12. 12
C ut off at the shoulders in the short mirror, I try to tie the tie on the suit I was instructed to wear today. The wardrobe team allows me to be myself when it comes to clothes, for the most part, but sometimes, I have to dress according to the date we are going on.
“We will get to the field at eleven for the group date. The ladies will show up at 11:05. You will have six minutes to greet everyone. The girls will go off and get dressed for about twenty minutes and then we will begin the date!
“After that, you and the winner of the competition will get cleaned up and you will have a date with her. We will provide you a light snack. You’ll have, at max, two hours and thirty minutes with her. Like always, you can end the date whenever you’d like. You’re also allowed to eliminate her if you feel the need to do so at the end of the solo date.
“It tends to be very dramatic when it happens and the audience will love it when they see it happen to Lucy,” Philip says, ticking things off his list as I try to tie my tie while partially squatting.
“Got it,” I tell him simply, annoyed they’d think I would do anything just for ratings.
Once my tie is tied, I put my hair up into a low bun, the bane of the hairdresser’s existence. She offers to style it for me every day, promising to not make it look too done, but I just know it won’t feel like me, no matter what she does.
When it’s time, and to avoid seeing the girls before the date, Philip leads me through a back door to a gate in the fence, hidden by a faux wall production created. My car is waiting for me.
Inside the car are various cameras strapped to the backs of the front seats so I can film my thoughts before or after the dates, should the mood strike. Sometimes, they give me scripted things to say so they can cut them in where needed.
“Good morning, Parker. How are you?” the production assistant assigned to ride with me today asks, her Boston accent thick.
“I’m good, thanks. How are you?”
Luckily, she always gives me the Reader’s Digest version of her day before lapsing into silence. There are few things I dislike more than feeling like I have to fill the air with words. There is enough pressure on me to keep up the conversation during dates, the last thing I want to do is ride in the car with a constant diatribe.
We pull up in front of a local college’s football stadium and I wonder what they will be doing today. Without waiting for the driver to open the door, I get out of the car. It disappears the second the door slams and I make my way to my blue mark at the end of a red carpet.
Almost every date I’ve been on has involved a red carpet for the ladies to walk down. I think it’s incredibly cheesy, and probably a little bit of a pain for whomever has to deal with it, but I know there’s no point in my objecting. The show is going to do what it’s going to do. The thoughts of the leading man certainly don’t matter to them.
At exactly 11:05, the limo carrying Victoria, Anastasia, Mia, and Aisha pulls up. Anastasia is the first from the car, her long black hair swinging freely. Her smile is perfect, and pulls one onto my face every time.
I find no matter who’s in the room with me, if Anastasia is there, all I want to do is look at her. And talk to her. But the conversation with Carmen was so easy and flowed on our one-on-one date the other day, I was shocked when the date ended and I realized I had barely thought of Anastasia. Her perfume envelopes me moments before her arms do, pushing all thoughts of Carmen from my brain.
“Fancy seeing you here,” I tell her as I take a deep breath in, hoping we’ll be able to go on a truly solo date soon.
“Are you stalking me? You’re being really obvious about it. Stalking, by its nature, is a more low-key endeavor,” she jokes with a smile I want to kiss.
“Maybe I want you to know I’m stalking you, otherwise where’s the fun?” I say with a wink.
“I think staying hidden is the fun. But I wouldn’t know. You’re the professional here.”
I kiss her cheek before reluctantly pulling out of her embrace, the other girls waiting for their turn to say hi .
“I didn’t know I was going to have a performance review today, but I’ll take the critique under advisement for the second half of the show.” I can hardly believe we are already three weeks into the filming schedule after Jasmine being sent home at the elimination last night. It feels like it’s gone so much faster than when I was in House of Deceit .
Then again, on House of Deceit , a week was actually a week. Here, we are filming a “week” of the show every five days. The blistering pace makes it seem like more time is passing than it is.
Victoria all but elbows Anastasia out of the way as she goes to hug me. Her perfume almost gives me a cavity. It’s too sweet.
“Hello, sexy. You look so good, I want to climb you like a tree,” she whispers before taking my earlobe between her teeth.
I jerk back from her. Her expression is a little annoyed before settling into something, I believe, she intends to be sexy but makes it look like she has gas.
“You look good enough to eat. I got carried away,” Victoria says.
Anastasia shifts and it catches my eye over Victoria’s shoulder. Her expression has darkened, and she looks about ready to attack. Unsure if she’s feeding off my discomfort at the situation, or if jealousy is starting to get the better of her, I move on to the other two girls before anything can happen.
“Hi Mia. Aisha. Thank you both for coming,” I say as I hug both ladies. It feels off to hug them, a lack of connection becoming harder and harder to fight as I’m required to keep people around so the show is longer than a few weeks.
“You didn’t thank me,” Victoria says, batting her eyelashes. I can tell it’s meant to be funny, but the edge to her tone hints maybe it’s not .
“Maybe he was too shocked at the fact you were sucking on his ear like a poorly aimed vampire,” Anastasia says, sarcasm dripping.
My jaw wants to drop at the unexpected biting remark while the caveman inside me glows at the show of jealousy. But Victoria’s back tenses and I can feel the moment starting to devolve.
“Why don’t you shut up? I was having a moment with my boyfriend,” Victoria seethes.
“Your boyfriend? You mean the guy who probably wouldn’t recognize you if he passed you on the street for all the time you’ve spent with him?”
“Woah, now. My memory isn’t that bad,” I joke, trying to defuse the tension while sliding myself a little closer to both women, prepared to intervene, but neither of them hear me.
“Don’t think I didn’t notice how you threw yourself on him when you got out of the limo. Desperate much?” Victoria cocks an eyebrow at Anya, crossing her arms over her chest.
One of the camera people moves, and I see how it catches Anastasia’s attention. Her entire body language changes. The annoyance melts from her face in a split second.
“Whatever you say, Victoria,” she says, backing down and trying to blend back into the group.
Wanting to drag the attention away from her, I step in.
“We are probably behind schedule now. Maybe we should get back to it?”
Production steps in, ushering the ladies into the changing room. I’m taken to the sideline where I’m given a stopwatch, whistle, and a clipboard.
“What are they going to be doing? For the competition?”
“The pacer test,” Philip says .
“The pacer test? Like from fifth grade where they have to make it from one line to the other before the beep?”
“Yup!”
“What does that have to do with finding love?” I ask, trying to give him back all the things he just gave me.
I also want to ask why I needed to wear a suit for this, but I just let it go.
“They want to show the lengths the women will go to for your attention,” he says, like he’s talking to a particularly slow person.
“By making them run?” Rolling my eyes, I put the whistle over my head before shoving the other two items back into his hands. “I’m not holding these.”
“Fine. Get on your mark, please. In the middle of the field.” He hands me a card. “You’re going to be reading this.”
I do as he tells me. The sun is heating me up, and I’m wondering why we can’t have a normal type of date. With the sound of an air horn rending the air in two, the women come running out from the tunnel and everyone is dressed in white. Which is weird. Until they get closer to me. Wedding dresses. All four of them are in wedding dresses.
And without warning, I’m back to watching Brittany walk down the aisle toward me in her grandmother’s vintage wedding dress. She looked so happy and I loved her so much, but it didn’t keep my heart from racing. My hand unconsciously rubs my sternum, trying to calm my body down, but it’s not working. After months of sessions, I admitted to Sharon this would happen every once in a blue moon. She suggested putting an ice pack directly on my chest, calming my nerves down and giving my brain something to focus on when it was more intense. But I don’t really think saying “Hey, I’m mid-panic attack. Can I get some ice?” would be very effective.
“Hi, ladies. In today’s challenge for a one-on-one date and a chance to fan the flames of our desire, you will be running a pacer test. This sound”—I pause until the loud, high-pitched tone sounds around the stadium—“will tell you to go. You will run ten yards. For everyone who hasn’t crossed the line before the sound emits again, you’ll be eliminated. The pauses between beats will get shorter and shorter until, finally, one of you is the winner. Any questions?” It all comes out stilted and monotone as I just try to hold on and get through this circus.
They all tell me no, or so I assume as their voices are just indistinct sounds at this point. Anya pauses for a second, her eyes searching my face as I fight to breathe. Her eyebrows slant over her eyes.
“Are you okay?” she mouths and I nod minutely. She stands there for a second more and all I can do is hope she moves to the competition.
The last thing I want to do is call production’s attention to me. Thankfully, she turns and moves to the line with the other girls. With the first tone, they are off.
They run back and forth. Back and forth. My heartbeat steadies as woman after woman end up on the sidelines waiting for the competition to end.
By the time Anya is crowned the winner, her face is red and sweaty, but the smile she gives me banishes the last of the panic and a fluttering of excitement takes its place .
The art museum is metal and too modern outside for the warmth and beauty of the art inside. Anastasia moves around the room, looking at various paintings. Some she merely gives a glance, but others she’ll stand at for longer. We stood at one called The Whispering Forest for almost half an hour. The forest gave off an enchanted feeling but with a hidden undercurrent of danger. Like there might be monsters and it would depend on the person venturing into the depths of the trees on if they were dangerous.
But I don’t mind. I’m just happy she won us some much-needed alone time. Or as alone as we can be during filming a show like this. Production is giving us space, filming from further back. But the mics mean it’s just a facade.
“Do you like art?” she asks, moving onto a picture showing a scene from an 1800s picnic.
“I like art, but I don’t really come to museums or anything. I couldn’t tell you about influences or brush strokes or color composition. Just if I like it or not.”
“Sometimes I think it’s better to enjoy things than critique them.” She takes in a painting, but all I can do is take in her.
“Do you go to museums often?” I ask.
“No. I don’t have a lot of free time. The bakery takes up pretty much every minute.”
“Is it everything you want it to be?”
She doesn’t look at me, but I can see the edge of a smile.
“Yes and no. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. So many people say ‘Do what you love and you’ll never work a day’ but every day I’ve worked doing this has been the hardest I’ve worked in my entire life. And some days, having to create on a deadline and to someone else’s vision can suck the fun out of it for me. But to follow a dream? I wouldn’t give it up for anything.”
“That’s how I feel about my company, too. It’s nice to have someone understand the demands of being a business owner.”
“What do you think they are talking about?” she says, indicating the painting we are standing next to.
“Oh, that’s easy. This guy here”—I point to the painting, playing along—“the one in the top hat? He’s telling her about dirigibles and how they are going to change the way people travel.”
“Do you think that’s why she’s rolling her eyes?”
“Oh, absolutely.” I move closer to the painting and clear my throat. Raising my voice an octave, I make up the painting’s dialogue. “ Victor, I told you already, I’m part of the team that invented them .”
Snickering, she moves closer. With a dropped voice, she joins in on the fun. “ But Martha, you don’t understand. We would be able to fly thirty miles in an hour !”
“ I wish you would fly thirty miles away from me and never come back. Maybe then my ‘best friend’ Sally can move in .”
“ Well, I’m sure the stable boy would really miss me .”
“ Scandal !”
She giggles and the sound is perfect. I needed this. Despite the panic seeing the women in wedding dresses gave me earlier, this is easy. Simple. Pressure free, in spite of the cameras.
“Anastasia, I—”
“Anya, please. Anastasia makes me feel like I’m about to be grounded or something.”
“Anya, I don’t think I told you how beautiful you look tonight,” I tell her. Her jeans and white t-shirt are casual, but they are perfectly tailored to her, keeping her from looking anything but put together. My hands twitch, wanting to run down her curves.
“You didn’t, but I decided to forgive you and not hold your terrible manners against your parents.”
“I’m sure they appreciate that.”
“Can I ask you something? Something you might not want to answer?” she asks, nervous, but I know I’ll tell her anything she wants to know.
“Yes, I’d still like you if you were a worm. I would make sure you had the best worm terrarium.”
She snorts, a hand flying up to cover her face. “That wasn’t going to be my question, but I think I can breathe easier knowing that.”
“What’s the question,” I tell her, taking her hand and leading her to another painting.
“Do you want to talk about what was going on today?”
“What was going on today?”
“Parker, you had a panic attack. I’ve had them a few times in the past and I recognized the signs.”
Not wanting to look at her, embarrassed she was so easily able to see what was happening, I try to decide how much I want to tell her. Fear gnaws at my stomach. Fear she’ll leave. Fear she can see how broken I still am.
“It’s no big deal.”
Her heels click against the floor as we move from painting to painting in silence. It’s not an awkward silence, but it is a heavy one. I can feel it pressing against me, tightening around me like ropes.
“There was this one time I was asked to enter a cake into a competition that had the ability to change my entire career. I had carte blanche to create anything I wanted. The prize was a quarter of a million dollars.”
“What happened?” I ask, curious how this well put together woman could ever fail at such a competition.
“Every day, I would try to sit down and come up with a design and new flavor combination. Every day I would think ‘Maybe tomorrow’ and then, eventually, tomorrow was, well, tomorrow and I had no idea what to do. In a panic, I put together a cake that looked like a novice had done it. I couldn’t get my hands to stop shaking.
“When they started the judging, and showed mine on the screen for the audience to be able to see, there were some snickers. And then a few people outright laughed. It got so loud in my head and I thought my lungs would never be able to draw in air again.” She continues moving through the room until she’s standing right in front of me and a sculpture titled A Symphony of Dreams that has two lovers entwined on a bed, but the man has wings.
The moment grows and I can almost feel Sharon’s eyes boring into me telling me to take a chance and open up.
“The thought of my ex-wife and how things ended kind of blindsided me. And a part of me is scared it would happen again.”
She nods, reading I don’t want to go too much further into depth with the camera crew around us. I am counting down the minutes until I can get away from all the cameras.
“It’s understandable some things would remind you of something so monumental in your life. Especially on this journey. I won’t hold it against you, considering I made the choice to come here after a guy I had been flirting with all night at an event ended up having a girlfriend. I wouldn’t say I was in the best head space to apply,” she jokes. “I’m glad I’m here, though.” She touches my hand before moving off to another painting and the ropes of pain and hurt and betrayal from Brittany’s abandonment loosen around me just a little.
The fact she’s not running away in the opposite direction is leeching the worry from me.
“I signed up after my therapist said something to me.”
“You’re in therapy?”
“Going on nine months,” I tell her. One thing I decided when I finally took Charlie’s advice and found Sharon was, I would never hide the fact I needed the help. “Don’t worry, she’d give me a gold star.”
“Do you have a little chart where you collect your therapy gold stars?”
Her quick wit and joking manner are quickly becoming my favorite things about Anya. Even when we are discussing something heavy, she has an ability to put me at ease.
“Right beside my bed.”
“It’s good to see your accomplishments daily.”
“That’s what I think, too.” I grab her hand, interlocking our fingers. “You’re very easy to talk to.”
“I’m just trying to lure you into a false sense of security so you’ll keep me around, the audience will fall in love with me, and I’ll be the next lead on House of Desire so twenty men can fight for me.”
“Sounds like I might need to learn how to fight, then.”
Her eyes rake down my body and I heat under her gaze, the desire to kiss her almost taking over.
“You might want to get on that. ”
Pulling my shirt off over my head, part of me wishes I had kissed Anya before she got into her car. But there was something holding me back. It felt too soon, and the thought of messing things up with her makes my anxiety spike.
Flipping on the light, I begin to undo my belt as I move through the house.
“Hey, good lookin’,” Victoria says from the bed, naked but for the sheet draped over her.
“How did you get in here?” I say, shocked, but trying to lock down my face, not giving her any reaction.
“I know you’re feeling the connection between us and I didn’t want to wait for the Desire Suite dates.”
After her little ear biting event at the group date, I knew I would be eliminating Victoria this week. When the pacer test got down to Anya and her, I was very worried I’d have to spend the night on a date with Victoria. I move toward the front of the house and I hear her get off the bed.
“Parker! I love you!” she yells at me, annoyance tightening her tone.
I rip the door open, calling for anyone from production before turning back toward her, thankful she brought the sheet with her.
“How could you possibly love me? We’ve barely spent any time together! And most of the time wasn’t even one-on-one.” I move out of the house, with her following.
“What do you mean how could I love you? You’re hot! And funny. And I know you love me, too. You don’t want to tell everyone else for the show, but I know it’s true.”
“Victoria,” I say, voice steady, as members of production start to come around us. And camera people. “I appreciate you have feelings for me, but unfortunately, those feelings just aren’t reciprocated. I don’t want to hurt you, and you’re a lovely woman, but I just don’t think you’re the right one for me. I think it’s time for you to go home. I don’t want to lead you on.”
The veil of civility drops from her, and standing before me is a goddess of rage.
“You think I should go home? You think one of those other bitches is the right one for you?”
She grabs up one of the flower pots that sits in front of the pool house and hurls it. The ceramic pot shatters, scattering dirt and flowers everywhere.
“Victoria, I think you need to calm down,” I say, mentally kicking myself. The knee jerk comment slipped out despite the fact I know it’s the worst thing you could ever say to an enraged person.
As she picks up and throws another flower pot, I hear the back door slide open as some of the ladies join the show. Intending to keep them safe, I move more toward the property line instead of the house. When the pot shatters on the ground, a part of my brain marvels at the fact the sheet is staying where she tied it. I hear one of the members of production send out a call to get the local police department sent to the house and I worry about Victoria, despite the fact she’s throwing things at me.
“I don’t know why I came here! You didn’t even give me a chance! No one ever gives me a chance!” she yells, throwing one of the lounge chairs into the pool.
A few of the girls chuckle at the sight, drawing her attention and ire. Before she can make a move toward them, I step back into her path, drawing her focus once more .
“You’re right. I didn’t give you a fair shot. I’m sorry. Unfortunately, I’m only allowed to go on so many solo dates and they are always determined by winners of competitions and whatnot. I would have picked you, otherwise.”
Anya comes into view, still dressed from our date, and Victoria’s eyes harden as she catches sight of her.
“You stole my date! It should have been me!” She starts storming toward Anya, but I keep myself in front of her.
“It should have been you. Maybe they’ll let us do a picnic here,” I say.
“Are you trying to placate me?” she screeches, turning her hateful gaze back to me.
Sirens tear through the air as the police near, red and blue lights flashing in the night sky. Two cops come through the front door of the pool house, taking my secluded entrance while movement from another two coming out of the mansion catches my eye.
“Ma’am,” one says with a thick handlebar mustache. “You’re going to have to get dressed and come with us tonight. We don’t want any problems.”
Tears start streaming down Victoria’s face as she takes in the scene around her.
“I just wanted someone to love me,” she cries.
“I know. Everyone does. But we can’t destroy property. Why don’t we get you dressed and then you can come with us and relax for the evening, okay?” he says, his voice low and even.
She swipes at her tears before moving into the pool house. Once she’s out of sight, I turn toward the other cops.
“What’s going to happen to her?” I ask .
“It’ll depend if the owners of the property want to press charges, but either way, she’s going to spend the night in a jail cell,” the officer says.
“I don’t want her to go to jail,” I say.
“That’s not up to you.”
Victoria comes out of the pool house, this time dressed in actual clothes. Thankfully, the cops don’t have her in handcuffs as they escort her from the property.
“I’m sorry for making a scene,” she apologizes as she stops in front of me.
“I’m sorry I made you feel neglected. You’ll find the right person for you.”
The other ladies part, allowing the cops and Victoria to move through the house, and as she leaves Anya locks eyes with me and I simply shrug, unsure what else to do.