Lying to The Billionaire Star

“You didn’t get the job.”

The woman across the desk closes my resume like she's closing a coffin lid.

"We'll call you if we change our mind," she says, and I already know that call will never come. Not with this haircut I gave myself with kitchen scissors. Not with these mismatched shoes under the fluorescent lights.

"Thank you for your time," I say anyway, because manners are the only currency I have left, the one thing poverty hasn't managed to strip from me yet.

Outside, the August heat presses down on Manhattan like a hand on the back of my neck. I sit on the curb, phone in hand, and dial the only number that still makes me feel like a person instead of a walking rejection.

"Tell me it went well," Priya says instead of hello.

"It went the way they all go," I say, and my voice cracks in the middle of the sentence, embarrassing and small.

"Stel. Hey. Breathe."

"I can't keep doing this, Pri." I press my palm against my eyes, hard, like I can push the tears back in. "22 interviews. 22. And that's just this month."

"You're the most qualified person I know and they keep hiring some guy named Chad."

"Chad probably has family money," I mutter, and I almost laugh, except nothing about this is funny. "Dad's bill came again. 11k for this round of chemo. Eleven thousand, Priya, and that's not counting the room."

"I know, honey. I know."

"I have 400 dollars in my account." My throat closes around the number like it's ashamed of itself. "400 dollars and a dad who's dying slower than we can pay for."

"He's not dying," Priya says, sharp now, protective. "He's fighting. And you're going to help him keep fighting, because I might have something."

I go still on that curb, coffin-lid rejection forgotten. "Something like a job?"

"Something like the job. My cousin does PR for celebrities and she just texted me — Jack Wando needs a personal assistant."

"The singer? The one who got photographed doing tequila shots off a hood of a Ferrari last month?"

"That's the one. The pay is obscene, Stel. Like, pay-off-your-dad's-treatment-in-three-months obscene."

My heart does something complicated — hope and fear knotting together in my chest until I can't tell which is winning. "There has to be a catch."

"There's always a catch." A pause, papers rustling on her end. "They only hire from noble families. Like, actual title-holding, ballroom-dancing, old-money families."

The hope in my chest deflates so fast it almost hurts. "Then it's not for me."

"I'm just saying what the posting says. I'm not saying give up."

"I have to go, Pri. Bus is coming." I stand, dust off my only interview skirt, and start walking toward the stop even though the bus isn't actually there yet. "Thank you for trying."

"I love you, you stubborn idiot."

"Love you too."

The apartment smells like Priya's overcooked ramen and the candle she lit to cover it up. She's curled on the couch when I walk in, laptop balanced on her knees, and she looks up at me with the kind of hope that makes my chest ache.

"Did you look at the listing?" she asks, patting the cushion beside her.

I drop down next to her, exhaustion pulling at every limb. "I looked at it on the bus."

"And?"

"And it's perfect, Pri. The salary, the housing stipend, the medical coverage — it's everything. It's the answer to everything." I press the heels of my hands into my eyes. "And I can't apply because I'm not a Vanderbilt or a Rothschild. I'm Stella Howard from Queens, whose dad drove a delivery truck until his spine gave out."

"There has to be a way—"

"There isn't."

My phone buzzes against my thigh, cutting her off, an unknown number lighting up the screen. I answer it because some instinct in my gut turns cold before I even hear the voice.

"Miss Howard, this is billing at Mercy General." The woman's tone is clipped, rehearsed, the tone of someone who says this sentence fifteen times a day. "Your account is now sixty days past due. If payment isn't received by Friday, we'll have to discuss discharge options for your father."

"Discharge—" The word claws its way out of me, ragged. "He has stage three cancer. You can't just put him on the street."

"I understand this is difficult. But policy is policy." The woman's voice doesn't waver, doesn't even slow down, like she's reading the line off a script taped to her monitor.

"Please," I say quietly, hating how small it sounds. "Give me a little more time. I'm working on it, I swear, I promise."

"Friday, Miss Howard."

The call ends, and I sit there with the phone still pressed to my ear, listening to nothing, my whole body gone numb and cold at once.

"Stella?" Priya's voice sounds far away. "Stella, what happened?"

"They're going to kick him out." My voice comes out flat, stripped of everything. "Friday. If I don't pay, they're going to kick my dad out on Friday."

Priya's arms wrap around me, and I let myself shake against her shoulder for exactly ten seconds before I pull back, wipe my face, and reach for her laptop.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm applying." My fingers are already moving over the keys, cold and certain in a way the rest of me isn't. "I'll build the family. The name, the school, the whole story. If they want a noble girl, I'll give them a noble girl."

"Stel, if they find out—"

"They won't." I don't look up from the screen, because if I look at her, I might lose the nerve I'm barely holding onto. "I don't have another option, Priya. This is the only door still open, so I'm walking through it, even if I have to lie to do it."

The hospital smells like bleach trying to cover up something worse, and I've stopped noticing it the way you stop noticing a bruise you press on every day.

The hallway lights hum overhead, too bright, too white, and my sneakers squeak against the linoleum with every step toward room 412.

"There's my girl," Dad says when I push open the door, and his voice is thinner than it was last week, stretched over the bones of what it used to be. The machines beside his bed beep in a rhythm I've memorized without meaning to.

"Hey, Dad." I drop into the plastic chair beside his bed and take his hand, the skin loose over his knuckles now, papery and cool. "How are you feeling today?"

"Like a million bucks." He grins, and it doesn't quite reach his eyes. "Nurse said I get pudding with lunch. Living the high life."

"You and your pudding." I try to smile, but it wobbles halfway through. "Did they run the new bloodwork yet?"

"This afternoon." He waves a hand like