Chapter 4

Angelina

It wasn’t Dean Morrison. I could tell by the stupid messages the guy was sending me. The more I messaged him, though, the angrier I got. Dean didn’t need some shmuck out there pretending to be him. I was going to string this guy along and get him to meet up with me so I could call him out.

Catfishing profiles were my pet peeve. I was sure there were plenty of people out there that had my photos and were pretending to be me too. But I knew a big movie star like Dean wouldn’t be on a hook-up app like Instamatch. If I had to write a few dirty messages to keep this weirdo occupied, then that was what I was going to do.

“I’d love to invite you over to my hotel room; I’ve got a huge whirlpool tub we could enjoy together,” I text him and laughed.

Guys were so predictable; just make everything about sex, and he certainly would agree to meet up with me. Even though this loser was pretending to be someone he really wasn’t, he would agree to meet up with me because he’d want to have sex. Of course, I’d have to meet him in a public place, and I had no idea what exactly I would say to the guy, but it really bugged me that someone was pretending to be Dean.

“Wow, you’re in a hotel? What are you in town for?” The guy pretending to be Dean Morrison responded.

“I’m here on business.”

I wasn’t about to tell him who I really was. This poser didn’t deserve the truth, and the last thing I needed was for him to start stalking me when he found out who I was. Nope, I was fine with lying to him since he was obviously lying and using a fake profile picture.

“What kind of business are you in?”

“Finance,” I sent back to him in the Instamatch messaging section.

I’m sure this wasn’t what Jeremy meant when he told me to talk to people. He probably wanted me to be talking to guys that I would actually want to meet up with, but I was preoccupied with this particular guy. Probably because I had lusted after Dean Morrison since the first movie I ever saw him in.

“Oh, I’ve been learning a lot about finance. I’d love to pick your brain.”

“You can have any part of my body you’d like,” I teased him. “How about we meet up for a drink tomorrow night?”

Was this guy serious? Pretending to be interested in finance and asking me questions. What would a girl that looked like me be doing in the finance world? I started to get more and more suspicious of this guy. Maybe he wasn’t just a guy posing as a famous person; maybe he was some sort of killer or rapist. I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep talking with him and quickly closed the app and put the phone next to my bed.

The sad part about it all was I really did wish the guy was the real Dean Morrison. The real man was someone I would have loved to talk to. He had lived a fascinating life and was so damn handsome I wouldn’t be able to breathe if I was in the same room with him.

Dean Morrison was an old-school rugged looking guy. He was a man’s man, with wrinkles around his eyes and a scar above his eyebrow. Dean wasn’t like the new Hollywood guys who spent money to have scars removed and hide their wrinkles. Dean didn’t buy into the hype of Hollywood and bow down to the producers who wanted him to sell himself out. I had already told my agent that I didn’t care what the project was; if Dean was assigned to something, I needed to be on the project.

Jeremy laughed at my request to work with Dean, though. Not because Dean had been out of Hollywood for a little bit, but because I was nowhere near the star that Dean was. It wasn’t likely I’d even get a small role in a Dean Morrison movie. Dean didn’t seem like the type of guy who would want a reality television star in his film either. He really didn’t seem like the type of guy who even knew what reality television was.

“Tomorrow, I have a show, but I could meet you for a drink afterward,” the guy pretending to be Dean sent in the messaging app.

I stared at the notification, and the handsome picture of Dean that showed up with it. I knew this guy was fake; everything in my body said he was fake and that he might even be someone dangerous. The problem was there was a small part inside of me that really needed to prove that this wasn’t Dean. I had to meet up with the guy, or I would wonder if the real Dean Morrison had actually been messaging me. It was a tiny possibility that sat way back in my head, but I had to clear it up before I was going to block this guy.

“Okay, eleven o’clock at Club 64 near Times Square,” I replied. “I’ll be wearing an all white dress and drinking a blue martini.”

“See you then,” he replied quickly.

What the hell was I doing? I had just agreed to meet up with some stranger who was pretending to be a guy I had a crush on. This wasn’t going to turn out well; I just had a bad feeling about it. How on earth was I going to recognize who this guy was? I was already assuming he wasn’t the real Dean, but maybe he would at least look like the guy.

Sunday was my last day to rest, and I took full advantage of it. I stayed in bed until noon and then put on a hat, sunglasses, and sweatpants before I went to explore the city. No one knew I was in town yet; well, I hoped they didn’t, so I didn’t think it would be too much of a problem to go shopping.

But I just never knew for sure if the paparazzi knew I was in town. Sometimes people leaked information, and there would be paparazzi following me in the weirdest of locations. One time, I was filming in Montana, and it got out; the small town was swarmed with the press, and we ended up hiring a dozen security guards to keep the filming location closed.

New York was like an old friend to me. I loved how big and inviting it was. I loved how busy the streets were, and that I could walk or take the subway to pretty much anyplace I wanted. When I was in New York, I was just one of the millions of people who lived there. There was no fame, no planning every second of my day. Most of the time, I could just be a normal woman, which was nearly impossible to do when I was in Los Angeles.

Admittedly, I had set my life up the way it was, and I wasn’t complaining about the media attention at all. The media and paparazzi were just a part of my normal day to day life, but I really did enjoy when I could live my life without the cameras. I had been getting more and more time without cameras since I moved out of my mother’s house, and I really liked it.

Since my makeup line was starting to take off, I had been thinking about opening my own cosmetics shop in New York. My new line of eye shadows and lipsticks were very popular, and we had a business plan to expand to over a dozen other products. Using my fame and popularity in the moment seemed like the right thing to do. So while I walked the streets, I kept my eye out for real estate that might work for a small store. Nothing too big, I just wanted a legitimate makeup store that I could sell my products in. I took some pictures of storefronts that seemed like they might work for me.

“Hey, hey, can I get a picture with you?” a teenager yelled at me as I stood in front of an empty building. and had my phone out so I could put the telephone number in. I really had no idea how she knew it was me.

I wasn’t prepared for fan encounters. When I traveled in Los Angeles, I almost always had friends with me. It was harder to get stuck in a fan line when you had friends who could pull you away. Otherwise, once one fan took a photo, a dozen more lined up to have their photos, and soon the street could be a very unsafe place for me to be all alone.

“Sure,” I said casually.

There was always the chance that I could snap a quick picture with the girl and then get out of the area before others saw us or figured out who I was. I hoped that would be the case this time. I just couldn’t get stuck in a huge crowd of fans when I was out all alone.

“What are you doing in New York? I thought you were filming that new movie?” she asked. “Didn’t you just post from the set like yesterday?”

“We are filming in town for a couple of days. It was nice meeting you,” I said as soon as she snapped her photo and started to walk away.

“Thanks, Angie; I love all your makeup!” the girl screamed with excitement after me.

I didn’t even care that she had called me Angie, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I made it to the end of the block and turned the corner. I slipped my phone back into my bag and realized the phone had been the culprit. I had a one of a kind selfie case; it was large, with photo lighting on one side and my reality show logo on the other. It was an advertisement for the company, and I was under contract to keep the case on it for three months. As much as I wanted to get rid of the thing, I didn’t want to break a contract and knew I could never really tell when paparazzi might show up and take a photo of me. If they took a photo of me, and I didn’t have the phone case on, then I would be in breach of contract.

I turned down a couple of different streets just to make sure I had lost the girls. With my hat and sunglasses on, I knew I could blend in if I just left my cell phone in my bag. As I turned one last corner to head back to my hotel, I realized I was on Broadway. Then I realized I was standing right next to the Showman Theater and the billboard said To Catch a Killer was starring Dean Morrison.

My life had been busy as hell, and I hadn’t heard at all that Dean would be starring in a Broadway show. Then it dawned on me; maybe the guy on Instamatch had really been him! I still had the gut feeling that the guy was a fake, but seeing that the real Dean was in New York gave me the tiniest bit of hope that I might be able to meet him while I was in town. Probably not from a dating app, but maybe I could run into him another way.

I leaned against the building as I felt my head getting light. I had acted like a total ass to the guy online; what if it was the real Dean? I had been aggressive and sent erotic texts. Oh, the idea of sending those to the real Dean Morrison was absolutely terrifying. I was starting to hope the guy online was, in fact, a fake, purely because I had totally embarrassed myself.

“Are you alright young lady?” an elderly woman asked as she went to walk into the theater.

“Um, yes. I, um …yes, I’m okay. Thank you.”

“I’m just opening up if you want to get some tickets. I heard they opened up a few seats for the afternoon show.”

“Oh, well I wasn’t going to …”

“You know we are sold out now. It will be your only chance to see the show. They sold almost every seat we have for the rest of the month.”

“Okay, one ticket,” I blurted out before I could stop myself.

I paid the woman and went to grab a quick sandwich before the show started. My mind was all jumbled up with thoughts on whether it really was Dean who I had been talking to. It couldn’t have been; why would a guy like that even be on Instamatch? It made no sense at all. The person who was pretending to be him had probably just seen that Dean was in town for a show and was playing off of women’s love for the guy. Maybe the pretender even looked enough like Dean that he could pull it off, but I wouldn’t be so gullible.

I hatched a plan. I would send the pretender a message about the show. Something that only Dean would know, maybe something that actually happened while I watched the afternoon performance. That’s what I would do, catch the pretender in his lie so I could put myself at ease and stop thinking he might possibly be the real Dean Morrison. I was going to show up to that drink with the Instamatch guy.

When it was time to be seated, I quickly got into my seat and tried not to make eye contact with those around me. I no longer had my hat or sunglasses for protection, but I hoped my casual attire, and the fact that I was alone, would be enough to keep me hidden. I did have to pull my phone out to turn off the ringer and see if there were any important messages, but I kept it in my lap to avoid anyone seeing the logo on the back of it.

“Hey, I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it to the club later. Can you meet up sooner?” I sent to the pretender on Instamatch, just before the show started. If it were the real Dean, he wouldn’t be able to meet any sooner because he would be doing his evening show; if it was a pretender, he might have said yes to my offer.

I noticed I had at least two dozen text messages that I hadn’t looked at yet, but I still turned my phone off and put it into my bag. I couldn’t risk someone seeing me with that bulky phone case. There would be no denying who I was, and I didn’t want to cause a scene.

The lights dimmed, and Dean came out on the stage. My heart fluttered at seeing him up close and personal like that. He looked natural, without a stitch of makeup on, but that was no surprise. A guy as rugged as Dean wasn’t going to bother with the fluff of stage makeup. It was an intimate theater, and I was in the fifth row; I looked up into his eyes and watched intently. as he performed flawlessly. Theater acting was way beyond my skills, and I was in awe of Dean and all the other actors as the show continued.

The acting was so intense I felt like I was there in the show with them. The horror of trying to figure out who the murderer was, the fear in the female character’s eyes as she started to figure out that Dean was the man she needed to be afraid of. They made it look easy, but I knew it had to be so hard managing to remember your lines, acting and moving around the stage. Everything was flawless, and it inspired me as an actress.

I was so new to acting that I felt I would never be good enough for the stage. Hell, I would settle for being good enough to have my movie actually make money or to be asked to be in a film that was made by a major studio; that was a dream. The film I was doing now would do well enough; I’m sure we would turn a profit, but I wanted people to talk about my acting. I wanted the dream of getting nominated for awards and having others tell me I was unbelievably good. It was a silly dream; I knew it, but still one that I couldn’t get out of my head.