Page 7 of Fresh Start
Acting had been my passion since I was a little munchkin in rural Virginia, and that same passion had taken me all the way to New York to study at the NYC School for the Dramatic Arts. And when I finally got a part, after a lifetime of waiting and getting nothing in return, the critics had to go and crap all over it.
Stick to what you know.Really? How could anyone even grasp what my breadth of knowledge even entailed? What my skillset even was. All my life, I’d watched celebrity after celebrity after celebrity parade their usually artless asses through my dreams and get applauded for it, and when I was finally doing what I loved, no one cared for it.
It was funny, in a way. When I was in One Shot and we were taking Britain by storm with our hits, the critics were begging me to stick to what I knew best. Modeling. I was just a pretty face and nothing more. And when I was a model? Well, no one cared much about what I knew best. It was all about the looks.
“Iced latte for Leo,” another barista called out, and the few people waiting turned to look at me, recognition coloring their faces.
I approached the guy and grabbed my coffee.
“Hey, aren’t you from One Shot?” he said.
Did it matter that I’d been cast as Sherlock Holmes inSherlock Holmes: The Musical Whodunnit? No. Because everyone just remembered Leo, the wild One Shot member.
“Yes, and?” I snapped at him and immediately regretted it.
It wasn’t his fault the critics were making our show tank. He was just a man. He wasn’t to blame that I was a failure. I’d achieved that all by myself.
I looked at him to try and apologize, but the guy shook his head and returned to his next order, so I gave up and left the coffee shop, coming back out on the busy high street at Camden.
This area had been my home for more than a few years, only lately I couldn’t stand it. The people, the tourist crowds, the pretense. To be fair, nowhere felt like home anymore.
I left Cedarwood Beach when I was just a babe, barely legal, and hadn’t returned since. That had been my only home, and by the time I came of age, I couldn’t wait to leave and never return.
Maybe this was karma, and I was paying some stupid price for something terrible I’d done that I wasn’t even aware of.
I didn’t know what it was. What I knew for sure was that if I didn’t control this bullshit, my career as an actor would be over before it had even begun.
Retrieving my phone from my pocket, I immediately called Milo, who answered on the second ring.
“Hey, sweetheart. I was just thinking about my cutie, sex-on-legs client. What can I do you for?” he sang on the other end.
At least there was someone who was always on my side, no matter what crap the press or life threw my way. And boy did he know how to make me feel wanted.
“Hey M, have you read the Daily Post?”
“No. Should I?” he asked.
“Uhm, hell yeah. There’s a scathing review for the show,” I told him. “This is what? The seventh in a week?”
“More like the twelfth, darling. I haven’t been showing youeverythingthey’re writing about you. I don’t want you going into a depress mode,” he chuckled. “You get it?Depressmode?”
I turned left to one of the side streets that was less crammed and walked up toward Primrose Hill and back home.
“Have you heard anything from Nichols?”
Nichols had approached me specifically for this part and had coached me on everything I needed to make my stage debut, but no director or producer could keep a show alive if all the critics hated it and the tickets didn’t sell.
“He’s trying to deal with the situation. It’s only the previews anyway, darling. He’s already got the writers working on bettering the script. Don’t panic. Besides, the people are loving it, and that’s what matters,” Milo said.
“Yeah, well, that’s a relief, I guess,” I said. I took the house keys out of my back pocket and unlocked my front door. “Are you sure they’re loving it?”
“Of course they do. Just... don’t go on Reddit, okay?”
I rolled my eyes at my close friend and agent and closed the front door.
“You’re not supposed to tell me that. Now, of course, I’m going to go on Reddit,” I said. “Gee, M, you’re terrible at this.”
Milo let out a shrill gasp, and I could picture him clasping his imaginary pearls.
