Chapter Four
On TV, each elimination ceremony won’t be more than ten minutes, but filming them can take hours. Especially on the first night, be prepared to stand in that rose garden for upward of six hours and don’t let your smile slip once.
—Shacking Up: The Definitive, Unauthorized Guide to Winning Love Shack
Electric tea lights line every inch of the path to the rose garden. There are twenty of us now, all arranged in a semicircle between bushes. Soon there will be only fifteen left.
My feet are aching, my back is killing me, and every time Olie-Ravioli exhales, I get a strong whiff of bourbon. I could probably get drunk off her fumes alone. The tight dress makes the situation infinitely more unbearable.
When Serena and I came up with Gracie Hart as my pseudonym, drunk on wine coolers in our senior-year apartment, neither of us expected I’d ever be in a situation so similar to the real Gracie’s in Miss Congeniality.
But short of demonstrating self-defense skills, I feel every bit the undercover pageant queen.
The only thing making this worth it is the job waiting for me when it’s over.
One more freelance investigative assignment.
That’s what Serena promised. One more time digging up dirt and she’d fight for me to get the job of my dreams at Vivid.
No more grueling research, no more losing myself in someone else’s life, no more forgoing any credit to stay anonymous.
Just me and a column dedicated to what I love writing about: music.
Lainey and Rhett saunter out from the mansion—rather, he saunters and she struts, her tiny legs working double-time to keep up.
As the cameras finish setting up, Rhett sweeps his gaze over the crowd and finds me. He seems to be asking a silent question, but I raise my chin, refusing to answer.
Scowling, he shoves his hands in his pockets, hands that just a few hours ago were picking my mic from beneath my dress, skimming over my skin. Hands that once mapped my body like it led to an oasis. I ball my own hands into fists and drag my gaze away from him.
Another wave of nausea hits as he runs his fingers through his hair, just like he did as he stood back and watched the band play at the Pink Iguana. We were surrounded by surfers and college girls. Besides me, he was the only person who seemed to be alone. Until he wasn’t—and neither was I.
I don’t remember everything about that night, but flashes stand out so sharply they might as well be happening all over again for the cameras.
His fingers pressing into my hips as I hovered above him.
Him, licking a bead of sweat off my neck, murmuring words I couldn’t hear over the beating of my own heart.
The soft orange light from my lamp leaving his face half in shadow.
As we drifted to sleep, I considered asking for his phone number, but it seemed ridiculous.
I could ask him in the morning, right after I told him my real name.
“Ladies.” Rhett’s voice startles me out of my head.
If it weren’t for the s on the word, I could pretend he was talking only to me.
“What a magical night. During this ceremony, Roland will call fifteen names. Those women will get to stay. If he doesn’t say your name, you’ll need to pack your bags.
” His eyes flick to me, something unreadable in his expression.
He was my mistake that night, but maybe I was his too. If I were him, I’d want me gone.
One by one, Roland calls out names and, one by one, women file up to him, thank him graciously (or in Olie-Ravioli’s case, tearfully), and head inside, escorted by Rhett.
When ten women have gone up, ten of us remain. More than halfway through and my name hasn’t been called.
Roland’s lips part. “Nina,” he says. A stunning woman with waist-length black ringlets kisses him on the cheek and walks inside.
Four to go.
Lainey hurries forward and whispers to Roland. Her hands are on her hips, her lips moving so quickly they’re a blur. When she steps back, Roland clears his throat.
“Monica,” he says and she files inside, her fresh athlete’s face showing no signs of fatigue.
Three to go.
Is there a chance I won’t make it? After everything, after telling him about my parents, after “Georgia Peach,” he’s going to cast me off like a stray hair on the highway?
“Georgia,” Roland says. And just for me, he mouths, “Peach,” and winks. Maybe I’m delirious from lack of sleep, because something in me bubbles up as I walk toward him. I have the compulsive urge to laugh, but I choke it down as exhaustion rolls over me.
“Thank you,” I whisper. And I mean it.
Briefly, his hands clasp my waist, fingers scraping over the sequins. Then he lets me go, and I give him one last smile as I leave the garden.
“Nice job,” a gruff voice says. Rhett places a hand on my back, his thumb grazing against the exposed skin at the top of my dress.
“Rhett—” I wobble on my heels but he steadies me, and my stomach swoops.
“This way.” He points up the path to one of the mansion’s doors, glowing with light.
I offer a tight smile—all for show, of course—and pull away. I blame it on the skimpy dress that my back is cold where he was touching my skin.
The postceremony pool party is in full swing by four AM.
Everyone else sprinted off as soon as they hopped into bikinis, so I’m the only one in the mansion’s dorm room now, surrounded by more bunk beds than I’ve seen since my brief stint at sleepaway camp in middle school—brief because I didn’t poop for ten days and had to be helicoptered out of Vermont.
From what I remember before that fiasco, the sleepaway camp didn’t come decked out with nearly as many photos of shirtless men (rather, one man) on the walls.
Roland stares down at me from a few dozen glossy prints, racket in hand, cuddling puppies, reading a thick but nondescript book.
You name it, he’s doing it. Shirtless. Like he’s in a goddamn deodorant commercial.
I drag my suitcase to a bottom bunk in the corner, trying to ignore the inanimate eyes staring at me.
When Rhett was the lead two years ago, did the producers plaster his face all over this room?
The thought makes me queasy. Though that might just be the exhaustion.
I rummage through my torso-sized bathroom kit and pull out an antacid pill, but since the problem is a man and not my stomach, it doesn’t help much.
I take a deep breath and try to focus. I don’t need Tums, I need leverage.
Glancing at the cameras, I feel around in my bag until I find the white eyeliner that I told Serena would make me look like Bambi on steroids.
I hardly thought I’d need it on my first night.
I swipe it around my eyes, then reach deeper into the bag and pull out my burner phone, which is hiding between several maxi pads.
2D Roland watching the whole time, I rip off my body mic, shove it under the bunk bed, and scurry to the ensuite bathroom with my plethora of menstrual products.
“Shut up,” I mutter at his glossy, tulip-sniffing face.
Having one shower for fifteen women is a disaster waiting to happen.
Even beyond scheduling, plumbing issues are inevitable with the amount of hair going down the drain.
I glance up into the corner above the hers and hers and hers vanity and sinks: camera, check.
Peeking into the small shower though, I don’t see one.
I scurry in, turn on the faucet, and strip off my dress. Then I dial Serena, carefully holding the phone out of the water spray.
She picks up on the first ring. “Georgia? What happened? Are you okay?”
Despite the panic in her voice, I breathe a sigh of relief. “I’m fine, I’ve just—”
“We said you’d only call in an emergency, is this—?”
“No,” I cut in. “It’s not an emergency.” The whole situation seems almost too ridiculous to say aloud, so I hedge.
“How’s Presley? Are you checking the color of his litter every two hours?
” I can’t help the anxious whine that creeps into my voice.
Presley may be my baby, but really, he’s an old man—delicate and prone to playing dead until he gets his favorite flavor of Fancy Feast. “And if he doesn’t take his heart pills, you have to use the anal—”
“You’re calling me about your cat?” she interrupts. “I thought something was seriously wrong.”
“No,” I assure her. “Nothing’s wrong. I didn’t get eliminated or anything.”
“Are you nervous?” she asks. “Don’t be nervous. You’ll do great. The producers snapped you up like a kid in a candy shop. I mean, come on, we both know what you look like.”
“Well…” I try to steer the conversation in a direction that doesn’t sound like Serena’s pre-frat-party pep talks from college.
“Let’s hope Roland feels the same.” Roland, whose smoldering promotional headshot is taped above the sink just a few feet away with the Love Shack logo and the caption “Marchetti is Playing for Love.”
She’s not wrong—I do look, at least in part, like a stereotypical Love Shack contestant.
My long honey-colored hair reaches almost to my waist, I’ve got good cheekbones, and even I’ll admit that my calves look killer in heels.
Serena made me tamp down the amount of florals and paisleys in my wardrobe, made me trade out my fringed suede purse for a clutch in my intro video.
It was all solid colors and loose hair and minimalist eye makeup, like I was a Barbie we wanted the producers to get excited about dressing up.
“Stay focused on Lainey, okay?” Serena says.
“If there really are cover-ups, she’ll be the mastermind.
This exposé has to be new. It has to be”—she pauses dramatically—“mind-boggling. Something of this level plus the fact that you were able to fool the producers and get on the show—it’s going to save us. ”
“What do you mean?”
She coughs so quietly I almost don’t hear it over the sound of the shower. “Corporate did another round of cuts a few days ago. Really gutted the budget for freelance. But don’t worry, you’ll get paid for this job.”
“And my job when it’s over?”
She pauses. “Yeah … Yeah, it’ll be fine.”
My frown gets deeper, but I don’t have time to worry about that right now.
“Listen,” I say. “I need you to do something.”
“Anything.” In the background, I hear Presley meowing, but I ignore him.
“Do you know who Rhett Auburn is?”
To my surprise, she laughs. “Of course I know who Rhett Auburn is—his season was totally my favorite. I was so devastated when he and Cassidy broke up that I called out sick. Why?”
“He’s the host this season.”
“Oh shit,” she says. “Has he—”
“I need you to find some dirt on him,” I interrupt. “Just something I can use for … leverage. If I need it—not that I need it now, but you know … down the line.”
I bite my lip, hoping she won’t ask any follow-up questions. I can’t afford to tell her about my mistake last year, not when her fighting for my job hinges on the success of this assignment.
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll ask around—I’m sure I can find something. You know famous guys—there’s always something.”
“Right.” The shower is starting to get cold, and I hop from foot to foot. “I’ve got to go.”
“Good luck, G, you’re going to be amazing,” she says.
The nickname, a private joke between us (Georgia or Gracie?
Or both!), feels like a slap in the face, a reminder of just how foolish I was to trust Rhett when I met him.
“You are amazing. And G?” She already sounds far away from the phone. “Be careful, okay?”
She doesn’t have to tell me twice. As far as I’m concerned, this mansion is about as safe as a den of wolves.
“Try to have a little fun,” she says. “Who knows, maybe you’ll fall in love!”
But her words don’t have the intended effect. Falling in love is the last thing I plan on doing.