hunks and your dried-up vag, but I gotta run to rehearsal. I’ll call you later.
I smile despite her mocking.
No joke, Birdie is living the music dream. The country music dream, that is.
Daddy always said Birdie was named Birdie because she could sing, but it took her years to find the confidence to step onstage and sing in front of a crowd.
Luckily, a little over six years ago, after our granny passed away and a cheating ex-boyfriend pushed her over the edge, Birdie finally had enough.
I was eighteen, Birdie was twenty-one, and we drove to Tennessee on a destiny-fulfilling whim. We arrived in Nashville in the evening, and Birdie entered herself in an open mic night at the first bar we found.
What song did she sing? Well, exactly what you’d think someone would sing after their boyfriend cheated on them with a girl named Jolene.
The rest is pretty much history. Someone from a record label happened to be in the crowd that night, and Birdie Harris’s life changed forever.
She stayed in Nashville and signed with a record label, and I headed for LA, determined to turn the movies in my head into movies on the silver screen.
Both of us, out there in the world, making our granny’s advice happen.
All thanks to Ricky Case and his cheating penis, a real-life floozy named Jolene, and country music’s queen, Dolly Parton.
Billie
Call me an egg because I crack under pressure. And my yolk looks a hell of a lot like blood.
Locked and loaded with caffeine and ready to bring my A game to this morning’s meeting, I slide into the chair to the right of my boss.
In nude heels and a sophisticated white power suit that looks perfect against her caramel-colored skin, Serena perches like an exotic bird at the head of the large conference table. A Bluetooth is in her ear, and she is listening intently to whatever the person on the other line is saying.
Charles takes the chair to the left of her, directly across from me, and immediately starts trying to one-up me. “Good morning, Serena,” he says, and I don’t miss the way he flashes a stupid smile my way.
Too bad when your lips are that close to her ass, you can’t see that she’s obviously on a call, numbnuts.
I open my notebook and review a few of the notes I took while poring over Espionage—the screenplay that Serena decided a few months ago will be Koontz Productions’ next big project. It’s expected to do well, and she’s already managed to get the financial green-light from Capo Brothers Studios.
Charles, on the other hand, hops up from his seat, heads to the refreshment table at the back of the room, and pours two glasses of water—one for him and one for Serena.
Smug smile engaged, he locks eyes with me and slides the glass onto the table in front of our boss while she finishes up her conversation.
Internally, I roll my eyes. Good job, buddy. Way to be Serena’s gofer.
Apparently, even with all of their family’s money, ole Chuck’s parents couldn’t afford to buy him any common sense.
Charles and I have reached this point in our careers via very different paths.
He comes from a wealthy family that had enough money to pay for private schools and Yale and a bachelor pad in Laurel Canyon, and I’ve spent most of my life surrounded by hard times, crawling my way up from the fucking bottom of the barrel.
If it weren’t for Granny’s gambling problem and her lucky lotto ticket, my family wouldn’t have had anything to give me besides the clothes on my back and a country accent.
That’s right. My granny won the freaking lotto.
Four million dollars. Fifteen years before she died.
It’s a long story. An ironic story. Certainly, a very fucking crazy story, but a real story, nonetheless.
Since Granny died six years ago, Birdie and I have only touched that money to pay for necessities—my Bachelor of Arts in Film and Television at UCLA, her move to Nashville, and basic living expenses when we can’t afford to cover them on our own. We both know the last thing Granny would want is for us to turn into some kind of trust-fund babies who are too lazy to make something of themselves.
I’ll make my way in La La Land, fighting for every inch, without leaning on Granny’s money unless I absolutely have to. The fact that I’m currently living in a four-hundred-square-foot apartment in downtown LA with a toilet right next to the fridge is