Page 5 of Don't Date Your Nemesis

Blake: Worse. ‘Deepika Sharma: Hollywood’s Jealous Problem Child?’

I poured myself a bowl of Lucky Charms (dinner of champions at seven in the evening) and called her back.

“Please tell me you didn’t punch anyone today,” Blake answered on the first ring.

“Hello to you too. And no, my violence remains purely hypothetical,” I said, crunching through a mouthful of marshmallows. “What did I do now?”

“What did you do?” Blake’s voice climbed an octave. I could imagine her pacing around, chewing on her nails. “Deepa, honey⁠—”

“Deepika.”

“There’s a story on Celeb Gossip calling you difficult to work with. Apparently, an anonymous source says you throw tantrums on set and refuse to do press.”

“Let me guess,” I said, closing my eyes at the throbbing headache forming at the back of my skull. “The source is five-foot-ten, has extensions, and shares half my DNA?”

Silence.

Blake continued, “I can neither confirm nor deny, but the article mentions your jealousy issues regarding your sister’s happiness.”

Of course it fucking did.

It had been six months since I had walked into my apartment. The same apartment I foolishly gave Yash, my ex-boyfriend, a key to, only to find him in bed with Diya.

My twin sister. My identical twin sister, which somehow made it worse, like he couldn’t even be bothered to cheat with someone who didn’t share my face.

My stomach twisted even now, remembering how they froze. How she had cried fat tears and how sickly it had felt.

The worst part came after that.

Everyone told me I should be happy for them because she’s my sister and they’re in love.

Sure. Sure, Diya’s happiness was important. My happiness could go fuck itself. Without lube.

“Deepika? You still there?”

I realized I was stabbing my spoon into the milk, watching the cereal disintegrate. I swallowed and shook myself back to the present. I refused to let them live rent-free in my head. They had already taken enough.

“Yeah. I’m here. Listen, Blake, can we at least ask them to spell my name right? It’s D-E-E-P-I-K-A, not Deepa, not Depika, not⁠—”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Blake sighed, as if my name were an inconvenience. “Try to stay out of trouble this week, okay? With the Elite Awards campaign in full swing, we need you to be all business.”

Professional. Of fucking course.

Because nothing said professional like being publicly humiliated by your ex-boyfriend and your twin sister while the entire internet decided you were the villain for being upset about it.

After Blake hung up, I did what I always did when the world felt too sharp. I opened my secret Instagram account. TerribleRomanceReviews had twenty-thousand followers who did not know they were getting romance novel critiques from an actress who couldn’t even keep her own love story from imploding.

Tonight’s victim was Passion’s Plunder, a pirate romance where the heroine fell in love with her captor after he ‘ravished’ her on page thirty-two.

“Nothing says ‘happily ever after’ like Stockholm Syndrome with better abs,” I typed, posting a photo of the book’s cover. A shirtless man with improbable hair and a woman whose corset defied physics. “One star. The parrot had more personality than the hero.”

The comments flooded in immediately, making me smile because they were my people. My anonymous, romance-loving, trash-talking people who didn’t care that I was difficult or that my sister was sleeping with my ex or that my hips were two inches too wide for Hollywood’s idea of beautiful.

Yash’s voice crept into my head. “You know, Diya’s been really disciplined with her diet. Maybe you could try…”

I aggressively shoved another spoonful of Lucky Charms into my mouth.

My phone buzzed. Another text from my publicist.