Page 35 of Dream On, Ramona Riley

Dylan blew out a long breath. “Thanks. I’ve got to go.”

“Good luck!” her parents chimed together. “We love—”

But Dylan hit the red button before they could finish their saccharine chorus, then flopped back onto the couch, blinking up at the bamboo ceiling fan as she took deep breaths.

In for four…

Hold…

Out for eight.

Just like her therapist, Eli, had told her to do whenever she felt like she wanted to scream and cuss and throw her phone against a wall.

Her parents often had that effect on her, a feeling that also brought a wave of guilt with it. Jack and Carrie loved her. She knewthat. And she should be grateful. She just had a hard time reconciling her current parents with the parents of her past. Eli called itrepressed anger, called it justified. They also called it something Dylan needed to deal with—repressedrarely meant anything healthy—but she had no idea how the hell to do that, not when every piece of her life had been shaped by Jack and Carrie’s decisions and fame.

Or infamy, as the case may be.

Her phone buzzed in her lap. She groaned, knowing what she would see before she even looked—a text featuring a Bitmoji of both her parents shooting her a thumbs-up with the wordsYou got thisarcing over their cartoon heads in rainbow letters.

Two hours later,Dylan’s hair was in a messy fishtail braid, and she was wearing a pink sleeveless blouse tucked into high-waisted denim shorts, a yellow apron with curated grease stains tied around her hips. Her makeup was subtle and her shoes were sensible.

She was Eloise Tucker, small-town waitress who grew up in a tiny apartment on the outside of town with an unreliable mother and dreamed of opening her own flower shop. She was quiet and cerebral, knew the meanings of every single flower in creation, and was a terrible driver.

So, pretty much the complete opposite of Dylan. All except theunreliable motherpart, an experience Dylan had zero clue how to tap into for theatrical fodder. Now, she stood in the grassy town square with its adorable white gazebo as Noelle Yang and her assistant debated whether or not her apron needed a smear of mustard.

“I think the more, the better,” the assistant, Vee, said. They had pale skin, and their pixie-cut hair was such a light strawberry blond it was nearly pink. “It says she’s exhausted.”

Noelle, a designer famous for her attention to detail, tapped her red mouth. Her straight salt-and-pepper hair hit her shoulders, cut so bluntly Dylan thought the ends might slice a finger open if touched. She wore all black—simple jeans and a tee—and her entire air was elegance and style and just fuckingcool. Dylan would be intimidated if Noelle weren’t also extremely gentle and calm and snorted when she laughed.

“I think you’re right,” Noelle said. “You good with that, Dylan?”

“Oh, sure,” Dylan said.

“Great,” Noelle said, then tapped away on her iPad as Vee finger-painted a blob of yellow mustard near Dylan’s hip. “Then we’re a go. Yes, that means I’m finished.”

It took Dylan a second to realize Noelle was speaking into her headset, which also meant it was time. Butterflies swelled into her stomach, an entire swarm. She smoothed her apron, but then came away with a bit of mustard on her fingers.

“Oh, that’s okay, that’s okay,” Vee said, fluttering around her with a napkin. “Gives it a good smeared look.”

Dylan nodded, smiled. She would not be the high-maintenance actress on this set, she wouldnot, but god she hated mustard. The smell alone triggered her gag reflex.

“You good?” Laurel said, sidling up next to her, phone out. She eyed the mustard Vee was currently wiping away.

Dylan could only nod, the scent lingering on her fingers making her regret not having any breakfast.

“Just channel your inner small town,” Laurel said. “You’ll be fine.”

Dylan said nothing, as Laurel knew full well Dylan had no inner small town. She’d been to this particular small town once in her life and barely remembered it because she couldn’t stop worrying about her parents, who had been just about a month away from entering rehab. At the time, she only knew that something was very wrongwith them, and she’d gone far too many days without an actual meal when Aunt Hallie came and picked her up. All she really had to pull from was an inner fucked-up kid of rock icons. Where was the rom-com for that character?

She sighed, pressed her hands to her stomach. She was an actor. She couldbeanything, anyone. That was her job.

All around her people buzzed and barked orders. She hadn’t seen Gia Santos, the director, yet. Nor had she seen Blair, but they were filming a conversation between their characters that took place several scenes into the movie. At this point in the story, Mallory, Blair’s character, had just arrived in town for the summer at her family’s lake house and run into Eloise—the girl she’d loved for many summers as a teen, then lost touch with after she went to college—at the diner, and she’d already begged Eloise to pretend to be her girlfriend to satisfy Mallory’s wealthy parents, who hesitated to trust her with the family’s publishing business unless Mallory settled down andgot serious.

Dylan would much prefer to start filming with the meet-cute—at least then she could build up the feelings and emotions alongside Eloise—but Gia wanted this scene first, where the two women meet at the town gazebo to go over plans for a boat party Mallory’s family was throwing, their maiden voyage as a fake couple.

We want to establish chemistry straightawayis what Gia had written in the film itinerary.

So not only did Dylan have to figure out how to smile at Blair after so many years of, let’s be real,enmity, she also had to flirt with her. Be shy and uncertain. Laugh with her eyes sparkling. Lower her lashes in that way that Ramona did when Dylan had made her laugh yesterday…