Chapter 20 Reasons to Say Yes
REASONS TO SAY YES
THE NEW YORK SKYLINE is like no other—but being inside the skyline was something else entirely.
From Emma and Sybil’s rooftop, high-rises rose up around us, and the buzz of traffic in the streets below sounded distant, dim.
It was early September, the city evenings were still warm, holding the last of summer in them.
Sybil, Emma, Willow, and I were gathered together for what felt like the first time in ages, with cartons of Thai takeout scattered between us, reaching over each other to grab pad see ew and crab fried rice as the last rays of sun disappeared from the streets of Manhattan.
We were in our early twenties, and by that point, the four of us were spread across three time zones and two continents.
I’d missed all of them so much. With Willow passing through New York on her way home from Europe, now was the perfect time for a visit.
“Sybs… stop hogging the panang,” I teased.
“She’s worked up an appetite,” Willow said before crunching into a spring roll. “All that, you know.”
Emma groaned. “Please, do we need to talk about Syb’s sex life while we’re eating? I literally keep noise-canceling headphones by my bed now.”
Sybil started laughing.
“What is going on in Sebastian land these days?” I pressed. “I feel like I’ve missed a million updates.”
“That’s because the updates keep changing,” Sybil admitted. “He’s hot and cold… but mostly”—she paused for effect—“hot.” She opened her eyes in mock innocence as Emma groaned again.
“I’m happy for you,” Emma said. “But I do wish he’d actually get an apartment in the city where you could… locate your… time together. The man is so itinerant, I’d be surprised if he’s actually paid rent anywhere in years.”
“He’s a free spirit,” Sybil said with a shrug.
Willow laughed. “Don’t be jealous, Emma.”
“Oh, she’s not,” Sybil blurted out.
“Wait, what?” I swiveled to face Emma, realization registering. “Is it…”
Sybil had a huge grin on her face and was nodding.
“Yes,” Emma said, blushing. “It’s Finn. He came to visit Sybil, honestly. I wasn’t planning on anything happening with us. It’s… it’s nothing serious.”
“The pair of ripped tights I found up here last weekend would suggest otherwise,” Sybil said, taking a satisfied bite of pad
see ew.
I grinned, happy for Emma. I’d only met Finn in passing, but Sybil always said he and Emma were soulmates.
Emma slapped her hands, causing Sybil to drop her chopsticks. “Hey! You can’t blame me,” Sybil said. “You’re the one who left hard evidence.”
I practically spit out my spring roll. “Hard evidence. You’re hilarious.”
“He was just helping me… with… something,” Emma said, blushing.
The three of us let Emma’s excuse hang for a moment.
“Okay, babe,” Willow said. “We’re here when you want to talk about it.
” She sat with her legs crossed, her wrists settled on her knees, giving Sybil a stern look that clearly conveyed it was time to leave Emma alone.
As much as Sybil and I were willing to tease Emma about her love life, neither one of us wanted to push Willow too far about hers.
Her own romantic roller coaster had hit some truly heartbreaking turns that summer, and despite her open nature, we knew when to give her space.
“Well, I don’t care who y’all are or are not sleeping with.
I just love you guys,” I said, feeling a little tipsy and sentimental.
“And I’m so happy to be here.” I took a sip of wine in a juice glass and enjoyed the background banter of Sybil and Emma.
The three of them had known each other for years, and it was times like these that I felt lucky I’d found my way into their circle.
I’d spent my teen years constantly batting away remarks from Mary Moore and my other pageant friends, worried that one misstep would mean being iced out for weeks at a time, but I’ve never had to do that with these girls.
They’d welcomed me with open arms, and I’d never once felt like I was in competition with them.
I trusted they’d always have my back, and never with an ulterior motive.
I was having these thoughts when my phone rang. An LA area code.
“Hi, is this Nicole Bennet?” an unfamiliar voice asked when I picked up.
“Yes?” I moved away from the group slightly, trying to hear her better.
“It’s Sloane Norton from LovedBy.” Before I could ask why she was calling me, she barreled ahead. “We see a lot of promise in your application, and we’d love to have you out for a screen test.”
“A screen test?”
The girls had fallen silent, eyeing me.
“Can you come in next Tuesday? You’re local, right?”
“Um… Sure.”
Sloane confirmed my email and promised to send me more details. Then promptly hung up.
“What just happened?” Sybil asked.
“LovedBy wants me to audition to be a contestant?” I said, not really believing it. “But it makes no sense. I never applied.”
“Or did you?” Emma asked. She seemed to have fully regained the power of speech now that she had someone else’s life to manage.
“Have I?”
“Well, I may have nominated you,” she admitted, smiling hugely. “Same thing.”
“Shut up. Really? But… why?”
“It just seemed like something you’d be really good at. And after your last job fell through”—she has the grace to look a little sheepish as she continues—“I thought you might have the time. I just feel like you’re meant for… for more.”
BACK IN LA, I followed the instructions from Sloane’s email and arrive bright and early to a studio lot on Tuesday morning.
Emma had been right. I did have the time.
My last gig at a wellness start-up had fallen through when the company lost funding.
While I looked for something more permanent, I’d been getting certified to teach Pilates, but as much as I loved it, it felt like a waste of potential.
The girl who’d moved to LA had big goals and even bigger dreams. Emma had been right about that too.
I did feel like there was more out there for me.
Maybe going on LovedBy would help me get there.
Sloane collected me from a waiting room. She took a few photos of me and had me sit in front of a camera while she asked me some softball questions about my background. Afterward, she led me into a room and directed me to a chair facing a dozen people.
“Hi, Nicole, we’re all producers on the show. We have some questions for you. We’re going to go fast and dirty, so just say whatever comes to your mind.” Allan Bristol, one of the show’s OG producers, smiled at me. “Have you ever watched LovedBy before?”
“Yes,” I answered. “I’ve been a fan for a long time.”
“Where’s your dream vacation?”
“Thailand.” There’s an expectant pause, and I felt all the training from a decade of pageants stir to life.
The mantle of pageant queen settled onto my shoulders, and I let it take over.
I understood innately how it could be both reality television and a performance at the same time; if I wanted to be cast, I needed to find a part to play.
A woman with gold-rimmed glasses jumped in. “And what about your dream job?”
“I’d love to run my own company one day.” As I said it, I recognized the truth behind it.
The rest of the interview, I went on charm autopilot. They asked me what I thought made a good girlfriend. (Loyalty.) And who was my celebrity crush? (Glen Powell, at the time.) What was the sexiest thing about a man? (Confidence.)
In the days following the interview, I went through a psych eval, a literal background check with a private investigator, and a bunch of health and STD tests. I felt like I was being grilled for military service, not a show about finding lasting romance.
Months passed with no word from Sloane, and the same anxiety, the nervousness I used to get at pageants while places were called, returned.
I’d never been totally convinced that I wanted to be on the show, but it was so ingrained in me to want to win, to want to be chosen, that I really started to worry I hadn’t qualified, hadn’t been impressive or interesting or fun enough.
It wasn’t until a year or so after the interview rounds when my phone rang again. Sloane’s number. I was shocked. “We’d love to have you on the show next season. Are you in?”
“I’m in.” Of course I was. It had never occurred to me, not once in my life, to turn down a winning offer.
AFTER THAT CAME THE whirlwind of pre-TV prep: styling, shopping, spray tanning, teeth whitening.
Not to mention signing pages and pages of paperwork.
Finally, a couple months before shooting was about to begin, and before they’d even announced the rest of the cast, a LovedBy production team flew out to Georgia to capture their pre-taping “get to know you” footage of me in my hometown.
Sloane loved our house and the dock, and she made sure to get shots of the rope swing that hangs over the lake.
My parents were a little reticent to be on camera, but Sloane smoothed away their concerns.
She played up how excited they were to have me on the show, and how lucky we all were.
She set them both up on the porch. I was brought to my room to shoot my own conversation, but their taping went longer than expected, and when I came back downstairs, I caught the tail end of my mom’s interview.
“I’ve always known Nikki was destined for great things. Ever since her first pageant, I knew she’d make her mark on the world. She always does everything she can to make us proud.”
My heart clenched. At the time, getting on national television truly felt like it could be the culmination of all the sacrifices my parents have made over the years: the miles of driving to pageants on weekends, the money spent on dresses and dance classes, the hours spent helping me with school projects.
It hadn’t ever been my explicit dream to be on TV, but now, it was easy to rewrite my childhood and imagine that it had been.
By then, I was so used to being looked at, to performing and presenting a version of myself I thought others wanted to see, that this turned out to be the perfect natural extension of everything I’d worked at.
I’d always imagined having this big, beautiful life, but the idea of it in my head had been hazy, vague.
LovedBy gave it shape, gave me a sense that I had been headed in the right direction all this time.
Without ever explicitly doing so, the show told me what my fantasy was, and I believed it.
Last but not least, the producers wanted some montage pickup of “an average day in the life.” Sloane asked me what a normal Sunday looked like for our family, and I told her that usually, we’d go to church and then to The Chicken Factory since frying chicken is the one thing my mom refuses to do at home.
But after the team scouted our locations, they nixed The Chicken Factory, saying it wasn’t quite the “quaint Southern atmosphere” they wanted, and the lighting was no good.
Instead, they’d chosen this place called Sadie’s—an old-fashioned diner with original red leather booths, about a half-hour drive away.
We’d never eaten there before, but Sloane asked us to act like this was our family’s go-to.
And that wasn’t so difficult once we got there. The place turned out to only serve variations on grilled cheese, but the food was surprisingly delicious. It was inviting and cozy, and as we fake-ate for the cameras while making real conversation, I found it wasn’t actually that hard to imagine…
That this was my real life and always had been.