Pretending to Be Us Page 3

  I trudged home, wet, angry, broke, and feeling broken inside and out. I would probably have bruises on both my knees tomorrow. At least Peter Prince had almost kissed me. That had to count for something.

  I got home to find that Bill, Daniel’s poodle, had taken a huge poop on the living room floor because I’d been late getting home. I set about cleaning it up, still dripping on the carpet. Afterward I looked at the bare cupboards and seriously considered whether Bill’s kibble would be better tasting than another night of stale bread and questionable ham from the depths of the refrigerator. I even took a teeny tiny bite of it. It was so awful that I almost threw up. Daniel needed to upgrade his dog food. Poor Bill shouldn’t have to eat that shit.

  Some princess I was. At least, thanks to Darcy, I had pizza money. It was better than nothing, but only just barely. I dialed up delivery.

  3

  Lucy

  I was just finishing up putting on my most unsexy pair of pajamas when the front door creaked open. Part of me wondered for an instant if it was Darcy come to murder me after her outburst earlier, only Bill wasn’t barking. Although he was a food-stealing, sock-eating, floor-shitting, leg-humper, Bill was also a decent guard dog. He might suck in every other way and be miles from the refined, elegant poodle that Daniel expected, but the pooch was loyal. I’d give him that.

  So, the fact that he wasn’t going apoplectic meant exactly one thing: Daniel. I ran out of the bedroom in disbelief.

  “Surprise!” he said, smiling broadly at me. “I’m home early.”

  I hugged him, so happy to see him that I could barely make words. Daniel was my best friend in the entire world, and also the greatest guy in the entire world. If he wasn’t gay, I'd marry him.

  “I thought you wouldn’t be back for two more weeks!” I squealed.

  He grimaced, smoothing back his dark hair and looking anywhere but at me. “I don’t think I really excel at writing fiction. I hate it.” Bill was dancing around Daniel’s feet like the floor was made of lava and Daniel scratched behind his ears to calm him. “I guess a hugely expensive five-week screenwriting bootcamp in LA wasn’t the greatest way to figure that out, but at least now I know.”

  “I’m so glad you’re back,” I told him, even though the fact that he’d recently quit his job and spent all his savings on the trip meant we were both broke. “I mean, I’m not glad you hate writing because I know you were hoping it would be better than being a tax lawyer,” I babbled, “but you would not believe the day I’ve had. It’s been nuts. First, I quit my job because I hadn’t been paid in two weeks. Next, I stole a bunch of coconut shrimp that then got devoured by a gaggle of hungry old foreign ladies. Then my sociopathic ex-boss helped me to pretend to be a Swedish princess at an audition. I ended up landing a major film role opposite the man of my dreams.”

  “My that does sound dramatic,” he said sarcastically.

  I swallowed against a sudden hysterical belly laugh. A tiny, squealing giggle escaped instead. It sounded really insane to say it all out loud, especially like that. But it was true. Even the part about meeting Peter Prince again after all these years.

  “No, really,” I told Daniel, squaring my shoulders and standing up straight. “Every piece of that was one hundred percent true.”

  Daniel laughed like I was joking, and I proceeded to stare at him seriously. When his expression turned from amused to concerned for my sanity, I fished the contract for the role out of the damp, stolen Prada purse and handed it to him seriously. He stared down at the contract, then he stared at me, then back down at the contract. He sat down and started reading. I waited. Finally, his jaw went slack.

  “We’re going to need some beer to process all this,” Daniel said after a nonplussed moment. “Come on.”

  Three hours later and I was drunk. Very drunk. I don’t drink a lot, and I’m not good at it, so even a half glass of wine can make me tipsy. I stared down at the pile of empties on the coffee table, many of which were mine. I was so going to pay for this in the morning.

  “Okay,” Daniel was saying, “tell me again why Darcy-the-nightmare-cunt wanted you to pretend to be a princess and go to the audition?”

  I shrugged. The anger and hurt were dulled by the alcohol, which was good, because the numbness didn’t make me want to punch my fist through the wall like the incredible she-Hulk. “I don’t know,” I replied. “She seemed to think it was really important that I go in and audition right before she met with everyone though. And she insisted that I pretend to be a Swedish princess.”

  “And she said later that you were supposed to bomb?”

  I nodded, thinking about Peter’s deep, forest-green eyes and forcing myself to concentrate instead. “Yeah. Isn’t that mean?”

  Daniel’s smile was sad but also a bit knowing. “She doesn’t sound very nice, Lucy. I don’t mean to sound like a jerk, but you probably should have known she was setting you up somehow. It’s not like she’s ever been on your side before.”

  I sighed. “I guess so. It just sucks. I mean, Darcy never said anything about me not doing a good job at the audition beforehand. We ran the lines together before I went in. She said I was doing great. She sounded so upbeat and optimistic, and she pretended like she wanted me to succeed. I honestly thought at the time that maybe she’d realized I had some actual talent as a performer and could have a real shot. I thought that my little stunt with Chief and the coconut shrimp had somehow penetrated through her jaded, hateful shell and made her realize that I was an actual person with real potential. How silly of me. I should have known she was playing me the whole time.”

  “I don’t understand why she didn’t just tell you to do a bad job intentionally.” Daniel said. “If she was trying to make some kind of a point, and that’s the only thing I can think of, wouldn’t it have been easier to have you in on it?”

  “I know, right?” I took another swig of my beer only to discover it was empty. I set it next to its fellow fallen brethren on the coffee table. “I guess we’ll never know.”

  Daniel frowned. “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, I’ll probably never see her again,” I said despondently. “It’s not like I can show up to filming as Princess Lucia as much as I’d love the money in that dang contract.” Five hundred dollars a day. A relative fortune. With a tiny slice of the distribution pie to boot. It also included an addendum that provided for a personal assistant. Usually, I was the personal assistant. Given what I knew about the film industry, I’m sure Peter was getting paid fifty times that as the big-name star, but it was more than I’d ever made in my life. “But people are going to figure out I’m lying after five minutes.” I sighed. “It sucks though. I really need the job. My mom and grandma are going to lose their house next month...”

  Daniel swallowed and then took a deep breath. “What if you could do it?” he said suddenly. It came out all at once: what-if-you-could-do-it?

  I rolled my eyes at him. “Do what? Pretend to be Princess Lucia? Shoot an entire movie when I’ve barely ever acted on camera before?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. If you could, would you?”

  I took a deep breath, thinking about Peter, my mom, my grandma, and my bank account. “Of course. If I could, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I really need the money, and it’s not like I want to be a production assistant for the rest of my life...”

  Daniel tapped the contract, which was sitting on the coffee table next to the beers. “Then sign the contract and show up to your new job. How hard could it be?” he mused. “It’ll be fun. You’ll need wardrobe, new hair, a convincing story about your living arrangements, knowledge of your royal family, some basic Euro trivia. I can help you with the social media...” he laughed. “I can be your assistant. We’ll both get paid.”

  “You’re not serious.” I stared. “Oh God. You are serious. You’re crazy.”

  Daniel had burned his bridges when he quit his tax law job and recently let his law license lapse to become a writer. We were trying, but we w
ere both failing hard at following our dreams.

  He shrugged. “Why not just try? We’re both broke, starving artists. Why not go all in here? After all this is over, at least we’ll have some cash and an amazing story. What do you have to lose here?”

  “Our dignity. Our ability to ever work in this industry again. Our sanity.”

  “And what do we stand to gain?”

  I didn’t know what to say, because it was obvious. Seeing Peter Prince again. And money. Lots of money. Enough to fix everything.

  My family was hit hard during the ‘great recession’ and like so many on the trailing edge of the working class, we never seemed to get back on our feet. My mom never could find another job as a teacher’s aide, and eventually she accepted defeat and took social security earlier than she wanted to. My family were just barely making ends meet, and since I quit my steady job at a hospital to chase my show business dreams, everything got worse. My mom’s benefits got cut, the house needed repairs, my grandma was getting older... the problems never seemed to stop. I couldn’t provide much to help, and it made me feel doubly guilty.

  Despite my worries, I was already sold. “With friends like you, who needs enemies?” I managed.

  He laughed and his Texas slipped out. “Princess, you ain’t never had a friend like me.”

  4

  Peter

  “She’s perfect,” my dad proclaimed over a caviar lunch the next day. “Princess Lucia Antonia Bergen. Thank God for Darcy.” He was as happy as a pig in mud. “I can’t believe we found her.”

  “Yeah, perfect,” I mumbled. I’d spent the entire night thinking about Lucy. I’d gotten up around two a.m. and googled her. At first, I couldn’t find anything on her. I guess I must have been typing her name in wrong or something. I’d tried to put her from my mind, but around three I googled her again and found her Wikipedia page, IMDB, and social media accounts. She didn’t have a huge online presence, but it gave me something to tide me over in the early hours of the morning.

  “Can you believe Darcy tried to talk us out of casting Princess Lucia after her audition?” My dad added. “What a strange woman.”

  I frowned, agreeing that it was an odd reaction. “She did seem a bit angry when I saw her afterwards.” Then again, Darcy always seemed a bit... off to me. She made me feel vaguely uncomfortable, and while she was nice to me, she was perfectly awful to just about everybody else. Plus, there was something about the way she stared at me. She didn’t blink enough. Like she wanted to eat me.

  My dad shook his head in disbelief. “It was so bizarre. She’s really a strange woman. She was all excited about bringing us a princess as the last audition and then she totally changed her mind. I guess I underestimated how much she really wants the film to succeed. She even suggested we do a third round of auditions.”

  “She was the one who insisted that this round be the last one or she’d pull out,” I said, suddenly confused. Darcy had been yelling and screaming about the slow casting decisions for weeks. She’d been livid, and even crazy enough to suggest that she play the lead role herself. According to her, the volleyball from Cast Away would be a better lead actress than continued delay. She had a point, but Darcy wasn’t exactly in her salad days. The role of Eva was supposed to be twenty-two. Darcy was forty-two if she was a day.

  “Like I said,” my dad continued. “Bizarre. But you know Hollywood creative types. They’re all odd balls and weirdos.”

  Now he was referring to me. And his brother. And his nephews. Aside from my dad, our family were pretty much all actors. My dad had hit it rich in the tech and had transitioned into a Hollywood money man when his brother, my uncle, became a huge star. He loved to tease us for being artsy-fartsy.

  “We can’t all be computer nerds,” I teased back.

  “I’m a scientist,” he replied, scooping up another bite of expensive fish eggs. “And a genius. Besides, someone has to keep this family on track.”

  I decided to let that slide without comment. My dad viewed his role as the family patriarch very seriously. At least he had the money to burn. My dad had been a developer and early investor in not one but two of the major tech companies that now dominated the global economy. He wasn’t as famous as the other members of the Prince dynasty, but he was richer. By a lot. And he never let anyone forget it.

  “She seems very down to earth for a princess,” my dad was now saying, pivoting back to his other favorite subject besides money: royalty. It was the one thing he couldn’t buy. Maybe that’s why he was so obsessed with it.

  “According to her Wikipedia page she’s only got a courtesy title,” I told him. “She’s not ever going to be the queen of Sweden or anything. There are literally dozens of people ahead of her in line.”

  My dad shrugged. “Queen Elizabeth was never supposed to end up as the queen of England either. Catherine the Great was never meant to rule Russia, and--”

  I rolled my eyes and waved him off. There was no way in hell I could fight him on the historical trivia of European royalty. That was definitely his area of strength and not mine. I had a high school education. “Okay, okay. Fine. Maybe one day she’ll end up as Queen of the Swedes." I smirked at him. “Although I don’t get the feeling from her that she wants that.”

  “No?” My dad asked. “I suppose it is a lot of responsibility for a young woman to consider.”

  I turned my laugh into a cough. From what I’d read, and it was a lot, Lucy wasn’t really that different from me. Born into lots of money and twice as many expectations. “I’m not sure how much real power the monarchy of Sweden actually has these days, dad. It seems like they’re basically just glorified mascots, not rulers. They mostly just do ceremonial stuff, and that’s only for the folks at the top. For Lucy it’s just a title.”

  My dad’s face turned pale. “Please don’t say that in front of her highness. That’s very insulting to her family. To her whole country, actually.”

  Oh hell, no. “Her highness?” I asked incredulously.

  “Isn’t that how you’re supposed to address her?” He was perfectly serious. I’d looked it up, actually, at about three a.m., although I’d never admit it to my dad. He’d get far too excited about it. The correct persona address was ‘Her Royal Highness, Princess Lucia of Sweden.’ In Swedish it would be ‘Hennes kungliga höghet, Prinsessa Lucia.’ Or something. Google translate didn’t seem to be great at Swedish and the whole language sounded unintelligible to me.

  I turned my attention back to my dad’s question since he was continuing to stare at me expectantly. “Lucy’s asked me to treat her like a normal person, dad. She doesn’t go by Lucia, either. It’s Lucy.”

  “Oh?” He raised an eyebrow. “She wants you to call her by her first name? She must like you.”

  “Well, we’re going to be working closely together for weeks so it might be kind of strange otherwise.”

  “Please just try not to offend her,” my dad said. He looked worried I might somehow cause an international incident. Rationally he had to know we were going to shoot a sex scene together, but it wasn’t quite registering for him.

  I frowned. “I’ll make a note to myself.” In reality, I’d already had to remind myself that a guy like me who preferred tying up and spanking his sexual partners was not probably a good match for a refined, European princess.

  “Seriously, Peter,” he repeated. “A woman like that could be good for you.”

  I raised an eyebrow wishing it were true. “What does that mean?”

  “I think you know.”

  Unfortunately, I did. My dad was still sore that I’d very publicly broken up with more than a few flighty Hollywood girlfriends over the years and was now living the casual, bachelor lifestyle. Since the last failed relationship three years ago, I hadn’t dated anyone. Of my four brothers, I was the most private about my personal life. I just hadn’t met anyone that interested me, and honestly, being single is easier when you’re famous. If you’d asked me if I could ever get tired of datin
g models in my early twenties, I would have laughed you out of the room. What a difference a decade can make.

  Besides, the few rules I absolutely adhered to were smart ones. Don’t date coworkers, especially actresses. Ever since that first, broken engagement, I’d learned my lesson. Never, ever date a girl you’re pretending to date in a movie. That’s asking for trouble.

  “How about I just make a good movie and you let me manage my personal life on my own instead of trying to pair me off with the first princess you meet?” I suggested.

  He spread his hands innocently. “I’m just saying that a thousand years of good breeding and class wouldn’t be the worst thing for you. She’s the kind of girl you marry. Not like these lying Hollywood floozies you used to date.”

  I ignored the dig about the lying Hollywood floozies. I’d been cheated on and deceived more times than I wanted to admit. It was enough to make anyone suspicious of the opposite sex.

  “Trying to improve the family pedigree?” I teased my dad. “Are you afraid everyone will find out that we’re really just a bunch of trashy peasants?”

  He shrugged. “You can’t blame me for trying to nudge you in the direction of a lovely, eligible bachelorette.”

  I didn’t really blame him; it was just annoying because I couldn’t—shouldn’t—have her. “Look, Lucy’s an actress. And a person. She’s not a fairytale character. For all I know she’s a lesbian, or already married, or asexual. Plus, I don’t date costars; it’s bad form.” I sighed. “Look. You got the casting control you wanted for financing the movie. Will you please, please, please back off now and let us make the movie?”

  He nodded after a moment. “Alright, Peter. I’ll back off. I said I’d get out of the way and I’m not going back on my word to you.” He smirked. “After all, I have to keep my lead actor from getting cold feet and wrecking my investment.”