ONE

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“I’m telling you, Katherine: be careful you wish for.”

“I do, Mom. I am.”

Katie Dunn fought hard not to wince, even though her mother couldn’t see her expression over the phone.

The last couple of years, it seemed like that phrase had made its way into every single one of their conversations, no matter what they were actually talking about. It had gotten pretty old a long time ago, but it kept popping up anyway, as if Mom were convinced that her advice was being ignored.

But this was just a regular call, not FaceTime, so Katie was actually free to grimace, or roll her eyes, or let out a silent scream. Her mother was no big fan of video calls, so they seldom used the app, although they both had it on their phones. Mom claimed it made her look ‘compressed’, whatever that meant.

No matter that the only person who’d be able to see her was Katie.

No matter that Katie would really have liked to see her mother instead of just talking to her from a thousand miles away. Provided that Mom could avoid repeating that same old advice.

“I’m just saying.”

“I know, Mom.”

“All right, then.”

And with that, the lecture was over. It was time to move on to something new, or at least different.

You would think.

“The tabloids are claiming Ellery is pregnant again, you know,” her mother said, and there was nothing new or different about that, either. “I was at the market this morning, and there it was, for all the world to see. Staring me in the face while I was trying to pay for my pork chops and broccoli.”

Katie sank into her favorite cozy chair and dug her bare toes into the soft nap of the throw rug that lay in front of it. This time, she didn’t fight her response. She heaved a sigh that her mother certainly heard loud and clear up in Twin Falls.

“You’re sure she can’t sue them for lying about her?” her mother asked.

“No, she can’t,” Katie replied. “They word it all really carefully. What’s the headline this time? ‘Is That a Baby Bump on Roomies Star Ellery Cooper?’ With inside scoops provided by a close friend who went shopping with her at the most trendy baby store in town? Is that it?”

“I don’t know. I tried not to look at it.”

“She was invited to a baby shower for one of our hairdressers, so she had to buy a gift. We both did. I went to the baby store too. In fact, I was there with her. And no, I’m not the one who provided the inside scoops.”

Her mother hmpfed. “She should be able to sue them. Seriously, Katherine. It’s an outright lie.”

“Not legally,” Katie said. “They didn’t come right out and say she’s pregnant. They asked a question. Legally, it’s different.”

“And still wrong.”

“I know that, Mom.”

“She’s not really pregnant, then.”

“Of course not.”

Katie couldn’t help but sigh again, because she could imagine how Ellery would look the next morning at the table read for the next episode of their sitcom—the same way she’d looked every other time this had happened.

Embarrassed. Helpless. Ashamed.

The first time, a year or so ago, she’d been so upset that she threw up in the hallway outside her dressing room. It had come completely out of the blue: her picture plastered across the front page of that stupid tabloid, the one that was in every checkout aisle of every supermarket across the country.

‘ROOMIES’ STAR SPORTING A BABY BUMP? BEST GAL PAL SAYS SHE’S TICKLED PINK!

And underneath, a small picture of the guy who was Ellery’s boyfriend at the time, with the question: IS BF KEITH HAYES THE DADDY?

Since then, Ellery had theoretically been pregnant at least four times.

Four times in one year. That was rarefied territory, Katie supposed, up there with Jennifer Anniston (the reigning queen of mythical pregnancies), Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle.

Even what most people saw as legitimate magazines and websites had put Ellery on their front page several times, either spreading gossip or offering what they claimed were her personal tips for living a sexy, successful life. How to dress, what makeup to wear, how to exercise to stay Slim & Gorgeous!!!!!

If she was being honest, all that attention sometimes made Katie a little jealous, in spite of her mother’s warnings and her own common sense.

The press (legitimate or not) seldom even mentioned Katie, or her other co-star, Dana, in spite of their having equal billing with Ellery in the credits of Roomies, their hit sitcom. Even though Ellery was the one the reporters and photographers all chased, as far as the show was concerned, there was no real difference among the three of them.

The Gorgeous One, The Smart One… and The Funny One.

Katie lifted her head a little and looked across the room at the sliding glass door that led out onto the balcony of her condo. She couldn’t see her reflection in it, but she knew what she’d find if she could: a 31-year-old woman nobody referred to as ‘gorgeous’, although she was pretty enough to have landed the role of Cassie, the tender-hearted goofball.

People in the real world thought of her as slender, but on TV? Compared to the willowy Ellery? She was chunky. Curvy.

Quirky-looking.

And definitely not pregnant, even in the Twilight Zone world of the tabloids.

Not that she wanted to be. It would have been nice to have a steady guy in her life, though, someone who was as sweet and attentive to her as poor hounded Keith Hayes had been to Ellery.

Someone to curl up and watch a movie with, or take a long hike with up in the canyons. Someone to enjoy a quiet meal with. Someone to bring home to Twin Falls and show off to her parents and their neighbors.

Someone who was good-looking would be a plus, although that wasn’t a must. In this town, the good-looking guys were all actors, or wanted to be. Which meant what they generally wanted was connections, a stepping stone to stardom. Not a partner, a soulmate.

A foot in the door, not a girlfriend. Not someone like Katie Dunn.

“Sweetie,” Katie’s mother said gently. “Are you mooning again?”

“No,” Katie replied.

To her great relief, her mother didn’t repeat what she’d said a few minutes ago. Be careful what you wish for. But she’d said it so many times that it hung there in the air, surrounding Katie’s phone like a little gray cloud.

Mom didn’t say Everything comes at a price, either, but that hung there too, competing for the territory around the phone.

You don’t need to wish for anything, Katie told herself firmly. Look at you. You live a charmed life, for heaven’s sake.

She was one of the three leads on a hit show that was finishing up its second season and had been renewed for a third. Her agent had engineered a nice raise for her for next season—one that would match what Ellery and Dana were earning, of course—and she’d been able to buy a pretty, spacious condo less than a mile from the studio, which meant a really short commute in the busy Burbank traffic.

The paparazzi generally didn’t pester her, unless there was no bigger ‘get’ nearby, and no one ever wrote crazy stuff about her, except that one article that had claimed she had a wacky exercise routine involving… What was it? A pair of mini-trampolines. Strap-on weights for her wrists and ankles. And her three dogs, which ignored the fact that Katie didn’t own a dog.

The magazine hadn’t mentioned, either, that the routine obviously didn’t work all that well, since she was The Curvy One.

Just that one crazy article in the year and a half since Roomies had debuted. So, she had no reason to be embarrassed, or angry, or ashamed.

That was good, right? She had nothing to complain about.

Except that her condo was awfully quiet.

That was what she’d wanted, originally: a place where her ears wouldn’t be bombarded by other people’s music, or shrieking kids, or arguing couples. Where her balcony was on the side of the building away from the street, so she could only faintly hear the traffic noise.

Thank heaven, she heard sirens only rarely, and no gunshots.

But a place could be too quiet, and it felt like that now, although she could hear Adele singing in the background at her parents’ place in Twin Falls. She had to be careful not to sigh again, because that might be one sigh too many: enough to prompt her mother to show up on her doorstep to cheer her up, possibly with Dad in tow, or one of her aunts, or a cousin.

You’ve got nothing to be upset about, she thought. But Ellery sure does.

Assuming Ell had seen the tabloids, or her agent’s office had called to tell her about them.

“Just ignore it,” everyone told her.

But how could you, when strangers would stare at your stomach when (and if) you ventured out in public? When you couldn’t run out for a coffee without people gaping at you?

The few times they’d gaped at Katie, it definitely wasn’t a good thing. Like when that woman at the market had stared and stared, then yanked her husband in close and hissed, “Look, Stan. It’s that girl from that show. You know: the stupid one.”

She hadn’t specified whether she meant the show was stupid, or Katie’s character, or Katie herself, but it didn’t much matter. Katie had pasted on the most genuine smile she could manage, and had posed for a selfie with the woman when she asked.

No doubt she’d made it onto the woman’s Facebook page—wearing no makeup, her hair pulled into a messy ponytail, dressed in leggings and the USC sweatshirt that she’d washed so many times, it was as soft as a pajama top.

Afterwards, she’d made the mistake of mentioning the encounter to her agent, whose eyes had blown open wide.

“Oh, darling,” Amanda had blurted. “You can’t go out in public like that. Do you want to end up on the Fashion Rejects page?”

“It was an… an emergency.”

Amanda didn’t ask for a clarification.

“Dress for success,” she’d informed Katie, patting the surface of her desk with the palms of both stylishly manicured hands as if that would underscore the advice. “Even if you just pop down to the lobby to get the mail. The world is watching, love. Twenty-four-seven, and you’re a big name now.”

A huge name, actually, in Twin Falls. They’d even held a parade in her honor.

So, yeah. Things were good.

Couldn’t be better.

“I have to go,” she told her mother.

“Try not to moon, baby girl. It’ll give you frown lines, and you’ll never get rid of them. You’ll end up selling concealer on infomercials at three o’clock in the morning.”

That was a joke. The kind of joke her father generally made.

Maybe you did that after almost forty years together. Stole each other’s jokes, even if they weren’t particularly funny.

Or funny at all.

Even if they were sort of cringe-worthy.

“Yeah,” Katie said. “Love you.”

“I love you too,” her mother replied. “Be good.”

Katie put the phone down gently, well-trained enough to be wary even of bumping something that had cost so much. She had in mind throwing a load of laundry into the machine, but when she leaned forward, intending to get ‘up and at it’, as Dad always said, her body declined to cooperate. It was a Sunday afternoon, after all, and she hadn’t bothered to turn up the AC, so the condo was warm enough to make her a little drowsy.

She spent a lot of Sunday afternoons reading, but that didn’t seem like a good choice, not when her eyes were drooping shut.

A hike, maybe? It was close to eighty outside, a little unusual for the end of February, even in Southern California, but if she drove up to one of the trails near the beach, there might be a breeze coming in off the water.

Okay, yeah. That’s a plan.

All she needed to do was…

Take a shower and wash her hair. Choose an outfit that wouldn’t make her look homeless or sloppy or fashion-blind if she ran into someone who wanted to score a selfie with her, though that would probably be an outfit that wasn’t at all comfortable to hike in. She’d have to put on makeup, too, and style her hair.

All of that on the off chance that some stranger would recognize her.

You lead a charmed life, Katherine Dunn, she told herself firmly.

Sure, it had taken her almost seven years to score a really good role after she’d moved to Los Angeles post-college, but there were thousands of people here who’d been struggling for decades, who were barely getting by. Katie, on the other hand, had gotten enough work even early on that she’d always been able to pay her bills, and now she was famous, more or less.

Living in a beautiful condo. Able to fly home for a visit whenever she liked. Able to eat in good restaurants and buy expensive phones.

Shaking her head, she struggled up out of her chair, pushed open the sliding door and went out onto the balcony.

It was a big space, lined with potted plants of all sizes. There were comfortable chairs there too, but she didn’t sit down. Instead, she went to the waist-high railing that surrounded the balcony and leaned there, gazing across the courtyard at the building on the other side.

Back home, she knew almost everyone who lived within a few blocks of her parents. Here, she really knew almost no one.

It was best to be careful, Amanda had told her; it wasn’t just boyfriends who’d try to take advantage of her, it was pretty much everyone, and that certainly seemed to be true, at least sometimes.

The cute guy she often saw walking his twin German shepherds had wanted to be introduced to Ellery. That Mohawked bagger at the market wanted a better job and thought Katie could help with that. Darcy, who lived in one of the apartments Katie could see from her balcony, had asked three times for a loan.

There were nice people, too, of course. People who didn’t seem to want anything, who were simply friendly.

But it was best to be careful.

Even her grandfather had asked if Katie could introduce him to Mark Harmon. “Tell him I love his show,” he’d instructed her, and her reply that she’d never met Mr. Harmon had left him undeterred. “You might run into him one day,” he said, patting her on the arm. “You never know.”

Nope, you sure didn’t.

It wasn’t until her mother’s voice (chiming in from the back of her mind) had reminded her for the umpteenth time not to ‘moon’ that she stepped away from the railing and went back inside.

It was too quiet here, too warm, and if she gave in to Sunday afternoon ennui, it would end up being Sunday evening, and then Monday morning, and there would be Ellery, crying softly at the table read.

When Katie reached her bedroom, she addressed herself in the mirror with a stern shake of her head.

“Enough of this,” she told her mirror-self. “Up and at ’em, girlie.”