Chapter 6
EMMA
Two kinds of people go to exclusive industry parties: sharks and those looking to be eaten. I never intended to be chum, but the moment Lena Carson bursts onto the poolside terrace, all eyes automatically snap to her, and I realize, with resigned clarity, that I am absolutely the latter tonight.
“Lena-fucking-Carson,” someone hisses, reverent, as she descends the stairs like she owns the place—which, in a way, she does.
That’s Lena’s magic. She’s immortal in every room, burning at thirty frames per second while the rest of us flicker and fade.
I watch her take the air, fold it into her lungs, exhale, and bend the mood to her will.
Her skin glows with that Argentine sun, a souvenir from six weeks filming some arthouse piece where she apparently lectured generals about gender equality.
The black jumpsuit she’s wearing defies both gravity and the unspoken rules of festival parties—fabric slashed in places that would get anyone else escorted out, yet on her it’s so effortlessly right that I suddenly feel like I’m wearing my mother’s hand-me-downs.
Her eyes find me before her mouth does. She mouths, “I’ll kill you,” then barrels straight through the animated corpse of a producer to wrap me in a tight hug.
I burrow my face in her hair and, for half a second, I don’t care about cameras or hashtags or the fact that I am absolutely, one hundred percent lying to her about what’s happening with Asher Dixon.
She pulls back, pinning me in a serious-lipstick scowl. “You bitch. You’re famous now, and you’re not even answering my texts.”
"I did! You were on a glacier with no service.”
It’s true. The last video call was of her, impossibly small at the bottom of a sweep of blue, wind shrieking so loud I could only read her lips as she screamed, “I almost shat myself!” before the call died. I saved the screenshot for days when I need to remember who I am.
She doesn’t want to fight; she wants gossip, so she grabs my hand and hustles us through the thicket of Hollywood personalities clumping around the bar and into the relative sanctity of the pool house bathroom.
The mirror is rimmed with what appears to be a halo of paparazzi bulbs. The air tastes like citrus and secrets.
“Okay,” she says. “From the top. You and Asher Dixon, explain, explain.”
“It’s for PR. The studio cooked it up. It’s basically court-mandated dating.”
She arches a brow. “So you’re telling me those Instagram photos where he’s looking at you like you’re the last cold beer on a desert island—that’s all just PR magic?”
I stare at my nails, which are painted the same shade as my dress. “I sincerely hope so.”
She crosses her arms and leans into the sink. “You could have fooled me. Exhibit A: the way you looked at him on the red carpet tonight. That’s not method acting, babe.”
I try to roll my eyes, but catch myself in the mirror instead. Something in my expression looks starved, and it has nothing to do with the tiny appetizers circulating outside.
“Fine,” I say, “he’s hot. He smells good. I’m not dead inside. Can we talk about you? I need fresh foreign drama.”
She holds up her phone, which is already playing a clip of a news anchor in a powder blue suit.
Lena’s face flashes onscreen, followed by Jake Tisdale in oversized sunglasses; together, they look like the most photogenic felons ever.
“The Argentine press thinks I’m engaged to Jake,” she says, delighted.
“Are you?”
She shrugs. “I have no memory of a proposal.”
We cackle in tones born of barely surviving Juilliard’s sophomore spring and trust-fund theater kids who thought crying on cue was a personality.
There is comfort in the gross stuff, the unsurfaced love.
For two minutes, we are just Lena and Emma, not famous people, not warring Instagram algorithms.
Then there’s a knock, and an assistant with a clipboard pokes her head in. “They want you by the pool for group shots in five.”
Lena winks at me. “Back to the meat grinder. Asher better be out there. I want to inspect him before you claim it’s over.”
She grabs my arm and pulls me through the party’s nerve center, where the bodies multiply, and the air turns heady with expectation.
Asher is, of course, already at the edge of the crowd, hands in his pockets and posture calculatedly casual, like he’s auditioning for a magazine cover called “Effortlessly Handsome.” When his gaze finds me, it’s the same jolt as before, like stepping into sunshine after a week in the dark.
Lena sizes him up with a smirk so obvious I consider warning him, but the glint in his eye says he’s ready and, probably, amused.
“Mr. Dixon. I’m Lena, and I’ll be conducting tonight’s performance review.”
He gives her a hand to shake—a real one, not the floppy “so nice to meet you” kind. “Happy to be here. Are you the jealous best friend or secretly in love with her?”
She grins. “Both. Sometimes in the same night.”
They spar for a minute, barbs circling each other. I watch the party noise fade to the background: the hum of drone cameras, the filtered laughter, the flash of pool lights on well-oiled skin. The world is suddenly smaller, limited to the triangle of us.
Asher breaks first. “Emma says you just got back from Argentina. Did you bring her anything illegal?”
Lena looks at me. “Did you tell him?”
“Tell me what?” His gaze flicks between us.
She leans in conspiratorially. “She’s a lightweight. One glass of Malbec and she’s singing Hamilton.”
I shoot her a look. “That was one time. And you spiked it with Fernet.”
He looks at me, delighted. “Noted.”
Across the pool, the master of ceremonies—a man who once fired his stylist for a poorly tied bowtie—waves us over. Lena pushes us forward, then pauses, whispering to me, “I’ll handle the piranhas. You two go be disgusting. But you have exactly one hour before I come bail you out.”
I want to protest that we’re not “disgusting,” but already she’s absorbed by a knot of execs debating the virtues of AI and virtual reality in cinema. Asher and I are left at the edge of the party, surrounded by the riotous scent of jasmine and 300-watt ambition.
I glance at him. “You passed inspection. Congratulations.”
He steps closer, keeping just enough distance for plausible deniability. “That felt like a real trial. Does she always interview your fake boyfriends?”
“Only the good ones,” I say, and my voice comes out softer than I mean. “Sorry about the grilling.”
He shrugs. “It’s show business. I expected to be on TMZ with a half-life of forty-eight hours. Your friend is more interesting.”
I don’t have a script for this part. Throughout my professional life, I’ve been coached on how to handle co-stars, fans, and even hostile bloggers, but this is uncharted territory.
It’s not quite chemistry, not quite combat.
It’s as if someone handed me a live grenade and asked me to critique its aesthetics.
He senses my panic and, graciously, changes the subject. “This place is something, huh?”
I glance around at the glittering crowd. “Ever feel like you’re just watching yourself at these things? Like you’re not really here?”
He studies me for a moment, his eyes catching the pool lights. “You seem pretty real to me.”
"And what exactly am I?” I ask the question slipping out before I can stop it.
He takes inventory—deliberately, a scan from my shoes to my hair and back. “Like someone who’s dying to get out of this dress and into pajamas.”
I laugh—uncultured, snorting, real. It shakes off my anxiety the way nothing else does. I want to tell him this, but instead, I say, “You’re not bad at this, you know.”
“At pretending to be a boyfriend?”
“At making it feel unpretentious.”
He doesn’t answer, just lets the silence spool out until the emcee beckons us into the white-hot gladiator pit of the group photo.
We line up with the other talent, the flashbulbs building a strobe-lit wall.
Asher stands behind me, his hand on my waist, and the warmth is so tangible I wonder if the camera will catch it.
The photographers keep us posing until my smile calcifies.
Between flashes, the director’s wife makes a grab for my champagne flute, and whispers ripple through the crowd about a Tarantino sighting near the parking attendants.
I scan the sea of faces, but Asher has vanished.
Until suddenly he materializes beside me, navigating the crush of bodies with two stemmed glasses of ruby liquid balanced between his fingers.
He holds one out. “You don’t have to sing, but it might help. Cheers?”
I take it, sipping the wine. “It’s not Malbec, so you’re safe.”
He clinks his glass against mine, hovering just a little too close. “I’d like to hear you sing Hamilton, actually.”
I shoot him a sidelong look. “Some other time. In a soundproof room.”
He laughs, and my stomach flip-flops, a sensation I thought I’d aged out of in high school. He folds himself onto the low wall next to the pool and pats the spot beside him, so I perch there, careful of my dress. For a second, we are two kids skipping prom, making up our own afterparty.
“Lena’s nice,” he says, and I can’t tell if he means it.
“She’d murder you for a good story.”
He tilts his head. “So would you, I think.”
I want to protest, but he’s right. I love the story more than I love whatever thing is supposed to come after. He sees this in me. Even worse, he seems to like it.
The stars overhead are clustered closer than seems possible, like one strong wind could blow them all into the pool. I want to bottle this feeling: the world loud, but not too loud; the wine gone to my head just enough for me to believe the future isn’t a trap.
I trace the rim of my glass with my finger. “You know,” I say, my voice softer than intended, “I thought this would be simpler. Get some good press, smile for the cameras, move on to the next project before...” I hesitate, looking up at him. “Before it got complicated.”
He considers this. “That plan sucks.”
I smile. “Yeah. It kind of does.”
He looks at me directly, as if he can see all the moving parts and knows I’m still holding a few in reserve. “Let’s agree to not have a plan. Tonight, anyway.”
The words are lazy, unthreatening, a gentle dare. I nod, and we fall into a rhythm, trading stories about worst table reads and accidental auditions, discovering our shared loathing of morning shows and an unironic love of diecast model cars. It’s easy in a way that nothing has been for months.
Eventually Lena reappears, triumph in her stride, and a lipstick smudge on her front tooth. “Ciaran Doyle says you’re the most talented American since Brando, and I told him you sleep with a stuffed wombat named Sir Gregory.”
I die inside. “You did not.”
She grins. “He’s very supportive. He says it’s healthy.”
Asher cocks an eyebrow. “I’d like to meet Sir Gregory.”
Lena drops onto the wall, sandwiching me between them. “You’ll adore him. He’s very plush.”
She changes the subject to something less me, more celebrity, and I sink into the comfort of my friends bickering and the weight of Asher’s steady presence beside me.
The party is fading, the music turned down, and I’m tired but, for once, not lonely.
In a city built on illusion, the three of us—two humans, one hypothetical plush wombat—feel real.
When the party breaks, and we tumble into the driveway, Asher catches my hand so lightly I could pretend I don’t notice. But I do, and I don’t let go.
There are two kinds of people in this city. For tonight, I think I’m finally with the sharks.