I took the job in California. The network had made it hard to say no. I’d been flown out to L.A., put up in a costly hotel, and encouraged by Val, Corbin, and Roger to say yes. When I’d said I’d need time to think about the offer, the producers had sweetened the deal. Of the five principals hired, only two were making more than me, and they were both minor local celebrities.

The world would fall in love with me—according to the producers and crew. Of course, I’d never had it in me to play the villain. They’d set me up with a roommate, a struggling set designer named Bree, who was also on the show. Corbin and Val had been around for some of the filming, but I’d refused to bring my family into it, even though the producers sometimes made me talk about my dad and Tiffany while filming. Cameras followed us around, intrusive and cumbersome, all to marry the slice-of-life reality Mike had promised with plots the writing team molded into stories.

Late summer, a couple months into shooting, Val invited just about everyone I knew in L.A. over to her house for the pilot. When Bree and I showed up, sans cameras but with party platters, the applause began.

Bree bowed, but I only hid my reddening face. I hadn’t gotten into acting to be famous. I loved that I could access a different part of my brain and heart and use those to create a world for others. An escape. But I’d gotten more attention over the past few months than I’d ever wanted, and we hadn’t even aired yet. With a look, I implored Val to make it stop.

She picked up a bottle of champagne and got on the coffee table. “Who wants alcohol?”

Some of our friends held out their glasses, and others took their places around the TV, which was currently muted on Charmed. Not everyone was so easily sidetracked, though.

“They put up a billboard on Sunset Boulevard,” Roger said, holding out his glass for champagne. “You’re like goddesses gazing upon us mere mortals.”

Bree handled the attention better than I did, so I slipped into the crowd as she whipped a disposable camera out of her purse. “I already took a whole roll of photos this afternoon.”

I disappeared into the kitchen to prepare the appetizers I’d brought. I was setting the oven as Val floated in. Tonight, she was Bohemian Val, Sienna Miller-meets-Stevie Nicks with heavy bangs and straightened blonde hair. She’d paired an off-the-shoulder floral dress with a wide leather belt and fashion cowboy boots.

“What’re those?” she asked over my shoulder as I stood at the island.

“Homemade bagel bites. Just like the frozen kind, except I made these.”

“You are such a good mom.”

I smiled a little, tossing the foil wrapping into the trash. “I’m doing whatever I can to keep the nerves at bay.”

“Well, then I should probably keep what I know to myself,” she said, leaning her upper half on the island, “but you know I won’t.”

I glanced up at her, arranging the food. “Okay . . .? What?”

“Listen.” She checked over her shoulder. “Corbin and I fought for an hour about this, but in the end, I couldn’t talk him out of it—and I couldn’t explain to him the depth of why this was a bad idea without revealing the truth about your history with your sister.” She made a face. “Corbin flew in today.”

“Wait—really?” I grinned. “All the way from New York? What’s that got to do with Tiffany?”

“She called him and asked if she could come tonight.”

I stopped fussing with the platter and stared at her. “What?”

“I guess she wanted to surprise you, because—duh—if she’d asked you, you’d have told her to take a hike.”

Would I have? Tiffany and I hadn’t spoken since last Christmas, and even then it’d been a cursory, five-minute conversation. She didn’t even live in the area. She’d have to drive in from Orange County. “Did she say why?” I asked.

“I think it’s just because she wants to grab onto your coattails, I mean, could she be more obvious with her timing? You’re going to be on TV tonight.” Val picked a diced tomato off one of the bagel bites and popped it in her mouth. “But Corbin seems to think Tiffany’s making an effort and deserves a chance you’d never give her otherwise. He felt bad that Tiffany couldn’t even bring herself to call you.”

“Well,” I said, my posture sagging. “Shit.”

“Yeah.” Val lifted a shoulder. “I couldn’t exactly tell Corbin that there might be a catfight over he-whose-name-makes-me-gag.”

I looked out the kitchen window, where palm tree silhouettes painted the dusky, indigo sky. Did I want to see my sister after all these years? No. She wasn’t just the cruelest reminder possible of Manning, but she’d intentionally hurt me. I’d done the same to her, though. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready to face her, but she was making an effort. After going years without hearing from my dad, that spoke volumes. Tiffany and I had kept in touch, but I hadn’t seen her since she’d left for her honeymoon. “Thanks for warning me,” I said. “Even though I’m twice as nervous now.”

“Don’t be. You’re older and smarter. She can’t get to you anymore.” Val turned to get a bottle of Veuve Clicquot from the fridge before I could protest. “And the show will be fan-fucking-tastic. You’re the sweetheart, so you have nothing to worry about. Bree on the other hand . . .” She grimaced before taking a champagne glass from a cupboard. “I’m worried she’s the village idiot and doesn’t know it.”

I laughed. “Or she knows it, and she’ll get more screen time because of it—which would make her the shrewdest of all.”

“Touché. So how come instead of being excited, you’ve been moping around all week like you just found out you have chlamydia?”

I shrugged. According to my agent, castmates, and the media, I was the industry’s next “sweetheart.” I had “something,” the “it factor” and “the right look.” I was going to be someone. But aside from the few low-budget, hardly attended plays I’d been a part of in New York, nobody had seen me act yet. The cameras didn’t even follow me into the auditions I attended during filming, just the preparation before, and getting rejected or called back after.

“Val?” I said, sliding the tray into the oven. “You’re around actresses all day on set. Do you think I’m any good?”

“You have a certain quality,” she said.

“What quality?” I asked.

“The one you have. It’s indescribable.” She waved me off. “Anyone can learn to act, but not anyone can be a star.”

I crossed my oven mitt-clad hands under my arms. “So you’re saying I suck.”

She laughed. “Suck? No. You’re just honing your craft. I’d cast you, and I’m not just saying that. You really do steal the show when you’re on stage, and I think it’ll be the same on screen.”

“I honestly don’t know why they bother with me,” I said. “I didn’t get into that much drama. I mostly met people for lunch like the producers wanted, went to auditions, cried about missing my family, or stood around the bar.”

“Did you ever think you’d have to get a job to support your current job? It’s like they made you work at that place so the group would have a nighttime meeting spot. It’s the after-hours Peach Pit of reality TV.”

I snickered. “That’s exactly why they set me up there. That, and I swear they knew Sean and I would start dating before either of us did.”

“It’s because they needed a Bad Boy Bartender,” Val said. She’d been secretly guiding me all season, helping me understand the inner-workings of the industry so I wouldn’t step in too many piles of shit on national television. “He’s got tattoos, a motorcycle, and a bad attitude. How’s it going with him anyway?”

“Perfect,” I said, tossing the mitts on the counter. Sean and I saw each other when we wanted and the crew got footage for the show. He never prodded about my past or asked how I was feeling. He was flighty and shallow, and that was the absolute most I could handle for a love interest. If my life ended up a series of flings, I wasn’t sure I’d mind too much. “Off camera, he treats me all right,” I said. “Better than it’ll look on TV.”

“What about that other guy, the boom operator?”

“I like him, too, but ours is a romance for the shadows. He’s not supposed to date the cast.”

Val’s eyes sparkled as she sipped her champagne. “So that means the sex is hot?”

“Very.” I turned away to check on the bagel bites, worried Val would read my expression and sigh the way she always did. Sex belonged to Manning first. It was so fucking predictable but true—he’d destroyed me for anyone else. Sex could be a lot of things, including passionate, but no one would ever come close to Manning. “Do you miss New York?” I asked her.

“Kind of.” She sounded thoughtful. “Not more than I’d miss working in film, though. I wouldn’t exactly complain if Hollywood was relocated to Eighth Avenue. What about you?”

I leaned back against the counter to face her. New York had definitely had its moments. For me, it had been split in half with graduation in the middle. Before Manning, after Manning. We’d constructed a life there together in five days, and I had spent the next few years not living it. “Coming back was the right choice,” I said. “I didn’t realize I needed a change until it was in motion.”

A male voice spoke from just outside the kitchen. “If only you’d had someone there to point that out to you.”

I turned around with my most convincing look of surprise. I was an actress, after all. “Corbin?”

He sauntered in with his signature ear-to-ear grin and bouquets in both hands. If I could cash in all the flowers he’d given me over the years, I’d be living in a high-rise in downtown New York City like he was. “Evening, superstars.”

“What’re you doing here?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m not staying, I just wanted to fly in and drop these off in person,” he teased, holding out white lilies.

I rolled my eyes, taking them. “Corbin. You did not come all the way here for this.”

He winked. “Wouldn’t miss it,” he said, then turned and gave Val a different bouquet.

She just stared at it. “Aren’t those for Bree?”

“No, ma’am. One for each of my best girls.”

When Val blushed, I almost laughed. It was such a rare sight. She took the medley of mismatched flowers, an assortment of shapes, sizes, and colors, and looked into them with a furrowed brow. “What are these, grocery store leftovers?”

He laughed. “I wanted to buy something I thought you’d like but I couldn’t decide. You have a million different interests and opinions.” To me, he said out of the side of his mouth, “Not to mention personalities.”

Val raised the bouquet like she was going to smack him with it. He waved his hands in surrender. “So I just pulled over and picked a bunch of different shit. If you grew out of the ground, that’s basically what you’d look like.”

Val and I stared at him. I started to laugh, but she just looked perplexed. “O-kay, thanks for the roadside weeds, I guess?” she said, but when she turned her back to look for a vase, I caught the way she stuck her nose in the flowers.

“That’s not all I brought,” Corbin said, shoulders back as he moved aside. Even though I’d been warned, I almost dropped my flowers. Tiffany stood behind him clutching a Louis Vuitton purse to her hip. The kitchen went silent. In a short denim skirt and Rocket Dogs, she dressed the part of the girl who’d stolen Manning out from under me, but she didn’t look the same. Eight years had passed since I’d watched her leave for her honeymoon, and she was a thirty-year-old divorcée now.

She took a few steps into the kitchen, her eyes bouncing from Val and Corbin back to me. She’d never had much trouble handling a roomful of people, but she looked a little out of her element.

I couldn’t quite gauge her mood—or my own. It wasn’t as if I never wondered about seeing her. In fact, I thought about it often, especially when I was at my most vulnerable. Right before I’d moved here, I’d almost picked up the phone to ask her if it was the right choice, but what answer could she have possibly given? Aside from a few short phone calls over the years, I’d told her next to nothing about my life. After I’d lost Manning, in some of my darkest moments, I’d wished I could escape into her bedroom for a few hours where she’d play Soundgarden too loud and pet me and tell me things would get better once I understood boys. Well, here we were, almost a decade later, and I still didn’t understand boys.

“I can’t believe you’re going to be on TV,” she said.

I couldn’t say I understood her, either, or most of the things I was supposed to by twenty-six years old. I was an adult now, and I should’ve known what to say to my own sibling, but I just gaped at her. Maybe that was why she’d come. To see her sister on TV.

“And . . . I can’t believe you’re standing in front of me,” she added.

For all the ups and downs we’d had, she was familiar. She was home. I wanted to hug her. She wore shoes higher than mine, her top showed more cleavage than the ultimate Wonderbra could bless me with, and her beauty—her curled blonde hair and impeccable smoky eyes—outshone anyone else’s in the room. And that was exactly what I needed in that moment—to be a kid again, hidden in her older sister’s shadow, shielded from the attention the people in the next room were trying to give me. That was the thing nobody but my mom had ever seemed to notice, especially not Tiffany—I hadn’t minded being in my sister’s shadow all that much, not until Manning had come along.

Corbin took my bouquet and leaned between us. “This is where you hug.”

We put our arms around each other. She hugged the same. Smelled the same. But there was no possible way she could be the same after what she’d been through. “I’m sorry about the baby,” I whispered into her hair.

She nodded against me. “Me too.”

I’d called after the miscarriage, but neither of us had been in a position to have a conversation longer than a few minutes. I’d gripped the receiver in my hand, tears streaming down my face since the moment my mom had called from the hospital. And as Tiffany had taken my condolences, her grief flowing through the phone, I’d felt him there in the background. I hadn’t asked to speak to Manning. What was there to say?

This was the first time I’d gotten to tell Tiffany in person. Maybe it was overdue, but I pulled back and looked her in the face. “I’m genuinely sorry. I hope you know that,” I said, and it was true. But I couldn’t offer my regrets that she and Manning hadn’t made it. I was sorry for what they’d been through, and that it’d gotten so bad that, according to my mom, the miscarriage had caused their split, but knowing she no longer had him—no, I couldn’t be the least bit sorry about that.

“I can’t really talk about it.” She glanced at the floor but then back up quickly, her eyes glittering. “Were those photographers out front?”

“Paparazzi.” My stomach churned with the word. “They’ve started following some of us the last few weeks.”

“Seriously?” Tiffany asked.

“They might try to take your picture,” I warned, even though I knew that could cause her to run out front, waving her arms. “I talk about you and Dad a little on the show.”

“What? That’s so freaking awesome.”

“It’s not, trust me,” I said. “If I so much as stumble, they catch it. If the film crew doesn’t, then the paparazzi will.”

“Oh, how utterly mortifying.” She shifted feet. “Is there anything to drink?”

“If I know Val, there’s a roomful of rosé on the other side of that wall,” Corbin said. “Come on.”

Val nodded solemnly. “You know me.”

There were probably things I needed to say to Tiffany, but I didn’t even know where to start. And anyway, it wasn’t the time. For tonight, maybe it was best we let the alcohol do the talking.

Five minutes before the show, we were all at least a glass-of-something deep. I was too nervous to do anything other than sit on the edge of the couch and sip wine. The first time I appeared on screen after the opening credits, it became immediately clear to me I didn’t want to see any more. A pit formed in my stomach as I watched Bree and myself at our kitchen table drinking coffee and browsing the classifieds. A title popped up with my name and “aspiring actress” underneath. How many people in America were tuning in at that moment? Learning that I took my coffee with sugar and cream? It was completely innocuous, boring, and, as Tiffany had eloquently put it—utterly mortifying.

My movements on screen were stiff while the rest of the cast looked at ease. They’d taken to having cameras in their face much better than I had. Two had scored forgettable on-screen roles before this, and the others were natural extroverts. Everyone in the living room had their eyes glued to the screen, but I had to look away.

What would Manning think? I hated that he came to mind first, but that’d always been my habit—what was Manning doing, how was he, and did he still think of me? Having Tiffany in the room didn’t change that. If anything, his absence was stronger.

The longer the show went on, the worse it got. Corbin had already made an appearance. Across the living room, he and I kept exchanging uncomfortable looks.

During the last commercial break, Val jumped on the couch. “A toast,” she said, “to sexy Bree, and to Lake, America’s next sweetheart.”

I flinched. I didn’t want to be called that. Not only was it untrue, but was that what America wanted? I hadn’t done anything but sit there. “Please,” I said, “it’s not a big deal.”

Val groaned. “Stop saying that.”

“It’s a huge deal,” Tiffany said. I glanced at her, but she was looking at the bottom of her empty champagne glass. As Val bent over to refill it, my new BlackBerry rang. Only a few people had the number, so I wasn’t surprised to see the name June McPherson lit up on the screen.

“I’m so sorry to interrupt the toast,” I said, “but I have to take this. It’s my agent.”

“Everyone shut up,” Val called. “Answer it, Lake.”

While my friends watched, I picked up. “Listen,” June said straight off. She’d been my agent for over a year now and never seemed to run out of energy. “Are you listening?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“With Bree and some friends at a viewing party.”

“Put me on speakerphone.”

It took me a moment to figure out how, but once I did, I held up the cell for everyone. “Do you guys fucking love the show or what?” June asked.

They cheered. Corbin winked at me, even as I rolled my eyes.

“So do we,” she said. “I’m almost positive we have a smash hit on our hands.”

Val jumped up and down on the couch as everyone else hooted and hollered.

I took June off speaker, and she laughed. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she yelled over the noise. “Have fun tonight.”

Everyone clinked glasses as I hung up, while Tiffany downed her champagne in one go. She raised her glass to no one in particular, got up, and left the room. I was sixteen again, watching Tiffany’s light go out while mine shone on. My face was front and center of a hit TV show while my outgoing, full-of-life older sister spent her life—where? I didn’t even know if she had a desk, a cubicle, or an office, just that she’d recently accepted an associate buyer position at PacSun.

She’d married young and to the wrong man, and had since lost a baby and gotten divorced. I’d betrayed her in the worst kind of way—just by existing. By being the one our dad had pinned his hopes on. By rising to stardom when she’d never secured another modeling job. By being her husband’s true love. And yet she had to sit there and toast me. I had the urge to tell her the truth—I wasn’t all that great of an actress, I was definitely a bad sister, and most of all, I was unhappy. I was on my way to a life most only dreamed about. One Tiffany had dreamed about. And yet I would never have what she’d had. No matter how much money I made, no matter who I met or became, I didn’t have Manning then or now, and I wasn’t sure how to move past that.