Chapter Six
Mikey
Aaron and I moved into our room at the Cliff Walker mansion.
Yes, both me and Aaron.
After Aaron had submitted my application, I still hadn’t had much hope I’d be selected.
But his creative writing skills had led to an interview, and he had accompanied me.
Instead of the show’s producers finding the situation odd, they’d welcomed Aaron’s presence, finding him delightful and amusing.
Within ten minutes, they had offered him a chance as a contestant.
That had shocked us both, before Aaron had explained he was straight.
One of the producers had replied that was fine.
To my dismay, the man shared that his plan was to seed the cast with someone straight pretending to be gay.
He believed the deceitful ploy would spike interest from viewers, making them speculate whether poor Cliff Walker would fall for one of the disinterested instead of a viable partner.
I hated the idea and told them as much. However, Aaron and I had already signed NDAs when we had begun the interview, so there wasn’t anything I could say or do to warn Mr. Walker.
Then Aaron accepted the part. I was angry with him until we left the meeting.
That was when Aaron shared that he also thought the plot twist was a crummy thing to do to Cliff Walker, but he figured the producers were going to bring on someone straight regardless, so it might as well be him.
This way, he could devise a way to prevent Cliff from choosing him and help steer Cliff my way.
Yeah…my way, because I was hired, too.
I wouldn’t have been brought on were it not for Aaron.
He had told the producer he would back out if I wasn’t part of the deal.
I had been mortified as the producer stared at me for a couple of minutes with hesitation before agreeing.
He had admitted that he rather liked the idea of best friends competing against each other, but he wanted the hair and makeup team to ‘spruce’ me up.
Once we signed, the local press picked up on the fact that two White Pines residents would be joining the cast, and the news spread quickly throughout town.
Many folks knew Aaron, of course. He was a presence and made the ladies swoon wherever he went.
Local reporters pointed out as much, quoting women Aaron had dated as surprised he was a suitor on a gay reality show.
When asked for a statement, the show’s producers replied that citizens shouldn’t be shocked, as their own mayor, Adam Tilson, hadn’t realized his attraction to men until he had met his now-husband, Myles.
Meanwhile, the only references to me were that I was Aaron’s little-known roommate and fellow employee at the local tech firm.
My boss had been quoted as saying I was a ‘nice kid’ who did a good job but pretty much kept a low profile.
He would have guessed me to be the last person to seek a spotlight. Yeah—he and I both.
A limo had picked up Aaron and me at our apartment door for our ride to the mansion, and we were stunned as we passed several signs that businesses and locals had put up wishing the two of us, as well as Cliff Walker, success on the show.
“Dude, you’re going to be fine,” Aaron assured me as we dropped our suitcases on the massive bed in a room larger than our apartment.
“And if you don’t win, at least you’ll get your kicks by sleeping next to me all week.
” Aaron added a wink, and it made me chuckle.
From anyone else, that would have come off as arrogant. Aaron just enjoyed messing with me.
“Oh, I already know I won’t win. I’m only here because the producers wanted you on the show,” I reminded him. “That producer thought I looked like roadkill—after a few semis ran over the body.”
Aaron approached me from behind and smacked me lightly on the back of the head. “Did not.”
I rubbed where he had hit me. “Don’t mess up my hair. They spent three hours on it.”
The His Choice beauty team had taken one look at me before coalescing into a circle, whispering conspiratorially, probably agreeing that they were facing the biggest challenge of their careers.
“We must cut this much shorter,” the head hairdresser had bemoaned. “This length on the sides is dragging down your face, no? It makes you look like one of those unfortunate folk singers from the early nineteen-seventies.”
Somehow, they had added volume to the top, which I had never been able to do.
The sides were cut significantly, even though I feared the style would reveal how my ears stick out a bit.
Then they shaped the hair into what they called a flow, leaving longer, wavy locks meeting at the back of my head.
It made me think of the way Aaron had always cut his hair.
Leave it to him to be on top of current fashion.
The makeup team had been next. I’d endured more hours of mud packs, serums, moisturizers, and a ‘soft foundation.’ I wondered why they had gone through so much effort if they were going to cover their work with makeup anyway.
“You have a rodent head,” the beautician had noted with a smile.
“Huh?” I had asked. I hadn’t been bullied since middle school, so it took me by surprise.
“It’s wonderful. C’est chic,” he had added. “Pronounced cheekbones, narrow chin, little round ears, pointy nose, tiny cherry mouth. Very Tom Hiddleston or…Timothée Chalamet.”
When I had told Aaron that the beautician had compared me to a rat, I thought he’d laugh at me.
Instead, his expression had become stormy.
“Want me to go kick his ass?” I explained that it was allegedly a compliment, comparing me to Chalamet.
“Are you kidding me? You’re way, way better looking than that guy.
Much better build than that twig has, too. ”
If people ever wondered why I put up with Aaron’s quirks, that was my reminder. He might have teased, but when he believed I had been hurt, he was quick to build me up and defend me against everyone else.
Once we’d unpacked and hung our shirts and pants, we loaded a dresser with our underwear and socks, then dropped a box of toiletries on the counter in the adjoining bathroom. When we returned to the suite, Aaron jumped on the bed like a child.
“Stop! You’ll break it and we won’t have the money to replace it. It looks like some kind of antique,” I chastised.
“So did one of the suitors,” Aaron remarked before lying on his back. “I saw him in the foyer. He told Walker’s butler, that guy James, that he was one of the contestants and asked how to get to his room. I waited for James to tell him that there was a back staircase with a chairlift.”
“Are you talking about that British guy?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Aaron nodded. “You already have him beat.”
I sat on a chair at the bedside. “You’re crazy. That guy was incredibly handsome.”
“He had gray hair,” Aaron pointed out.
“He had brown hair,” I corrected. “Four gray hairs on each sideburn doesn’t count. And he looked like he was forty years old at most.”
“The only word I heard you say that I agree with is ‘old,’” Aaron countered.
“Late thirties or forty is old? Aaron, fourteen years will go by quickly, then that will be you and me. Will you think the same then?”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Okay, maybe he was good looking for his advanced age. But why would Cliff Walker, the richest dude around, settle for someone who’s gotta be like seven years older than him? He can get someone seven years younger…like you. All fresh and virginal.”
“I’m not a virgin,” I protested. “I just haven’t done anal.”
“Virgin,” Aaron repeated. “There has to be penetration for it to be sex.”
“Says who?” I asked.
He thought about it for a moment. “Bill Clinton.”
I shook my head. “Agree to disagree with Bill Clinton, then.”
Aaron sat up, resting his back on the pillows that hid the headboard. “You never told me what you think of the makeover they did on me.”
I looked his way, still unsure what they had changed. “You look the same.”
He smiled. “Yeah, well, they said they were struggling to find a way to improve my looks.”
“Hmm,” I mumbled. “Lost cause, huh?”
Aaron chuckled, then pretended to be hurt. “Don’t be that way, pookie.”
“You just love that they had to sandblast my face and bring in a team of scientists to make my hair look good,” I complained.
He jumped off the bed and came over to the roomy chair, pushing me so he could join me. Once he settled in, he put his arm over my shoulders. “They just highlighted what was already there. Confidence, remember?”
“We’re going to break Mr. Walker’s furniture,” I warned, though I didn’t want him to stop cuddling.
“I’ll just tell Walker that when I took a seat, it broke apart beneath me, and now I have a permanent injury. You and I can travel to the Caribbean with my lawsuit award,” he joked.
“If you tell them the injury was to your brain, the jury will believe it, for sure,” I agreed.
“Don’t make me slap you upside the head again,” he cautioned, then tsked me. “You’ve been very bitchy since this whole adventure started. You said people at work even asked why you were taking a vacation to do His Choice, since you sounded so miserable about it.”
I had shared that information with Aaron, along with my own parents’ disbelief that the show would cast me as a potential suitor to a rich, handsome multi-millionaire.
I massaged my closed eyes with my fingers.
“Sorry. You’ve done all this work to get me on the show, and I’m seeming ungrateful.
I’m not. It’s just that I’m going to make a fool of myself.
And everyone in the United States will be watching wondering the same thing my mom and dad did…
What the heck were the producers thinking? It’s going to be humiliating.”
Aaron got off the chair, then grabbed my arm to pull me up. I resisted.
“Stand up,” he commanded.
“Why?” I asked, though I had already given in and risen, Aaron’s hand still on my arm. He dragged me to an old-fashioned full-length mirror encased in cherry wood, perched on a stand. “Take a look at yourself. Not at what you grew up believing about your appearance. See who you are now.”
I sighed. “I see a much better-looking guy standing behind me.”
Aaron slapped the back of my head, making some of the hairs stand up.
“Stop it!” I barked, patting the hair back in place. “We have our first introductions to Cliff Walker tonight, on camera. With all the hairspray in my hair to keep it from curling, you’ll have it permanently looking like Albert Einstein’s.”
“Then Walker will think you’re smart,” he countered. “Will you stop being a whiney poop and just take a good look at yourself? Mikey, you’re a catch. I promise you. If Cliff Walker doesn’t see it, then let him run off with geezer-guy. His loss.”
I smiled, though it made me feel guilty that I was joining in on trashing someone we didn’t know.
“And what if he chooses you, despite however you plan to dissuade him? I still think it blows that the producers are adding this plot twist. If you end up winning and announcing you’re not into men, the viewers will end up hating you. ”
Aaron grinned. “I already have a plan how to prevent that from happening. You know how they’re going to have ongoing camera confessionals, where each of us tells the viewers what we’re thinking at different points in the show?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, they made us sign an NDA that we wouldn’t tell Walker or other contestants that I’m straight, but it didn’t say anything about keeping the information hidden from the viewers.
When the show is live, they won’t be able to stop me from blabbing the truth to everyone.
And I’m going to share that I think it’s a crappy thing to do, too,” he added.
I squinted back at him. “But then they’ll wonder why you’re doing it.”
“I’ll tell them what I said to my parents in confidence a couple of days ago.
I’m here rooting for the best guy to win, and that happens to be my best friend.
I’ll explain that my goal is to play you up so much, Walker will think I’m falling for you instead of him.
That will keep him from making the mistake of choosing me.
It’s an opportunity to help you and thwart the producers’ slimy trick.
People will see me as a hero. You’ll win the guy you’re creaming over, and I’ll win the viewers’ hearts.
Maybe it will even lead to something for me in television later. ”
“Yeah.” I thought about it, and it made some sense, if his plan went off without a hitch. “Wait, did you agree to do this program just to achieve your goal of landing an acting gig?”
Aaron looked hurt. “Mikey, you wound me. I’d do this stunt whether it leads to anything for me or not.”
I could tell from his expression that he was sincere. “Have I ever told you that aside from all the annoying things you do, you’re like one of the greatest people I’ve ever met?”
He jerked his head back in surprise. “What do you mean, one of the greatest?”
I laughed. “Thus, the qualifier.”
Aaron smirked. “Confidence shouldn’t be a detractor. Let some of mine rub off on you. That should be easy for you, seeing as rubbing off is the one thing you’ve mastered.”
I scowled. “Speaking of, don’t you dare do that in our bed. I don’t want Mr. Walker’s cleaning staff thinking I’m the sleaze who’d messed their sheets. Besides, I need to sleep on them, too.”
“Please. You’d love it,” he countered. “Now, for the last time, will you take an honest look at yourself in the mirror?”
I exhaled, then turned back to face my reflection. I wasn’t my type, but I could see where I might be to others now that I was polished up. “I guess some guys might think I’m cute. A twunk, as they say.”
“There you go,” he whispered, patting my shoulder. “Don’t forget that when you meet with Walker later. Assume he’s one of those guys who’s drawn to twunks.”