Page 19 of When We Met

She can’t even change the color of her hair without asking, and forget about eating a cheeseburger. Nope. They measure her body fat, and if she gains an ounce of it, no food for her.

Listen, I’m not a quitter. I’m not, but I draw the line at some things. Like being peed on. Yeah, that happened, too. Not by Tara, but other models. Long story and not worth telling. But it certainly explains why I’m five hundred miles from the Hollywood hills and that familiar Sunset Strip I grew up on, and planning on never returning.

I don’t want that life any longer. I’ve been lied to, shamed, blamed, and cheated on. Robbed, sprayed with pepper spray, puked on, all before I turned twenty-one. Welcome to being a personal assistant. It’s awful. I don’t recommend it to anyone.

“Kacy!” Tara yells. “I swear to God, if you’re not here within the hour, you will never work in this industry again.”

I laugh and chew on the Sour Patch Kids I’ve been eating for the last hour. “Honey, do you know who my parents are? Last time I checked, they’re bigger than you on all levels, and besides that, I don’t want anything to do with another model in my life. You were enough to ruin me.”

“You’re so dramatic.” She sighs. “Whatever. You’re fired.”

“Cute, but I already quit.”

And then she hangs up on me, and my first smile since I left that shit-box apartment above that Indian restaurant that made my clothes smell like curry graces my lips.

This might be random, but I used to wonder what birds felt when they flew through the sky.

Freedom?

Contentment?

Surely with the wind in their wings and everything in view, they felt something.

When was the last time I felt anything other than discontentment?

Probably the day before I walked into a room full of men and was told I’d never be what the world wanted. I wouldn’t be the princess they thought I would be. Since my parents are in the industry, this wasn’t acceptable to them. I starved myself for years, developed a serious eating disorder that left me with kidney failure at one point, and at five foot nine, I barely weighed a hundred and ten pounds. And after working for Tara Thomas, I have post-traumatic stress syndrome.

If you worship materialization, models, actors, singers, anyone residing in those hills, don’t. They’re all a bunch of addicts. Their drug choice is just a little different.

Fame.

It’s just as deadly and kills silently when no one’s looking.

And that’s the difference between my life and theirs. I wouldn’t silently slip into the shadows and become the version they wanted me to be. This girl, she has wings and longs for the Southern sunsets where boys kiss your forehead and call you darlin’ just before sunrise.

I despise fairytales. I don’t believe them to be true, but rather an account of someone else’s retelling, and probably fictional account, of the love they wish existed.

Where’s the part where he cheats on her with her mom and then calls her crazy for overreacting? Huh? Where’s that in your fucking fairy tale?

This might have something to do with this being my life and not a fairy tale.

But when I was little, growing up in a beautiful mansion in the hills of Hollywood, I thought that would always be my life. I thought everything would be perfect. I thought I would l be accepted by the ones who brought me into the world because, after all, I’m their only daughter.

I thought… wrong. I thought, well, I never thought I’d catch my boyfriend in bed with my mother.

So, California, I outgrew you.

I created these meatballs. Literally.

BARRON

Camdyn frowns at the meatballs I take out of the oven. “I don’t like meatballs.”

Believe it or not, I can cook. My kids eat my food, but that’s not saying much. They’d starve if they didn’t, and believe me, Camdyn’s tried this in protest before, and it didn’t end well for her.

“I don’t like red,” Sevyn tells us, obnoxiously beating the spoon against the pot. I fight the urge to rip the spoon from her hand and break it.

I look to the cat at my feet, who’s hoping to catch an ounce of bison meat. He’s a meat-eater. “Any demands from you?”

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