By the time Blue and Chelsea arrived at Terrance’s house breakfast was over. Colleen and Terrance were snuggling by the pool and Jamie was watching TV in the living room. They had just walked into the house when Chelsea’s cellphone rang. She looked down and saw it was her manager Lauren.
“Hey, Lauren,” Chelsea said as she walked into her room and closed the door behind her.
“Chels, you beautiful darling, how are you this fine morning?”
“Um...I’m okay,” Chelsea answered. After the events of last night, it was hard for her to move back into chirpy LA mode.
“Great. So, we are really amping up for album release over here and we are starting to think of some advance press. Give them something to talk about before the full album drops.”
“Okay, so like interviews or something?” Chelsea asked.
“Even better. Have you heard of Ryan Baron?”
“Yeah, of course, everyone has.” He was the lead actor of the newest Young Adult dystopian craze. Chelsea hadn’t bothered to see the movie but it was about a group of teenagers in a dystopian world where people could read minds or something. Ryan Baron was the newest teen crush. His chiseled jaw, blue eyes, and black hair had graced the cover of half a dozen magazines last year and he was being considered for the next Batman.
“Well, his publicist told my publicist that he wants to meet you.”
“What?” Chelsea asked. It seemed too ridiculous; he had asked his people to call her people to ask her out. Chelsea wondered if that was supposed to impress her.
“He wants to meet you. The second movie in his trilogy comes out in about a month and your album drops in three. It’ll be good press.”
“We would have to be together for at least three months?” Chelsea asked. “I haven’t even met him yet.”
“Oh, honey, don’t worry about that. We would iron out all of the details for you. Honestly, this could be great for you. He might want the same girlfriend in the break between the movies, you know to really sell him as nice boy so moms and dads are okay with their teenage daughter’s pestering their room with his face. And he is hugely famous; this would be a big bump for you and it would stop all of those ‘she’s so lonely!’ articles before they even start. You know the ones, an unflattering picture of you with the words crying herself to sleep at night over your cheek. It’s horrible, but if you have a boyfriend and you go out for drinks a few times a month everyone will be happy.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Chelsea said. “I mean I want to say no; this sounds crazy.”
“Chels, everyone does it. Everyone, all the time. But there is no pressure, just promise me you’ll think about it. I’ll give Ryan your number; he can text you and we can see how you two feel about each other.”
“It’s just...there might be-”
“No, Chelsea,” Jennifer said, her chirpy voice getting colder. “Do not tell me there is someone else. We had an agreement, no boyfriends, remember?”
“But wouldn’t Ryan be a boyfriend?”
“Yes, but first he would be good for your career. Is this guy good for your career?”
Chelsea didn’t speak. The answer was no, Blue was terrible for her career. He was standoffish and rude and wouldn’t be able to stomach the paparazzi, oh and he also might be her stepbrother soon. No, Blue was not good for her career.
“I’ll take your silence as a no. Look, I’m not saying you have to stop seeing what’s his name. You just need to keep it on the down low. You would think of Ryan as your fulltime job and this guy as your part time job; one obviously takes precedent over the other.”
“Wow,” Chelsea said.
Her manager was referring to her love life as a job. Was this what it took to be successful? Was this the only way she could make her dreams come true? Chelsea had been taking dance classes since she was five and voice lessons since she was twelve. She had competed in pageants and school plays and talent shows. She had written countless songs and taught herself the guitar. So now she was being asked to pretend that she was in love in with someone; it was just another form of acting, another thing she had to do. But there was no way she could do it.
“Look, Lauren,” Chelsea said. “I’m flattered, but I have a bunch of family stuff happening right now, and I don’t know if I can deal with a fake boyfriend at the moment.”
“You have family issues?” Lauren said. Her voice had a dangerous edge to it.
Chelsea could easily imagine her in her sixteenth floor office. Lauren had a view of the ocean, but she kept her back to it all day, so if you were a client you had to face her and the view all at the same time. She was tough and she knew what she was doing and she scared Chelsea a little, but she was the best in the business and she had personally chosen Chelsea.
“Deal with your family issues, Chelsea. We have spent millions of dollars on you, between printing the album, planning the tours, and making merchandise. People’s livelihoods are depending on you. When you signed up, you said you were ready to put in the work. You said you were ready to put your career first. Now it’s time to put your money where your mouth is. Deal with your family issues in the next two weeks, Chelsea, because you are due back to work on December first and nothing changes that date. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, I understand.”
“Give Ryan a chance and remember that everyone in your family is a grown adult, Chelsea. You can’t control them, and you can’t let them derail your career.”
The line went dead and Chelsea fell back on her bed. She had no idea what she wanted to do. She wished she were like those girls in the story who went for true love headfirst. She wished she could be more like Lizzy Bennett and reject Ryan, her own personal Mr. Collins, without even having to question it. She loved Blue and she wanted to be with him, but she couldn’t help but think of what it might cost her.
“Chels?” There was a knock at the door and then her sister’s quiet voice.
“Yeah, come in,” Chelsea said.
“You all right?” Jamie asked lying down on the bed next to her sister.
“Ryan Baron had his people call my people,” Chelsea said.
“Oh my God! Ryan Baron is so hot. I’d die for those chiseled cheekbones. What did you say?”
“Jamie, he had his people call my people. I’m not on the auction block. He could have got my number and called me, but instead it’s this weird PR play and I don’t know what to do.”
“He might be cool. Maybe that’s just how super famous people do it. It’s not like they can go to bars. I think you should go for it.”
“Yesterday you were telling me to go for Blue.”
“Did something happen with Blue?” Jamie asked excitedly propping herself up on one elbow.
“Yeah, but it wasn’t what you think,” Chelsea told her sister everything Blue had told her the other night. She would need Jamie on her side if she wanted to convince her mother to leave Terrance.
“Oh my God,” Jamie said when Chelsea was finally done. “We’re in that man’s house; we’re sleeping in his beds.”
“I know.”
“Our mother is going to marry him!”
“I know. We have to tell her. We have to warn her.”
“She’ll never believe us. She always sides with her boyfriends. Maybe there’s some way we can prove it.”
“No, if we did that we would have to involve Blue and I don’t want to do that to him. I don’t want him to have anything to do with these fights. It must have been so horrible for him.”
“We’ll have to goad Terrance into saying something in front of Mom, then,” Jamie said. “It’ll be ugly, but at least it will be quick.”
“We’ll just have to hope that someday she forgives us.” Chelsea said.
She didn’t want to do this. She was going to break her mother’s heart and humiliate her all in one sweep. She could tell Colleen really liked Terrance, or at least the decent person Terrance was pretending to be. It was going to be terrible for Colleen to realize that Terrance didn’t really exist. Her mother deserved happiness; she didn’t deserve what was about to happen to her.