Page 2 of Close Match
“Because this one’s a halfway decent article on you. They’re not gossiping about you beating out Michelle for the role inThe Dream Sequence. They’re not saying you and Mom are scratching each other’s eyes out onstage. And best yet, they’re not saying you’re having a flaming affair with Simon.” She rolls her eyes.
I grin at her. “That’s your favorite part.” Ever since I treated Bristol to a trip to England to see me act inOklahoma!, she and Simon have been inseparable. America should consider itself lucky that Simon tumbled head over feet over my baby sister, or juicy role or not, he’d still be in London. Gossips assume it was because of our “magnetic stage presence.” I chortle every time I think about it.
We both must be better actors than we let on. After all, when you individually eat onion- and cilantro-riddled food before going onstage for your big romance scene, it’s all you can do to not laugh at each other. Or deliberately burp in each other’s faces. Yet, night after night, our “sexual tension” keeps receiving rave reviews and amusing Bristol to no end. Since she’s long dealt with our onstage romance, she delights in slapping a cup of mouthwash in Simon’s hand before she’ll even come near him after a show.
Especially now.
“How are you feeling?” I ask her. Bristol is about six weeks pregnant. Neither Simon, she, nor I have said anything knowing the gossip rags—much like the one she is trying to make me read—are going to go insane when they realize who the father is.
“Fantastic so long as Simon doesn’t come near me until he’s brushed his teeth about eight times,” she mutters in disgust.
I heft my water glass in the air. “To morning sickness.”
She clinks hers back. “To everything sickness, when it comes to cilantro.” We both burst out laughing.
“It must be from Dad. Mom loves that stuff.” I’m laughing as I peruse a menu I should have memorized already. We’re at Wolf’s Delicatessen at least once a month. Their pastrami on rye is one of the few luxuries I’ll allow myself while I’m onstage.
“Mom loves it, but nothing like Simon does. I swear, he’d make it another food group if he could,” Bristol agrees. “I know it’s just a stage kiss, but how you don’t vomit in his mouth night after night…”
“That’s why they call it acting, darling.” We both turn. Even at sixty-three, our mother turns heads everywhere she goes. “Scoot over, Bris. And tell me why your iPad is on the table. Didn’t I teach you better manners than that?”
I shoot my sister an amused sneer before I answer for her. “She wants me to read some piece of garbage that was written about me this morning.”
My mother sighs. “It appalls me you never read your own press.”
“Probably because most of the time I’m reading about the fact we all hate each other?” I arch a perfectly groomed eyebrow.
“Linnie, that’s half the fun.” I shake my head at my mother in amusement.
“Mom, you just like having gossip to spread on set,” I retort.
She shrugs. Guilty. “Only when I can substantiate it, darling. And besides, I know which one of my daughters is pregnant.”
Bristol and I exchange horrified looks. “Tell me someone’s not…” I whisper, leaning forward.
“Darling, if you didn’t want the rumor mill to start, you should have let me go with your sister to her first appointment.”
“She’d have had to have delayed it, Mom! You were flying in from Paris,” I snap.
Mom shrugs. She’s still pissed I got to see her first grandchild before she did. Not that she didn’t march Bristol back to the OBGYN the next day to make her do to it again, but did the paparazzi follow her? No, of course not. They wouldn’t dare follow Brielle Brogan.
It’s just me.
I grab my oversized Louis Vuitton, stick my head into it, and scream. Since it’s New York, no one pays me any attention, not even Mom or Bristol, who are chattering away. I catch the tail end of their conversation even as I manage to get something caught in my hair as I remove my head from my purse.
“…swear this one is actually a good article.”
“Let me see it.” My mother holds out her hands. Bristol unlocks her iPad.
“Are we still talking about that damn article?” I demand as I untangle my Mont Blanc from the end of my hair.
My mother hushes me. “Let me read this.” Knowing there is no choice, I toss the pen back in my bag and do what my mother tells me. “This is a decent article, Linnie.”
Crap, when Mom sounds impressed, I know I’ll have to read it. “Give it to me.” I hold out my hand. Scrolling to the top, I scan it. Scrolling down, I frown. “What the…who is this person? Courtney Jackson? This is the most legit article I’ve read about myself since I was twenty-four and was actually inBest Thing,” I admit.
“I don’t know, but I’d pass this along to your agent. This is the kind of person you want in your corner,” Mom advises me.
She’s not wrong. One of the things they don’t teach you at school is how to deal with fame. Likely because they don’t think you’re going to get very far, I surmise. But the problems that can occur when you’re young and trying to deal with the media can be outrageous. If I didn’t have my mother providing me guidance along the way, I’d be in much worse shape than I am.
