2. Stockholm Syndrome with Better Abs
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME WITH BETTER ABS
DEEPIKA
“Yash, that was incredible. Truly moving.”
Then the director walked right past me as if I were part of the set.
I stayed in character for five full seconds, long enough for the camera to stop rolling, before my left eye twitched. It wasn’t the cute, delicate twitch. No, it was the I-might-set-something-on-fire twitch.
“Brilliant, Yash! Just brilliant!” Director Rajesh clapped his hands together as if Yash had just discovered fire instead of remembering his lines for once. “The way you held that pause? Chef’s kiss.”
Yash turned around and flashed me his infuriatingly perfect smile. “You were great too, Dee.”
Dee?
Don’t punch him, Deepika. Your knuckles are far too perfect to touch the likes of him. Plus, who knows where that face has been. Erugh.
I gave him a saccharine smile. “Don’t call me that.”
I stood a few feet away, mascara tracking down my cheeks from the scene we had just wrapped.
My chest was still tight from the emotional breakdown I had just performed.
The one where my character finally confronts her dying mother.
The one I had been preparing for since four in the morning, listening to my own mother’s voicemails on repeat until the grief felt genuine enough to bleed on camera.
She was very much alive. But I missed her and her aloo parathas.
“Deepika, that was... adequate. Let’s move on,” Rajesh said, already walking away, shouting about lighting setups.
Adequate. As if it meant nothing.
“He’s an idiot,” Yash muttered, squeezing my shoulder as he passed. “You were phenomenal.”
I forced a smile once again. Probably the umpteenth time in the presence of Yash Malhotra.
Why? Because Yash was nice. He was always nice.
That was his whole thing, his charade. The nice, handsome leading man who would inevitably get the Oscar nomination while I would get a throwaway mention in the trades, ‘Oh, and Deepika Sharma was also there.’
This is my life now.
My ‘breakout role’ had everyone talking, sure, but they were talking about how I was the ‘surprisingly good’ best friend, the ‘scene-stealing’ sidekick and most importantly the emotional glue holding the lead together while he got the glory.
I wanted to be the one whose name came first on the poster. Be the reason people buy tickets. And I wanted to stop feeling like I was auditioning for a seat at a table that was supposedly already mine.
I retreated to my trailer and peeled off my costume. It was a frumpy cardigan that Wardrobe had insisted made me look ‘approachable’. I reached for my phone. Five missed calls from Blake, my publicist.
Ugh.
Blake: Have you seen the new article?
If it says I’m difficult again, I’m suing the English language.
Blake: Worse. ‘Deepika Sharma: Hollywood’s Jealous Problem Child?’
I poured myself a bowl of Lucky Charms (dinner of champions at seven in the evening) and called her back.
“Please tell me you didn’t punch anyone today,” Blake answered on the first ring.
“Hello to you too. And no, my violence remains purely hypothetical,” I said, crunching through a mouthful of marshmallows. “What did I do now?”
“What did you do?” Blake’s voice climbed an octave. I could imagine her pacing around, chewing on her nails. “Deepa, honey—”
“Deepika.”
“There’s a story on Celeb Gossip calling you difficult to work with. Apparently, an anonymous source says you throw tantrums on set and refuse to do press.”
“Let me guess,” I said, closing my eyes at the throbbing headache forming at the back of my skull. “The source is five-foot-ten, has extensions, and shares half my DNA?”
Silence.
Blake continued, “I can neither confirm nor deny, but the article mentions your jealousy issues regarding your sister’s happiness.”
Of course it fucking did.
It had been six months since I had walked into my apartment. The same apartment I foolishly gave Yash, my ex-boyfriend, a key to, only to find him in bed with Diya.
My twin sister. My identical twin sister, which somehow made it worse, like he couldn’t even be bothered to cheat with someone who didn’t share my face.
My stomach twisted even now, remembering how they froze. How she had cried fat tears and how sickly it had felt.
The worst part came after that.
Everyone told me I should be happy for them because she’s my sister and they’re in love.
Sure. Sure, Diya’s happiness was important. My happiness could go fuck itself. Without lube.
“Deepika? You still there?”
I realized I was stabbing my spoon into the milk, watching the cereal disintegrate. I swallowed and shook myself back to the present. I refused to let them live rent-free in my head. They had already taken enough.
“Yeah. I’m here. Listen, Blake, can we at least ask them to spell my name right? It’s D-E-E-P-I-K-A, not Deepa, not Depika, not—”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Blake sighed, as if my name were an inconvenience. “Try to stay out of trouble this week, okay? With the Elite Awards campaign in full swing, we need you to be all business.”
Professional. Of fucking course.
Because nothing said professional like being publicly humiliated by your ex-boyfriend and your twin sister while the entire internet decided you were the villain for being upset about it.
After Blake hung up, I did what I always did when the world felt too sharp. I opened my secret Instagram account. TerribleRomanceReviews had twenty-thousand followers who did not know they were getting romance novel critiques from an actress who couldn’t even keep her own love story from imploding.
Tonight’s victim was Passion’s Plunder, a pirate romance where the heroine fell in love with her captor after he ‘ravished’ her on page thirty-two.
“Nothing says ‘happily ever after’ like Stockholm Syndrome with better abs,” I typed, posting a photo of the book’s cover. A shirtless man with improbable hair and a woman whose corset defied physics. “One star. The parrot had more personality than the hero.”
The comments flooded in immediately, making me smile because they were my people. My anonymous, romance-loving, trash-talking people who didn’t care that I was difficult or that my sister was sleeping with my ex or that my hips were two inches too wide for Hollywood’s idea of beautiful.
Yash’s voice crept into my head. “You know, Diya’s been really disciplined with her diet. Maybe you could try…”
I aggressively shoved another spoonful of Lucky Charms into my mouth.
My phone buzzed. Another text from my publicist.
Blake: Btw, you’re trending on Twitter. #DeepikaSharma. Don’t look.
I looked.
@HollywoodTea: Deepika Sharma really thought she could keep a man looking like THAT? Diya is serving face, meanwhile Deepika stays pressed LOL
@FilmSnobSince1999: Unpopular opinion: Deepika Sharma cant act. She just has one expression
@YashDiyaShipper: Yash and Diya are GOALS! Deepika needs to move on and stop being bitter!!! #YaDiya4Eva
If they had used any more exclamation marks, it would have been satisfactory. And what the fuck is Yadiya? Their stupid ship name?
I sighed and locked my phone, staring at my reflection in the dark screen.
Not American enough for Hollywood because I was too ethnic, too curvy, and too much. Not Indian enough for my family in Mumbai because I was too Americanized, too loud, and too selfish for not immediately forgiving my sister.
I didn’t belong anywhere.
My gaze drifted to the vintage teacups lining the shelves in my trailer.
Fifty-three at last count. Each one a distinct pattern, a different story.
I started collecting them in college, hunting through estate sales, thrift and antique shops for the most delicate, beautiful things nobody wanted anymore.
I understood that feeling intimately.
Outside, I could hear Rajesh shouting about tomorrow’s call time. Five in the morning. Another day of being adequate, another day of watching Yash get praised for breathing while I performed minor miracles and got a fucking pat on the head.
But here’s the thing they didn’t show you in the movies. You don’t get a dramatic montage when your life falls apart. You don’t get a soaring soundtrack or a wise mentor who tells you exactly what to do.
You get Lucky Charms for dinner and internet strangers dissecting your worth. You get a vintage convertible in your garage that you’re too terrified to drive because what if you crash it? What if you ruin one more beautiful thing?
You get up at four in the morning and you do it all again.
Because maybe if I was good enough, perfect enough, small enough, quiet enough...
No, I stopped that thought cold. I was done making myself smaller and done apologizing for taking up space.
I wanted a leading role. I wanted respect, and I wanted to walk into a room and have people remember my name. Spelled correctly.
I wanted to belong somewhere that wasn’t the footnote of someone else’s story.
I reached for my laptop instead. Someone had sent my agent a script last week. It was a lead role, finally. A romantic comedy about a woman who runs a wedding planning business and falls for her nemesis, the owner of a competing company.
Ha! If it was a book, I’d eat it up in a day.
The character was described as full-figured, confident, and unapologetically herself.
Lucky Charms forgotten, I opened the file and started reading.
My phone buzzed again, and my interest piqued when I saw a familiar name, making a grin curl up on my lips.
Gold Medalist Olympian Liam James Sleeping with Three Women?!
What an ass. I scrolled through the article only to make a face at his disgustingly handsome face photographed with recent models, gymnasts, and women in short dresses who, in my opinion, deserved better than the gray-eyed monster.
I was sure scientists would find a new type of sex disease just from his blood test.
Shaking my head, I turned my phone face down and focused on the script instead of the smolder from a certain gold medalist.