How to Fake It in Hollywood

  How to Fake It in Hollywood is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2022 by Ava Wilder, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Dell, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Dell and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  ISBN 9780593358955

  Ebook ISBN 9780593358962

  randomhousebooks.com

  Designed by Debbie Glasserman, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Elena Giavaldi

  Cover illustration: Mercedes deBellard

  ep_prh_6.0_140165841_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Sixteen Months Later

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  “LUCY?”

  Grey Brooks almost didn’t hear the timid voice behind her. She had slipped into a trancelike state while staring at the coffee shop menu, weighing the wisdom of a medium versus large cold brew: did she merely want to spend the next few hours uncomfortably jittery, or was she in the market for a full-blown caffeine-induced panic attack?

  She shifted in her clogs and didn’t react. They probably weren’t talking to her. Lucy was a fairly common name. She’d finally broken the embarrassing habit of whirling around expectantly every time she heard it, and she wasn’t about to relapse now.

  Grey’s eyes flicked over the other inhabitants of the coffee shop. It was sparsely populated, with only a few tables occupied. Still, it was possible that Lucy was the stylish woman sipping an Americano and flipping through Variety over by the ficus.

  The voice spoke again, louder and closer this time.

  “Lucy LaVey?”

  Well, that settled that. Grey pushed her sunglasses to her forehead and plastered on a toothy smile as she turned to face the voice: a bespectacled teenage girl clutching a blended iced mocha (extra whip). The girl’s mouth dropped open when their eyes met.

  “Hey! How’s it going?” Grey made her tone as warm as possible. The girl covered her mouth with her free hand and squealed. A few heads turned at her outburst.

  “Ohmigod, it is you! I’m sooo sorry to bother you, I know you’re just, like, trying to live your life or whatever. I just—I’m literally obsessed with Poison Paradise. I’m such a big fan.”

  The first time Grey had been called by her character’s name, it thrilled her. The next few times, it had bruised her ego a little. Now, six seasons and 132 episodes of Poison Paradise later, she took it in stride. It was better than not being recognized at all.

  “Thank you, that’s so sweet! Do you want a selfie?”

  The fan’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of her head as she nodded, fumbling through her purse for her phone and swiping the camera open. Grey looped an arm over the girl’s shoulder as they grinned at the screen. She snapped a couple of pictures, then scrolled back through them to make sure they were satisfactory.

  “Should we do a fun one?” Grey suggested. The girl nodded again and stuck her tongue out as Grey crossed her eyes.

  “Thank you soooo much,” the fan breathed, overwhelmed, as she slid her phone back into her bag.

  “My pleasure. What’s your name?”

  “Kelly.”

  “Nice to meet you, Kelly. I’m Grey.”

  Kelly blushed.

  “Grey. Ohmigod. Of course! Sorry!”

  Grey laughed. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “It’s just, like, I feel like I grew up with Lucy, you know? Like, I started watching the show when I was in, like, elementary school. You were, like…my big sister.” Kelly turned her face up at Grey with a look of such naked vulnerability that Grey’s heart ached a little. She felt guilty for being annoyed at the interruption.

  “Thank you. That really means a lot. She kind of felt like my sister, too.”

  “So what are you doing now that it’s over?”

  Over. It had been eight months since the last episode of Poison Paradise aired, but the reminder still sent a jolt of anxiety through Grey’s body. The teen soap had its share of devoted fans, and pulled in solid enough ratings on its small cable network to keep getting renewed, but had never achieved the mainstream crossover success that Grey had naïvely hoped for back when she shot the pilot. Sure, she’d worked a little in between seasons—a bad studio slasher here, a Hallmark Christmas movie there—but her last few auditions had gone nowhere. In her most self-pitying moments, sweating in her bed in the middle of the night, she worried her career was in the same place it had been before she booked the show—only now she was seven years older. Seven years she could not afford to lose.

  Grey forced a breezy smile.

  “Oh, you know, I’m just taking some time for myself right now.” She saw the disappointment creeping over Kelly’s face and hastily added, “But I do have a few things coming up that I can’t really talk about yet. Too early.” She winked, then immediately felt embarrassed. Who winks? Lying made her corny.

  It worked, though. Kelly beamed.

  “That’s so awesome! I literally can’t wait. You’re so talented.”

  Grey suddenly felt very tired. She still hadn’t ordered her coffee. “Thanks. It was really nice to meet you, Kelly.” She flashed her another smile and turned back toward the menu. Kelly squeaked out a few more words of gratitude before scurrying back to her friends, who were doing a terrible job of pretending not to watch intently from a corner table. They broke out in excited giggles and whispers as soon as she joined them. Every now and then one turned to steal a look at Grey before quickly ducking her head back down to confer with the group. They reminded her of a pack of oversized gophers.

  Before Grey had a chance to approach the barista, another stranger sidled up and blocked her path. This time it was a scrawny guy in his late thirties, who had been watching her interaction with Kelly from a nearby table.

  “Hey! Can I get a picture, too? Big fan.”

  “Um…sure, no problem.” Grey had long ago learned not to be surprised at the variety of people outside the target teen demographic who watched Poison Paradise—and were champing at the bit for the opportunity to tell he
r, in detail, how ashamed they were for enjoying it. Still, the odds were against her running into two of its fans in such quick succession. Maybe he knew her from that stupid horror movie where she’d been in a bikini the whole time, but those guys usually directed their whole conversation at her (not especially substantial) tits.

  She smiled and leaned in as he snapped the picture. Grey steeled herself for more small talk, but he just thanked her and quickly crossed to his friend waiting by the door.

  They spoke in hushed voices, but Grey heard their conversation clearly as they left the shop.

  “Who was that?”

  “Dude, I have no idea.”

  Grey flushed. She felt her chest tighten in humiliation. She gave herself exactly three seconds to be upset: Three. Two. One. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and strode up to the barista.

  “Large cold brew, please. Black.”

  * * *

  —

  COFFEE IN HAND, Grey settled into one of the turquoise upholstered chairs and pulled out her laptop. Kamilah had sent back the next draft of their script in the middle of the night and Grey hadn’t had a chance to look at her revisions. She opened the screenplay to the title page:

  THE EMPTY CHAIR

  Written by Kamilah Ross & Grey Brooks

  Based on the novel by P. L. Morrison

  Before Grey could get any further, her phone buzzed. Her agent, Renata. She quickly swiped to answer the call, careful to keep her voice hushed in the quiet coffee shop.

  “Hello?”

  Renata’s voice came blaring through the phone as loudly as if she’d been on speaker.

  “Where are you, honey? Are you alone? Can you talk?” Grey had signed with Renata within a few months of moving out to L.A. Her previous agent in New York had been old as the hills, bald as a newborn, and delivered every piece of news, good or bad, with the hangdog inflection of someone informing her of the death of her entire immediate family.

  Renata, on the other hand, was loud and glamorous in an eighties Business Bitch sort of way, with a cloud of teased red hair surrounded by an even larger cloud of Marlboro Light smoke. She’d assigned Grey more pet names over the course of their first meeting than Grey had heard from her own mother in her entire life. Grey had adored her instantly, and the feeling was mutual. Over the years Grey had known her, Renata had kicked the Lights, but still had problems with volume control.

  So much for getting some work done. “Yeah, I can be. Give me two minutes.” Grey closed her laptop and slid it back into her bag. The coffee shop was still empty enough that she could probably reclaim her table when she returned.

  Grey walked around the side of the building toward the parking lot and found a secluded tree to stand under. She lifted the phone to her ear again.

  “Okay, I’m ready. What’s up?”

  “I just got off the phone with the Golden City casting director. They loved you.”

  Grey’s stomach flip-flopped. It had been almost two months since her third round of auditions for the adaptation of the latest dystopian franchise dominating the bestseller list. Despite Renata’s assurance that this kind of big-budget studio tentpole moved at a snail’s pace, and that no news was good news, she had practically given up hope. Her Poison Paradise schedule had prevented her from ever being considered for something like this before: three huge sci-fi epics, shot back-to-back-to-back.

  Renata continued, oblivious to Grey’s pounding heart.

  “They want you to meet with the director and do a chemistry read with Owen for the studio heads. Bad news is, they won’t both be back in town at the same time for another six weeks at the earliest.”

  Grey exhaled. More waiting. “All that for the girlfriend role?” She knew she sounded bratty, but Renata was basically her mother at this point. She and Kamilah were the only people in Grey’s life who didn’t make her feel like she had to second-guess every word before she spoke.

  “You know it’s not about the part, sweetie. It’s about where it can take you.”

  Grey closed her eyes and leaned back against the tree. “I know. You’re right. That’s great news.” The initial disappointment at yet another obstacle had dissipated and she felt excitement brewing inside her. It wasn’t over. She was still in the running. The role she was up for, Catalin, was relatively small, but still the biggest female role in the book. Sci-fi wasn’t normally Grey’s thing, but she’d devoured the first book practically overnight in preparation for her audition. The second installment, Golden Kingdom, might as well have been a brick in the bottom of her bag for the past month. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to start it once she thought she’d lost the part. Grey reached inside her bag and stroked the book’s embossed cover, as if to apologize for scorning it prematurely.

  “That’s my girl. I’ll send you the new sides as soon as I get them, but knowing this type of project, it might not be until the night before.”

  “Got it. Thanks, Renata. That’s really exciting.” Grey expected Renata to say her goodbyes and hang up, but instead she heard her inhale and hesitate. “What is it? Is there something else?”

  Renata was silent for another beat. “I also had an interesting call with Audrey Aoki this morning.” Grey’s new publicist. Most of Audrey’s client list was out of Grey’s league, but she had taken a liking to Grey after Grey had been in the right place at the right time (the ladies’ room at the MTV Video Music Awards) to provide the right assistance (a well-hidden safety pin to repair Audrey’s broken dress strap).

  Grey and Renata had both been surprised when Audrey had agreed to work with her, but Audrey had waved them away: “You’ve got the chops, you work hard, you stay out of trouble. You deserve to be huge and I can get you there.”

  Of course, it wasn’t a purely magnanimous offer—her fee was exorbitant. So far, she’d snagged Grey a few modest Instagram brand deals and an Us Weekly “What’s in My Bag?” feature, but from the sound of Renata’s voice she had something bigger brewing.

  “What did she say?”

  Another pause. “You’re not dating anyone right now, are you? I haven’t heard you talk about anyone since Callum.”

  The name made her wince. She’d fallen for Callum Hendrix, who’d played Lucy LaVey’s on-again, off-again bad boy love interest, from the first time he’d raised an impeccably sculpted eyebrow at her during the first Poison Paradise table read. He was her first love, and for four years, they’d practically been attached at the hip. That is, until the three-month break before they’d started shooting the fifth season, when he’d urged her to turn down a juicy indie role to fly out to visit him on the set of his current gig: a midbudget thriller shooting on a picturesque Greek island.

  She’d stepped off the plane, visions of a Mamma Mia! summer dancing in her head, only to discover the whole set snickering and gossiping behind her back about how he was secretly fucking his costar. It hadn’t stayed a secret for long. Mamma mia, indeed. Over the years, her devastation had dulled to vague irritation—it helped that Callum and the costar had flamed out spectacularly before their movie was even out of postproduction—but even now, hearing his name unexpectedly sometimes felt like accidentally bumping a bruise she had forgotten was there.

  To add to her misery, the movie she’d passed on had ended up doing fairly well in the festival circuit and picked up a few smaller awards, including one for the actress who’d replaced her. Since then, every time she opened Raya to swipe through the endless hordes of shirtless EDM DJs and smirking agency execs, all she could see was her replacement accepting that damn Independent Spirit Award. Grey wasn’t about to make that same mistake again. Dating was a distraction.

  “Um, no. No. There’s no one.”

  “Good.” Renata heaved a sigh. “You know, I told her you probably wouldn’t go for it, but she thought I should be the one to bring it up, since she knows we’re close.” r />
  “What? Go for what?”

  “How would you feel about being set up?”

  That was not what Grey expected. “Set up? Like a blind date?”

  “Sort of. Audrey has another client whose profile could also use a boost. She pitched the idea of the two of you possibly entering into some sort of…mutually beneficial personal arrangement.”

  Grey ran her fingers through her hair. “So you’re pimping me out now. Awesome. I guess my career is even more dead than I thought.” The bitterness in her voice was undercut by a quaver she couldn’t hide, tears welling behind her eyes. She willed them to retreat. Being an easy crier was an asset on set, but not so much at literally any other time.

  Renata sounded hurt. “Of course not. There wouldn’t need to be…intimacy. Just the illusion. We would work out the terms and make sure everyone’s happy.”

  Grey was silent. She kicked a clod of dirt at the base of the tree and watched it explode in a satisfying puff. Renata sighed again.

  “Grey. Listen to me. Don’t be dramatic.” Grey knew Renata was serious if she was calling her by her real name. That is, her fake real name. “You’ve been in this business a long time. You know how it works. I don’t blame you for being insulted by the idea. I’m not crazy about it myself. But you’re paying out the ass for Audrey’s help, and if this is what she thinks it’ll take to give you that extra edge with Golden City, or to help you and Kamilah get in the right rooms with your script, I think it’s worth exploring.”

  Renata had a point. Grey hated that her desire to keep a low profile outside of work—especially after the humiliation of what she had gone through with Callum—could be counted as a mark against hiring her. But that was what she got for choosing a profession where her skill, her experience, and her drive would always be secondary to how many people knew her name. Even if it was just her character’s name.