I can’t help it. I’m drunk. The first time he sends someone packing with that catchphrase, I start laughing. It’s a quiet laugh but not so much that those nearest to me don’t notice. The girls all shift uncomfortably, and I try to clear my face, burying it in my hands until I can get hold of myself. I should be embarrassed, but my brain can’t bother to process that emotion, and I see Marcus is smiling at me like he noticed me laughing, and liked it. Only, recently eliminated Bonnie is crying, and I wish I could take it back. Laughing is my psychosomatic response to discomfort.
Unfortunately, the statement sounds even funnier the second time, and my giggles persist, but by the third time Marcus says the absolutely absurd words, I have it under my control. I finally can release a breath once the director calls, “Cut!”
Rikki, who has practically been sleeping standing up, curls into my side and lays her head on my shoulder. I don’t know how this happened, this compulsory intimacy between us, but it pretty clearly has and now I feel oddly protective of her. I brush her hair back from her face softly. I’m pretty sure she threw up right before the ceremony started.
“Okay, folks,” Charlotte announces to the group of girls lined up on the risers. “We’re going to get you back to the hotel for a couple of hours of sleep and then we can all officially move into the house. The cars will be here shortly. You’ll get your room assignments on the way back. Try and have your stuff packed and ready to go by five. Heard that, ladies? Five p.m.!”
“Are all pregnant women so grumpy?” Rikki mutters into my arm. I hadn’t known she was taking in anything being said.
“Probably just the ones producing twenty-five women for twelve hours straight,” I tell her. I glance at Charlotte, who has gathered the remaining producers around her and is muttering to them, her mouth moving nonstop. “Honestly, I doubt Charlotte needs sleep,” I mutter as an aside to Rikki. When she doesn’t answer, I wonder if she’s fallen back asleep.
It takes an hour to get back to the hotel, to the point the sun is fully up. I want to collapse directly into bed, but I remember instead that I am trying to be a Real Girl and all that, the kind a guy on a reality TV show would fall in love with—or at least keep around long enough for her to sell a couple thousand books to curious fans.
I start wiping the layers of makeup off my face. It hasn’t escaped my notice that most of the other girls are between five and ten years younger than me. Sure, Marcus himself is thirty-four, but what interest would he have in a thirty-two-year-old when there were so many bouncy girls in their mid-twenties around? It also didn’t escape my notice that fillers and veneers were almost a prerequisite to come on the show these days, adding even more to everyone’s youthful appearances. I knew plenty of women in New York who engaged in the ritual, but Botox was as far as I could go.
I sigh, moving in on the moisturizer my dermatologist recommended to me. Just as I finish up, there is a knock on my door.
I don’t know why—probably lack of sleep—but I expect it to be Rikki, come back for more emotional support. But when I open the door, it’s him. It’s Henry.
Four Days Earlier
I woke up and I was pretty sure I was dying.
A beam of sunlight found me, creeping in from a big, open window to the east. It was early—too early for me when I lived in my real life on the East Coast, barely scraping myself out of bed before 10 a.m., but just right for me in this life, where the real had ceased to exist.
I was naked in an unfamiliar bed, the taste of alcohol and pizza coating my mouth, and I was dying. So things were going really well.
“Shit,” I said out loud. “Shit.”
“That’s exactly what you said last night.” The voice was a deep baritone and it was light. Easy. Last night.
I almost laughed. Last night.
“Shit,” I said again and turned over to face him.
“Good morning,” I said, keeping my voice breezy. Something about knowing a relationship was already over before it began made it easy. It always had.
“It’s too early,” he answered, burying his face back in his pillow, an arm draping over the sheets covering my body casually. Almost too casually.
“Running on East Coast time,” I answered, and he laughed against the pillow.
“Don’t I know it.”
“I talk too much,” I confessed, almost ashamed, “especially after a couple beers.”
“I live in LA,” he reminded me as if I could forget, turning back over to look at me. He blinked, and for a moment, I did forget. Why I was here. Instead, I thought about his long eyelashes, and how I didn’t want him to disappear. “Your honesty is refreshing.”
“Mm. Maybe you should try being less honest,” I told him, and I thought he liked it from the way he laughed. I slid out of the bed and pulled my shirt over my head. “I need to go. Shower.”
He sat up, his black sheets—dead giveaway for bachelor status—pooling at his stomach. “You’re welcome to shower here,” he told me. “I have the snob coffee.”
“Of course you do.” I pulled up my shorts, the last comfortable outfit I would wear for weeks. “But I’m a cheap date, I’ll grab Starbucks.” I started putting on my sandals that I had tossed off last night. We both sat in the awkward silence before I said, “Thanks for letting me crash. It was fun.” I turned back to look at him, and he was looking at me with bright-eyed interest.
“So a no on breakfast then?” He was smiling though. “God, you look so good in red,” he almost-moaned, eyeing my ratty old tank, the bottom skimming my belly button. “Did I mention that?”
“A couple thousand times last night,” I answered. Then I leaned in closer, letting him in on a secret we both already knew. He smelled like stale alcohol and sex. “C’mon,” I said. “I bet you’re good at this.”
“Like really good,” he agreed. “But I figured I’d offer. You were ‘like, so fucking hungry’ last night.”
He didn’t know the half of it. I grinned and beared it. “Back on my diet as of today.”
He didn’t comment on it, didn’t try to tell me what to do with my body or how he thought it might look best, which I liked. “Can I at least drive you somewhere?” he asked.
I tilted my head back and smiled. I’d remember him in that patch of sunlight, I thought. The way he looked. And then I’d forget all about last night, the way you were supposed to. “Wouldn’t that just ruin all the mystery?”
He laughed. “Well, there’s no mystery where I’m going.”
“Ah,” I said. “The job you hate.”
He stared at me, lost for a moment, before he remembered himself. The game we were playing. “You have no idea.”
“Don’t get too lost in your nihilism, Henry,” I called to him as I made my way toward the door, ordering a Lyft on the way.
When the car pulled up a couple minutes later, I watched him unguarded through the large windows into his house, brewing a coffee in sweats, no shirt on, as he faded away into the sunrise.
He never looked up.
4
