Starlight Nights

  “From who?” I ask, refusing to take it.

  “Come on, man.” He waves the package at me.

  “Hell no,” I snap. “And get off my set.”

  He makes an impatient noise and steps closer to me. “Chill, bro. It’s from one of those production companies downtown.”

  Production companies … my father has an office downtown.

  With a clenched feeling in my stomach, I snatch the package from his hands.

  “Hey, can you sign for—”

  “No, leave.”

  With a mournful sigh, he turns away, muttering about a lack of tip.

  I tear off the silver wrapping, which is perfect, with razor-sharp edges. An assistant’s work for sure. I recognize it from every birthday present I’ve ever received from my dad.

  I inch the box lid off cautiously, as if there’s a good possibility a rattlesnake is going to leap out and bite me.

  In the end it is both more innocuous and more venomous than that.

  Beneath several layers of tissue paper, I find a red baseball cap with the RSP logo embroidered on the front. A card lies on top, blank except for one word, “Welcome!” in my father’s handwriting.

  It takes me only a second to put the pieces together. My father. Callie. This is a declaration of victory, as clearly as if he’d just knocked over the queen on my side of the chessboard.

  I charge down the hallway to the dressing room, where Callie is staring at her mother in abject horror, while Lori beams at the vase of pink roses.

  “What the hell is this?” I rip the baseball cap out of the box and hold it up. “My father is congratulating me? What did you do, Lori?”

  “Oh, my God,” Calista whispers, her face paling. “Eric, I had no idea—”

  “She didn’t,” Lori affirms smoothly. “I took care of it yesterday.”

  “Yesterday was Thanksgiving,” Callie says, as if this is a misunderstanding that logic will clear up. “No one does business on Thanksgiving.” She sounds panicked.

  “Yesterday…” It clicks. Calista’s attempt to call home yesterday. “You were at my father’s house. His Thanksgiving Day schmoozefest.”

  “He invited us,” Lori says defensively. “He called the other night to discuss some additional details—”

  “I bet.” More like dear old Dad figured out he wasn’t going to win so easily and needed to add a little more fuel to the fire. “How much more did he offer you?”

  Lori doesn’t even have the shame to look guilty. She lifts her chin. “Recurring at twice her Starlight rate, with the possibility of series regular next season.”

  So while Calista and I were laughing, eating pizza, and feeling free for the first time in either of our lives, the walls were closing in on us the whole time. We just didn’t know it.

  “You have until Monday to finish up with Calista. You’ll get more than enough to put together a few episodes, if you want, and then you can wait until hiatus to continue. Assuming you’re still interested.” Lori’s tone indicates that she strongly doubts this.

  Fury lights within me. “She’s not a child anymore,” I say, stepping closer to Lori, who cocks her head but takes a most gratifying step back. “You don’t make decisions for her. Her contract with me stands, and legally, you can’t force her to—”

  “Who says I’m forcing her to do anything?” she asks, with the gall to sound offended.

  “I don’t know, maybe the precedent of Calista’s entire life? You harping over her shoulder about what she eats, how much water she drinks, where she goes, when she sleeps.” I shake my head in disgust. “Jesus, no wonder she went over the ledge when she fired you. She has no idea how to be a person without you micromanaging her every breath. Heroin has to be easier than you.”

  It’s a quiet sound, a gasp barely audible over the noise around us, but I know exactly who it is, what I’ve done.

  I turn. Callie is watching me, her blue eyes wide and filling with tears. “Calista, I—”

  She pushes past me and flees the room.

  Fuck.

  Lori looks slightly shaken, but her smile curls with satisfaction. I can almost see the feathers sticking to her lips.

  “You are pathetic, and you don’t deserve her,” I spit at Lori as I follow after Calista.

  “And that, maybe, is the one thing we have in common,” she calls after me, sounding tired but triumphant.

  Her words hit the mark well enough that it causes a hitch in my step.

  I catch up with Calista in the hall outside the condo, where she’s stopped, seemingly at a loss of where to go next. “I’m sorry, I never should have said any of that.” I reach out to touch her, and she twists away. “Lori just pissed me off. She has no right to do that to you. Or to me.”

  “Do you believe it?” she asks, studying the floor.

  “I don’t know what—”

  “That I don’t know how to be a person without her?” she asks, her chin jerking up in defiance. She’s sad, yes, but there’s anger burning deep in there, too. Not at Lori. At me.

  “I think she makes it harder on you that she should, and you’re nicer to her than you should be.” Softer. That’s what I want to say. Somewhere inside herself, Callie is still waiting for her mother to pat her on the head and say Good job, you’re good enough. I gave up on that from my dad ages ago. I’m not saying that makes me better or smarter than her, but in this situation, it makes me stronger. “It’s a verbal contract at best, Callie. Made without your consent. You don’t have to do this.”

  “The money is gone,” Calista says with a sigh.

  “What?”

  “All of my money. All of her money. Their house is next. I can’t stop it.”

  Shit. “Callie, it’s okay. This is not your fault.” It’s that of the judge who gave Lori access to all of Calista’s funds when Calista was under her mother’s “guardianship.” But then, Calista never took that access back.

  But she doesn’t seem to hear me, folding her arms across her middle as if she’s trying to be smaller. “She’s just going to push Zinn down the same path. She’s already doing it. That bruise on her head? That’s because she fainted at school. She’s not eating enough, afraid she’s getting fat.” She looks up at me then, sharply. “You remember what that was like? When I didn’t know how to be a person and only ate what my mother told me to?”

  I wince. “Calista…”

  “She’s going to do it to Zinn, if I’m not here. If she can’t control me, she’s going to use Zinn to get what she wants.”

  “But where does it stop? When are you done with her? When she can’t land you regular work anymore, except for some soft-core porn bullshit?” I demand. “Or will you do that, too?”

  “No!”

  “Are you sure about that? Because I’m not. If she leans hard enough on you, I think you’ll do whatever she tells you is necessary. And what kind of example does that set for your sisters?” I rub my forehead where pressure is beginning to build. “I don’t have siblings, but I’m guessing they might look up to you. And do you honestly think she’ll stop with you anyway? That she won’t push the rest of them to follow you?”

  “Where else am I going to go?” she asks. “What else am I going to do? I can’t afford tuition. I need to work, and your dad has already said that he’ll keep me from getting more jobs if I turn him down.”

  I jerk back. “You never told me that. He can’t … Calista, he thinks he’s all-powerful, but—”

  “He’s more powerful than a former addict who hasn’t worked steadily in years,” she hisses at me.

  “I will help you,” I say. “We will figure this out. Callie, please.” It’s as if I can feel her disappearing right in front of me.

  She looks at me helplessly. “For how long?”

  “What?”

  “How long are you willing to help me?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “You’re going to let me move in with you? What about my sisters?”

&nb
sp; The thought is panic-inducing. My condo has two bedrooms, that’s it. And I don’t have the financial resources at the moment to pour into an insta-family. Not without tapping the last of my trust fund, and that would be taking money from my dad, which I’ve sworn never to do again. Rawley wins again.

  Plus, I’m just figuring out how to be responsible for myself, let alone three kids.

  My hesitation must show on my face because she smiles sadly. “That’s what I thought.”

  I shake my head. “No, I’ll do it. Whatever you need. We’ll figure it out.”

  She just shakes her head with a tired-sounding laugh. “And how long until you resent me?” She swallows hard. “Until you’re bored, frustrated, tired of being tied down and wanting to move on?”

  I can’t breathe for a moment. “That’s what you think of me? Still?” That, more than anything, feels like the betrayal. She doesn’t believe, not completely, that I’ve actually changed.

  “I won’t do it,” she says. “I won’t do that to you. I won’t do that to us. I don’t want to see us destroyed that way.”

  It’s in that instant that I realize she’s already made up her mind. She probably made up her mind the second she saw those flowers and figured out what they meant, what her mother had done on her behalf.

  Something in me goes cold and hard. This is her version of goodbye. She’s just taking a little longer to get around to it. “But this way you’ll have, what? The memories?” I give a harsh laugh.

  “What do you want from me?” she asks dully. This is not the girl who was in my bed just a few hours ago. It’s a shadow of who the real Calista is, the version of her that exists when her mother is in charge. Small, scared, lesser, and it kills me to see her reduce herself that way. To fit into the tiny space her mother allows for her. But I don’t know how to save someone who won’t save herself. I don’t know that I’m even going to be able to save myself.

  But I can sure as hell answer her question. “I want you to grow a spine and do what you want.”

  She jerks her head up to meet my gaze. “Even if it’s not what you want?” she asks, her words sliding in like a knife between my ribs.

  “You think I’m like her?” I ask in disbelief.

  “Aren’t you?” She lifts her shoulder. “The two of you were just standing in there arguing over me like I wasn’t even there. For different reasons, but it’s control all the same.” Her mouth turns up in a bleak smile. “Isn’t that what someone means when they say they love you? They just want to control you.”

  I don’t know how to respond to that. Yes, I want her to walk away from Lori, and yeah, that would benefit me, but I don’t want her to do it for that reason. I want her to do it for herself.

  But I have the feeling that explaining that would be like trying to explain color to someone who has never seen.

  “You’re right,” I say finally. “There are limits. I’m not going to watch you destroy yourself for her. I won’t help you with that.”

  She pales, and then she nods as if I’ve confirmed some horrible flaw in my character.

  And that’s it. With the clutch in my stomach, I can feel the finality of the moment. I’ve just signed away any chance of an “us” now or in the future.

  “If this weren’t about your father, you would understand. But all you see is him winning,” she says, her voice shaking.

  I roll my eyes. “Don’t bring him into it. I hated what your mother does to you, what you let her do, long before—”

  “Oh, but you didn’t hate it enough not to use it against me,” she points out.

  I grit my teeth. “I told you, I’m sorry about that. It was just a means to an end. You were hiding, and I didn’t want you to—”

  “Make choices on my own?” she asks.

  “That’s not fair,” I snap, though there is enough truth in her question to make me feel uneasy.

  She laughs, wiping under her eyes. “What, exactly, about any of this is fair?” She pauses. “I love you. You are … home to me.” She makes a choked noise, somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “I can’t believe it took me this long to figure it out, and now…”

  My eyes and nose are stinging now. “Please. Don’t do this.”

  She shakes her head. “You have no idea what it’s like. You aren’t responsible for anyone. I’m responsible for everyone!”

  I stiffen, her words slamming into me. “Because I’m a total fuck up, right? Just Rawley’s spoiled-brat kid who’s playing around with being an adult and—”

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” she says, glaring at me.

  “I want to believe that,” I say flatly. “But I don’t.”

  She folds her arms across herself. “I don’t know what else to say.”

  There isn’t anything else to say. She’s made her choice. And I have a crew waiting on me, equipment rentals that are costing me every minute, whether we’re working or not. An accountant who is possibly stealing from me.

  The memory of Calista frowning over my accounts this morning, trying to help me, tears at me, makes me feel as helpless as I ever have. Worse even than the time my father told me the truth about my existence. Worse than when my mother confirmed it.

  Something in me pushes for a fight. But the wrong kind of fight, an old impulse that I thought I’d conquered: to break before I am broken.

  I force a smile. “Well, then. Good luck with your life as Lori’s slave,” I say. “I hope she stops before she signs you up for Saucy School Girls 3, but I wouldn’t count on it, sweetheart.”

  She gives a choked gasp. “Eric.”

  “But maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe she’ll eventually switch her attention to the next generation. Because Calista, that’s the only way you’re getting free of her.”

  Spewing those words should make me feel better, like releasing the pressure behind all my hurt and frustration, but it doesn’t.

  So, of course, I keep pushing.

  “You know I have to give my dad credit,” I say, as I turn to head back into the condo. “He knew you better than I did, after all. Maybe I should send him a congratulations card.”

  She’s crying then, and the soft sounds of her breath hitching in her throat slice at me. But I keep walking. Leaving her there alone.

  29

  CALISTA

  Eric.

  I want to call after him again, the urge so strong in me I can feel it pushing up against my lungs.

  But I don’t. Because what will change? We’ll just keep tearing each other to shreds until there’s nothing left.

  I curl my arms tighter around myself and slide down against the wall until I’m sitting on the floor.

  He’s protecting himself, choosing to see it as me picking his father, my family, over him.

  And … maybe he’s right. But I don’t know what else to do. How do I protect myself and my sisters and have him, too? I don’t think I can.

  I saw it, that flicker of uncertainty, when I talked about moving in together. When I talked about bringing my sisters. And why not? It’s crazy. We’re not even officially a couple. But that’s the thing—it’s never going to get any less complicated with me. Or, rather, I don’t know how to make it less complicated without hurting people who don’t deserve it.

  But he has a point—one that’s kept me awake at night at various points in my life—where does it end? How does it end? The path from former teen star to just-barely-not porn star is not an untraveled one. Desperation and lack of other marketable skills collide in an ugly way sometimes—that’s why I wanted my degree, my nice, safe accounting office, a fallback plan.

  Because as much as I would love to think that my mother would never, ever, sink to that level, I can almost hear her—“Calista, darling, don’t overthink it! It’s art, not some guy with a mattress and a camera. You’ll transform the medium, and they’ll all be knocking at your door, admiring your daring choices. And the money!” Yeah, that totally worked for LiLo.

  “Calista??
?? Josie calls, then she peeks into the hall. Her eyes go wide as soon as she sees me on the floor. “Oh, Calista.” She sounds sad for me.

  “I’m fine,” I say, but my voice cracks in the face of her kindness and then I’m crying again.

  She doesn’t say anything, just pulls me to my feet and ushers me back to the dressing room, her arm around my shoulders to block prying stares.

  My mother is waiting, of course. “Oh, baby,” she says, as Josie and I walk through the door. “I know it’s hard, but you’ll thank me later.” She reaches out as if she’s going to pull me to her.

  “Don’t touch me,” I snap.

  “Calista…” Lori sighs.

  Josie seats me in the folding chair and immediately applies cucumber-patterned eye pads to take the swelling down. I may need a whole case of them before I can go back out there.

  “You know we could just go home,” Lori offers. “There’s nothing that says—”

  “No. I’m finishing what I started.” As much as she’ll allow anyway. I may not be able to give Eric next week, but at least this way, he should have enough to finish an arc. A much shorter story arc than he’d planned. Five episodes instead of ten, assuming he ends on the emotional low point that we’re filming today—Evie and Cory realizing that they’re now too different—but it would be something. Enough to prove that he’s as good as I know he is.

  But in the way of things, it’s the worst possible section we could be filming today. Evie and Cory trying to have a normal date, kissing, holding hands, and watching a movie at her home instead of fighting on opposite sides of the superhero spectrum.

  The problem is neither of them are normal, and without their antagonism between them, they have nothing in common. And then when Cory accidentally squeezes Evie’s hand too hard, forgetting the strength difference between them now, he breaks a bone, and that devastates him. They are standing on opposite sides of an uncrossable divide, one that somehow didn’t exist when he was a villain and she was one of the “good guys.”

  It is one of my favorite scenes in the book—mainly because of the absolutely crushing emotions. As an actor, the juicy, painful scenes are the ones you look for, the ones that give you something to work with.