I pull off my stained shirt, tossing it on the ground, and Henry pointedly scoffs, turning away from me. “You’ve seen more,” I say.
“Don’t, Jac” is all he answers. I make my way to the sink, running water and combing it through my hair, where clumps of sauce have taken up residence.
“What the fuck, Henry,” I say as I turn back from the sink. “What the fuck.”
“Can you keep your voice down?” he asks me, his gaze still trained on the wall behind him.
“Why are you doing this? Why did you . . .” But I trail off because it feels too dangerous to even say.
“Are you dressed?” he asks as I slide on the Lou Malnati’s T-shirt.
“Yes,” I say, and he turns back around. “This shirt is stupid tight.”
“This show is still the show,” he answers, like we’re all just stuck in a misogyny loop with no idea how to free ourselves. He ruffles his hair, distracted, running through the lines in his head; I can see him doing it. “About LA. I shouldn’t have.”
“Then why did you?”
He steps close to me, our faces inches from each other. “Don’t you already know?”
“So is this it?” I ask him. “It’s over?”
“Nothing is over,” he says. “Because nothing ever started.”
“If I recall correctly,” I reply, “it started three times.”
His face goes red, and he averts his eyes from mine. “Didn’t the boundaries we established preclude you from bringing up any pre-show activities?”
“Boundaries?” I demand. “What fucking boundaries?”
“We’re not teenagers; we can’t just do whatever we want,” he says.
“But you did.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, a note of finality in his voice. He’s just decided to end it and it’s over.
I don’t know what makes me say it. It’s ridiculous. “I don’t think you’re sorry.”
“Jac.” He puts his hands on either side of me, gripping my arms, his skin warm and bronze against my pale arms. “I’m sorry.”
He turns away from me, and I fume. I don’t know what I wanted him to say. I don’t know what I hoped to get out of this conversation.
“Why did you break up with your fiancée?” I ask him.
He stops, his back to me, sighs deeply, ruffles his hair, then turns to face me. “Why are you doing this?”
“Just tell me.”
He shrugs. “You were right. Is that what you want to hear? She got sick of my misery. Good enough?”
I pick up my mic and walk past him without saying anything.
I’m here for Marcus.
I head back into the filming room in high dudgeon. Marcus is kneading a pizza with Andi, and I make my way over to Charlotte.
“What was that about?” she asks me, glancing at Henry.
“Strategizing,” I tell Charlotte without missing a beat. “Like we talked about.” I hold my mic out to her. “Can you fix this?”
She does. “What are you going to do?” she asks me.
“I want to talk to Marcus,” I say, still staring at him flirting with Andi. She’s looking away from the eye contact Marcus is making with her. I wouldn’t do that, I think. I’d hold his gaze because I think he’d like that. He’d know what I wanted just like I know what he wants.
Fuck, I was horny.
“Okay,” Charlotte says. “So go talk to him.”
“I have your permission?” I ask her, quirking my eyebrow.
“In fact, you have my blessing,” Charlotte answers, typing out a text as she does so. Red alert, I imagine it saying, bitch on the move.
I approach Andi and Marcus and feel a camera immediately train on me. “Marcus,” I say with a shy smile, “I think I missed some of the instructions when I splattered marinara all over myself. Maybe you could come help me?” I imbue my voice with as much innocence as I can, and I watch it work on him like a charm.
One thing I had noticed in Shailene’s season was how much Marcus loved to be needed, to be reassured. He never seemed confident in her affection, constantly in his head about what things meant, but opening up and blooming like a flower when she focused solely on him. It may seem obvious in the structure of the 1 how that would work, but Marcus seemed especially attuned to it.
When we get to my already rolled out pizza, Marcus looks down at it with a smirk. “You seem to be doing pretty well on your own.”
I look up into his eyes with a grin. “I excel at most things I try,” I tell him, trying that on for size. That’s what I’d thought about myself at twenty-two, precocious and narcissistic and fresh-out-of-college, confident I was more than any of the other girls I’d gone to school with. Sure I was heading somewhere because every teacher and professor and adult I’d run across in my previous twenty-two years had assured me I was.
