“You’re right. I do want to make sure I’m not stealing the other girls’ time, you know?” I say, thinking of Rikki’s words earlier.
“Trust me, Marcus is much more interested in talking to you,” she says. “I just want to give him that chance.”
Listen, here’s the fucked-up thing about this show. There are so many times when I straight up know what’s happening—I know that I’m being told what to do, and at some point, I become convinced that I do in fact have to do that thing. And anyone watching me sees that and thinks, “Not only are you a terrible person, Jacqueline Matthis, but you’re an idiot for getting tricked into that.”
I put a whiskey into Marcus’s hand as soon as he arrives. He hugs me first, and I wait as patiently as I can while he hugs the other girls. “Marcus,” I say, after he has greeted us all and given the obligatory toast. “Can I actually steal you for a second?”
It’s the thing they all say—everyone on the 1 since time immemorial—and it just came out of my mouth.
And then I get exactly what I want: “I would love that,” Marcus says.
We get settled on a couch, distancing ourselves from the other girls in another room, set up for this purpose. Priya is there with Marcus’s producer, Janelle.
Immediately, Marcus’s hand is on my leg. It’s an odd thing, but I like it and I don’t. The intimacy feels presumptuous but also good, like maybe it’s the right presumption. I know deep down that it’s a good thing for me because it means he likes me. He wants to touch me.
I hate how hard I think about it, but it makes me feel special.
“I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again,” Marcus tells me.
I do my best to look coy (later read as disingenuous). “Was it worth the wait?”
“You better believe it.” He leans in, his hand going to pull me in closer to facing him. “You were really something during that obstacle course today.”
I look down, almost embarrassed. “I get a little competitive,” I admit.
When I glance back up at him, he tilts his head to the side. “I did say I wanted a girl who was willing to fight for me. I haven’t always gotten that.”
We both laugh lightly at that, but what he says, it’s a bit on the nose, and I immediately wonder if he’s talking about Shailene, playing into some storyline. My eyes find the camera lens right over his shoulder. “Not at the camera,” Priya quickly chides me. I look back at Marcus, his expectant eyes on me, a correctly trained puppy.
“My ankle is—uh—a little swollen,” I tell him then, not sure what else to say. I show him my ankle through the slit in my dress and he grabs onto it, his bare skin against mine. His hands are big; that’s one of the things I like most about him, physically. The way he takes up so much space, how his hand can hold on to so much of me at once.
In some ways, I’m a simpler girl than I wish I was.
“You’re tough. I like that about you.” He drops my ankle and leans his elbow into the back of the couch we’re sitting on, his body turned fully into me. “I can tell the stress of the show won’t get to you.”
“Really?” I ask, mimicking his position. “Did it get to you?”
“Sometimes,” he admits with a sheepish grin, as if remembering some past embarrassment. He leans in closer than me, like he can shield us from anything the mics we’re wearing might catch. “It’s the oddest thing about the producers. You know they’re trying to manipulate you, but you’ll still always be trying to please them. Eats away at your soul a bit.”
“Yeah?” I say. “I’m still managing to hold on to my soul right now.”
Marcus shrugs, but his smile falters a bit. “Just watch out for Henry. He was my producer last season.”
My eyebrows go up. “But he’s not now?”
Marcus doesn’t answer for a moment, and then, “C’mon, Marcus,” his producer, Janelle, calls. “You know we can’t use any of this. Can you talk about something else?”
“Fine.” Marcus smiles, aggressively pleasant, and I read it as us being in on an inside joke, that we are following the rules that we don’t want to. “Who are you, Jacqueline Matthis?”
“Shit,” I mutter. (To be clear, none of this conversation will ever air on television because the 1 is only interested in the depth on the shallow side of the pool. Please list your job, interests, and trauma and proceed through the door to the left.) “I guess that’s kind of the thing about me. I’m never quite sure who I am.”
“Yeah,” Marcus says. “I know what you mean. You don’t go on this show if you have perfect clarity in where your life is headed, do you?”
I laugh, feeling that moment of kinship, one I feel like I’ve been looking for in the past five years, as friends have gotten married and had kids and progressed in their jobs. Of course not. “It doesn’t scare you to be in your thirties and still lost?” I ask.
“Scares the shit out of me,” he returns.
“Can I kiss you now?” I ask, biting into my lip. He leans forward without hesitation and captures my mouth with his own. The kiss lasts longer than our kisses before; it’s slow and suspenseful and leaves off with the promise of another before Marcus walks me back over to the other girls and leaves with Grace-Ann.
Henry grabs me for an ITM and I say some bland, predictable things about Marcus, and he looks tempted to fall asleep.
“So, how do you feel after today?” he is asking, going for it at a different angle.
“I think this process could be working for us,” I say.
“Journey,” Henry says.
“What?”
“Say that again, but say, ‘I think this journey might be working for us.’”
“Absolutely not,” I return. “That’s a nonsensical sentence and I’m a writer. I’m trying to use language in a precise way.”
“Right,” Henry says, “but on this show, we say ‘journey,’ not ‘process.’ Otherwise, it makes it sound like we’re sticking you all in a big assembly line and spitting out a couple at the end for ratings.”
“Yeah,” I say slowly, “but to be clear, that is what’s happening here.” I cross my arms; something about him makes me feel particularly antagonistic. “I am still allowed to think my own thoughts.”
“Journey,” Henry repeats.
