I want You Deeper

Vanessa was making the most of her week in L. A. She’d booked a room at an affordable but safe hotel well outside the city and was working her way around town to every casting call and audition she could line up. Her agent had sent her on a few, but she was getting a lot of the action off a casting website she’d used, on and off, for the past year.

As she stepped out of her last audition of the day, she glanced at her phone screen. Her agent. Again. As if she needed further proof that something had gone wonky inside her over the past week, she was annoyed at the sight of her agent’s name, Monica, on the screen.

A week ago, one call from her agent would have caused her to jump up and down with excitement. Those calls used to be few and far between. But things were different now. And she didn’t know if they’d ever be the same.

“Vanessa.” Monica spoke in a terse, clipped tone. “I have one more for you. Need you to report to the Wayside Agency in Venice. Here’s the address. Do you have a pen?”

Of course, she didn’t have a pen. She was coming out of an audition. Monica knew that. Oh, wait. This had been one of the casting calls she’d found online, so her agent didn’t know.

“I’ll punch it into my navigation,” Vanessa said. “I can take a rideshare there. What exactly am I auditioning for?”

“Reality show. Good luck.”

With that, the line went dead. Vanessa looked at her screen and sighed. This was the sort of thing that wouldn’t have seemed even the slightest bit noticeable a week ago. When you were excited that your agent merely bothered to grace you with her company for thirty seconds, nothing could annoy you. When you expected someone to act like a normal human being, these little things got on your last nerve.

That was what she’d learned, anyway.

Like a good little girl, Vanessa went exactly where she’d been told to go. She hopped in a rideshare, got to the destination, and made her way to the talent office in the very back of what looked to be a converted warehouse of some type. She expected to open the door marked “Wayside Agency Casting” and find rows of chairs filled with excited auditioners. Instead, she was met with a small, empty waiting area that didn’t even have one chair in it.

If her agent hadn’t sent her on this, her Spidey senses would definitely be kicking in at this point. Heck, they still were. This could be some sort of

scam. She should turn and leave before they knew she was-

“Vanessa Gilbert?”

The head and shoulders of a Jack McBrayer lookalike appeared in the window that looked like it had been built for the front desk of a medical practice. He had the friendliest smile she’d ever seen. It was like

Hollywood had cast him in the role of “receptionist you can trust.” Oh, yes, this had to be some kind of trick.

“Come on back,” he said and vanished from the window. A couple of seconds later, the door next to it opened. The head and shoulders had a body, it turned out, and somehow it communicated the same “too happy” message as his face.

“I’m so excited to meet you,” he gushed as he led her down a long hallway. Just how far back did this building go? “I loved you on that secret boss show.”

“Thanks.”

She knew her voice sounded flat on that word, but the whole “Ohmygosh you’re her, aren’t you?” thing had gotten old, fast. It had started when she walked into the lobby of the hotel that first night after escaping San Francisco. It had continued when she’d dropped into a coffee shop the next morning, and from there, it had never stopped. People stared, snapped photos of her without asking, surrounded her when she was just trying to check her phone while leaving a building-

Yeah. Fame. That thing she’d always wanted. It wasn’t what she’d thought. She hadn’t realized how much she’d prized her privacy until she lost it. Although she knew this particular type of fame was very, very shortlived, she also knew that if she really succeeded at her goal, this would be her life. Every time she left the house, she’d have to be prepared to have long conversations with strangers, often answering the same questions over and over and over.

The reception’s voice cut into her thoughts. “You and Heath are the cutest couple ever. I hope you’re still together. I loved what he said at the end of the episode.”

Huh. Wait. What? Why were they talking about Heath?

“Sorry?” she asked.

He slowed to a stop right there in the middle of the hallway, his smile quickly transforming to a frown. This was getting creepier by the second. “You aren’t together anymore, are you? This is just awful. My friends and

I…we were so rooting for you guys.”

“What did he say at the end of the episode?”

She knew, even as the question came out of her mouth, that she probably shouldn’t be asking a stranger this. She should watch the episode herself. She’d do just that, assuming she could figure out a way to watch it online. But she couldn’t wait for that. She had to know now.

“It was so dreamy,” the guy said, clapping his hands in front of his chest and staring at a spot on the wall with a dazed expression on his face. “He said he’d waited all his life to meet a woman like you, and now that he had, he couldn’t tell if your feelings for him were real or not.”

The guy sighed then. Actually sighed. Vanessa was too stunned to react. She just stared at him, her eyes wide. Was it possible she’d missed the most important thing to ever happen to her?

“Come with me.” The guy had snapped out of his reverie and now had a very serious look on his face. He waved for her to follow and took off down the hallway toward a door at the very end. Something about it reminded her of Heath’s office, making her long to be back in San Francisco even more.

“Vanessa Gilbert,” the guy said in a voice that was all business. He said it into a small, but echo-filled room as he held the door open for Vanessa to step inside, then shut the door behind him.

The room was like a thousand others in Los Angeles. Camera set up and pointed at a backdrop and, next to it, a person to interview her. Sometimes there was a team of people seated at a table, but this time, it was just one.NôvelDrama.Org: text © owner.

Vanessa preferred it that way if she had to be honest.

“You seem to be the talk of the town this week,” the woman commented, smiling at her. “This is a last-minute thing, but we want to work you in.”

Work her in? What did that even mean?

“What’s the job?” Vanessa asked stiffly. All business, no enthusiasm. It wasn’t like her at all, but she was more than a little distracted right now.

“It’s a new game show. You would be one of the contestants on the first episode.”

“You’re casting for a game show?” Vanessa found that odd.

“Just the celebrity guests. You’d be on a panel of former reality show stars, of course. There might be a couple of actors mixed in-we’re still working on that. Anyway, we just need to get a clip of your on-camera personality to send to the production company. No big deal.”

Vanessa stepped into place in front of the backdrop, putting her feet on the mark as she’d been well trained to do. The woman, who hadn’t even bothered to introduce herself, positioned the camera, then pressed a button to start recording. She stepped off to the side and instructed Vanessa to keep her eyes on her, not the camera.

Yeah, she’d done this a few dozen times, at least. It felt like all few dozen had been today. She was definitely burned out.

“Tell us a little about yourself. How did you end up on a reality show?”

Suddenly, that burned-out feeling was gone. As it turned out, this was exactly what she wanted to discuss. Smile on her face, she looked at the lens and talked through her experience, from the time she’d pulled up to Heath’s castle-mansion to the airing of the show. She included how weirded out she was by being recognized and the woman jumped right on that, asking her to talk more about that.

“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t really understand what I wanted.” Vanessa looked down at her hands before remembering she was on camera, not talking to a trusted friend or therapist. “All my life, I fought for attention and I never got it. Do you know my parents didn’t even watch the show? They said, ‘That’s great,’ when I called them to tell them to watch. I can’t get their attention even now.”

“You thought being on TV would get their attention.”

Vanessa nodded. “I guess I did. I realize now even if I had the number one movie in the country, they’d barely notice. I was just…a child they had to check off a box on the list of things they needed to do in life.”

“Wow. That had to be hard.”

Maybe this was some bizarre therapy session. It sure felt like it. She wasn’t sure how this could possibly help with the casting of some game show, but at this point, she didn’t even care if she got the show or not. She was coming to the realization that the thing she’d always wanted wasn’t what she wanted at all.

“What about Heath?”

Blinking in surprise, Vanessa slid her gaze over to the interviewer.

“Heath?”

“How does he fit into the picture?”

Vanessa shrugged. “I think I messed everything up with Heath. I don’t know. I have to go back and fight for him. I guess I spent so much time

trying to get attention, I didn’t realize that wasn’t what I wanted.”

“What did you want?”

“Love. I wanted someone to love me the way I loved them. I never had that with my parents, and now I’m wondering if maybe that’s partly my fault. If I thought I had to be on a TV show to get their attention-that’s kind of messed up, right?”

The woman said nothing, just watched her with big, soft, sympathetic eyes. The sympathy didn’t seem genuine, though. There was something about this entire experience that seemed…off. She’d never had a screen-test that was anything like this.

“Could you tell me a little more about this game show?” Vanessa suddenly asked, narrowing her eyes at the woman.

The woman stepped over and shut off the camera. “We have all we need. I’ll be in touch with your agent about call times. Thank you for coming out. Dave!”

That last word was shouted, startling Vanessa. Suddenly, the door to the room flew open, and the smiley host guy stuck his head in.

“We’re all finished here. Please escort Ms. Gilbert out.”

Dave, as his name apparently was, didn’t let his smile falter even a centimeter as he nodded and waved Vanessa toward him. She cast a quick, uncertain look at the casting person, then did exactly as she’d been instructed. There really was no other choice, was there?

“What exactly was that all about?” Vanessa asked the guy as he led her down the hall. “Can you tell me the name of the game show? Is it legit?

Something’s weird about all this.”

The guy didn’t say a word, just led her to the door she’d entered through minutes earlier. He turned and gave her a big, phony smile.

“Thank you for coming,” he said. “We’ll be in touch!”

Vanessa paused, staring at him. She considered staying there and initiating a stare-off, but she immediately changed her mind. Wasn’t worth it. Whatever had happened here would be clear soon enough. Meanwhile, she was going to have the rideshare take her back to her hotel, where her own car was parked.

And then she was driving home.