The Decoy Girlfriend
Lillie Vale
For Gaby, who rolled out the red carpet and always makes me feel like a star
CHAPTER ONE
With two huge secrets, Freya Lal is the exact opposite of the open book she always considered herself to be.
She stares at the laptop on the counter of her aunt’s bookshop, Books & Brambles. The blinking cursor at the end of the page mocks her. Grimly, she rereads her words until she has no choice but to come to the conclusion that she is, in fact, a one-hit wonder who will never be published again.
She holds down the Delete key until every single awful word is obliterated. The pinching band of tightness around her chest eases the moment the Word doc is blank again. Yesterday’s words are gone, and she already can’t remember what they said. It feels like Freya’s chased away a bogeyman, one that’s been Frankensteined together with ugly words stitched into unflattering sentences.
The more she thinks about it, not only does her imposter syndrome become more plausible, it becomes more obvious: her first book deal—when she was a teenage wunderkind—was obviously a fluke. How the hell is she supposed to turn in a first draft of her second book to her publisher when she can’t even write two paragraphs before self-doubt creeps in? She’s been keeping her lack of progress a secret from everyone for so long that the only thing that will help her now is to—
No. That’s secret number two, and she swore that she was cutting back.
After throwing her long brown hair into a high ponytail, she shoves her oversize electric-blue plastic-framed glasses up her nose and holds back a groan. The only thing she has going for her right now is the fact that absolutely no one in Books & Brambles knows that the twenty-three-year-old girl slumped next to the register is in the throes of an existential crisis.
The indie bookshop is a few minutes away from its 9:00 a.m. opening, and two other employees are putting the finishing touches on the themed window display. Freya can catch snippets of conversation regaling all the gory details of her coworkers’ terrible Tinder dates drifting down the aisle, too quiet and far away for her to take part in, even if she were dating right now (which she isn’t) and even if she wanted to (which she doesn’t).
“Are we sure these should be here?” Cliff’s voice is strained, like he’s lifting a tall stack of books.
With a confidence far greater than her few weeks of working here, Emma authoritatively replies, “If Stori left them up here, then yeah. Left window is for summer swoons, and right window is for summer slashers.”
“I know that.” Cliff’s words are punctuated with a solid thump that Freya can only imagine is him setting down the books until the confusion is cleared up. “I meant are we sure because it’s an old title.”
“That can’t be right. Let me see that— Oh. Just put them there.”
“Should we double-check with Stori?”
“You mean Freya’s aunt? Of course not,” Emma snorts. “Didn’t the name on the cover ring a bell?”
“Oh shit.” Cliff’s voice drops. “This is actually her? I thought she was a writer in the same way that you’re a model.”
Like Freya, Emma was another East Coast transplant who came to Los Angeles with big dreams. She had yet to book a modeling gig but had added influencer to her Instagram bio after her third DM from a brand that didn’t care she hadn’t cracked a thousand followers.
“I am a model.” Emma’s indignant and forgets to whisper. “She hasn’t published a new book in years.”
Mortification stings like fire ants down Freya’s neck. They haven’t said anything that isn’t true, but it still hurts to hear the confirmation that she’s already considered a has-been. In a city that makes dreams as often as it crushes them, it’s not a lonely club, but it’s not the life she’d envisioned for herself, either.
Compared to her debut novel, writing book two has been a completely different experience in every way. In high school, Freya—a self-professed neutral evil on the alignment chart—was entirely consumed by her writing. She woke up thinking about her characters, went to bed excited to write the next day’s words, and jolted awake at 3:00 a.m. to jot down fragments of dialogue or scene ideas in her iPhone’s Notes app. She spent every study hall reading the latest YA novel and asked for writing books and summer workshops every birthday and Christmas to level up on her craft.
The difference is Freya’s mom had been around to cheerlead back then. Anjali Lal had a fierce optimism in all things but especially in this: if her daughter wanted to publish a book, she had every faith that it was a when, not an if. As Freya’s first beta reader, her mother knew this was the one with a certainty Freya doubts she herself has had about anything in her entire life.
Freya never had to look for her own inner validation because she knew she always had her mom’s.
Until she didn’t anymore.
“Look, forget about it. It’s Stori’s call, and we’re opening in, like, five minutes,” Emma says finally. “Take the new Riley Sager novel and finish the other window before she notices we’re running behind.”
“Seriously?” Cliff complains, voice back to normal. “I helped you unbox the new Tessa Bailey, set up the sandbox, and used my superior stamina to inflate the beach ball and flamingo floatie.”