“God,” I say, and he gives me a sympathetic smile. “I just needed a little time today.”
“There’s no time on the 1.”
“Only Marcus,” I answer him.
“I heard your date went really well last night.” He waits a beat, and when I don’t say anything, he says, “Pulling out the monologue about his dad. He basically cemented himself as the one with that.”
“It wasn’t a move,” I answer, secretly pleased at how well it played. “I was being honest.”
“Well, even if it wasn’t a move, it was a pretty brilliant one,” he tells me.
“You’re sick,” I say.
Henry stares at me, and it’s too long. We both know it’s too long.
Then he breaks eye contact and looks toward the house. “I should go do my job,” he says.
“I’m pretty sick of you doing your job. I’m especially sick of you promising to make it up to me.”
“Would you believe me if I told you I was, too, actually?” he asks. I don’t answer, and silently, he gives up and turns away.
He’s walking back toward the house, when I say, “Henry.”
Mid-stride, he stops and turns back to look at me. It’s cliché to say at this point, but he’s picturesque, something about him unbelievably flawless—his skin and his eyes and his smile that looks like a lie.
“Was it real?” I ask him. “It felt real.”
“Jac,” he says, walking back over to me and crouching so we’re eye-level again. We’re both not saying what we really want to say, and that’s what’s so wrong. The code we speak in. The things we attempt to say with only the way we look.
“It can’t be real,” he says, his voice low. “That would be against the rules.”
I swallow slowly and he backs away.
IT’S 11 A.M. and I’ve been mentally preparing for a pool day for hours. Kendall and I are alone near the front of the house while a girl chat is happening in the den. I’m splayed out on a couch, and Kendall is staring out the window, holding a sparkling water, probably hoping something will happen. Even so, it still shocks me when she says, without a hint of surprise, “It’s Shailene.”
“What?” I ask, going to stand next to her at the window. She gives me a look, clearly seeing it as an invasion of space.
There she is. Shailene Dowd, the charming Midwestern lead of last season’s the 1. She’d shown up to the first episode of the season, dressed as a fairy-tale princess, and left with practical, extremely sexual, and a touch possessive Bentley Routh, after romance had come crashing down for Shailene and Marcus.
Marcus had been steady and goofy, and more than a few people had found him irresistible, but something about Shailene had been so clear to me watching her season. Shailene was the picture of traditional values when she needed to be, but that wasn’t really Shailene. She was as down-home Indiana as it came, but when you really got down to it, Shailene was a freak.
Dark brown hair, skinny as a rail, and fierce as fuck, I’d liked Shailene, even if she was so generic in her white, Christian beauty ideals, she’d practically been made for the 1. She’d sent more than a few guys packing for being absolute dickheads. There was one other guy in her final three, Alex, a hardcore Christian like her, and he’d played it against her, managing to hang on as a contender by constantly convincing Shailene it would be sinful to end up with Marcus or Bentley. In the end, after what was thankfully Alex’s last temper tantrum—after Alex found out Shailene supposedly slept with Marcus during the overnight date—she sent Alex packing, flipping him off all the while. Shailene had her own code. When she told Alex to fuck off, she stuck to it, despite Alex insisting his code was the right one. It was oddly empowering to watch. I kind of admired Shailene, what a great character she was, and I admired that Marcus saw something in her.
She’s here now, walking down the sidewalk in a white dress, legs like a dream. The producers appear to greet her—Charlotte and Henry and Janelle—and Shailene screams when she sees them, effusive as ever. She takes the rest of the sidewalk in a run and makes a leap into Henry’s arms. He catches her with ease and spins her around, holding her into a hug before putting her down. It startles me, seeing him be so openly affectionate with someone, in contrast to the guarded way he’s been treating me. He’s not my producer, but he wasn’t hers either. When I see it in that moment, I know: he’s had a wall up with me since I’ve been here.
Elodie and Priya gather us around when Becca arrives with Shailene, and Becca tells us about the pool party on camera. We react with the obligatory excitement. Then she tells us Shailene is here to give us a real idea of what dating Marcus is like.
I change fast—I’d already done my makeup and mentally picked my bathing suit (a deep red bikini with an unbuttoned black cover-up that flowed down to my ankles) when Henry told me about the pool party. And, as I sit poolside, drinking a whiskey and waiting for something to happen, Charlotte grabs me.
“Shailene wants to talk to you,” she says.
I pause, stare up at her. “Me?”
“Come on,” she says. “Over by the cabana.”
And there she is, in all of her bright, bubbly glory. I’m about six inches taller than her, and she hugs me like an old friend, grabbing my hand and pulling me to sit in the cabana with her.
“I see you,” she says as I sit down, immediately picking up on my hesitation. Her smile could take out the whole of LA. “You don’t have to be scared of me, Jac,” she tells me in her soft, flat, Midwestern affect.
I smile, reserved. “I loved you,” I say, “last season.”
“Aw, you’re sweet.” She sips her own drink, a comically large margarita, to make me more comfortable. The producers and camera crew surround us. “So, tell me,” she says. “Tell me all about Marcus.”
Here’s the thing about Shailene and Marcus—no one ever really knew what happened.
I maintain there was a zero percent chance she wasn’t choosing Bentley; when they were together, they were practically insatiable for one another. But there was something with Marcus, too, a different kind of chemistry, a different kind of physicality.
Shailene was, famously, the virgin. All season had built toward an explosion—toward the deflowering. Like I said, the 1 is predictably puritanical in its storytelling, always looking for the best storyline. They’d tried virgins before, but none had resulted in quite the fireworks this one did. Marcus had been Shailene’s first overnight date, the obligatory episode when you are finally allowed to spend time together alone, without cameras, with three suitors left. When Marcus’s producer asked him the next morning what had happened, he’d been coy at first. But then the producer asked him, directly, “Did you sleep with Shailene?”—a question so important that they’d left the producer’s audio in, Marcus famously said one word that launched a thousand TikTok ships, started a million Reddit wars: “Yes.”
The confrontation had led to epic, gripping television. Shailene had cried, asked him over and over again why he’d told them. Marcus had said it was because he needed to have an honest relationship. Even after everything, she’d begged him not to leave her there. But he did anyway.
It started an online firestorm that hadn’t died down since.
That’s what I see when I see Shailene asking me to tell her about Marcus—a girl broken down and humiliated. Instead, here, she’s fresh-faced and breezy, talking about him with ease. I glance down awkwardly for a moment, the scene playing in my head, and then meet her eyes. “This seems like a trick. I was hoping you could tell me about Marcus.”
“Oh, I got it. More of a giver than a taker.” She leans in closer, her eyes bright and clear. “Yes, I totally see it. You’re definitely his type.”
I swallow, glance around at the producers. No Henry. “I thought usually when they bring exes on, it’s to give the leads a big scare? Make them wonder if they can truly get over their past heartbreak?”
