The Decoy Girlfriend(2)
Emma makes a bad joke about blowing, but Freya’s already tuning them out.
The blank white page on her screen stares damningly back at her, so she fixes her gaze on the mountain of Steph Kirkland’s books on the display stand closest to the register. All Freya has to do is get through the rest of the day, then it will all be better. Her best friends, who started as Twitter critique partners and turned into real-life besties, are all flying out to celebrate Steph’s book signing at Books & Brambles tonight.
They’re the only ones who know her second secret.
Even the best writer can have a bad writing day—or, in Freya’s case, bad writing years—but this is the one thing she is always, always good at: impersonating the actress Mandini Roy.
The first time it happened was back in New York a year after her mother had passed, and it had been a complete coincidence while she was out on a date (back when she actually dated). It was with a guy from her building, and they didn’t have a reservation for the trendy new rooftop bar he thought he could schmooze his way into. But by some strange stroke of luck, simply because Freya had parted her hair a certain way and worn a dress that looked kind of like one Mandi had worn to Cannes Film Festival, security had waved them through without even a blink.
That first time had been a total accident.
But every time after that hadn’t been.
A free mimosa at a trendy new bistro off Madison Square Park; skipping the queue at an upscale lounge in Chelsea, the kind of venue where they wouldn’t let you in if you were wearing sneakers, shorts, or sandals; rooftop bars frequented by the Wall Street crowd, offering sweeping skyline views.
Since her mother’s death, Freya had lost all motivation to write. None of her usual tricks—people-watching, rereading her dog-eared and well-thumbed favorite books, taking up a new hobby—worked.
But the first time she was mistaken for Mandi, she couldn’t wait to end the date so she could go home and write. Freya couldn’t justify doing it often enough to finish her second book, but when she did, the novelty and, frankly, danger of it all fed her writing inspiration like nothing else could.
Maybe she wouldn’t feel the temptation if she were good at something else, but after college, getting that external validation proved a lot harder. But studying was always an area where she excelled, and it didn’t take much to talk herself into just one more experiment. She devoured every picture and interview of Mandi’s until she had the actress’s style down pat. Though there was no way she could afford the thousand-dollar-plus price tags of Mandi’s favorite designers, Freya’s copycat outfits were just as fashionable, for a fraction of the cost.
Successfully getting away with being Mandi broke the monotony of impending deadlines, the stress of her dwindling bank balance living in a city she could barely afford while attending NYU’s undergraduate Creative Writing Program, and of the plunging guilt in her stomach that reminded her that with every night out, she was letting down her mom’s memory.
Freya felt her mom’s absence so keenly that she didn’t think she could handle smelling the scent of her mom’s perfume or seeing bits of her unfinished business around her childhood home: a bookmark stuck in the middle of an unreturned library book; a recipe she’d ripped out of a magazine, stuck to the fridge, and never got around to making; the clothes with price tags still hanging in her half of the closet.
So when her aunt invited Freya to come live with her in LA to focus on her writing, she’d leaped at the offer. Freya returns Stori’s generosity by helping out around the bookshop every day.
“Good morning, everyone!” Stori sweeps onto the bookshop floor. She’s wearing a smart short-sleeved mock turtleneck and brown houndstooth trousers. “Thanks for holding down the fort, Freya. I just got off the phone with the caterers for Steph’s event tonight and sorted out the canapé situation.”
“We’re all done with the windows, too!” Cliff calls out.
Emma makes a sound of agreement.
“Perf! And you?” Stori turns to Freya with an expectant look on her face.
Aunt Astoria, who insisted on going by Stori, was her father’s half sister and the only child from Freya’s grandfather’s second marriage. She’s closer in age to Freya than she is to Freya’s dad, but that doesn’t stop her from occasionally slipping into a persona where she thinks Freya’s her own child, instead of the adult who’s basically her sister.
Stori has no idea what Freya’s going to get up to tonight, and Freya’s going to keep it that way.
Freya pastes what she hopes is an I have my shit together smile on her face as she removes her glasses. “I, um, got a lot of writing done, too.”
Stori beams with pride. “I knew moving out here was exactly what you needed.”
“Oh yeah. Absolutely.” Freya nods, half-guilty and half-proud that she’s gotten away with her little white lie about her huge blank page. She lowers the top of her laptop, hiding her shame from view.
“Don’t forget to wear your store name tag!” Stori flashes an encouraging smile. “Today’s going to be a busy one.”
Tuesdays—book-release day—always are.
The next few hours go by in a blur of Books & Brambles’s regulars and a few random walk-ins. Through some determined handselling, something that once filled Freya with awful anxiety but got easier every time she did it, she sells several copies of Steph’s book and talks up tonight’s signing.