Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 65643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 328(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 328(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
“What’s unfortunate about it?” I asked as Con’s comment sank in.
“She was good. I wanted to sign her about fifteen years ago when she was looking for an agent, but The Walker Agency was still a shithole back then,” Con shot me a look, “so she went with CAA.”
“She was a child star though,” Dominic said, uninterested. “Isn’t yacht girl the inevitable destination unless you’re Natalie Portman or Zendaya?”
I tuned out as Con started listing all the other actresses who had successfully transitioned to adult stardom over the years. I was with Dominic. Unfortunate, but hardly surprising.
Destiny Pollock was destined to be a yacht girl.
2
DESTINY
I had a blinding headache. I’d felt it coming on even before the calls started coming in. I hadn’t gotten home until nearly four this morning, and even though I’d slept until almost noon, I still felt lousy. The group of socialites I hung out with seemed able to drink all night, party until sunrise, and still be ready to go again at sundown. It was becoming more and more clear that I couldn’t live that life. I’d woken up with the start of the headache. It was faint, but persistent, tapping on the left side of my brain. Threatening to swarm over it, a storm of thunderous pain and shimmering lightning. I might have fought it off though, until my mom showed up at my door unexpectedly, asking ‘did you see this?’
She showed me a blind item that was circulating–one that claimed I was a yacht girl who had slept with a Saudi prince for five million dollars.
“If I was making five million a night, don’t you think you’d know?” I shot back. I led her back into the living room where I had been curled up on the couch, binge watching romantic comedies and trying to stave off this headache with endless electrolytes. I lifted my hands to press them against either side of my cranium, trying to contain the pain.
“I would wonder where my fifteen percent was,” my mom teased. She sat down on the couch beside me and studied my face. Despite her light tone, her eyes were worried. I felt bad about that. Rowena was always worried about me lately. And worried about herself, too, because we both could have used fifteen percent of five million. “So, it’s all nonsense, right?” she asked.
I nodded, then immediately regretted it as the motion pushed the headache deeper. “It’s all nonsense,” I assured her.
“Because you are on yachts a lot lately…”
“Mom,” I groaned, pushing my face into a pillow. I wasn’t embarrassed really, but I wanted to block out the light.
Her cool fingers pushed the hair off my neck and covered the back of it. That always used to help when I was a kid. It didn’t cut it anymore though. I needed narcotics and a regular sleep schedule if I didn’t want to feel like this anymore.
“What are we watching?” Rowena asked after a few moments.
My mom was so cute. She could see clear as day that Julia Roberts was wearing her thigh high black leather boots and blonde wig, but she would still pretend like this wasn’t the millionth time she’d caught me watching Pretty Woman. It was my go-to pick-me-up movie. Lose a part? Pretty Woman. Embarrass myself in public? Pretty Woman. Wake up with the beginnings of a headache, wondering if my career was ending? Pretty Woman on loop.
We settled back into the couch to watch it. Her fingertips started to feel warm and heavy on the back of my neck, so I shrugged off her hand and asked her to get me an ice pack out of the freezer. While she was wrapping it in a dishtowel, my agent called.
“Destiny, aren’t you checking your damn phone?” Lorraine asked, her irritation filling the line with static tension.
My headache notched up. I put her on speaker and held the phone away from my ear so all that tension wasn’t going straight into my ear canal. “No,” I said without explaining. “Why?”
At the sound of Lorraine’s voice, my mom came hurrying back. She handed me the ice pack wrapped in a towel and took the phone, holding it for me.
“Kaitlyn has been trying to get in touch with you. We need to put out a statement.”
I laughed even though it made sharp bolts of pain shoot into my brainstem and blind spots appear in front of my eyes. “About what? The fact I’m not making five million dollars a night?”
“This isn’t a joke, Destiny.”
I sobered. Lorraine never thought anything was a joke, but she sounded particularly on edge now. My mom noticed it, too. She pulled the phone closer to herself, like it was a bomb about to explode and she could protect me from the shrapnel by blocking it with her body.