Eight Weeks to Mr. Right Page 5

  “Don’t worry, I’m not your competition,” I was now telling her on-screen. She gave me a strange look, so I added to be extra clear, “I’m not interested in him.” Then I’d turned and walked away.

  Pity for me, because the camera caught something that in the moment I had not: Brandi’s mouth dropped open, and she looked like she had just received the juiciest nugget of gossip she’d heard in her life.

  Oh shit. The lump in my stomach grew.

  The scene cut to Brandi whispering furtively to Isabella. “She told me she’s not interested in dating Andrew.”

  Isabella fluttered her lashes in her signature impatient way. “Then why is she here?”

  “I don’t know! The fame? To get people fawning over her?” She shook her head. “She’s up to something. And I don’t like it.” The music got tense.

  Cut to the confessional again, me saying: “I would do anything to get to work for La Joie. Anything.”

  Oh. Shit.

  “You conniving little skank!” Megan said playfully when the episode was over, but my heart felt frozen. I was panicked. After the episode, the previews for next week had not shown me in a positive light either, and it appeared that the following episode would be more of the same: Based on the music that now played when I appeared, based on the carefully chosen comments I was shown saying, it was obvious what direction this was headed: I was now the show’s villain.

  Dreading what I would find, I went on Twitter again and found the #MrRight hashtag. “January, what a crazy bitch!” someone said. “I knew something was up with her,” someone else commented. “She think she can get way with that!” a near-illiterate tweeted. “Not here for the right reasons, then go home, trash,” another said.

  “Oh my god,” I said. “Everyone hates me now!” I looked wide-eyed between Megan and Ben. Ben looked grim, but Megan just shrugged.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “It’ll blow over.”

  But I wasn’t so sure. “Ben…what do I do?” I asked. “You’re in communications. How do I handle this?”

  He pressed his lips together. “Reality TV viewers do make quick judgments.”

  “Hey, did you choose your own outfits for the show?” Megan asked suddenly, and I whipped my attention back to her, not sure how this could help but ready to listen to whatever she had to offer.

  “Yes, why?”

  “Will you help me choose what to bring on my trip to Dallas tomorrow?”

  I sucked in a deep breath. I was so screwed.

  “Well,” Ben said later, as we walked toward his car and my bus stop from Megan’s house, “I guess you have two options.” I hung on his every word, ready to try anything. “You can choose not to care and not to get involved. That’s what I would do if…for some reason…I’d gone on a reality TV show and had this happen.”

  “No,” I said. “I do care. I do desperately want a job from him, but they’re making me look like a monster for it.”

  “Well, you didn’t play by the rules,” he pointed out. “Reality TV is all about the rules.”

  “I tried!” I protested. “I tried a lot harder than a lot of those women to play by the rules. Our contract said we couldn’t talk about our one-on-one dates with Andrew with each other, and everyone else did. I never did.”

  “There are certain rules that can be broken, and certain rules that can’t.”

  “And you’re saying that I broke the wrong rule.”

  “It does look bad,” he admitted. “I mean, I don’t know how many people in this country would actually believe you can fall in love with someone over the course of eight weeks starting as total strangers, but that is the premise of the show.”

  “What about the people who went on because they wanted to be famous?” I demanded. “What about them?”

  “Did they admit that’s why they went on, or did they play along?” he asked, and I sighed.

  “I guess you’re right.” It all felt so patently unfair, especially since that offhanded comment didn’t even show how I actually felt about Andrew — not later, at least. I’d fallen for him, whether I intended to or not. I may have started out by applying when the only thing I knew about him was his ability to advance my career, but by the end I really did want to be with him. By the end, it legitimately hurt like hell when The Horrible Day happened. It still did. It had been the worst day of my life, without a doubt.

  “So what’s option two?” I asked.

  He looked at me. “If you really can’t get past the idea that strangers whom you’ll never meet don’t think highly of you…”

  “Which I can’t,” I can’t flatly. It was partly the strangers, and partly the fact that I didn’t want Andrew to see what I’d said, couldn’t stand the thought of him knowing that I’d gone on the show for the wrong reasons. If there was still the smallest fragment of a chance he could want me back, this was only going to change his mind forever. Besides, love or no love, villain or no villain, I desperately wanted to be on his good side if a job opened up.

  “Then you can start a PR campaign of sorts,” he said. “Get on Twitter and make your case. Be polite and professional when people are mean to you. But January —” He peered even more intently at me now. “They will be mean to you. At least if this thread on the show continues.”

  “So what do I say?” I asked. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  He gave me a few suggestions, but I was terrified. I couldn’t believe the massive shift in direction that had taken place, the total 180 the show had made from portraying me as the sweet, innocent frontrunner to the manipulative bitch who was there solely for personal gain.

  “Ben…” I started tentatively. Once upon a time I’d been closer to him than anyone else on earth, but those days were so far behind us I could hardly remember what it had been like to need him. Would he be receptive now, or would he see me as a needy pain in the ass?

  “Ben, will you help me? Will you do all this with me?”

  We’d arrived at his car by then, and Ben put a hand on my arm. “Sure,” he said, and relief flooded my body. “Come back to my place, and we’ll get started now.”

  By the time Ben put the key into the lock on his front door, I was starting to calm down. Ben would help me handle this. He knew what to do. With him, I was safe.

  I’d been strategizing the whole way back, and I’d decided on my first tweet, with Ben’s help. “I came on the show to find love. If I implied otherwise, it was an exhausted mistake after a long day. #MrRight”. For the second tweet, I wanted to say something about how my interest in perfume only meant I had something in common with Andrew. And having things in common often leads to love, right?

  We got inside the apartment and he sat beside me on the couch while we used his laptop to create a new Twitter account for me. I could feel the heat from his body next to mine, and I had to admit it felt good to have him sitting so close to me. Under different circumstances, I might have thought about snuggling closer to him. I might even have thought about kissing him.

  Right now, though, I was focused.

  “I can’t figure out how to word this second tweet,” I said, and we brainstormed. “Something about how I admire him professionally, and I went on the show because we had perfume in common, but then it led to something else. Because having things in common is a good thing if you’re looking for love!” I chose my words carefully, not wanting Ben to know that I’d actually fallen for Andrew in the end. I wanted him to respect me, and I didn’t think he would if he’d known I’d fallen for someone so quickly.

  And maybe it was a little more complicated than that.

  “What about ‘I respect and admire what Andrew has done for La Joie, but my interest in him was always sincere,’ or something along those lines?” he suggested.

  “Hmm,” I considered. “Too…straightforward. And I can’t suggest that I didn’t win.”

  He took the laptop from me and typed something out. I leaned toward him to read it.

 
; “Mutual interests lead to love all the time. In my case, professional respect for @andrewaudrave led to something deeper. #MrRight”

  “Ben!” I said, amazed. “That’s perfect!”

  He glowed with satisfaction.

  I reached across him to press Send, and was surprised by the way my heart beat faster when my wrist grazed his stomach. I caught a whiff of his familiar, comforting scent, the scent that always reminded me of those lazy days of first love in high school.

  I pulled back and turned sideways on the couch, heaving my legs up to sit crossways and face him, leaning back against the arm of the couch.

  “You’re a lifesaver,” I told him. “Really.”

  “So why did you go on a dating show?” he asked.

  “Well…I do want to work for La Joie,” I said, looking straight at him. “More than anything. And I guess it was just the right timing. To shake my life up. Start over.”

  He nodded thoughtfully.

  “I was working for this company in New York, and I was really lonely. I had these long hours alone in the lab, and I was working on developing the scent for a deodorant. I mean, a deodorant! That’s not exactly every girl’s dream scent.”

  “How long were you working on that?”

  “Oh my god…months! You’d think it would be simple and straightforward, but no. I was bored. And I was getting near the end of the project and feeling so far away from my family and everyone I used to know. And then one of my coworkers sent me this press release, just as a joke.”

  I told him about reading the news from La Joie that their CEO, Andrew Audrave, was going on the inaugural season of a new show called Eight Weeks to Mr. Right, which was currently holding auditions for female contestants. I knew that most of the contestants would never have heard of Andrew before applying for the show, but I was very familiar with him. I’d been following him for years.

  “After all,” I said, “he’s really young to be CEO of a big company like that. It’s very unusual.”

  “How did he get there?” Ben asked, and I told him about Andrew’s dad stepping down due to health problems and surprising the industry by wanting his son to succeed him. But the board had voted him in, and so there he was.

  “Huh,” Ben said, an unreadable expression flickering across his face.

  I hesitated, wondering what he was thinking.

  “So it was almost a joke when he announced that he’d go on this reality show,” I continued. “This young CEO, he’d been in the position for a few years but was still trying to prove himself. And then he decided to do reality TV? When he was worried about people not taking him seriously enough?”

  “It does seem like an odd choice,” Ben agreed.

  “I thought so too. But the more I thought about it, I realized it was all part of his strategy. Get younger people into the industry, everyday people. People who watch reality TV.”

  “So you’re saying you think he went on the show as a career move.”

  “I know he did,” I said. “He didn’t really expect to find love, not in the start. He just wanted the exposure that being on national TV can bring. It’s free advertising and gets a whole new demographic interested in his perfumes, people who think the older, more established brands are old-fashioned and overpriced.”

  “Okay,” he said. “That makes sense.”

  “So I figured, he’s doing this to advance his career, why shouldn’t I? Working for La Joie is my dream. It’s been my dream since years before Andrew decided to go on the show, since before he was ever named CEO. And like I said, I was lonely in New York and bored with my job. And I just thought…why not?”

  “Why not indeed,” Ben said. “That makes a lot of sense.”

  I pulled at a thread on my sweater, thinking back on that decision. Mr. Right was a new show, so no one had heard of it yet when I’d decided to apply. Somehow, it had felt like the safety of obscurity would follow me once I’d been chosen and started filming. There had been a disconnect between knowing that the show would be on TV, and actually seeing myself appear on network television.

  At the time, I never would’ve guessed that anyone would care if I only went on the show to further my career. I’d known enough not to tell the producers outright, but back then the idea that other contestants or viewers would think poorly of me for my choice had seemed as remote as thinking I might actually be romantically attracted to Andrew. Now, it all felt a little more real. The reality of reality TV.

  “So what about you?” I asked, wanting to change the subject. “What have you been doing since high school? How did you get into the job you have now?”

  “I’ve mostly stuck around here,” Ben said. “I got a communications degree, worked for a couple of other nonprofits, learned the ropes. When something came open at the San Francisco Mentorship Alliance, I applied, and I’ve been there for about three years. Pretty boring.”

  I looked at him sitting there in his old but comfortable apartment on his cozy couch. His hair fell over his eye as he spoke, and he pushed it back with one hand. He looked confident, calm. Like he knew what he wanted out of life and knew how to get it. Like maybe he already had it.

  “I don’t think it’s boring at all,” I said. Ben was the last person on earth I would’ve described as boring, especially in that moment. “I think it sounds really wonderful. Good for you.” He looked back at me, and our eyes caught for one second, two seconds, three, before we looked away.

  “Ben,” I said tentatively. “If you still want it, after all this…I’d love to move in here.”

  He smiled at me. “And I’d love to have you.”

  And so it was decided.

  WEEK 3

  The next day, I moved my stuff into Ben’s apartment. I’d gotten rid of almost everything I owned before leaving New York, not wanting to move it across the country, so I had just two suitcases to bring over. I’d gotten lucky finding a place that already had a bed and small table, and my bedroom furniture would just have to remain sparse until I figured out my long-term plan.

  I was surprised at how natural it felt to be moving into Ben’s place. After not seeing him for over a decade, I had expected things between us to be awkward at first, but we’d slipped easily back into a familiar camaraderie that normally came after many months. We chided and joked with each other, and sometimes it felt like no time at all had passed, except of course that everything in our lives was different now.

  We still hadn’t talked about our breakup all those years ago, though in some ways I supposed it no longer mattered. I was long since over getting dumped, much as it had hurt at the time, and tended to naturally remember the many good times throughout our two years together more than the painful end. Still, though, I wondered. Did he even remember his high school boy logic?

  It was Thursday, so after getting my few belongings put away in my new bedroom I had agreed to meet my sister, Sophie, for a quick bite to eat after work. Like Ben, Sophie hadn’t left San Francisco, and I was jealous of the stability she had now. At twenty-seven, two years younger than I was, she was living with her boyfriend of five years and happily settled in her job as a kindergarten teacher.

  And here I was, the older and supposedly wiser sister, with almost every aspect of my life up in the air.

  We met at a small grocery store near Sophie’s place. I looked through the sandwiches in the display case while Sophie ran around the store grabbing veggies and household staples.

  “There’s no hurry,” I’d told her, but Sophie was often a ball of nervous energy.

  I was absentmindedly reading the label on some prepackaged chicken and pasta when Sophie came back around the corner with her basket, ready to check out.

  “Okay, done! So how are things?” she asked, and I grabbed a sandwich and coconut water and we got in line as I thought about it.

  “Things are okay,” I said. “It’s kind of a weird time. Oh, and I moved in with Ben today.”

  “You did?” she asked, surprised. “Are you…dating
?”

  “No, no,” I was quick to assure her. “Just friends. Anyway —” I waved a hand as though to clear the topic away. “How are you?”

  “Good,” she said. Things were always good with Sophie — never great, never terrible. She was the most stable person I knew. “One of my students swallowed a button today, but other than that.”

  “A button?!” I laughed. “That seems like a really bad thing to eat.”

  “It was a small button,” she amended. “I’ve had kids eat worse things, but it wasn’t fun. His mom was nice about it, though.”

  “I am so glad I don’t work with kids,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know how you manage to keep them alive.”

  “It’s fun,” she said. “But I am looking forward to summer vacation. Tomorrow’s the last day!”

  “Already?” It was June, I reminded myself. “How’s Matt?”

  Matt was Sophie’s boyfriend. He wasn’t particularly social, but I’d met him enough times over the years at family gatherings and birthdays to have a generally positive impression of him. Not who I would’ve chosen for Sophie, but they seemed happy enough.

  “Good,” she said again. “I haven’t seen him much lately because he’s gotten really into this new video game. But we usually have dinner together.”

  It was a lukewarm recommendation, but I didn’t want to dwell on it. Sophie had always sought out stability at any cost, and if Matt was playing video games at least he wasn’t cheating on her, or draining her bank account, or cutting down her self-esteem one jab at a time.

  “So what’s it like watching yourself on TV?” she asked me, and I wondered whether she was trying to avoid the topic of her boyfriend the same way I was trying to avoid the topic of Ben.

  I hadn’t talked with Sophie since before the first episode aired, and anymore I wasn’t quite sure where to start. “It’s been strange,” I said, because that seemed like the most accurate way to sum up the roller coaster of emotions I’d experienced after being loved the first episode and hated the second. “Have you been watching?”