“Yeah,” Marcus says to me, an aside between just the two of us as Ari fiddles with the pack. “Beauty of show biz. Why be genuine when you can do it better?”
I like him, I think. I like him and I think I hate it.
“Just one more time, Jac. Do the whole thing with the yelling and saying you planned to be cool and all of that. Great stuff. You’re a natural.”
The journalists are staring at me, and I think of them going through the notes. Failed author Jacqueline Matthis. Failed author, failed love interest, failed person.
“You’ll be perfect this time,” Priya promises me.
“I thought you were perfect the first time,” Marcus whispers, and winks. And with that to fuel me, I head back to the limo, Charlotte opening the door for me and giving me an encouraging squeeze of my arm as I get back in. “Happens all the time,” she promises.
So I do it again, role-playing myself awkwardly. After the second run-through, with a thumbs-up from Priya, I continue up the driveway toward the house, where an assistant producer will meet me as per Charlotte’s promise. But at the last minute, I chance a glance over my shoulder at Marcus.
He’s looking back at me, too.
I had always been a casual watcher of the 1—back in New York, my Pilates instructor Margot used to host wine and cheese nights and we’d all watch ironically, we said, making fun of it all, of the bad outfits and the cheesy lines, and the brain-dead girls who thought they were in love with some stranger after one date.
But three months ago, after staring at a blank page of a supposed new book draft for five days straight, I was so deep into Instagram and a bottle of wine, I thought I might soon come out of the other end. That’s when I saw an old contestant from the 1, sporting one million followers—an audience most authors only dreamed of.
This discovery led me down a rabbit hole deep into best of the 1 videos, and the more I saw, the more I thought: What could be better publicity for my writing career than a romance author looking for her own happily-ever-after?
The show could be a huge sales boost to my backlist of failed titles. And then, maybe once I’d proved my worth, I’d have something to build on. Something new to sell. Either way, it was the best plan I’d had since leaving New York.
With the kind of reckless abandon one can have only when desperately avoiding a deadline, I clicked over to the 1 website and applied to become a contestant on the biggest network reality dating show of the past twenty years. I wasn’t sure if I would actually get picked—I knew I was of above average attractiveness, potentially intriguing, and most importantly, could create a great character, but there were no guarantees.
Until I got the call and passed through the casting rounds. I knew it was happening the first time Charlotte said to me during an interview, “We’ve never had an author on before.”
So I’d spent all my time since obsessively researching and taking notes on previous seasons, reading blogs and advice, and doing what I was generally the best at—creating a perfect character. There was no money in this for me or the other contestants, so I had to make the one chance to build a fan base work for me.
To catch up on the most recent crop of contestants, I’d hopped on Zoom with Sarah, and we’d blasted through Shailene’s season, watched Marcus and his mannerisms and his bad jokes, and halfway through, Sarah said, “This is your dream man. He’s emotionally available, but not too needy. He’s witty. He knows what he wants.”
“You’re delusional,” I told her. “We’re supposed to be making a game strategy to keep me on the show. That’s it.” There was a certain confidence, a straightforwardness to Marcus I admired. His bluntness on the show rubbed a lot of viewers the wrong way, but I saw someone who knew what he wanted. It was tricky, balancing playing a love interest and being honest about your feelings—I admired the way he tried.
“Come on, Jac, be real! You didn’t just randomly pick the 1 of all venues to drum up publicity. Why are you going on this show,” Sarah asked me, “if it’s not to fall in love? This is perfect.”
“Sarah.” I sighed out her name. “I’m not trying to win the ring; I’m trying to win the audience.”
She tutted. “Just make sure you’re ready,” Sarah told me at the time. “He’s looking for the real thing.”
And I have the ridiculous thought as Elodie, an assistant producer, shows me to the bar: Maybe Sarah was right. Maybe Marcus and I had enough in common that our chemistry would be easy. Maybe this would be fun.
I wasn’t delusional, though. People didn’t fall in love on reality television, especially this show. They gained social media followers and started shilling diet teas, no matter how often they claimed to be “here for the right reasons.” They made money, made themselves into a brand. And that was going to be me in a couple of weeks if I played my cards right.
“Jac, do you have a minute for an ITM?” Elodie asks me as soon as the bartender has handed over my liquid courage. “In-the-moment interview,” she explains.
“Sure,” I say, and then a camera crew hurries over and gets me set up in a quiet room that has been blocked off for this purpose alone, walls painted deep red, decorative gold curtains as the backdrop.
“Seems like you and Marcus really had a moment back there,” Elodie prompts me.
“I don’t know about Marcus yet,” I say, hedging. Playing a little hard-to-get, waiting for the real chemistry, was my move. “We just met. I want to make sure it’s the right fit for both of us.”
“You seem hesitant. Has it been a while since you’ve been in love?”
I frown at her, a little thrown by the question. I expected questions about past relationships—had already answered many—but I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about being in love on principle. “Uhm? I don’t know?”
“Can you answer like I’m not here?” Elodie says with a smile. “We’re going to cut everything I say out.”
“I’m not hesitant about love,” I tell the camera, amending the slip-up quickly. “I’m looking for something real,” I say, because it seems like something they’ll like. (In the episode, right after this statement, they cut to a shot of me throwing back a drink at the bar, and then another shot of me in the ITM room laughing.)
“Okay, fair enough. When’s the last time you had something real?” Elodie asks me.
I bite into my lip, calculating my answer. Never one to share my feelings, this was going to take some finessing. “I’m not scared to open myself up,” I tell her. Sounds genuine. “I’ve been hurt in the past, but who hasn’t? I just want to make sure it’s for the right person.”
“That’s perfect,” Elodie tells me, nodding to the cameraperson, who kills the recording. “You’re going to be so good onscreen, Jac.” She hands my fresh drink back to me. “Why don’t we head back to the party now? Some of the other girls should be here by now.”
We walk back through a hall of the infamous the 1 mansion, noticeably shabbier in person than it looks on TV, toward the sounds of the party kicking off, past another interview room.
I chug my drink—a bourbon this time, eat your heart out, Southern belles—and then head to the bar for another. I can feel Charlotte watching me now that she’s made her way into the house, leaning into one of her assistants and asking how many drinks that is for me this hour. Just my second, if we’re doing strict hour-to-hour counting. I watch the other interview room open up, and a man comes out first, likely another producer. And then I really see the man. Dark-haired, dark-browed, shirtsleeves rolled up, exposing ropy forearms, a tenseness to his body as if he’s ready to spring.
He sees me.
I drop my drink, and it rolls off the bar, hits the tile floor, and shatters.
Five Days Earlier
I got in early on Friday morning on a red-eye from Charleston by way of Dallas. The Uber dropped me off at Sarah’s Santa Monica house, beachy and modern, just off the always sunny Santa Monica Boulevard. Josh was at work—his job that had landed the two of them in California originally—and Sarah was in her home office with the baby, studying for the bar exam.
“Why don’t you try and take a nap?” she suggested when I got there, and I had agreed. I slept fitfully, the way you do when your body knows it’s not the right time to be asleep, and was up and showered by 2 p.m.
