Hate the Player: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romantic Comedy(3)
Rocky chortles. “That’s because Luca has a dick of his own, and you’re one of his best friend’s soon-to-be wife and baby momma.”
“So?”
“If you were single,” Rocky answers without missing a beat, “I guarantee you’d get a completely different Andrew.”
My sister’s expression is unconvinced. “You’re acting like he’s some kind of d-a-w, dawg.”
“Because he is,” Rocky challenges, the corners of her lips curving up with all kinds of secret knowledge. “Luca and Andrew have been friends for a long time. Before Luca turned himself into an Alaskan hermit and reformed his ways. I’ve been witness to many, many things. I’m not suggesting Birdie run scared. I’m just making sure she has all the important information.”
“Oh boy. He sounds wonderful,” I mutter and take a sip of my iced tea. Billie is once again quick to jump in and reassure me.
“Relax, Birdie,” she says and pats my hand from across the table. “I’m sure you have nothing to worry about when it comes to your future costar.”
“You lunatics keep acting like I already have the part. I still have to freaking audition. It’s not a foregone conclusion.”
“Help me out here, Rocky,” Billie says and moves her focus to her future sister-in-law after a heavy sigh. “Surely, you can tell Birdie something that will prevent her from flaking out on the opportunity of a lifetime—make some kind of productive contribution to this lunch.”
“I’m not going to flake out,” I lie. I am seriously considering ghosting. Casper-level, no-call, no-text kind of shit.
“Okay.” Rocky nods, clearly hearing the panic in my tone. She sets down her fork, putting both elbows on the table. “First of all, don’t stress about the stuff I told you about Andrew—”
“I’m not stressed about him,” I cut her off. “Nope. Not stressed at all over the fact that you’ve spent an entire lunch counseling me on how to handle a man—one of what I’m sure are many millions of assholes in this world—rather than how to handle a role in a profession for which I’m nearly entirely unqualified. No, it’s no problem at all.”
Rocky grins. “Are you sure you’ve never acted before? That was a very dramatic monologue.”
“Rocky,” I say, closing my eyes tight and banging my head on the table.
“Okay, okay. No more Andrew Watson talk. I think you get it.”
“Yeah, well,” I grumble, lifting my head from the table. “You made it easy to summarize. Faced with the possibility of landing this role, I have one important rule outside of the actual job. Don’t fuck Andrew Watson.” She laughs again, and I shake my head. “Easy enough.”
Birdie
If I were at Target right now, I’d be looking for the aisle with Depends. Desperately. Like, forget all formal training in avoiding embarrassment, get the closest associate with a radio to broadcast a public call to the manager, tell me where the freak the adult diapers are before you’re doing the tile cleanup kind of searching.
And a full bladder and bout with a new strain of gastrointestinal bacteria aren’t even the culprit. No. The real story is that after nearly three and a half months of waiting for this audition, I’ve given up my physical form as a human and reconstituted completely as a knotty bundle of overstimulated nerves.
But today…today is finally the day of my first real audition. Not ten-year-old me auditioning for the elementary school rendition of Beauty and the Beast and losing to Susie Marren because her mom was the president of the freaking PTA, but a real audition for a real film that will eventually be shown in movie theaters across the country and streamed on all sorts of online platforms.
Basically, millions of people could end up watching this.
Gah.
What if they cast me in this film and I ruin it?
What if I end up like Mariah Carey in that movie Glitter?
What if critics crush me like they did Britney Spears when she did Crossroads?
I kind of loved that movie, and that in and of itself makes me question my taste altogether.
What if I’m so bad in this movie that I have a total mental breakdown and end up reenacting Britney Spears’s 2007?
I can’t shave my head! I don’t have the right bone structure for that!
I’m so close to telling the driver of this limo to turn this big bitch around and take me to the airport so I can escape LA like a coward, that I start digging in my purse to see if there’s anything in there I can fashion into a tail to tuck between my legs.
Any reassuring thoughts—if there even were any—from my lunch with Billie and Rocky a week and a half ago are officially out the window, bumping violently down the freeway, and about to get run over by the traffic behind us.
I’ve played shows for thousands of fans, I’ve sung the national anthem at the freaking professional championship football game; I know I’ve been in a thousand situations that huge percentages of the population have never even dreamed of, but I’m also certain I’ve never been this scared in my entire life. This is different. Unfamiliar. And so, so unsettling.
Just breathe, Birdie. Just flippin’ breathe.
I pull in a huge gulp of air and let it out. I say namaste fifteen times in my head, I pray to the Big Man upstairs, and I try to channel my inner happy place. I do more mental freaking gymnastics than a therapist who teaches yoga on the weekends, and still, my fingers will not stop fidgeting with the material of my dress.