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days will be much longer, and some will require night filming, so we should enjoy this reprieve; but we lost two hours between California and Texas, which made eight a.m. feel like six a.m. Exhausted, Meredith and I climb into one of the cars that will transport us back to the hotel, and Brooke collapses onto the seat next to me. She’s basically a life-sized Barbie doll: perfect build (thin, but curvy where it counts, long dancer’s legs), perfect bone structure, clear blue eyes, blonde hair. Everything is pretty and flawless. Ninety-five percent of what people notice or talk about is her appearance, despite her acting skill. “Are you guys hungry? Because I’m star -ving .”
    My stomach, activated by the thought of food, reminds me that I skipped lunch. Craft services served gourmet pizzas and salads, but I had first-day jitters and couldn’t eat.
    “ Yes ,” Meredith and I chorus.
    Thanks to celery stick lunches, no-bread dinners and lots of cardio, Meredith and I are both slim, with physical features unlikely to inspire either resentment or adoration, but I’ll take a favorable acting review over someone gushing about the shape of my ass any day. My hair color (and Meredith’s) would be termed pecan or tweed according to Chloe, fake hair color expert, who’s been trying to get me to highlight my hair for years by declaring things like, “It’s so freaking dull ,” for motivation.
    Brooke gives the driver directions to a corner bar and grill a few blocks from the hotel, where we sit by the window and watch as people leave their downtown offices. I ask if she’s been to Austin before, and she says, “I grew up here,” smiling as a group of college boys stroll by, all three slowing when they spot her, one waving with a shy grin. Laughing, she crosses her arms over her chest loosely, sighing, “I would chew him up and spit him out.” The boy who’d waved glances back twice, disappointed and earning a punch in the arm from one of his friends.
    How does Brooke find the time for enough life experience to cause this level of sexual ennui when I don’t have time to go to a regular school or on a regular date? My moments of free time are erratic; granted, I’m more likely to spend them with Emily than with a boy. Boyfriends have been rare—only three. Two were fellow actors and the other was a friend of Emily’s. We broke up because I literally never saw him.
    Brooke scans the place after we’ve eaten, her eyes settling on two young professionals sitting at the bar. “I want an older guy,” she says. As if she’s called his name, one of them glances at Brooke, right in the middle of a sentence, his mouth slightly ajar. She smiles, holding the eye contact for a beat too long to be mistaken for anything but interest. His friend, noting his reaction, looks over as well.
    If either of them watched Life’s a Beach , the teen series Brooke spent the last two years doing, she’d look familiar. Doubtful, at their ages. I watched the show with Emily a few times. Brooke seems shockingly similar to her boy-crazed beach-girl character. Is this an act, or was her character so convincing because she was essentially playing herself?
    She turns back to us, silky hair tossed over her shoulders, and the guy at the bar can’t tear his eyes away from the back of her head. “It’s been a while since I was in Texas. Maybe it’s time to find out if everything is bigger here.”
    “Ohmigod,” Meredith says. “You are so bad.”
    “I try.” Brooke laughs and flashes a quick smile over her shoulder to the guy who’s debating whether or not to walk over. “Let’s get out of here.”
     

Chapter 8
     
    REID
    I spot Emma the moment I get to the set, watch her glancing around—looking for me, I think. When our gazes connect, she smiles shyly. I return her smile and then shift my attention back to Tadd, who’s got a running commentary going about the disappointing lack of boots and cowboy hats he’s seen since landing