Find a quiet spot, turn the page, and let’s see what this story has been hiding 🌙 ✦ “What do I want?” Adrian frowned, genuinely confused.
“Exactly.
What do you want?” Frederick folded his hands on the small round table.
“Or let me put it more clearly.
Do you want this role or not?” “Of course I…” Adrian stopped halfway through.
His frown deepened.
“You’re saying…
If I want the role, I have to…” “No.
Not necessarily.” Frederick spoke without hurry.
“A lot of the time, even if someone does that, there’s still no guarantee.
That’s why I’m asking what you want.
Do you walk away, or do you chase the opportunity?” “What kind of bullshit is that?” “Everything is about opportunity.” Frederick shrugged.
“For an actor, opportunity matters more than almost anything.” “Are you trying to talk me into it?” Adrian’s eyes narrowed.
“No.
I’m telling you what reality looks like.” The agent leaned forward, his tone blunt.
“Do you know how many working actors there are in Hollywood?
Do you know how many of them might ever become famous?
Do you know what people are willing to do for a chance?” “But…” Adrian started to argue, but Frederick cut him off.
“I need you to understand something.
Anyone who wants to become known here has to remember two things.” Frederick raised one finger.
“First: roles make actors.
Actors don’t make roles.
Second: everyone is replaceable.” He let that land, then continued.
“Everything else grows out of that.
If you want to make it here, you decide which chances are worth fighting for.” “So this is the casting couch?” Adrian was quiet for several seconds before asking.
“Yes.
One version of it,” Frederick said.
“It’s an open secret.
Some people refuse, some never face it, and some have connections or money that protect them.
I’m not telling you it’s right.
I’m telling you the pressure exists.
People in this town know opportunities can come with private expectations attached.” Adrian pinched the bridge of his nose, struggling to accept it.
Frederick paused for a moment, then tapped his fingers against the table and went on.
“Of course, that doesn’t mean everyone goes along with it.
Some people hold out for years and finally break through in an independent film.
Some get lucky and never run into someone with a taste for leverage.
Others have family, connections, money, or sheer timing protecting them.
But for a nobody chasing a first real role, the pressure can be hard to ignore.” The agent sat back, eyes fixed on Adrian.
“I won’t tell you what to do.
That’s not my job.
I’ll tell you how this business works and what options you have.
You can fight for every chance you decide is worth fighting for.
You can wait and hope you get lucky.
Or you can leave the business early.” Then he spread his hands and said nothing else.
“This is bullshit.” After a long moment, Adrian stood and walked away without another word.
Frederick didn’t stop him.
He watched Adrian go, finished the coffee in front of him, shook his head, and muttered under his breath.
“This is why I hate idealists.” Was Adrian an idealist?
Of course not.
He had lived two lives.
The old one hadn’t been gentle.
He wasn’t some bright-eyed fool who believed the world rewarded good people by default.
Maybe parts of him were still idealistic, but he understood reality.
In the old life, he had seen adults trade sex for advancement, and he had seen people in power exploit those who needed their approval.
None of that was new.
But those things had always lived in the shadows.
The people involved didn’t stand in the sunlight and call it reasonable.
When had the world decided to put it on display and ask everyone to pretend it was normal?
He did consider whether Frederick might be lying, pressuring him to chase the role so the agent could earn a commission.
But a second later, that explanation fell apart.
Frederick had other clients.
Adrian had shown almost no market value so far.
There was no reason for the man to gamble his reputation on a broke eighteen-year-old extra.
Whatever else he was, Adrian had his own line.
What Frederick had described sat beyond it.
“Can you imagine?
Can you imagine?” Back in his apartment, Adrian held Puck by the front paws and lifted him in front of his face, scowling at him with theatrical ferocity.
Puck tucked his head down, whined, and stared back with enormous innocent eyes.
Adrian sighed, let the joke go, and set him down.
He wished he could talk to someone.
His mother, maybe.
Alice was wise in the way that mattered most: she knew how to handle people without turning every problem into a battle.
In this life, the person Adrian felt closest to was his mother.
His sister came next.
His father…
The fact that he had stood in a phone booth praying Anthony wouldn’t answer said enough about that relationship.
Alice Vale was a genuinely good mother: warm, observant, patient, and never heavy-handed with her children.
“I know I can’t stop you, Adrian,” she had told him when he announced that he was leaving San Francisco after graduation to make it on his own.
“But I want you to remember that we love you, and we support you.
If you run into a problem you can’t solve alone, tell us.
Don’t try to carry everything alone just because you’re too proud to ask for help, all right?” For someone who had grown up without much motherly warmth in the old life, that kind of love was dangerously powerful.
Questions like ‘Who am I really?’ might have mattered to a philosopher.
For an ordinary person, they were a little too deep to live inside every day.
After rebirth, Adrian accepted his place in the Vale family faster than he once would have believed possible.
That didn’t mean he forgot the old life or the soul that had come with it.
Two years earlier, shortly after turning sixteen, he had talked several friends into taking an overseas trip with him.
He had been chasing traces of the life he remembered.
He found nothing.
It was as if the place, the people, and the proof he needed had never existed in this world at all.
That trip devoured more than half the savings he had built over the years.
By the time he graduated and left for Los Angeles, he had the used car and only about a thousand dollars in cash.
But that wasn’t the point.
At night, when everything went quiet, Adrian still remembered the old life.
He remembered pieces of language, places, habits, and grief no one around him could fully understand.
But the life he lived now was American in every practical way.
He liked making trouble.
He liked friends.
He liked reading, music, parties, school activities, and trying things just to see how they felt.
As someone who had been given another life, Adrian was eager to use the time.
That was also why his relationship with his father, never especially close, had grown increasingly strained.
Anthony Vale was old-fashioned.
Formal.
Rules mattered to him.
Manners mattered.
Reputation mattered.
When Adrian was little, that had been easier to live with.
As he got older, conflict became unavoidable.
Adrian had his own mind too.
The old life had made him independent early, and that independence didn’t sit easily under Anthony’s roof.
Add in the way memories of his first father overlapped with the man in this life, and the two images tangled into something neither of them knew how to handle.
Alice was good at smoothing things over, and both Adrian and Anthony respected her deeply.
But after Anthony forbade him from singing with his band in bars for extra cash – in his father’s eyes, it was a waste of time and discipline – the private conflict moved into the open.
Even after Leanna joined their mother’s peacekeeping efforts, the tension only stayed contained inside the family.
It still grew worse day by day.
So when Adrian turned eighteen and graduated high school, he bought a used car, took his savings, and drove to Los Angeles alone.
After thinking for a long time, he gave up on calling his mother.
This wasn’t the kind of thing he could explain properly over the phone.
He rubbed his aching forehead.
What was he supposed to do now?
Sensing his mood, Puck trotted over and rubbed against his calf.
Then he fetched the rubber ball and dropped it into Adrian’s lap.
“You want to play?” Adrian rubbed his head, smiled despite himself, and tossed the ball into the air.
Puck barked and sprang after it.
The lively pup managed to pull another smile from him, but almost immediately Adrian frowned.
Someone outside was arguing, and it still hadn’t stopped.
“This is not a charity, miss.
This is the second time.
The second time your rent check hasn’t cleared on time.
If you can’t pay rent here, find somewhere cheaper.” The moment Adrian opened the door, Mrs.
Waters’s voice carried down the hall, strong enough to rattle the paint.
He didn’t need to look to know who it was.
The landlady was in her forties, broad-shouldered, heavyset, and normally decent enough.
The moment rent entered the conversation, though, she became a different woman.
Right now, she was in full attack mode.
“Please believe me, Mrs.
Waters.
It’s only a small delay.
The money will be there tomorrow.
It will.” The woman in the apartment diagonally across from Adrian’s stood in her doorway, voice low and apologetic.
“That’s what you said last time,” Mrs.
Waters snapped.
“Then I waited almost a week.” “But it did clear,” the woman said carefully.
Perhaps deciding she had said enough, or perhaps satisfied that she’d made her point, Mrs.
Waters stared at her for another moment and nodded.
“Fine.
Five days.
No more.” She turned and marched away, her footsteps heavy down the hall, leaving the woman standing alone in her doorway.
“Are you all right?” Adrian couldn’t quite stop himself from walking over.
The question came out softer than he expected.
The woman looked around thirty.
Blond and blue-eyed, she was striking even in simple clothes and light makeup.
At roughly five-four, she looked almost fragile with her shoulders drawn in.
“I’m…
fine.” At the sound of Adrian’s voice, she lifted her head.
Her eyes were visibly red.
She turned away quickly, as if she didn’t want him to see her like that, then seemed to realize that was rude and added, “Thank you.” “Mrs.
Waters can be sharp about rent, but she isn’t a bad woman underneath it.” Adrian hesitated, then said a little more than he probably should have.
“Try not to let it get to you.
I’m Adrian.
Adrian Vale.
I live across the hall.” The woman gave him a grateful look, but she didn’t say anything else.
She nodded apologetically and closed the door.
Adrian scratched his head and glanced around.
No one else had come out of their rooms.
Relieved, he hurried back inside.
‘That was pathetic.’ He wasn’t some awkward kid, so why had he blurted out a line like that?
Then again, she really was attractive.
He had noticed her when she moved in a month earlier.
Back then, he had been too busy trying not to collapse under his own life.
After that came the extra work, and he had almost no free time left.
She seemed to leave early and come back late too, so they had never really spoken until tonight.
What a shame.
Back in his chair, Adrian took the rubber ball from Puck’s mouth and tossed it again.
✦ ✦ ✦ Ready for more?
CREATORS’ THOUGHTS TheBacklot Thank you for reading.
I hope this chapter drew you further into the story.
Stick around, because there’s still a lot waiting just ahead.