Fake Dating The Bad Boy

1. Anna

ANNA

"Iam enough," I remind myself as I enter the room.

The casting director is still looking at his phone.

I stand at the tape mark on the floor, script memorized, breath controlled, waiting. His assistant gives me an apologetic smile that means we're running behind, or he does this to everyone, or don't take it personally.

"Anna Simmons." He finally reads my name off the top sheet like he's reading a grocery list. "For the role of Diane. Supporting. You have the sides?"

"It's Simons. Anna Simons."

"Any questions?"

"No."

"Okay." He sets the phone down. Looks at me for the first time. "Whenever you're ready."

I close my eyes for half a second.

Then I stop being Anna Simons. I become Diane.

The scene is a woman telling her best friend the truth after ten years of silence. The writing looks simple on the page and destroys you if you try to perform it instead of live it.

I don't perform it.

The words come out ragged and real, the real that makes the assistant stop typing and look up from her notes. The casting director leans forward slightly. Just slightly. But I see it.

When it's over, the room is quiet for a beat longer than it needs to be.

"That was—" he starts.

"Thank you."

"No, genuinely. That was strong work." He clicks his pen. "The character is twenty-two on the page."

I keep my face still.

"You might be too mature for the best friend. They're just out of college."

"I played Juliet last year. In a play in Santa Monica."

"This isn't theatre."

He says it like he's doing me a favor. Like knowing exactly which shelf you don't fit on makes standing in the aisle easier.

The director comes over and leans close to the casting director. They whisper. I hear the word sexy.

I'm in a simple sweatshirt and jeans.

"I can do sexier if that's what you want?"

"No, that was good. Thank you."

I smile at his assistant on the way out.

She gives me the same apologetic glance as before.

The next two women waiting in the hallway are fitness models. Or should be.

I get to my car. Sit in the driver's seat and don't let myself feel it until the door closes.

I read the character description again. Best friend. Not the sexy best friend.

I start the engine.

The diner is busy for a Tuesday.

I tie my apron in the back hallway and scan the floor. Table four needs water. Table seven wants the check. The booth by the window — three women with matching highlights and phone ring lights propped against their coffee cups — already has a server hovering.

Chloe finds me at the service station between tables.

"How'd it go?"

"Fine. I think they wanted sexy."

"Oh, sweetie, they always want sexy."

"They didn't say that. The breakdown said best friend, so I thought I was the smart one."

"Smart and sexy. You can be a Nobel Prize winner, but you still have to be sexy in Hollywood. It's implied. Always."

She reads my face in about half a second. Chloe has always been able to do that.

"I don't think I got it."

"You'll crush it next time."

"I'm getting an audition every four months. Next time is summer."

"Hey, stop that."

“I’m twenty-nine, Chloe."

"I know."

"I'm twenty-nine and I'm aging out."

"You're not?—"

"Biologically impossible and still happening." I pick up a coffee pot. "Table nine needs a warm-up."

She follows me anyway.

"Alex thinks you should submit that self-tape to the Williams Casting Office. The period piece?—"

"I submitted it two months ago."

"And?"

"Nothing."

She's quiet for a second.

"It's fine," I say. "I'm fine."

Chloe and I each drive to class in separate cars.

Alex is outside running his lines, sipping coffee. When he looks up, he hugs me, which means Chloe texted him on the way over.

"Don't," I say.

"I didn't say anything."

"You have a look."

"I have a neutral face."

"You have a concerned face wearing a neutral face as a costume."

He hands me a coffee. I take it.

"Guys, I don't want to bum you out, but this is it for me."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm done with this town."

"You're leaving?" Alex says.

"I told you — I hit thirty and I'm done. I can't keep doing this."

"You've had that look for a few months. Like you're already somewhere else."

Chloe goes quiet.

A few other classmates arrive around us.

"After my birthday," I say. "I'm going back to Montana."

"To be a lawyer?" Chloe says.

"Yeah. Have a life. This is limbo."

"Anna—"

"I have a law degree, Chloe. I actually have a marketable skill. I keep not using it."

"You're an actress."

"I'm a waitress who acts sometimes."

"That's not?—"

"I'm not doing this to punish myself. I'm tired. I'm genuinely tired. And I have an option that most people don't have, and pretending I don't have it because it feels like giving up—" I shake my head. "I'm done pretending. It hurts too much."

Nobody speaks.

"Chloe, let's run lines," Alex says.

Our acting teacher, Joe Rankin, reminds us — like he does before every class — that we are enough. My eyes well up. This is our time. To always be prepared. This career is not for everyone.

Joe watches Chloe and Alex's scene from a folding chair, arms crossed, boots planted, eyes locked on every hesitation, every fake beat, every moment they try to perform instead of bleed.

When the scene ends, he gives notes without softening any of them.

What they're avoiding. Where they're protecting themselves.

What still isn't honest enough for him to believe.

"Simons." He points at the stage before I've fully sat down.

I walk up there, feeling every eye in the room.

I take a breath and start Laura's monologue from The Glass Menagerie.

The words come easily tonight. Too easy. Like something in me finally tired of fighting itself.

I stop thinking about auditions. About age brackets. About women in waiting rooms with perfect teeth and nineteen-year-old skin pretending they don't hate each other.

I tell the truth.

And the room changes.

Not in some dramatic way. Just enough.

People lean in.

For two minutes, I'm in the Glass Menagerie.

When I finish, Joe is silent. He walks toward me slowly, studying me.

"That was beautiful, Anna. You're finding different things every time. It was different tonight."

"Yeah."

"Because you're living it, not acting it."

I nod. It wasn't sexy, and it didn't have to be.

"I messed up a word. I said by myself instead of alone."

"Anna." His voice goes flat. "Give yourself a break. There are enough people in this town to beat you up. That was great work."

Then he moves on. Points at someone else.

We watch the rest of the scenes.

For the first time today, something inside me loosens. Not hope. Hope's dangerous in this town. But Joe saw it. The class saw it.

For five minutes up there, I wasn't the girl aging out of auditions or the waitress pretending LA hasn't started spitting her back out.

I was good.

At the end of class, Joe stops me at the door.

"That audition today." He doesn't ask how he knows. Joe always knows. "What happened?"

"I wasn't sexy enough."

"That's ridiculous."

My eyes go hot.

"I'm leaving." I burst into tears.

Joe gives me a hug. I need it.

"I'm moving back home. I can't take it anymore — the constant rejection."

"Hey." His voice softens just slightly. "What I saw on that stage tonight was Laura. Not an actress — Laura. You're really good, and I don't say that to everybody." A pause. "Whether good is enough in this town, I don't know."

"Joe—"

"I'm not going to argue with you. You're going to do what you're going to do." He studies me. "I just want you to know the difference."

I nod.

“You’re one of the ones I thought would make it. I’m sorry, kid. There are other things in life.”

He lets me go.

My apartment is 640 square feet on a street where overnight parking is a competition.

My lease is up at the end of the month. I let the building manager know I won't be renewing. Saying it out loud shook me.

He barely blinked. In this town, actors come and actors go.

The boxes are in the closet. I ordered them two weeks ago and haven't touched them, like keeping them folded flat meant I hadn't decided anything.

I open one.

Start with the closet shelf. Old scripts. Conservatory binders. A folder of headshots from my first year in LA.

I dump them all in.

I'm almost at the bottom of the pile when I find them.

Old conservatory programs. The paper ones they printed for every production, thick stock with the cast listed inside. I flip to my name.

There's a review tucked between the pages. I remember saving it. I remember being twenty-two and reading it so many times that the fold lines went white.

Anna Simons delivers a performance of startling emotional maturity. She doesn't act the scene — she inhabits it. One to watch.

I read it again.

Then I find another one from the spring showcase. Simons is the kind of actress who makes you forget the stage exists.

Outside, a car alarm goes off and nobody does anything about it, because that's Los Angeles.

My phone buzzes.

Mom: Honey, do you need gas money for the drive? I can send it tonight. Let me know what you need.

I stare at the text.

She's been ready for me to come home for six years. She never stopped being ready. The gas money was probably already set aside.

I look back down at the reviews.

The one to watch.

I fold it carefully. Put it back between the program pages. Place it in the box.

Close the flaps.

I don't text her back.

I find the graduation performance of The Taming of the Shrew video on my computer.

I watch the whole thing. Crying and laughing.

"How the hell did Luke fucking Wolfe make it?"