Season 20, Episode 9 “Shawn of the Bed”
“Shawn of the Bed”
PB brokered separate vans to the house, and mercifully Zara chaperoned ours despite Troy’s protests. “How could you miss capturing Barnes, Shawn, and Greta after your big bombshell?” she asked coldly. “Your Emmy’s in that pass van, Troy.”
Erika and Fortune joined me, Imogen, and PB, while Melange went with Shawn. “She figured they’d eat him alive,” Erika explained guiltily, rubbing my shoulder as she climbed in the van.
As we cruised the dark forest roads, I eventually snagged Zara in the rearview mirror and broke the silence we’d been marinating in. “Did you know? Was production just sitting on this?”
“I found out when you did, I swear,” she answered. I believed her. Unlike Troy.
Erika groaned, head against the smudged window.
“Shawn had to be blackout wasted though, right? Like, how does anyone with an ounce of self-respect just instantly leap into bed with Barnes fucking Appleby?” She caught my face, wincing apologetically.
“I just mean… I don’t see how this happened when they only met once. ”
“Pretty easily,” Fortune volunteered, the last commentator I’d expected.
“Once you’re in this world, you’re never really out of it.
You see another member of the tribe, and it’s like dogs sniffing each other’s asses.
The damage pulls toward itself.” He shrugged, eyeing me. “Hope that wasn’t out of line.”
“Not at all,” I said numbly. I’d never heard him speak so much.
The other van sped past then, racing us home, Troy no doubt itching for a confrontation.
“Here we go… Can you run interference while I get Luke inside?” Imogen asked PB.
“I’m not hiding,” I interjected.
“Bud, I might still be in your bad books, but trust me when I say that whatever you do tonight will absolutely air,” PB warned. “Don’t be careless.”
“No! Tonight is all I get. If I don’t hold him accountable now, in the moment, he’ll get away with his crap all over again, and then I’m not only a coward, I’m an idiot too.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Erika offered, still so impossibly in my corner.
“Whatever happens, don’t get involved. This mess is beneath you,” I said firmly.
Imogen leaned in from the backseat. “Luke, you don’t have to do this alone—”
“That’s exactly what I need to do, and I want you all steering clear… especially Shawn.”
“Don’t tell me you want to protect fucking Mighty Mouse too?” PB griped.
I couldn’t process yet how every moment I’d shared with Shawn had been a lie.
When he’d found me in the confessional after Bal’s tirade, when we’d spent those nights in Shanghai talking away, when I’d cradled him in that death trap of a resort, when the awful video leaked…
He’d always known. He hadn’t been jealous when Barnes arrived; he’d realized the jig was up.
“I’m not protecting him. He’s irrelevant,” I answered. “So keep him out of my way.”
As we parked in the gravel driveway, I ripped at the van door’s handle, Imogen frantically crawling forward to stop me. “Luke, do not fire off like a damn missile—”
I shrugged her hand away. For the first time in weeks, I wasn’t concerned about what she thought.
Watching the episode months later, I’d hear her muffled aside to Erika and PB as I barreled out of the van, captured in censored yellow subtitles below the footage: “Now is the worst time for him to revert to his loose cannon bulls***.”
She wasn’t wrong. She knew my loose cannon bulls*** better than anyone, except for maybe the person I was about to fire it at.
Shawn tearfully called my name, but Fortune blocked him in a single stride, the move of a professional. “Do your business,” he said neutrally, and it was refreshing for someone else to be the muscle for once. If only for tonight, I had the license to blow shit up.
I approached my waiting husband, snared in the headlights. “Inside,” I growled.
The cameras swarmed us like hornets as Barnes and I entered the living room, the giant antler chandelier hanging above us, its myriad prongs entwined like a wreath of thorned crowns.
I wheeled on him, the punching bag expecting my jab, his penitent demeanor only infuriating me more. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Believe it or not, I didn’t want to embarrass you.”
“Greta doing it really spared me the humiliation.”
“I told her on the plane from China after a few drinks. She swore she’d stay quiet.”
“You expect me to believe Greta went rogue on you?”
“Luke, it’s not 2005. I don’t exactly have anyone here on a string.” His face darkened, defensive. “No one but Greta would talk to me about you and him. You have to believe what happened meant nothing, to him or me. It was… in passing.”
“Oh, I heard, you were passing by a goddamned bathroom stall.”
“I’m saying we didn’t have some deep connection, we weren’t even alone—”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” I could only laugh. “Well, wonderful! How many men qualifies as an orgy for the family values candidate?”
He involuntarily flinched as a camerawoman stepped closer, but there was no way out now; he’d opened this door all by himself. “They were back and forth… I don’t remember.”
“How do you not remember?”
He closed his eyes. “I was high, so was he, pretty much everyone at the party was.”
“So drugs too?” I asked emptily. I’d assumed he’d had boundaries, some limit, but my husband’s revelations just kept coming. “What are your favorites? Which narcotic really gets the congressional interns hot and bothered?”
“The drugs were never a regular thing. Luke, I don’t even recognize the person who did that stuff. That’s why I’m in therapy now, for the kids and for you—”
“You do not care about me or the kids!”
“Okay, this is done.” He abruptly ripped off his mic and charged across the room, digging for my mine as well. I resisted, but he surgically detached my pack, then dragged me down the nearest hallway toward the laundry room.
“Guys, the equipment!” Troy cried in our wake.
“Fine me!” Barnes slammed the door, one of the few in the house that actually locked.
“What the fuck was that?” I demanded.
“I walked the house last night. This was the nearest room with no cameras installed.”
I could have strangled him. “I can’t even yell at you on my own terms.”
“Howl any narrative you want but never say I don’t care about our kids.”
“There’s no narrative, that’s the truth. Otherwise you wouldn’t have brought this shitstorm down on their heads and then abandoned them in the middle of it!”
He sneered, eyes electric. “You really want to throw that stone?”
“Don’t you dare turn this around on me. You gave me no choice.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“The only reason I’m here is to bring some stability back to their lives!”
“Oh, that’s why you introduced them to your little boy toy? To provide ‘stability’?”
“You are not the victim here!”
“Maybe not, but I deserved to know that was happening.”
“Fine, I apologize for not being more courteous regarding extramarital partners. At least when I fucked someone on camera it was unintentional.”
“Of course it was! You were too busy barreling into a relationship on national television to notice, because apparently that’s the only way you know how to cope with trauma.”
“Fuck you!” I had him pressed against the wall now, his breath hot and stale on my face, dry sweat chalky on his skin. I don’t know who got hard first.
“Well, congrats on finding your sex drive,” Barnes whispered bitterly. “That kid must have really improved his blow jobs.”
I couldn’t hit him, but no one could stop me from spitting right in his face.
The saliva landed thick across his lips, and then his mouth was on mine, teeth crashing against my gums. He was on his knees before I knew it, pulling out my cock and forcing it so deep in his mouth he gagged.
I exhaled, unsure if this was reality, my hands instinctively shoving the back of his skull into me.
It wasn’t even familiar; we’d never handled each other this roughly.
Barnes furiously jacked off while he choked on my dick, his forehead digging into my abdomen.
He grunted as he came, the sight of it proof that this was actually happening.
I pushed him off me before I could cum, as if that might somehow render invalid everything that had just transpired, staggering away only to ejaculate into my hand.
My paper-dry throat constricted in the silence as I feebly rinsed off at the laundry room sink.
What would a judge say? If I’d bounce from man to man on national television, what debaucheries would I commit off camera?
What environment was that for two children who already faced a lifetime dodging their parents’ legacy of sex tapes and scandal?
How could I fail my kids so horribly, even ten thousand miles away?
“Are you okay?” Barnes panted behind me.
Ignoring him, I morosely pulled up my jeans and unlocked the door to greet a theater in the hallway, cameras at every angle.
Shawn trembled inches from me, eyes bloodshot and stunned, a dumbfounded Troy hovering behind him.
Mercifully, Imogen forced past to grab my wrist, a mother tiger retrieving the wayward cub.
She proceeded to barricade us within her bedroom, where we stood in silence, neither knowing where to begin.
“At first I thought you were beating the shit out of him,” she eventually said. “If it makes you feel better, I slept with my ex-husband the day before we signed our divorce papers.”
I slouched into the cheap leather armchair haunting the corner, convinced everything I’d done to show who I truly was—to Imogen, to the world, to myself—had been destroyed in a single night. “I can’t believe I lost it like that. Still, nothing you haven’t seen before…”
“Luke, it wasn’t like Alaska.” Imogen knelt in front of me. “No comparison.”
A knock interrupted us. “Can I come in?” Shawn’s voice quivered behind the door.
“Is he kidding?” Imogen asked, but I flung open the door nonetheless.
Shawn looked like he’d lost ten pounds over the last ten minutes, face gaunt, nose runny. Erika and Melange lingered a few feet away, watching helplessly. “I… I was going to tell you,” he finally stammered.
“When exactly were you going to do that?”
“When we were home. Off camera.” He sniffled, pitifully trying to stand straighter.
“Sure, after I’d boosted your profile on the show, you’d ‘tell me’ via a TMZ exclusive.”
He fervently shook his head. “Luke, you would have quit the show if I’d said anything. Why do you think I stopped our kiss that first time and said I was celibate?”
I exhaled heavily, resisting the shame. “So being celibate was a crock of shit too?”
“No, I promise I’ve been way more cautious about sex… I guess I just hoped making an official buffer out of it would guarantee I protected you from this.”
“Or you just needed me to save your ass, so you played me.”
“That was never… The last thing I expected was us having a connection. I was so confused, especially after you tried so hard to save me at that Trial. All of a sudden, I was falling for you, and telling you would have derailed everything you were here fighting for.”
“Let’s say that’s true. Why not tell me the second Barnes arrived?”
“I didn’t think he recognized me!” Shawn protested. “I asked if he remembered meeting me in LA… He said no. He lied, or… Luke, I barely remember that night.”
“But you remember fucking him?”
“Yes, I remember the bathroom…” he said softly, as if each word came with a little stab.
“And of course you knew who he was, that he was married to me,” I pressed, to which he managed a guilty nod. “Did you say you were a big fan? After all, you’ve seen every episode.”
“It wasn’t like that, it was a blur. He was there, then other guys… I don’t remember much after we started. I woke up to three different numbers texting how much ‘fun’ we’d had.”
“Imagine how many didn’t bother to text.”
“I told you I used to be a different person, but when I said I’ve been trying to change, I meant it. I thought I’d tell you after the show, that I’d endure Barnes being here—”
“No! Look who’s around you!” I gestured furiously to Erika and Imogen, neither of whom responded. “You don’t get to be the one uncomfortable about him being here!”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” He trailed off, struggling for words. “Luke, I swear I was only ever trying to protect you. Nothing here means more to me than you.”
I stared him directly in the eye. “That’s a shame, because you mean nothing to me.”
Before he could answer, I shut the door and finally noticed the cameraman who’d snuck in during the confrontation, a shadow dutifully anticipating and capturing my every move.
“Do you want to sleep in here?” Imogen asked.
“I’ll never sleep tonight. I need to get to work.”
The crew had retreated, save for my lone cameraman, who cruised behind me like a shark after a boat that leaked blood.
But I didn’t care. I was going to give him something to film.
I wouldn’t allow Barnes to strike next or Shawn to manipulate my emotions.
If any chaos drove this game, I would be its engineer.
And I had one weapon left that I defied even Barnes to outmaneuver.
I knocked on the cracked door at the hallway’s end, and out slunk PB, his face blank.
“You okay?” he asked. “I was worried.”
“I’m not here to talk about my feelings.”
“Then to what do I owe this late-night tête-à-tête?”
“Does your offer still stand?”
His shoulders went alert. “You ready to get this house in order?”
“I’m ready to burn it down.”
He couldn’t suppress his grin. “Well, to quote you… Put me in, Coach.”