ‘Hey, thanks for getting in touch. Nice to “meet” you.’ That kind of thing.”
The phone buzzes with a new text.
What’re you doing tonight?
“What’d he say?”
“He asked what I’m doing tonight.”
“Tell him you’re busy and you’ll get in touch another time. I want to watch the damned movie.”
Busy tonight. I’ll text another time.
I’ll look forward to that.
What does that even mean?
Candace starts the movie and snuggles under the blanket we’re sharing to get comfortable. “Are you paying attention?”
“Yeah.”
Almost every aspect of my life feels a little out of control all of a sudden. I shot Valiant last year and have done several other smaller projects since then while feeling as if I’m in the calm before a storm that I lack the imagination to properly anticipate. Before I was cast in the film, Flynn and Hayden sat me down to talk about this. They wanted me to be sure, really, really sure, before they moved forward with me as their lead actress.
“It’s going to be insane,” Flynn said at that meeting. “I wish there was a way for me to fully explain to you what it’s like to go from low-key celebrity to world famous overnight, but there’s no way I can do it justice. It’s something you have to experience to fully understand.”
I could tell he was holding back somewhat because he didn’t want to scare the shit out of me.
But I’m scared anyway.
Of the attention, the crazies, the demands on my time, the way everything will change, even things I don’t want to change, such as my relationship with my sisters, nieces and nephews.
I told them at the meeting that it was what I wanted, and it was. It is. At least, I think it is… How in the hell do I know if it’s what I want when my own superstar brother-in-law couldn’t find the words to properly explain the reality of that kind of fame to me?
The covers of Variety and People and a text from Teddy Abrams, all in the same day... I have a feeling that’s the least of what’ll happen after the movie is released. I’ll be on the road promoting it for six weeks, beginning in early March. While Flynn, Natalie and Bennett will be with me for some of it, the other three kids won’t be. Six weeks without snuggles from my babies. They’ll grow a foot while I’m gone. Will they even remember me?
Candace looks over at me and presses Pause on the remote. “Why’re you crying?”
I wipe the tears from my face. “I’m feeling a little overwhelmed all of a sudden. It’s starting to get real.”
“You’re ready for it.”
“Am I?”
“You’ve got the best possible team supporting you and showing you the way. What other young actresses have the likes of Flynn Godfrey, Max Godfrey, Stella Flynn, Marlowe Sloane, Hayden Roth and their whole crew standing behind them? They’ll protect you and stand by you through every step of this journey. You know that. Remember when we were discussing this role and whether you should do it?”
“Yeah, I do.” I wipe away more tears. “That was the number one reason we decided to go for it. Because of them.”
“Flynn and the others have your back. He’d never let anything bad happen to either of us.”
“Even he can’t stop some of it.”
“True, but we’ve learned a few things in the years we’ve worked in this industry. We can take care of ourselves, if need be.” She reaches out to take my hand. “You’ll never be alone with any of it. We’re ride or die, girl.”
“That gives me tremendous comfort. Thank you for the reminders.”
“We’ve got this. Now, can we please watch Wicked ?”
I laugh at the face she makes as she says that. “Let’s do it.”
Max
When I say my marriage to Vivian is the last thing I want to talk about, I mean it. Revisiting my tumultuous relationship with her has never been on my to-do list, and talking about it with Stella is like pouring acid on an open wound. But because I’m so thankful to still be talking to her at all, and because she wants to know, I’ll tell her.
“I met her at a party at Bobby Scott’s house. It would’ve been about three years before I met you. I was about to turn twenty-three and had just had my first big hit with Sandman . I had work lined up for the next two years, which made me a success in the eyes of many of the guys I’d come up with who were still hustling, hoping for a break.
“A friend said, ‘Bobby wants to meet you and asked that you stop by his place Friday night.’ When one of the top producers in the business wants to meet you, you change your plans for Friday night, especially after your management has dropped you for acting like a dick. Bobby’s place was up in the Hills, not far from Flynn’s. I remember it being hard to find and thinking I was going to miss the whole thing because I couldn’t follow basic directions.”
“GPS was the best thing to ever happen to you.”
I bark out a laugh. “That’s a fact. Anyway, the party was in full swing when I arrived to valet parking and tuxedoed waiters with trays of champagne and some of the fanciest food I’d ever encountered. The house was unbelievable. It was all glass, one of the first truly modern contemporaries. I’d never seen anything like it or the views of LA. I remember thinking I’d never want to live in a glass house because everyone could see inside. Not to mention, people in glass houses…”
“Shouldn’t throw stones.”
“Right. It was just too weird for me. Bobby spotted me right away and came over, made a big fuss about how he’d been dying to meet me for ages and how he loved me in Sandman and wanted to work with me. You knew him, right?”
“I did, but not well until I met you.”
“He had a powerhouse personality. You couldn’t help but be sucked into his orbit. He was like the sun. If you were lucky enough to be one of the planets circling him, you felt like you were on top of the world. I was still new enough to be truly blown away by him. It took a while to see the rot beneath the glitzy surface.”
Bobby Scott was sued for sexual harassment by thirty actresses in a class-action lawsuit that rocked our industry twelve years ago. He went from being one of the most powerful people in our business to persona non grata overnight.
“Bobby introduced me to Vivian. He said he wanted us together on camera as soon as he could find the perfect vehicle for us. We were both new enough to be taken in by his enthusiasm, not to mention his star-making reputation. If Bobby Scott saw something in you, that meant big things.”
“I remember. He wielded outsized power, which is how he got away with the things he did for so long.”
“I never saw any of that, and I was around him a lot.”
“He saved his worst behavior for when he was alone with a young actress looking to him to make her a star. He preyed on their dreams and their vulnerability.”
“Men like him give us all a bad name, but we were years from seeing his true colors then. He wanted to pair me with Vivian Stevens, and I was all in on that. She was the hottest new commodity in town, and everyone wanted to work with her. What surprised me when I got to know her was the na?veté I found beneath the confident, polished exterior.”
Stella gives me a skeptical look. “Na?veté? For real?”
“You wouldn’t have seen it. She kept it very well hidden when she was working, but it was there, even if she’d grown some sharper edges by the time you met her. She’d had a very coddled upbringing. She wasn’t street-smart the way you need to be in this town. When I first knew her, I used to worry about her ending up like Marilyn, chewed up and spit out by people who used her to advance themselves.”
“And you don’t think she was playing you a bit by making you think she was na?ve?”
“No, not at all. For all her exterior sophistication, she was very different when she put down the mask she wore in public.”
“How so?”
“You know how I always say there’re people who get it and people who don’t?”
“Uh-huh.”
“She didn’t get it. The world was baffling to her. The simplest things were too much for her. She didn’t understand how things worked or how people manipulated others to get what they wanted. She was like a butterfly without wings.”
“How could you stand that? You can’t tolerate stupid people.”
“She wasn’t stupid. She was innocent, unprepared for the world in which she lived and worked. Did you know she was more or less raised in a convent? Her mother got pregnant as a teenager, and the nuns took her in. They helped to raise Vivian.”
“No way.”
“It’s true. That explained a lot about her.”
“So how does she go from being cloistered in a convent to the sexpot of stage and screen?”
“She got noticed by someone like Bobby Scott, who had the means to remake her in his image, and that’s exactly what he did. He turned her into the woman the public knows, but underneath the veneer, at least when I knew her, was a girl who was in way over her head in every part of her new life.”
“You would’ve felt protective of her.”
“That was the first thing I felt toward her when I realized the veneer was a facade.”
“I’m trying to reconcile the woman you describe with the one who strolled onto our set and walked away with my fiancé without so much as a care.”
“By the time you met her, she’d begun to understand her power and how to use it to get what she wanted.”
“Awesome.”
I smile at the sarcasm dripping from that single word. “I’m sorry she hurt you. I hated the way that went down, even if I eventually benefited from it.”
“She didn’t hurt me so much as infuriate me. Women in our business stuck together in those days. We looked out for each other. We took care of each other. She was the antithesis to that. She steamrolled right over me and my year-long relationship like it was nothing, and don’t try to tell me she didn’t know he was engaged. He was a bigger star than she was then. Everyone knew.”
“Of course she did. She didn’t care. She wanted him, and she took him. That’s how she behaved for the next twenty years and ended up married six times.”
“Seven.”
“Shhh, that’s a secret we’re hoping to keep.”
“I want to know what happened after you met her at Bobby’s party.”
“She tucked her hand into my arm and asked me to introduce her to people at the party. I took her around the room, and I liked the way the other guys looked at me when I had her on my arm. They were jealous, and I was young enough to get a kick out of that.”
She gets up to make another cup of tea. “Men. You’re all the same.”
“In some ways, we are. In others, we’re very different.”
“And I know that.” She smiles at me over her shoulder. “You’re better than most.”
“I’d like to think so. At that time, though… I was young and dumb?—”
“And full of cum,” we say together, laughing at one of Hayden’s favorite sayings.
“That’s so gross,” Stella says, laughing.
“Good old Hayden.”
“He does have a way with words.”
“I wanted her as much as the other guys did, and that she seemed to want me, too, was a heady thing when she could’ve had anyone. I was instantly smitten. We were pretty much together from that night on. As hard as Bobby tried, though, he never did come up with a project for us to star in together, and he was adamant that we keep our personal relationship off the radar. He said we were both far more bankable single than we were in a relationship, and he more or less said he’d walk away from us if the word got out that we were together.”
“He wouldn’t have done that. You were both hot commodities then.”
“I know that now. At the time, we were intimidated enough that we went deep underground with the personal stuff. He was outraged when we told him we’d gotten married. He said we were stupid idiots to get married so young when our careers were taking off the way they were. His adamant disapproval took the blush off the rose pretty quickly. We went from being blissfully happy to fighting about everything. Safe to say, we ruined it by getting married.”
She returns to the table with a perfectly steeped cup of tea and a mug of fresh coffee for me.
“Thanks, hon.”
“As upsetting as this has been, I don’t like to think of you as being unhappy, even if it was before I knew you.”
“It was a difficult time, to be sure. Especially after I pushed the boundaries in the bedroom.”
Stella props her chin on her upturned fist. “Tell me about that.”
“Do I hafta?”
“Yeah, you do.”
Sighing, I resign myself to talking about something I’d much rather forget. “I told you how I’d gotten into the scene with some friends.”
“Tell me more about what you liked about it.”
“Everything. The way we talked openly about things people never talked about. The talking was almost as hot as the doing. Remember how it was then? Women were taking command of their lives and their sexuality and exerting their power. It was an exciting time. They were as into it as we were. You could have this intense scene with someone and never see them again. No commitments, no expectations. I loved it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about that when we met?”
“You weren’t like the other women of that time. You were elegant and refined and captivating. It never occurred to me to bring that up with you, especially after it was such a disaster with Vivian.”
“How so?”
“She was furious about it. She told me I’d deceived her, hidden a big part of myself from her and made a fool of her by wanting things she thought were abhorrent. Remember, she was raised in a convent. As much as she portrayed herself as a sexpot, she was a virgin when I met her.”
“ What? No!”
“She was. I was her first.” I’m not sure I should’ve told her that, but I promised to be honest.
She goes completely silent on me, which has me breaking into a cold sweat.
“What’re you thinking?”
“That I still can’t believe you were married to her, slept with her. I can’t wrap my head around it.”
“I’m sorry. This is a terrible thing to drop on you at this point in our lives.”
“It’s just another reason to despise her.”
I didn’t expect to laugh just then but leave it to her.
“What’ll we do if we can’t stop the book?” she asks.
“We’ll do like Marlowe said and laugh it off, make light of it. Like that was so long ago, we don’t even remember it.”
“There’s no way we’ll let her think it’s upset us in any way. That’d be the ultimate revenge.”
“Is my love feeling a bit vindictive?”
“If she plans to run you—and us—through the wringer, I’ll make her sorry she was ever born.”