The Summer Set Read online

  The real drama happens backstage in this juicy novel about an idyllic summer theater where hot stars, has-beens and hopefuls chase roles—and each other.

  Charlie Savoy was once Hollywood’s hottest A-lister. Now, ten years later, the former ingenue is pushing forty, exiled from the film world and reluctantly back at the summer Shakespeare theater that launched her career—and where her old flame, Nick, is the artistic director.

  It’s not exactly her first choice. But as parts are cast and rehearsals begin, Charlie is surprised to find herself getting her groove back, bonding with celebrity actors, forging unexpected new friendships and even reigniting her spark with Nick, who still seems to bring out the best in her despite their complicated history.

  Until Charlie’s old rival, Hollywood’s current it girl, is brought in to attract theater donors, threatening to undo everything she’s built. As the drama amps up both on the stage and behind the curtains, Charlie must put on the show of a lifetime to fight for the second chance she deserves in career and in love.

  With an unforgettable cast of characters and undeniable charm, Aimee Agresti’s Limited Engagement is about first loves, second chances and third acts.

  Acclaim for Aimee Agresti’s first adult novel, Campaign Widows

  “D.C.’s juiciest politics might not be in the White House. Aimee Agresti’s irresistible novel Campaign Widows proves it.”

  —Cosmopolitan

  “Aimee Agresti’s whip-smart novel is a political page-turner.”

  —Us Weekly

  “Campaign Widows makes politics fun again…. The novel’s sharp pace, witty turn of phrase, and nonintrusive social commentary draw the reader into the glittery world of Washington during campaign season.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “A fun, escapist read about an election gone wild and the women (and men!) behind the scenes…. This story of love and friendship will keep you turning the pages long into the night.”

  —PopSugar, “Best New Books You Should Read This Spring”

  “Hits the right balance of Washington insiderness and women’s fiction…. [A] smart beach read.”

  —Booklist, starred review

  “This one has it all: politics, power and privilege wrapped in one delightfully juicy novel.”

  —Washington Life Magazine

  “Campaign Widows is big drama in an ultra-fun package, made all the more thrilling by Agresti’s insider knowledge.”

  —BookPage

  “As Aimee Agresti shows us through a compelling cast of characters, the most delicious drama happens right in the District.”

  —Karin Tanabe, author of The List and The Diplomat’s Daughter

  “Fun and fast-paced, populated with a lovable cast of characters—and peppered with undeniably dishy details—Campaign Widows will keep you turning the pages.”

  —Ann Mah, author of Mastering the Art of French Eating and The Lost Vintage

  “Twenty-first century politics might be an unmitigated disaster, but I adored my time with this collection of vibrant, compelling characters. My vote is an enthusiastic ‘yes’ for Campaign Widows.”

  —Shari Goldhagen, author of In Some Other World, Maybe

  Advance Praise for The Summer Set

  “With the drama and humor of a Shakespearean play, The Summer Set explores the blurred line between playing a part and being true to yourself.”

  —Amy Poeppel, author of Small Admissions

  “A page-turner set in the intoxicating theater world, The Summer Set considers the price of fame, the power of second chances and the enduring nature of love.”

  —Elyssa Friedland, author of The Floating Feldmans

  “Spectacular. Agresti captivates with her razor-sharp writing, keen eye for detail and emotional depth.”

  —Lisa Barr, author of The Unbreakables

  Aimee Agresti is the author of Campaign Widows, the Gilded Wings trilogy and Inside Hollywood. Her work has appeared in Us Weekly, People and the Washington Post, among others, and she has made countless appearances on the likes of Access Hollywood and E!. Aimee holds a BA in journalism from Northwestern University and lives with her family in the Washington, DC, area.

  AimeeAgresti.com

  The Summer Set

  A NOVEL

  Aimee Agresti

  For my family

  Contents

  EPIGRAPH

  IMDB.COM

  PART ONE

  STARCROSS EXCLUSIVE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  EPILOGUE

  IMDB.COM

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  READER’S GUIDE

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  EXCERPT FROM CAMPAIGN WIDOWS BY AIMEE AGRESTI

  I reckon some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses.

  —ELIZABETH TAYLOR

  IMDB.COM

  Charlie Savoy - ACTRESS

  Charlotte “Charlie” Savoy is a stage and screen actress. Daughter of famed Shakespearean actress Dame Sarah Rose Kingsbury and jazz trumpeter Reggie Fairfield (from whom she’s estranged), she was born in New York, New York, but raised primarily in London by her mother after her father left the family to pursue his music career.

  Charlie got her start as a teen performing Shakespeare on the London stage then jumped to the big screen, most notably in Nicholas Blunt’s The Tempest, earning several supporting actress awards (British Independent Film Award, Independent Spirit, Critics’ Choice), even more nominations (Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe) and anointing her “The Next Big Thing” (The Hollywood Reporter).

  Despite the accolades, she quickly flamed out, becoming known for erratic behavior when she walked off the set of the psychological action film Dawn of the Super Id (one of the most expensive and lowest-earning film
s of all time).

  The indie Midnight Daydream (a critical darling but box office bomb) was her last film. She now owns an art house movie theater in Boston.

  TRIVIA:

  Reputation as a wild child (arrested after jumping off London’s Tower Bridge on a dare as a teen)

  Dated director Nicholas Blunt

  Best friend of actress Marlena Andes (née Marlon Andes)

  Legally changed surname to Savoy at age eighteen

  Owns North End Cinema in Boston, Massachusetts

  FILMOGRAPHY:

  Midnight Daydream (Charlotte)

  Nicholas Blunt’s The Tempest (Ariel)

  Illuminate (Haven)

  Law & Order (Stacy; 2 episodes)

  A BBC Presentation: Live from the Globe Theatre, Macbeth (Lady Macbeth)

  A BBC Presentation: Live from the Globe Theatre, Hamlet (Ophelia)

  A BBC Presentation: Live from the Globe Theatre, Romeo and Juliet (Juliet)

  PART ONE

  Love is heavy and light,

  bright and dark,

  hot and cold,

  sick and healthy,

  asleep and awake—

  it’s everything except what it is!

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

  ROMEO AND JULIET

  STARCROSS EXCLUSIVE:

  WASHED UP!: TEMPEST STAR

  DRIVES CAR INTO BOSTON HARBOR

  Actress Charlotte “Charlie” Savoy, 39, best known for her award-winning turn in the classic Nicholas Blunt’s The Tempest, limped away from a near-fatal crash in the early morning hours of April 24. Paramedics were summoned to Boston Harbor after local fishermen pulled the star from the river.

  An eyewitness told STARCROSS that Savoy allegedly lost control of her car, which plowed through a barricade. The Oscar nominee reportedly flew through the smashed windshield as her Prius drove off the pier near Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. “It looked like something out of a movie,” the captain of a sightseeing tour boat docked nearby, which was damaged by debris from the flying car, told STARCROSS. He intends to press charges for destruction of property and reckless endangerment.

  Savoy—who had a meteoric rise in her midtwenties, left Hollywood after a series of flops and now runs North End Cinema on Hanover Street—was treated for multiple lacerations and contusions, according to a source at Massachusetts General Hospital, but is expected to make a full recovery.

  Authorities report that speed was a factor in the crash but it remains unclear whether alcohol or impairing substances contributed.

  1

  SUSPEND YOUR DISBELIEF, AS USUAL

  At least Charlie wore her sunglasses in the grainy photo, but they could only do so much. She slammed her laptop shut, as though a cobra might slither out from it. Only to open it again, take a deep breath and lean in to the full horror.

  She groaned at the picture of herself, circa one hour ago. She was out of practice with this: it had been years since her photographer-dodging days. The Starbucks sign over her right shoulder indicated the shot had been snapped on the northwest corner of her street during her nearly unrequited search for a cab. That butterfly-bandaged gash slashing her forehead looked even gnarlier in the image. Her cheekbones and chin, battered and bruised, gave her face the uninviting aura of an overripe peach.

  She should’ve just skipped work, she thought, excavating the makeup pouch from her office desk drawer. She swept on enough bronze foundation to erase even her freckles, masked that black-and-blue eye and painted on scarlet lips before returning to the screen.

  The play-by-play felt like reading about someone else: it helped to not remember any of it. It didn’t help that her phone, wallet, purse, keys and pride were all still at the bottom of the river. (She had paid for her cab home from the hospital with the soggy bills in her jeans pocket. And thank God for twenty-four-hour doormen with spare keys.)

  But the editorializing: Why did her standard ID always need to be that damn Tempest? This must be how it felt for people who shared beloved children with exes they couldn’t stand. Also there had been no substances—not the illicit kind, at least. And flops—plural? It had just been the singular flop, actually, a good movie that just hadn’t made any cash.

  Sweating now, she tugged off her faux-leather motorcycle jacket—the real one hung in her apartment, drying out like crinkly parchment—and tossed it at the sofa, hitting that framed Midnight Daydream poster.

  Her door burst open.

  “My God, you’re alive!” A flash of zhushed hair and thick hipster frames. Miles, her adoring theater manager/projectionist, threw his arms around her, knocking papers from her desk onto the floor.

  Including that letter. The one that had set her off last night before her drive.

  “Just like I confirmed for you in the past seventeen emails,” she said as he clung to her. He had written all morning after seeing the story and getting no answer on her phone.

  “It’s all my fault!” He tore himself away—her Frankenstein-stitched left thigh screaming in pain from the motion—and collapsed on her sofa. “I never should’ve given you the Ambien. I’m like some kind of low-life drug dealer! There’s blood on my hands!” He held up jazz hands, his head hung in shame.

  “Wow, okay, no—” Charlie laughed, as she always did, at his melodrama.

  “But I just wanted to help,” he went on, “you never sleep and—”

  “It’s not you, it’s me. I totally messed up timing that thing. Rookie mistake.” She straightened her leg beneath her long skirt, rotating her ankle. She had even rewrapped it herself (one role as a candy striper and she felt qualified). “Don’t drive or operate heavy machinery. Message received. I’m fine. Just suspend your disbelief, as usual—”

  “And you still made me coffee?” he said, producing a North End Cinema–logoed cup. “What is wrong with you?”

  “Absolutely nothing.” Charlie shook her head. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” Charlie made them each a cappuccino every morning at the theater’s opulent espresso bar. She saw no reason to abandon her routine today.

  “I see what you’re doing,” he said, taking a sip. “Distraction. Charm. It won’t work.” He sipped again, then under his breath, muttered, “Why are your cappuccinos so much better than mine?”

  “Cardamom,” Charlie said, returning to her laptop. She closed out the offending STARCROSS story, pulling up a spreadsheet instead. “And cinnamon.”

  “WAIT!” Miles barked, regaining her attention. “I mean...” He searched for the words. “If last night wasn’t a cry for help I’m supposed to be answering, then what would you call it?”

  “I don’t know.” Charlie exhaled, arms in the air. She really didn’t. She wasn’t the type to drive into a harbor. At least not anymore. Her mind whipped through her highlight/lowlight reel in flashes like one of those photo montages your phone automatically makes.

  It was all pretty well-documented—publicly, internationally, globally. Before her first movie (at age nineteen), she had already: drunk too much; done too much Ecstasy; talked her way into every London club worth going to; danced on too many tables in too little clothing; shaved her head (twice); jumped off London’s Tower Bridge on a dare; got arrested; sat in on the drums at Wembley Stadium when she was briefly dating that miserable singer; slept with too many boys...and girls...occasionally at the same time and had it all mean too little; had too few friends; too much talent; and too much hunger.

  And then she became successful and was maybe too passionate and had artistic standards set too high and possibly had too much bravado, and definitely had too much impulsivity and impetuousness. And then overnight she had...nothing. And now here she was. And that was how that ballad went.

  “Not a call you need to answer,” Charlie assured him. “Put me right through to voice mail.”

  “You’re sure
this isn’t about the letter?” he asked, his tone delicate.

  “This has nothing to do with the letter,” she snapped. Of course, it had everything to do with the letter, but she wasn’t about to admit that. “I threw it away.” Another lie.

  “Great!” he said, too peppy, overcompensating. “I just mean... You gave me quite a scare, young lady.” Charlie was, in fact, ten years Miles’s senior. “So just never do that again, okay?”

  “Won’t happen again, officer.” Charlie nodded, her eyes on that poster of herself lying on a park bench in Boston Common, the title Midnight Daydream written as a constellation. Signed by the cast and crew—including Miles, then just a college-aged production assistant.

  Charlie grabbed his arm as leverage, rising from her chair on that mangled leg. “Can we go back to talking about important things now, like when you’re going to make your move on the guy at the juice bar?” she said, hobbling out into the old-Hollywood glamour of the crimson velvet lobby. She had gutted the place, done a head-to-toe HGTV-worthy renovation after buying it on a whim—like a pack of gum at Stop & Shop—following the night of drunken revelry that was the wrap party for Midnight Daydream.

  “I know, the protein shakes are garbage but I keep buying them to see him.” She felt relief at the return to normalcy.

  “Listen, it’s not in the shakes to hold our destiny, but in ourselves,” she semi-quoted. “And in the meantime, we’ve got a subtitled Romanian horror film to show.” Charlie pushed him toward the entrance.

  A guy who looked barely old enough to drink peered inside, hands against the locked glass doors, searching for signs of life. They got a lot of students here, especially on weekends, like last night’s weekly Dawn of the Super Id screening. She had shown it once as a joke long after its doomed theatrical release and it sold out. So Charlie kept it going and it had become her theater’s answer to Rocky Horror. They came at midnight every Friday in masks and capes, some handmade from dorm bedsheets. They yelled the terrible dialogue. They sang the theme song. They always left joyous, free, raucous. And when Charlie needed to feel like she was contributing in some way to society, she could at least appreciate having given them a night like that.