Page 2 of The Small-Town Seduction Plan

‘The Runaway Bride Keeps on Running’!

‘Avery’s Next Target?’

My heart twists. I should be immune to it by now. Everyone says, to make it in Hollywood you need a thick skin, but I would have to be downright bulletproof not to feel bad every time I read a headline like these.

I grab the nearest copy and flip through, wondering what new angle they’ve found to drag out the story this week.

‘Avery Hitting Rock Bottom: Friends Terrified Over Her Wild Partying!’

Partying? Ha! These days, I spend every Friday night on my couch, watching Grey’s Anatomy reruns. And as for my so-called friends? Well, I’m guessing they’re the ones feeding the tabloids all these bullshit stories. I would laugh, if the massive photo accompanying the article wasn’t so bad. I’ve got stringy hair and a ratty t-shirt on, looking gaunt and exhausted, like I just staggered out of the club at 5 a.m.

I squint, trying to place it, until I recognize the building on the edge of the frame and sigh. My old gym. The paparazzi must have snapped me there a year ago, stumbling out from spinning class, not-so-fresh from a killer workout. They were probably staking out the building, hoping to get a look at someone more famous. Back then, nobody would have been interested in a photo of a C-list actress looking like a mess.

But now?

Now it fits the story they’re telling, so it’s plastered all over the page.

“You try looking good after ninety minutes of high-impact cardio with Mario,” I sigh, shoving the magazine back on the rack. I grab a basket instead, and load up on diet sodas and healthy snacks for the road. I send a longing look at the junk food aisle, full of delicious chips and cookies, but I bypass them for the farm stand shelf of fruit instead. Carbs would feel like quitting right now, and I have to believe that this lull in my career is just temporary. All the work and struggle and spinning classes can’t be for nothing now. My agents are bound to call me up with news about a big new audition. Sometime soon.

Any day now.

“Ugh, can’t they get any decent gossip? Who even cares who she’s screwing?”

Voices drift over to me from the next aisle, a pair of teenage girls chatting over the magazine stand. I freeze instinctively. They’re not talking about you, I tell myself, trying to stay calm. It could be anyone.

“You know she did that movie here last year? I heard she was hooking up with Jackson Kane and the director.”

“Like a kinky threesome?”

“No, like a dirty slut.”

I sag back, my heart sinking. Nope. They’re definitely talking about me.

“I don’t get it,” one of them muses. “I mean, she’s not that pretty.”

“Or talented.”

“You liked the movie though.”

“Yeah, but not because of her. I mean, look at her pores.”

“And her nose.”

“She should have married the old guy when she had a chance!”

They laugh, and then their voices recede as they go pay for their things and saunter out. I see them through the window: young and tanned, careless in cutoffs and tanks, they pile into a Jeep and take off, music blasting.

Meanwhile, my pulse is racing like crazy, and I feel like I’m about to pass out.

“Fight or flight”, my therapist calls it. My primal escape instincts kicking in. I call it freaking humiliating, to be crouching by the packaged pepperoni sticks, waiting for my heart rate to return to normal.

I sink back against the shelves, my cheeks burning with embarrassment. I never used to flinch at gossip, even if it was right to my face. Hell, a couple of months ago, I would have sashayed up to those girls and asked if they had any face masks they recommended, since clearly my pores needed some help. I would have looked them in the eye, stared them down, and then called up Jackson Kane right in front of them to invite him for a lunch date, just to rub it in.

But the brave Avery, the don’t-give-a-fuck starlet on the rise, seems to be taking a vacation right now, because I can’t help wondering if they’re right.

Not pretty enough. Not talented enough.

She should have married him when she had the chance.

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