Season 20, Episode 9 “Shawn of the Bed” #2
“Maybe, but my reputation was destroyed. Being a female producer didn’t help either.
After rehab, an old pal said Endeavor was hiring…
” She cut me a knowing look I understood all too well.
“Before I started, my mom took me out to dinner, and if you think I’m a ballbuster, I’m nothing compared to Holly Norris.
She said, ‘You’re not some PR flack anymore.
You have to stay sober because you have a responsibility to protect these people, especially the good ones. ’”
“And Shawn’s one of the good ones?”
She kept her eyes on the road. “Not just Shawn.”
We eventually parked at a small Alpine-themed hotel just a few blocks from the center of Queenstown. The temperature was dropping, the rain now light snow, and I felt an ache at the tired parents herding children through the lobby in cocoa-stained jackets.
The PAs guarding Shawn’s door scattered as Zara rounded the hallway, marching up to knock briskly on his door. “I said I don’t want water,” came Shawn’s muffled voice.
“It’s Zara,” she replied. “I brought Luke. Only us, no cameras.”
Silence followed, and she bumped me expectantly. “Shawn, can we come in?” I asked.
The door finally cracked, only the hallway sconces illuminating his hangdog profile. He said nothing, bare feet shuffling uneasily along the threshold.
“You need to do an exit interview,” I began. “If you don’t, they might ban you.”
His lifeless eyes flickered to my face. “So what?”
“Shawn, come on, you love this game,” I said. “No matter how they edit it, no matter how they twist it, what actually happens here is yours, not theirs. Don’t end it like this.”
“It already ended.”
Right as he turned back to the lightless void of that untouched hotel room, I caught his shoulder. “I’m still furious with you, but I’ll never forgive myself if you leave without taping something. Do it for me? Please?”
With a heavy sigh, he stepped aside, allowing us in. Zara mounted a handheld camera on a tripod, passing me a mic to clip to his collar. He flinched as I clumsily threaded the wire down his shirt, then took my place out of frame. “Anything I shouldn’t say?” he asked Zara.
She shook her head. “The network might not show it, but the truth’s the truth.”
He thus recounted Greta’s sabotage, the betrayal that drove him to confront her. “But you never intended to hurt Greta, right?” I prompted.
“Of course not.” He blanched. “I went too far, but I only wanted to humiliate her.”
“And why hit Barnes?”
“Because of what he said.” Shawn stared as if it were obvious.
“His mic was damaged,” Zara replied. “Troy took it off him… What did he say?”
“‘Congrats on ruining your life, you worthless white trash cum dump,’” he recited.
“Goddammit,” I exhaled, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Shawn, I am so sorry.”
“I’ve heard stuff like that for years. But I couldn’t take it from him.” His shoulders twitched, barely a shrug betraying deeply buried wounds.
I stepped toward him, but Zara stopped me. “You go on camera, the network will air every frame. I can’t in good conscience let you do that,” she said. “Shawn, I’ll fight like hell to get the truth on air, but we’re out of time. Any parting thoughts?”
He rubbed his eyes, struggling, and I focused on the image in Zara’s viewfinder rather than the man an arm’s length away, as if watching a show myself, not someone who’d broken my heart. “I… I just want Luke to win. For his kids. That’s all I’ve wanted this whole time.”
“And cut,” Zara said softly, a tiny beep chiming as she turned the camera off.
The paper cocktail napkin fluttered in Shawn’s hand, his phone number dancing in the wind as flurries of snow swirled around us. “Will you call me? When you’re ready?”
I stared across the hotel parking lot. The more I looked at him, the harder this was. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I admitted. “When I was your age, I thought I’d fallen in love on a TV show too, but we both know that wasn’t—”
“No, don’t give me some speech about the past, not right now, not if this is the last conversation we’re going to have. This isn’t about anyone but you and me.” He carefully reached out a hand to guide my face back to his.
“Luke… I’m so sorry. I hate that all you see in me now is one more guy who fucked your husband, that your kids will only know me as the piece of shit who punched their dad. I ruined everything, and I am… so disgusted with myself.”
He inhaled, brushing his curls from his face as the wind kicked up.
“God, I feel like I’ve been two different people.
One’s this dumb kid who fucked his way to some bogus idea of fame…
and the other’s a guy who’s a little older, still kind of dumb, probably pretty broken.
Or at least he was until he met someone at this old church in Italy, who saw all these possibilities in him.
” His voice shook, a fragile smile briefly breaking over his face.
“I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but… when you remember me, please just think of the second guy?
Because I promise he’s the one you knew. ”
I managed to nod, so unmoored by his honesty, no matter how fumbling it was, that the question I asked in response surprised even me. “Shawn, are you glad I found out? About you and Barnes?”
“Yeah,” he finally said, as if he were considering the possibility for the first time. “I mean, the worst thing’s happened now, right? The world’s still spinning.”
Zara cranked the car engine on, and he glanced away, granting me permission to leave, to consign him to memory, but before I got in the car, before he receded in that rearview mirror, I reached down to take the napkin bearing his phone number, crumpled from the grip of his fist.