Shooting Star (Beautiful Chaos) by Arianne Richmonde Read Free Book Online

Harry Potter actress—Brown University, even when she was shooting practically back-to-back. It wasn’t an impossibility. But it obviously hadn’t occurred to Dad that I could do anything else with my life other than be in movies. Handy that—didn’t want his resources to run dry.
    “You don’t seem to have an answer,” said Narissa. Her eyes were as piercing as arrows in flight but her mouth now soft around the edges, tilting into sympathy. “Is that how you feel? ‘Unloved’?”
    I could feel an unwelcome lump in my throat, which I swallowed into a smile. “Sure people love me,” I said, willing her off the subject with a flick of my wrist.
    “Boyfriend?”
    “I don’t do boyfriends.” My mind wandered to Jake and I wondered what it would be like to have someone like him as a boyfriend.
    “But—”
    “Oh, I guess you’ve read about that too. All my ‘conquests’ and all the guys I’ve dated. Don’t you love that word ‘date’? Like half the time you’re not even going anywhere. Date is synonymous with ‘fuck.’ ” I could see her wince at my choice of word as if she had a bad taste in her mouth. Great—Miss Prissy as my shrink. That was all I needed. Or maybe she was Mrs. Prissy—perhaps she was married?
    “So you’ve never had a serious relationship with a boy?” she pressed.
    “What for? So they can go all ego on me and boss me around, or secretly film me with their iPhones and post it on YouTube and say what a slut I am?”
    “Hopefully, if someone loved you you’d be able to build up a relationship based on trust, get to know somebody gradually without sexual relations at first.”
    “Yeah, well. I don’t have time to get onboard The Love Boat. I go away too much. I never spend a whole night with anyone, you know? They never come to my house either. Too personal. Too risky. I always have my own wheels and leave the second I get bored or when the guy starts getting too lovey-dovey. I don’t really do the intimacy thing.”
    “Hence your drunk/driving arrest?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Driving when you shouldn’t have. To make your getaway.”
    “I have a full-time chauffeur now. Just to be sure. Look, I know what I did was wrong and believe me I paid for it. In every possible way. I had to do community . . . hey, isn’t our forty minutes up? Speaking of drivers, mine’s outside waiting for me—I’m running real late.” I stood up, gathered my purse and offered to shake her hand, which she reluctantly accepted. I guess she wasn’t used to having her patients end the session first.
    Narissa had wheedled more information out of me in one session than Larry—my old therapist—had done in six months. I had half a mind to fire her but a myriad of voices from rehab chirped in my ear. Feeling uncomfortable, Star ? Good ! Now we’re getting somewhere. And, “ What doesn’t break you makes you stronger.”
    Most of the time I was sitting there, I had my mother on my mind—Mom’s face a blur in my memory but my feelings never wavering—that physical ache I sensed inside me, remembering how she’d hold me and say, You can do anything, baby, you know that? And then her eyelids fluttering and her dozy smile as she nodded off from whatever downers she’d taken. Uppers to get her out of bed, yellow and turquoise, stripy or red. Downers to calm her. When she was asleep I’d line them up, color-coordinated or in heart shapes or zigzag patterns. Once I popped one in my mouth thinking it would taste like candy but quickly spat it out; cruel and bitter. At the time I didn’t understand why she’d want to eat something that didn’t taste good.
    My mom had always believed in me. When we had no money and lived in a trailer, she’d spend her last dime on a pretty dress for me, or gas for her old spluttery Oldsmobile to get me to an audition on time. Even if she relied on her “mother’s little helpers” to get her through the day, she never once was late, hauling me off to