His expression changes, becomes almost urgent, and he moves a little bit closer to me as he says, “It’s not the same, I promise you.”
“So you did fuck him over? Did you tell him to say he had sex with Shailene on camera?”
“Oh, come off it,” he says, both of our voices rising. We can finally go at each other now, in a way we never could with the cameras rolling all around us. “Marcus fucked over Shailene all on his own. Not everything I do is a fucking strategy, I’m a real person.”
“I’ve seen little evidence that everything between us hasn’t just been so you can get more good TV out of me.”
“You’re right,” Henry says, pushing away from the railing overlooking the rooftop. “I pre-banged you as part of my production strategy.”
“Who are you?” I demand. “Are you some slick-as-fuck producer who hoards compliments and only gives them out when a girl has done exactly what you want, or are you some fucking California sad boy who hates himself and his job and the world? Like, what the fuck is this, Henry, and why are you doing it to me?”
“Don’t,” he says, “fall for Marcus.”
“Jesus, you are trying to sabotage us both!”
“I don’t actually care about sabotaging Marcus fucking Bellamy, thank you very much,” Henry hisses. “Did I do everything in my power to keep him from becoming the lead this season? Yes. Is it personal? Also yes.”
“So what is it?” I ask him, crossing my arms over my chest. “Are you jealous of him? Did he sleep with your fiancée or something?”
Henry openly rolls his eyes at me. “Please. You watch too many soap operas.”
“Maybe . . .” I lick my lip, letting myself warm up to the idea. Even just to saying it to get a rise out of him. “Maybe you’re jealous of him and . . . me.”
A slow smile spreads across Henry’s face after I say it, as we let it settle between the both of us. He’s looking at me like he’s just realized it. “You want me to be jealous over you, don’t you?”
“What?” I answer quickly. Then I say, “Henry, why did you come to my room in the middle of the night when there were no cameras around?”
He turns away from me and walks back into the bar without saying anything. Prick.
I follow him back inside. That bar itself is designed to let light in with a sloping glass rooftop coming down on all four walls into brick accents, Chicago-style. Everything else is polished wood, slick, with fairy lights strung up in rows next to the windows, spherical light fixtures hanging down, turned off. The light from the night is enough to make Henry clear to me.
He is leaned over the huge bar back against the wall we came in from, fishing a bottle of Woodford Reserve out from behind it and pouring us both a generous amount into water glasses. He slides one over to me.
“We’re too old to drink this much,” I say to him as I take a sip from the glass.
“I think the reason I like the Southern girls the best is I get to drink a lot more bourbon when they’re around,” he says, glancing sideways over at me. I boost myself up onto the bar next to where he’s standing, swinging my legs.
“So, you like the Southern girls?”
He taps his glass against mine. The air is electric, and we both know it. Everything Henry said to me at the pizza place about this not happening is bullshit and we both know it. I ease into it. “Since you know all the bad things I’ve done, it’s only fair if you tell me something really fucked up you’ve done.”
Henry thinks about it for a minute, leaning back against the bar, his lips pressed together. I see the way his posture changes when he arrives at the right story. “Okay, so one time,” he tells me, “I was on the 405 for three hours waiting on this girl to cry after she got eliminated. John told me literally not to come back to set if she didn’t cry.”
“Fuck off,” I say.
“Dead serious,” he says, but he’s laughing. “She wasn’t a crier—she just wasn’t. I don’t even think she liked the lead. So I had to use this old trick one of the other producers taught me of rubbing jalapeño under my eyes to make myself cry. That’s how upset I tried to convince her I was about the disillusionment of her relationship. We took four shots together, and I eventually got her to cry by talking about her grandpa.” His voice fades as he continues. “Her grandpa who died by suicide,” he finishes, setting down his whiskey. “By the end, I really was crying because—” He looks up at me and shakes his head. “Because, I don’t know, that’s what’s happened to my brain.”
“Every day, you have to be both the least human and most human version of yourself,” I say.
He thinks about it for a moment and nods. “So,” he says, hopping up on the bar to sit next to me, “why’d you fuck Marcus?”
“I don’t know,” I say, taking a sip of bourbon and staring straight ahead. “It’s usually what I do when I want something.”
“The Andi thing?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “That was just spontaneous.” Fuck, he knew about that, too.
Which meant he probably knew the other thing.
It’s you, Jac.
But he wasn’t asking me about that.
“Why do you want me?” I ask him. “Do you think?”
He finishes his drink, which is actually quite a bit of work as it was still over half full.
“Ah, well,” he says, setting his glass back on the bar with a clink. “I figure it’s probably a mix of things. The fact that I’m the only person in production right now with keys to this bar and that I drank three bourbons already tonight is a contributing factor.”
“Sure,” I agree.
“Then there’s the slick-as-fuck producer thing you so astutely pointed out where I’ve had opportunities with contestants for years and haven’t taken them because I wanted to see myself as a good guy, but you obviously know that nothing about doing this job would ever even slightly allow you to be a good person, so what have I been waiting for?”
I nod. “Right.”
“And then there’s the—what did you say again?” he asks, tilting his head to the side as he looks at me.
“Fucking California sad boy,” I supply.
