“Ah.” Teddy squirmed. The truth was that despite the viral success of Duke the Halls and its meta-fusion of wholesome holiday fun and sex-drenched lead actors, he and his new casting director still hadn’t found someone to star opposite Kallum for Santa, Baby. Or more so, they hadn’t found someone that their director Gretchen Young also liked. “We’re working on that.”
“Gretchen hasn’t found the right fit,” Astrid said, coming to his defense. “It’s not because he hasn’t been trying.”
“I believe you,” Steph said. “And that’s exactly why I’m here. Because I have an idea for who our Mrs. Claus should be.”
“I’m all ears,” Teddy said, and then added, “Not really. I’m only two ears.”
Everyone in the room groaned.
“I appreciate the sentiment,” Steph said, with a sharklike gleam in her eye, “because this idea is a little unconventional . . .”
Chapter One
Winnie
My name is Winnie Elizabeth Baker, and except for the one time I let a friend pierce my belly button, I have done everything right.
When my parents wanted me to spend every weekend auditioning for local commercials, I did exactly as they asked.
When they wanted me to upend my life at age ten and move to Los Angeles to star in a wholesome family sit-com, I did that too.
I hid my narcolepsy from the industry so well that the tabloids still have no idea.
I married my childhood sweetheart when I was eighteen years old, and I didn’t even kiss him until the day of our wedding.
I was a model daughter, a model wife: sweet, friendly, well-behaved. An icon for young women with purity rings everywhere.
So then why was I sitting in a therapist’s office, holding up my phone, and gesturing at what was on the screen like I was the glummest Vanna White of all time?
“And then Dominic Diamond dredges up this old picture, and now all anyone can talk about—again—is how Winnie Baker lives to make a scandal out of herself.” I dropped my phone in my lap, not wanting to look at the picture anymore, even to prove a point. I’d already seen it thousands of times anyway: a seventeen-year-old me, passed out in a car in front of the Chateau Marmont after that year’s Teen Choice Awards. My head was lolled back on the headrest, my normally fair cheeks were flushed red, and my mouth was hanging open.
Picture-me looked drunk, and even worse, picture-me looked sloppy. Promiscuous, even, according to my parents. In many ways, the picture had been when everything changed for me; it had been the beginning of the end.
“Dominic Diamond is a gutter-dwelling sociopath,” Renata said calmly. As a therapist to actors, models, and—if the rumors could be believed—a certain California-dwelling prince, Renata was more than familiar with Dominic Diamond. He was a gossip blogger turned gossip influencer who spared no one in his nasty content updates, and I’d believe in a heartbeat that he was the subject of many sessions here in Renata’s office. “He’s not allowed to change how you see yourself.”
“But this is bigger than Dominic,” I said, swiping my screen to show the next image on the post. It was a screenshot of a headline from a major news site. Former Child Star Hospitalized After Drug-Fueled Music Festival in Texas, Says Anonymous Source. And then another screenshot, this time from an article published yesterday: Troubled Actress Once Famed for Promoting Family Values Now Officially Divorced. “Everyone thinks I’m off the rails now. That I just randomly got a divorce for no reason. Like a hypocrite. Like a—like a crazy person.”
“I don’t like that word,” Renata put in mildly.
“People on social media like it,” I mumbled. My ex-husband liked it too, even if lazy was his preferred insult of choice. If you weren’t so lazy, you’d have better work than Hope Channel movies. If you weren’t so lazy, you’d be healthier, and if you were healthier, you’d be pregnant by now. And so forth. Lazy was a word that cut twice: once, because I considered myself to be disciplined, diligent, in control at all times, and twice, because my narcolepsy meant there were times that discipline and control were beyond me no matter how hard I tried.
“I did everything right,” I said finally, telling her what had been running through my mind all day. “I thought I was a good daughter, a good wife, a good actor. But it didn’t matter, did it? Michael cheated on me anyway. My parents still sided with him. And the one time I did do something for myself, something that was supposed to be fun, I ended up puking my guts out in a Texas desert, two hundred miles from a real airport. I missed the shoot for my next project, and the Hope Channel recast me, and now the entire world thinks I’m irresponsible. And I don’t have a job and I can’t repay the Hope Channel the money I owe them and everything is gone and I blew it all up myself—and it wasn’t even a regular music festival! It was UnFestival, which is an exclusive desert experience and so much more than a regular festival could ever be!”
I sucked in a breath after that surprise monologue, blinking back the burn behind my eyelids. I wanted to cry. But I’d been raised better than that; I’d learned better after fourteen years of marriage. Being out of control wasn’t welcome in my life, and had never been.
“You can cry if you’d like,” Renata said, almost as if she knew what I was thinking, but before I could respond, a tiny alarm beeped from her watch.
Our session was up.
She sighed at her wrist as she silenced the alarm. “Next time, I’m going to remind you earlier that there’s no need to hide your feelings here. But for now, I want you to remember what you told me during our second session, after I’d asked you to come up with a goal for our time together. Can you think of it?”
“Yes,” I said, eager to be a good therapy student. “My entire life, everyone else has defined Winnie Baker for me, but now, I want to define Winnie Baker for myself. I want to be New Winnie.”
Renata nodded. “Maybe think about what that means in conjunction with what people are saying online right now, hm? And what we can and can’t control?”
“Okay,” I said. With great confidence, because New Winnie was Not Going to Care about what people said online. Just like how New Winnie was never, ever going to make Old Winnie’s mistakes.
And Old Winnie had made quite a few, indeed.
Coming out of Renata’s building always felt like coming out of a womb, and I had to blink in the bright California sunshine for a few minutes until I could see again. And that was with my sunglasses on. In January.
“Finally,” a sharp voice said next to me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
But when I turned to issue a panicked “no comment,” it wasn’t a paparazzo at all, but a tall woman wearing a knotted trench coat and a smile that was somehow bossy and reassuring at the same time.
“I’ve been waiting here for five minutes,” the woman said, making five minutes sound like twelve hours. She stuck out a manicured hand, which I took. She had a quick, hard handshake. Michael would have hated it.
It made me like her immediately.
“Steph D’Arezzo, talent manager,” she said briskly. “Nice to meet you.”
Steph. Steph. The name swam hazily to the surface of my memories. “You’re Nolan Shaw’s manager,” I said. Before I got sick at UnFestival and had to be recast, the former bad boy of pop Nolan Shaw was going to be my costar in Duke the Halls. I’d been nervous about working with him when I’d signed on—even after his years out of the spotlight, I couldn’t picture him as anything other than the beanie-wearing boy-Jezebel I’d known as a teenager—but my distrust had been misplaced. He’d been fiercely supportive of his girlfriend, Bee Hobbes, when she’d been exposed as an adult content creator, and he’d also been nothing but a consummate professional since then, even helming a reboot of the reality show that had once made his career, Boy Band Bootcamp.