Page 6 of Dream On, Ramona Riley

Wasn’t it?

“Who else is in the film?” she asked April, just to give herself something else to focus on.

April scrolled and paused, scrolled and paused. She smiled. “Aubrey Daniels. She’s playing Mallory. God, I’m so excited this book is going to be a movie.”

Ramona snapped in approval, as Aubrey was a vocal lesbian who’d recently started dating the singer Reneé Ramirez.

“Who’s playing the other character? What’s her name? Elise?”

“Eloise,” April said.

Ramona nodded, vaguely remembering the name as she laid her napkin in her lap. She’d readAs If You Didn’t Knowlast year, just like everyone else in the world once it was picked up for the book club, but she’d been an Iris Kelly fan for a few years, both she and April devouring any queer romance they could get their hands on.

April’s eyes narrowed, scanning her screen, then widened. “Oh, shit.”

“What? Who is it?” Ramona picked up her water and took a sip.

April looked up, mouth hanging open slightly. “It’s Dylan,” she said softly. “Dylan Monroe.”

And with that, Ramona not only spit her beverage all over her lap, but also dropped her drink, sending ice and water and shattered glass all over the pine floors of Clover Moon Café.

Chapter

Two

Dylan Monroe lovedbeing miserable.

That was the only explanation for the way she was glued to her phone right now, eyes scanning the disaster that was her life. She sat on her turquoise couch in her cavernous house in Silver Lake, pausing her scrolling to stop on a picture of Jocelyn Gareth, her platinum-blond hair a blur next to her new girlfriend’s shiny black waves.

The picture itself wasn’t the problem. Nor was the new girlfriend, Ruby Chopra, an actual nice human Dylan had worked with when they were both in their midtwenties in Hollywood, acting as the BFFs of a main character in the teen sitcomGirlish, which had lasted only one season. The problem wasn’t even Jocelyn, Dylan’s ex, although Dylan’s teeth clenched at the sight of her angelic smile and sparkling blue eyes.

No, the problem, as always, was the copy in this Page Six article, which wasn’t even about Jocelyn and her new leading lady, but rather how Dylan would react to the new pairing. And not a single line of text hypothesized that Dylan would take the news with grace and charm and dignity.

While Dylan Monroe has been silent on the subject and her team declined to comment on Jocelyn’s new love, it comes as no surprise that Dylan was recently spotted at Bacari Silverlake nursing several vodka tonics and cursing out anyone with a camera in their hands.

“I was at dinner with my aunt, you vultures,” Dylan said to absolutely no one, her jaw clenched. “How dare I want to eat some fucking Bacari fries in peace.”

She should put her phone down now. She knew she should, go eat something with protein, maybe take a swim and read through her script in the sun, soak up some vitamin D.

But she was never very good atshould.

She kept reading, her temples aching from grinding her teeth.

But that’s what we’ve come to expect from America’s favorite party girl. The only child of nineties rock icons—Jack Monroe of Evenflow and Carrie Page of Halcyon—Dylan Monroe isn’t known for grace. Always the bad girl on-screen, Dylan’s life off-screen matches up pretty perfectly, filled with wild parties, public arguments with her mother, and drama-laced breakups.

The latest of which occurred just this past March at Jocelyn Gareth’s thirtieth birthday party atop the Mondrian Los Angeles hotel. A private event with tight security, yet nothing stopped videos leaking featuring a rabidly angry Dylan Monroe throwing nearly twenty bottles of Veuve Clicquot into the pool, all while screaming about Jocelyn’s alleged cheating. Cheating, mind you, that has never been confirmed. The affair took a dark turn when the police were called, and Dylan’s people removed her from the scene via helicopter.

Yes, you read that right.

Hel-i-cop-ter.

“The elevator was malfunctioning!” Dylan yelled, collapsing back onto the cushions and releasing a grunt at the ceiling. She tossed her phone into the L-curve of the couch. Goddamn gossip columnists. Granted, the Clicquot…yeah, that had happened, as well as the screaming, but it wasn’t about cheating. Jesus Christ, everyone in Hollywood thought every single romantic issue was about infidelity. But Jocelyn hadn’t cheated on Dylan. Instead, she’d done something even worse, something Dylan couldn’t even talk about without sounding petty and bratty and like an all-around bitch.

She huffed, got up, and grabbed her phone from the other side of the couch, this time flopping onto her stomach as she continued to read.

Shockingly, Dylan is headed to a small town in New Hampshire in a few weeks to start filming a rom-com, her first ever, playing a simple darling pining after her first love opposite Oscar nominee Aubrey Daniels. As for us, we’ll buy that sweet little story when we see it.

Good luck, Nowhere, New Hampshire—trouble is on the way.