Someone chuckles from the corner, and I know who it is, his voice getting right under my skin. Henry is looking at me again, the way he did with that wedding dress earlier. “What do you want?” I ask, watching him over my shoulder and feeling Elodie walk away behind me. Without prompting, I scoop up my drink from the bar and go over to him, leaning back against the wall next to him, off-camera.
“You’re not allowed to hide by standing next to me,” he says.
I survey the scene from this distance, the girls all mostly too drunk to make intelligible conversation, comforting a crying Aliana. “So, send me on my way,” I answer Henry, but when my eyes meet his, he’s smirking. This is the closest we’ve been since my hotel room, and it’s so surreal, the way we existed there in real life and now nothing is real, and everything is about Marcus and Marcus’s favorite thing, and the date with Marcus. Henry’s whole physical presence is like a lodestar, a reminder that my entire life is still real, and when all this is over I am still fuckup Jac, and that’s good and it’s bad.
I don’t know. It’s all still there.
“So, you put a teen mom on this season and then talked Stasia into saying some judgy shit.”
“I don’t know. Maybe,” Henry concedes. “Some people stir the pot when they realize they have no chemistry with the lead and know it’s the only way they’ll get on television. Not a problem you have.”
His face is neutral as he says it.
“Why me? Why should I defend Aliana?” I ask him. “She doesn’t even like me.”
“Have you given her any reason to?” Henry asks, a glance at me that gets under my skin.
I take a sip of my drink. We both already know the answer to his question.
“Look,” Henry says, “you don’t need the extra screen time, but if you’re going to be here awhile, then what you do want, when push comes to shove, is for some of the other girls to have your back. Otherwise, you are not going to be in for a fun twelve weeks.”
“What are you suggesting?” I ask, turning my body around fully to face him. “I lead some sort of mob in to dispatch Stasia in an attempt to make her public enemy number one instead of me?”
Henry laughs out loud. “Jesus, you have a dramatic imagination.”
“It’s what I get paid for,” I answer, stone-faced.
“Just start the conversation. Reconcile them. You can do that, can’t you?”
I study him, chewing my lip. Take another sip of my drink, survey the girls. “Just a conversation?” I ask.
“Isn’t this what you asked for me to do for you?” he responds in a low voice.
It was. Help me. This was a chance he was offering me. A chance to be the person I’d planned to be on this show. To be the kind of person other people would like. This was my character.
I march back over to the group. “I’m going to go talk to Stasia,” I announce to them. Everyone looks up at me in surprise.
“You?” Grace-Ann asks.
“I just think we should squash this,” I tell them. “Peacefully.”
Exactly, I think. Exactly.
“I’ll walk you over,” Elodie tells me before anyone else can respond. She leads me to a different room than the one where I met Marcus and opens up the door. There are Marcus and Stasia together on a white couch against an ornate backdrop, a room too big for the small amount of space they’re taking up. My stomach drops when I see that Stasia is crying and Marcus is leaned in close, wiping away her tears.
“Jac?” Marcus asks.
“I just wanted,” I start, walking into the room, “to talk . . . about Aliana . . .” and then I trail off.
Stasia devolves into loud, racking sobs, and Marcus quickly gets up, putting an arm around me and ushering me out of the room.
“We’ll talk soon,” he says, though his voice doesn’t lack affection. Janelle appears at my side.
“Don’t worry about it, Jac,” she says. “It’s not the right time.”
“What’s going on?” I ask. “Is she okay?”
Janelle gives me a pitying look. “Stasia was telling Marcus that her dad just died, and she’s leaving the show to be with her family.”
That hangs in the air between us like a dead body. I am fairly sure I can feel my soul floating away, humiliation ringing in my ears. I take a deep breath, and then I leave.
(Here’s what I can tell you about how this episode aired. I whiningly complain to Marcus about my ankle, which the other girls have spent the last ten minutes reminding the audience is definitely a fake injury. I call Grace-Ann insane, which I actually did and which was a kind of fucked-up thing to say to her as she’s really a lovely person. I cockily tell the other girls what a successful author I am. Then I storm into the room to demand more time with Marcus. I tell Stasia, who is in the middle of a tearful monologue about her father, that she’s a selfish bitch as they show only her mortified face. I’m not even sure where that audio came from but my best guess is that it was me telling either Charlotte or Henry that I would not do something they were asking of me because I didn’t want to look like a selfish bitch. The audio itself, by my estimation, was spliced in from at least three different ITMs or conversations I had while on the show. Stasia’s teen mom comment never airs.)
What happens in real life is Janelle comes out ten minutes later and tells us the rest of the cocktail party is canceled. With some girls looking very sour indeed (“Maybe if Jac hadn’t tried to get more time with Marcus,” Kendall complains in the episode), we are filed back into vans in our evening wear.
Instagram DM from Amberly Morgan
Amberly Morgan
Freelance photographer by day, the 1 recapper by night. Yes, I was on season 25 of the 1 and if you want to get into it, I guess we can. Small-town girl in the big city. Podcast & website—amberly will tell you anyway dot com.
Wednesday, 12:46 a.m. (after the airing of the first episode of the 1)
Hey Jac! I don’t know if you know me, but I write a fairly popular the 1 weekly recap for Glow. I was *obsessed* with your first-night gown! If you don’t mind dropping the link, I’d love to share the dress with my readers. Hope you are well!
Tuesday, 11:18 p.m. (after the airing of the second episode of the 1)
