A Decade Under the Influence
Home.
It’s a loaded word for me.
Home was always a place I was leaving. Somewhere to avoid. A funny story on a cold New York night about Civil War reenactments (no one I know has ever actually seen one) and terrifying rednecks (really just tobacco-spitting frat boys in camo). But home now was home, the place that had come to define me.
Home ended up being the place I returned to.
My hometown, the farthest from Los Angeles of any of the girls, is the first one filming.
I was disappointed but not surprised to learn how little I would actually be seeing my family on this hometown date. Priya and I fly into Charlotte, drive the three hours down to Charleston, stay in a hotel there for the night. I meet up with Marcus, see my family for a few hours that night, and then we drive back to Charlotte. We never go to my actual two-bedroom farmhouse in a small town outside of Charleston, but to the fake house on Folly Beach production has rented out for us.
I miss my family. My mom, somehow optimistic and surprisingly to-the-point; my dad, both easy and stern; my brother, quick with a joke and a drink; and even his fiancée, Eileen, friendlier than me but quiet with a solid smile. I haven’t spoken to them since I left for filming. All of them took this as another lark of mine—the adventurous black sheep of a born-and-bred Southern family, always doing something unexpected and off-kilter. Still, I don’t see how my family, the people who belong to me, can exist in a world where Marcus and Henry do. I don’t see how I can balance everything rolling around inside me with real people, who know the real me.
The day of my hometown date, I’m wearing jeans and a crop top, almost feeling like myself now that everyone’s talking in accents and wearing sundresses.
I’m meeting Marcus at the beach, I’ve been told. We’ll take a walk, eat at a restaurant, and apparently that will be an authentic representation of what my life is. I had mentioned to Henry once I enjoyed going to walk on the beach and eating dinner alone because I found a certain peace in it, in enjoying your own company. Apparently, he wants to ruin that for me, too.
Priya is staring at her phone as we walk toward the filming location. “Can you do a huju with Marcus when we get there?”
I look over at her. “What in the sweet fuck is a huju?”
Priya sighs deeply, anciently, before finally looking up at me. Brendan is with us to film the show opener for the hometown episode and his too-smooth face is shiny in the bright Carolina sun as we walk down one of the side streets leading to the beach, cars parked up on the grass outside of houses. “Come on, you’ve seen one, Jac!” Brendan says enthusiastically. “It’s a running hug jump. You run into Marcus’s arms, he sweeps you off your feet, you wrap your legs around him? Huju? Looks great on camera.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t think so.” Priya sighs again while Brendan’s face goes blank.
Marcus’s smile when he sees me standing alone on the beach is so radiant, I almost forget the vitriol now between us, imagine it was all a dream. It’s good because that’s the only thing that gives me the power to smile back, to accept the kiss he gives me as he literally scoops me up into his arms with the waves crashing behind us. Still, no huju is achieved.
“Jac,” he says. “Jac, Jac, Jac, Jac,” like a mantra, like a thing he can’t believe he’s lucky enough to say.
It surprises me how much that hurts.
I give him the spiel, on the beach, on the city (“As beautiful as you,” he says—fuck, I’m so tired of that line). We clasp hands and we walk. I feel a barrier, between the real me and the 1 me walking down the beach, saying things, playing along with the game. A barrier between the man holding my hand, and the one who so casually threatened to ruin me on a mountainside in Mexico.
At the restaurant, I sip a beer and ignore a burger.
“So, who am I going to be meeting today?” Marcus asks me.
No one, I want to say. They’re mine. “My mom, Carol, and my dad, Kevin. My brother, Austin, and his fiancée, Eileen.”
“Anything I should know about?” Marcus asks.
“Just don’t indicate any positive feelings toward Gamecock football, and you should be fine,” I say with a shrug, and immediately know it will air this way. Me, the cool girl, looking hot but casual in jeans, drinking beer, talking football, and Marcus, laughing, mesmerized. Eat your heart out, Gillian Flynn.
We meet up an hour later at a huge house my family certainly does not live in. It’s on the beach, keeping up the theme of me as some casual, laid-back beach girl. Marcus has brought flowers for both my mother and Eileen and professes to be nervous.
“Mm,” I respond halfheartedly, and note the way his eyes flash.
My mom and a camera open the door, and she immediately pulls me into a hug. I start crying, like the unhinged bitch the show has made me out to be.
“Oh, honey,” she says, rubbing my back. “I’ve missed you, too. Marcus!” she then says, spotting him behind me. “Oh, my goodness, there you are! Please come in.”
She scoots me inside, and I push my stupid tears away. Mom hugs Marcus, thrilled; she’s wearing a very pretty blue dress with a floral pattern. She must think I’m winning this game. Her desperation for me to no longer be single bleeds through all rational thought.
When I’d officially been offered a spot on the show, I’d waited as long as possible to tell my mother. I’d asked her to dinner and dropped it to her over her second cordial.
“You’re going on what?” she asked me.
“You know”—I felt my face heating up like I was a teenager confessing to needing birth control—“the big reality dating show.”
She fully set down her drink. Then she laughed. “You?”
I grimaced.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Mom quickly said. “It’s—well, it’s something. I didn’t know how much you were prioritizing finding a partner.” Partner. That was one she’d just learned at her monthly book club—“much more polite, just in case,” she’d explained to me.
“Mama, no,” I said. “It’s not like that. It’s good exposure. For my book, for my career. I can’t write so I need to do something.”
“Oh. So, this is about . . . publishing.” She took a long look at her drink and then had another sip. “Well, it’s a bit out of the box, honey,” she finally said.
“It’ll just be twelve weeks,” I told her. “At most.”
“You’ll give it a chance, won’t you?” she asked then, something hopeful in her eyes. “Love?”
I swallowed. “It’s not about that,” I told her. She surveyed me with her gimlet eye, looking poised to say more. My mom and I had butted heads often when I was younger, what with our different priorities, but she’d been doing her best to adopt a more modern way of thinking. Still, I knew sometimes she just wished for me to be the good Southern girl she had been.
“Well, all right then,” she finally said, and then turned the conversation to my brother’s upcoming wedding.
