For Her Consideration

Book 1: Out in Hollywood

by Amy Spalding

Genres: Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

“Pure romance magic.”—Christina Lauren, New York Times bestselling author of Love Other Words
“I loved how joyful, how thoughtful, and how real For Her Consideration was.”—New York Times bestselling author Jasmine Guillory
Perfect for fans of Casey McQuiston and Meryl Wilsner, a funny, heartwarming, and moving novel about bad breakups, found families, and embracing life.
A Buzzfeed LGBTQ Romance You’ve Got to Read
Since a crushing breakup three years ago, Nina Rice has written romance, friends, her dreams of scriptwriting for TV, and even LA proper out of her life. Instead, she’s safely out in the suburbs in her aunt’s condo working her talent agency job from home, managing celebrity email accounts, and certain that’s plenty of writing—and plot—for her life. But a surprise meeting called by Ari Fox, a young actress on everyone’s radar, stirs up all kinds of feelings Nina thought she’d deleted for good . . .
Ari is sexy, out and proud, and a serious control freak, according to Nina’s boss. She has her own ideas about how Nina should handle her emails—and about getting to know her ghostwriter. When she tells Nina she should be writing again, Nina suddenly finds it less scary to revisit her abandoned life than seriously consider that Ari is flirting with her. Between reconnecting with her old crew and working on a new script, a relationship with a movie star seems like something she’ll definitely mess up—but what could be more worth the risk?
Amy Spalding’s For Her Consideration is full of heat and heart as Nina learns that her story just might include the kind of love that lasts.
“A warm celebration of Los Angeles, chosen family, and learning how to love and be loved.”—Cameron Esposito, bestselling author of Save Yourself
“An optimistic, empathetic choice for readers, which highlights queer women pursuing creative careers and showcases a strong emotional growth arc.”—Library Journal
“A cozy comfort-read.”—Publishers Weekly

Release date: February 21, 2023

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

I glared at the email from Max, a twerpy little Hollywood bro who nonetheless treated me like I was beneath him in every sense. My industry belief system held assistants in a high, treasured place. Everyone knew they were paid badly while keeping the whole machine going, but, unfortunately, the one I’d been dealing with lately was an exception. If I could press a button and the only thing that would happen would be that Max got flung into the Pacific Ocean, I’d press it at least once daily.

Even so, I hit reply and hammered out a short but polite response letting Max know I was available all afternoon. Truly, when wasn’t I? Joyce was cc’d, but even if she hadn’t been, I’d have been polite to Max anyway. In general it was bad karma to treat assistants like shit, even if they specifically deserved it.

I didn’t hear back for hours, which was a relief because I had a larger list of emails to send out than usual. I’d only ever worked in this industry, so I didn’t know if others were the same way, all ebbs and flows with seemingly little in between, but that was Hollywood for you. Last week I’d had so little work that I’d read a literary novel the internet had been buzzing about and listened to two true crime podcasts from beginning to end. Mere days later and suddenly a thousand meetings, Instagram Lives, and dinners out had to be scheduled.

I wasn’t actually the one doing the scheduling; that was up to people like Max and the assistants on the other end of the equation. My job was the sort that most people outside of the entertainment industry didn’t even know about—hell, plenty of people within it weren’t aware, either. Celebrities often needed to connect with people after meetings and meals, or to coordinate appearances on social media, and even though they were apparently far too busy to take care of this themselves, that was the impression they needed to give. Enter someone like me, who ran email accounts for Joyce’s roster of talent agency clients. I could thank a producer for a great night out at n/naka as if I were actually the actor who’d eaten kaiseki while discussing his ideal transition from indie hits to comic book blockbusters. I could make a writer feel special that an actress was going to feature her book on an Instagram Live chat but please-don’t-mention-the-film-option-we-hadn’t-announced-to-the-trades-yet.

It didn’t matter that I’d never actually eaten there myself; Yelp and The Infatuation were incredibly helpful. And had I ever heard of the writer or even skimmed her book? Of course not. Thanks, Goodreads! The specifics didn’t seem to matter as much as a certain . . . flair. And that was something I knew I was good at; I could watch two interviews on YouTube, comb through social media, and within the hour spit out an email you’d swear came from the celebrity themselves.

Obviously this wasn’t why I came to Los Angeles. People didn’t move to LA with dreams of low-level talent agency jobs in their heads, but this was where I’d landed, and the truth was that it suited me better than I would have guessed. Back when I’d gotten hired, I’d assumed this would be a brief novelty item on my résumé, but it had been three years and I had no plans of moving on. Dipping in and out of personas and personalities was still entertaining, and I knew that Joyce trusted me to a level that made both of our lives easier.

While I was emailing as a “cool mom” celebrity to an up-and-coming designer about potentially partnering for a line of athleisure, Max was back with a call-in number for a meeting with Joyce set for only five minutes from now. It was probably her decision, but it was more fun to blame Max, her newest assistant, who I imagined getting the information forty minutes ago and just bothering to hit send now. Maybe in time we’d connect, but for now, Max was just an irritating name in my inbox that made my job more annoying than necessary.

Calls usually meant a new client—a big new client, that is. If you were an actor who was nowhere within sight of becoming a household name, Joyce wasn’t setting aside time to discuss you with me. In those cases I got a three- or four-sentence email, and it was up to me to spend time researching. Sometimes those actors’ fame grew—after all, Dan Torres was one of those emails, a conversation Joyce and I never had, and last month he played a feature role in the biggest film of the year so far—but in general, it was what it was. A lot of people came to Los Angeles to act, a small and fortunate percentage got signed with an agency, and an even smaller percentage of those ended up stars.

Many of Joyce’s colleagues, I knew, were positioned at one end or another of this. It wasn’t unusual for an agent to have a bustling list of clients on their ways up, or a smaller but jaw-droppingly A-list roster of huge stars. Agents became known for getting you there, or for being the intimidating type whose clients were all already offer-only (and, shit, what offers those were). Joyce, though, was everything. She could usher an actor through their first audition with kindness, and she could advocate for someone at the very top. Dan Torres, I was sure, wasn’t thinking about replacing her now that he was a household name. People tended to stick with Joyce forever, which obviously benefited me. There was almost always an email to write. My paychecks kept coming.

I dialed in on time for the meeting, though as usual, Joyce was a few minutes late.

“How are you?” she asked in her abrupt tone. Welcome packs should be provided to people new to Hollywood, and one of the pieces of advice offered therein should be to never actually answer this question with more than one word. No one had time for your personal anecdotes. This industry did not run on endless conversation. We were here to get shit done quickly.

“Good,” I said. It’s what I always said. “New client?”

“I’m afraid not. Ari Fox reached out earlier today with some complaints about her communications coming out of Exemplar.”

Panic flashed through me, hot and pulsing. Despite the names involved with my job, it had never particularly been high pressure. Sometimes I had to have particularly sensitive or high-profile emails reviewed a few times before sending, but it had been years since I’d had a complaint. Back then I’d been so new I’d expected guidance and correction here and there, but now I’d been doing this for so long. To some degree, I thought I was past calls like this.

Plus it was Ari Fox. I tried not to play favorites—after all, I wrote as every single actor Joyce represented, and I took that list seriously—but there was only one out, queer woman on that list. There was only one indie darling who’d also written guest columns for Autostraddle and booked a recurring role on the new L Word. Whenever I sent an email as Ari, I got a little thrill that we were in this together.

Sure, she was a gorgeous actor booking the kind of roles that wouldn’t have even existed a few decades ago, and I was, uh, nothing more than average in the looks department, setting up lunch appointments with production companies and Instagram Lives with designer dogwear brands while pretending to be someone else. We still felt linked, as far as I was concerned.

So for anyone to be unhappy with my work, how on earth could it be Ari Fox?

“Oh,” is all I said, though. I’d learned to bite down my words, and not unleash the torrent of questions, excuses, and concerns flooding my brain. “I’m really sorry to hear that. Is there something I can do, or—”

“Glad you asked. Ari would like to meet with you in person, so Max will get something on the books for you two later this week. I assume your schedule permits, even coming from the Inland Empire or wherever it is you call home?”

“Santa Clarita isn’t the Inland Empire,” I reminded her for potentially the hundredth time. “We’re still in LA County up here, thank you very much.”

Joyce laughed in a brusque bark. “Well, sure, technically speaking.”

“I’ll be available,” I said. “Whenever Ari is.”

“Great, expect to hear from Max soon.”

Despite dealing practically directly with talent, my job had always been fairly low stakes, all things considered. Between myself, Joyce, and whoever was in the assistant position, we took care of the kinds of details people with money, fame, and influence were lucky to skip out on. Agents, managers, accountants, and the rest of us made a celebrity’s life the kind where they never needed to think about paying a bill, setting their own appointments, or even receiving mail. And so my emails were probably never exactly perfect, but they did a job the client didn’t actually want to think about.

Not Ari Fox, though, it hit me as I clicked off the call with Joyce. Ari Fox cared about the emails “she” sent out. Ari cared about all of this, the stuff that didn’t matter to others, and I was the one who’d let her down.

My job had seemed like a safe bet, considering the limited contact and the—let’s face it—joy a lot of people felt in getting email from a celebrity. Even jaded industry professionals loved seeing those names land in their inboxes. I could feel the excitement in their prompt replies, even when I caught a whiff of pragmatism that they knew they were probably talking to someone’s person and not the actual someone. Out of nowhere, though, this safety seemed to take a hit.

Max emailed me with the meeting time, three o’clock the next afternoon, and I immediately typed it into my schedule. It was technically a request to see if I was free, but I’d met talent less than a handful of times before, and I knew to agree without even checking my calendar. Plus Joyce was well aware that I rarely left my little condo, tucked into the northern outer suburbs of Los Angeles. I’d be there.

I decided to leave for the meeting the next afternoon with ninety minutes to reach the Exemplar office. Much of my Tuesday night was spent checking every single traffic site and app to figure out how long it would take me to get from my place to Beverly Hills. Waze and I, after all, had not always seen eye to eye in the past. A three p.m. meeting sounded far out from rush hour traffic to anyone who hadn’t been to Los Angeles, sure, but time had a fluid sense here. Sometimes the freeway was miraculously open, and even once you were dumped out onto surface streets, green lights beckoned your way. At others, the 405 Freeway might be jammed so far back you’d sit at a standstill on another freeway you were only taking to get to it in the first place—and it would be eleven a.m., a time no one would ever confuse with rush hour.

It was funny I still had these thoughts, I knew. When was the last time I’d actually set foot in LA proper? Months, maybe years? I’d moved there for college and then stuck around, and so I’d been part of the city for over ten years before I headed up north. LA didn’t feel like mine anymore, but I guessed I still felt like the city’s, as if it was a stubborn ex who wasn’t quite ready to relinquish its hold on me.

It had taken me even longer than ninety minutes to get ready for this meeting, and I wasn’t even sure I’d nailed it. I’d been working from home for so long that it had been quite a while since I’d had to dress up for anything beyond running out to CVS or my weekly lunch with Lorna. Mine had turned into a caftan lifestyle, and while I could pretend the gauzy draped fabrics combined with my who-even-remembers-the-last-time-I-saw-my-stylist flowy hair was because of some sort of throwback to—oh, I don’t know, the Laurel Canyon days of yore?—in truth I’d gotten too comfortable. Pants and haircuts were for successful leave-the-house types, not Nina Rice.

Luckily, it was Southern California, where it was nearly always seasonally appropriate for a maxidress, which was sort of like if a caftan was allowed to leave the house. It was still flowing, but perfectly acceptable for an industry meeting. I mean, I assumed. Again, it had been a while. I probably could have used at least a trim to fully execute some of my dead ends, but I took the time to blow out my brown hair until it was hanging in waves, and rubbed some styling oil into the ends in lieu of trimming them myself. What would Ari think of me? I knew I didn’t always read as queer, what with the long hair and the fact that I’d long ago taken out my septum piercing. Would she know we had that in common, that I respected the hell out of her and her career? I decided to cut my nails even shorter—though it had been a while since I’d been in anyone’s pants, figuratively or literally—and wore my silver Birkenstocks instead of the daintier sandals I’d started to step into. I knew it didn’t matter if I was wearing a dress and had what an old friend had once deemed princess hair; I was queer. I loved and had sex with women. Or, at least, I had once. In another life.

In my car—my aunt Lorna’s old Honda that still ran like a charm, though an aging charm—I cranked up the music podcast I caught every week (when did I start listening to podcasts about music instead of . . . just, music?)—to keep all of that out of my head, especially once I crossed into the city’s limits and passed places that had meant something, once. Dates, nights out, my first internship at a shiny tall-for-LA building right off of Wilshire. Again, another long-ago life, hardly mine anymore.

I was ten minutes early, but since parking at Exemplar involved security as tight as a body-con dress—Did people still wear body-con dresses? I’d really been away from LA for a while—I felt as if I was right on time. My name was on the list with the parking lot security officer, and as a valet drove my car away from me—probably to park it between a couple of Teslas, if that was what trendy Hollywood people still drove—an attendant called in to reception so that I’d be greeted in the lobby. I was technically a freelance employee, hence the whole spectacle.

I’d only been to this office a few scattered times over the past years, and so I’d never gotten completely used to the lobby of Exemplar Talent Agency. It took up almost the entire first floor of the building. (The rest of the floor was a coffee shop strictly for Exemplar employees and clients, which had both cold brew and kombucha on tap and a no-public-allowed rule in place.) If someone confused this space with an Apple store, they wouldn’t be so far off-track. Bright white dominated the room, from the wide sleek walls to the curved sofas set at odd angles from one another atop a textured white rug. How did they keep all this white fabric so spotless?

“Nina Rice?” A girl at least five years younger than me, wearing a modern white dress, extremely tailored with countless little pleats and insets, and tall leather booties, beamed at me as I entered the lobby through the huge glass door. Her dark hair was blown out to glossy perfection, and suddenly mine seemed far less princess-like by comparison. My outfit no longer seemed to scream cool and queer but loose and lazy.

“Joyce will be down in a few minutes for you,” this clearly superior young woman said. “Can I get you a water in the meantime? Sparkling or flat?”

“Oh, I’m OK, thanks, I’d probably just spill it down the front of my dress,” I said, and immediately wished I could take back the second half of that. It had been way too long since I’d interacted with other people in person who weren’t at least eighty years old; I should have done some sort of warm-up first. Coffee not bought through a drive-thru. A dress from a real store and not the back of my closet. Dinner out, me and a waiter.

“Oh,” the girl said, frowning a little for, I suppose, my benefit. She returned her attention to her giant iMac, so I got out my phone to spend some time on the daily crossword. My current streak was at 859 days, and I was determined not to break it. Everything had changed for me a few years ago, and so my goals subsequently became smaller. There was something about not missing my daily crossword solve that made me feel like I hadn’t given up completely.

“Nina!” Joyce arrived into the lobby from the massive staircase that descended into the room from a huge circle of open air and mystery above. It barely looked real, more Star Trek than architecture. That was Hollywood for you.

“Hi,” I said, my words to a minimum on purpose. We hugged, because there was no meeting in this industry that managed to start without a round of hugs. Joyce wasn’t much older than me, especially considering how accomplished she already was, but unlike myself managed to express her own style as if she was supposed to be here. Her black hair was styled into a huge topknot that gave her at least four extra inches of height, which was already helped by her tall heels—and her floral jumpsuit popped next to her dark brown skin. The first time I’d met Joyce, I remembered feeling relieved that she wasn’t a standard Hollywood size zero, even though of course she was gorgeous and stylish far beyond what I’d ever manage.

“Hi to you,” Joyce said with a dazzling smile that actually reached her dark brown eyes. “You look great. How long’s it been? Since the Christmas party? Oh, wait, you didn’t show up to the Christmas party last year. The year before? The day I hired you? No, that was by phone.”

“I guess it’s been a while,” I said noncommittally, ducking my head to avert my gaze from Joyce’s eye contact. One didn’t keep her roster of talent happy without a certain level of directness.

“Ari’s already here, in the café,” Joyce continued, casually, as if Ari wasn’t a rising star and as if my poor performance hadn’t landed us in this situation in the first place. “Let’s grab her and then head up to the conference room near my office. Sound good?”

“Sounds great.” I followed Joyce through the lobby and into the café that shared its bright white, space-age vibe. But before I could even take that in, I spotted her sitting at the counter, not looking at her phone, though it was out. Ari Fox looked right at me.

Ari Fox stood up from the counter and made her way over to Joyce and me.

This was one of the first times I’d officially met any talent I was part of “handling,” and that included colliding with Melanie Larkin at the Exemplar holiday party a few years ago when we were both reaching for free glasses of rosé. (She’d merely said pardon and then glided away, but I still heard her throaty pardon in my ear whenever she popped up on a premium cable prestige drama.)

Ari was smaller than I expected. This was a celebrity cliché, but it was said often for a reason, that reason being accuracy, a frequent occurrence in the dealings with the rich and famous. At least the filmed and fairly well-known.

“Joyce.” Ari smiled widely at Joyce before pulling her into a hug. It didn’t read like an industry hug. Ari’s arms wrapped around tightly, and Joyce seemed in danger of toppling for just a moment. It made me like Ari—like her more, of course, because she’d already become my favorite, by virtue of who she was. A queer woman living out and proud in an industry that could be less supportive than it often gave itself credit for, who also gave real hugs? Letting her down—of all people!—felt terrible. I thought I’d set up enough safety guards to avoid making the kinds of mistakes I used to. My life was supposed to be letting down-free.

Joyce stepped back from the hug and smiled at me. Her eyes held a hint of giddiness, and I wondered if my boss, who was married to a man, felt at least a little jolted by Ari’s energy. How could one not?

“Ari,” she said, still smiling, “I’d love for you to meet Nina Rice, who’s been with me for years as one of my communication experts. Nina, Ari Fox.”

Ari leaned toward me with her hand out, and I felt myself being pulled into the handshake. In this world of hugs, it felt professional and respectful. And, obviously, it gave me this fleeting moment where my hand was wrapped inside Ari Fox’s. My job wasn’t for the type of person who regularly swooned over celebrities, but Ari was a bit of an exception for me.

“It’s nice to meet you, Nina Rice,” she said in her trademark husky voice. It was trademark to me, at least. While her fame level was still on the rise, she’d already garnered a voice-over contract with a credit card company. Frequently during commercial breaks I’d hear her advise us to spend wisely. It was, honestly, stunning to hear my name in that voice. Spend wisely, Nina Rice, I thought, not that this made any sense outside of my own head. Between the job stress and the hot woman holding my hand and the fact that I was out of my house and all the way down here in Beverly Hills, my brain was not exactly functioning at its highest capacity.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, finally, unable to hold Ari’s gaze. It was as direct as Joyce’s in its own way.

Ari Fox was only in her midtwenties, but her first role had been the buzzy kind that catapulted her into a career playing hot queer girls and women. After being cast on the high school drama Brother’s Keeper as Gillian, the tough field-hockey-playing jock who sweet blonde Serena fell for, Ari started popping up everywhere. GIFs of Serena and Gillian kissing against gym lockers became regular parts of conversation between people in the LGBTQ+ community, especially on Twitter when commenting about anything sexy or romantic. If swooning or lusting was involved, it was only a matter of time before that GIF set showed up.

She wasn’t around only in GIFs, though. Ari played a few other roles much like Gillian, showing up to usher a series regular into a sexuality journey, the previously untold lands of bi- and pansexuality, etc., and then being written off unceremoniously. (A writer at Vulture wondered in an article if any other actor had played so many high school students who transferred mid-semester.) Ari had been in her early twenties and still playing teenagers, and then suddenly she was playing actual adult roles, practically overnight. (She still ended up ushering in a lot of previously-believed-to-be-straight characters into queer identity, though.)

Ari wasn’t an A-list celebrity, and probably not even a B-list one, but she was on the radar. At the start of this year, she’d received early rave reviews for a supporting role in Treading Water, a film that premiered at Sundance. It was immediately picked up in a bidding war by A24 Films, which was set to release the movie at peak for-your-consideration time later in the year. The internet was on top of this star turn, and I devoured feature articles about her whenever I saw one posted. (Vulture’s headline: “Ari, the Fox.”)

I could lie and say that I’d followed Ari’s career closely because she was a client and I took my job very seriously. While I did actually take my job seriously, as silly as it could be sometimes—Don’t forget to email from Tess’s account to tell Shelby Feinstein you loved the homemade dog treats she sent to Rosie the Pug—I was a full-fledged Ari Fox fangirl. Fan-woman? I was thirty-two years old, after all, five years older than Ari. But I’d never seen a career like hers before. She hadn’t come out, she hadn’t avoided the topic, she just was. Ari Fox was a breath of fresh air, someone who felt brand-new.

And, of course, if it didn’t go without saying, she was gorgeous. Was gorgeous the right word? Ari was sexy. Even now, her posture at the counter, all hips at certain angles and forearms resting exactly so on the counter with her chin cocked in our direction. Her caramel-brown hair was shaggy over half her face, dipping down over one gray-blue eye, while the other side was trimmed short. I’d always wondered how one got a haircut like that; it seemed so specific as to defy instruction. Her body, which I’d absolutely thought about, was different in person than I’d surveyed on-screen. Again, a cliché, but I liked the differences. She was slim but not gym-lean, a person who took up space, and she didn’t fit the Exemplar aesthetic any more than I did, though I could tell her plain black T-shirt and je. . .