Mom.
Grey hadn’t been avoiding her mother, exactly; it was just a coincidence that they hadn’t spoken on the phone since she and Ethan had gone public. It wasn’t unusual for them to go a month or so without exchanging more than a sprinkling of texts. She knew her mother was itching for more details; even if Grey had had them, she was reluctant to provide them to her. Still, she couldn’t put it off forever.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Emily? Are you all right? Why do you sound like that?” Her mother’s voice sounded only vaguely concerned.
“I’m fine. I’m out running.”
“Is this a bad time?”
“No, it’s okay. What’s up?”
“Just calling to check in. Do you have any idea if you’ll be able to make it back home for Madison’s graduation?”
Grey had grown up in Port Chester, a working-class suburb of New York City. Her dad had been out of the picture for as long as she could remember. Her mother had worked as a receptionist in the city, her commute keeping her out of the house from dawn until well after dark. Once Grey started making money from acting, they were finally able to move into an apartment big enough for her mother to stop sleeping on the pull-out couch in the living room.
Shortly after Grey had moved cross-country for college, her mother had remarried: she’d fallen for a C-suite executive at her firm and decamped ten miles west to Scarsdale, into a sprawling house with more than enough bedrooms to spare. Her new husband had a daughter from a previous marriage, Madison, whom Grey had met fewer than five times over the past ten years.
“Um, maybe. My work schedule is really up in the air right now.”
“Oh, really? Did you book something?”
Grey winced. “Not yet. But I have some stuff coming up, maybe.” She’d repeated the lie so many times over the past few months that it had almost started to feel like the truth. She vowed to herself to text Renata as soon as she got off the phone: she couldn’t keep waiting around for Golden City. There had to be something else out there for her in the meantime.
“Well, even if you are working, I hope you find the time. You wouldn’t have to stay long, you could just fly in and out. Maybe your new friend can come with you.”
There it was. “Maybe. He’s pretty busy, too.”
“Look at you, you’ve finally gone Hollywood,” her mother said acidly.
For a brief moment, annoyance flared inside her: isn’t this what you wanted? But that was unfair. Her mother hadn’t asked her for a cent since she’d started dating her now-husband. And even when Grey was young, she had hardly been a nightmare stage mom. Unlike the moms of the other kids she always saw at auditions, whose only job was to cart their precious progeny from dance class to voice class to acting class, Grey’s mother had had neither the time nor the energy to take an active role in her career. Her older brother had accompanied her to auditions until she was old enough to take the Metro North into the city by herself.
She knew it was irrational to begrudge her mother for enabling Grey to follow her childhood dreams into an industry that she was still willingly involved in as an adult. Because as much as she wished she didn’t, as much as she despised the assorted bullshit that came with it, she really did love acting. From the first moment she’d stepped onstage at her kindergarten holiday pageant, there was no other road her life could have taken. She loved it, she was better at it than anything else, and, at least for now, it was still paying her bills. She was one of the lucky ones.
Still, when her mother tried to talk to her about anything involving her career, something childish and ugly was triggered inside her. Deep down, a part of her still resented being saddled with the responsibility of co-breadwinner before she’d even mastered her multiplication tables.
As a result, a yawning chasm had calcified between them over the years. Grey’s role in supporting the family had turned them into something closer to peers than mother and daughter. It would have been bearable if it manifested as polite distance, but it seemed like her mother had some lingering guilt on her side, too. As soon as Grey left the East Coast, every interaction became peppered with passive-aggressive needling about Grey’s career, her weight, her finances, or her personal life; as if she were trying to convince herself that she’d taken an active interest in the direction of Grey’s life back when it actually mattered.
“Yeah, well, you know how it is,” Grey said absently. Her mother took that as an opportunity to launch into a lengthy monologue about the finer points of planning Madison’s graduation party. This was the safest conversational zone for them, focusing on a neutral third party. Grey picked up her pace again, now that her input wasn’t required beyond the occasional murmur of assent. The second lap came easier, any residual uncertainty lingering from her breakfast with Ethan drowned out by the familiar disquietude that came from talking to her mother. That, at least, she could attempt to outrun.
Later, once she’d finished her second lap and extracted herself from the conversation, Grey found an empty bench to finish her cooldown. As she stretched out one burning quad at a time, she pulled out her phone and scrolled through Instagram. She had a notification that she’d been tagged in a post by a new fan account that had popped up a few weeks ago, @grethan_updates. At first, their couples moniker had made her cringe, but by now she was starting to get used to it.
The account was a painstakingly comprehensive chronicle of her and Ethan’s every move, a mixture of paparazzi shots and fan submissions. Grey wasn’t sure if she should be flattered or creeped out. Part of her was convinced that one of Audrey’s interns was behind it. She had her share of fan accounts, but the majority were focused on her Poison Paradise character rather than her personal life, and they had mostly lapsed into inactivity once the show ended. When she had followed this account, their bio had been instantly updated with a breathless “Grey followed back!!!” followed by the date.
She shifted to stretch her other leg as she looked at the new tagged picture. Her stomach jolted. This picture was of her, alone, midrun, wearing the same clothes she was currently wearing. The caption read: “@greybrooksofficial jogging around the Silver Lake Reservoir,” followed by today’s date. Grey whipped her head around, trying in vain to spot the culprit. The path was deserted. She’d been running for forty-five minutes; whoever it was was likely long gone.
She abandoned her stretching and hustled back to her car, her heart beating wildly in her chest. She rested her head on her steering wheel, breathing deeply, willing her hands to stop shaking before she was ready to put the car in drive. Once the initial shock wore off, the adrenaline drained from her body and she was able to think clearly. She wasn’t in any real danger. It was probably just an overzealous fan, looking for a way to feel important. She was a public figure in a public place. This was the trade-off for her boost in profile.
Too bad her career still hadn’t gotten the memo. So far, this bargain had brought her nothing but trouble.