Eight Weeks to Mr. Right Page 9

  After the show, I would live in this limbo period, waiting for the episodes to air, waiting for Andrew to realize even more in retrospect how he had to have me working for him. And then, once the show was over and our contract allowed it, I would contact him. Casually check in with him. See how he’d been doing since the show. Inquire about the company. And let him know that I’d be interested in working for him if anything came available. He would realize it was a perfect fit.

  Sleeping with Ben wasn’t part of the plan.

  Then again, neither was falling for Andrew.

  What did I even want anymore? I couldn’t deny that it felt amazing to have been wrapped in Ben’s arms, to feel protected by him and as though we were the only two people in the world.

  But I still desperately longed to work for La Joie. Could it even still happen? Everything felt up in the air now. With the way I was being portrayed on the show, surely Andrew would not want me involved with his company. He would think I would only bring drama to it, the way I was being shown to bring drama to the house. None of this was going according to plan.

  And then there was the fact that I had developed feelings for Andrew. Maybe I had ruined my chances of working for him way back on the show. Maybe it was everything leading up to The Horrible Day that had ruined it for me. I had certainly not acted professional then. If I had really wanted the job above all else, I never should’ve let myself fall for him.

  Now I liked him less and less the more I watched him on TV, while the TV me liked him more and more, moving us inevitably closer to The Horrible Day. I was just glad most of that day wasn’t caught on film. I knew I would have to watch my own elimination, but to have to relive that whole day would’ve been excruciating. It would’ve been too much.

  But Andrew aside, it was the company I was interested in. Did it matter that we’d had a relationship? I’d been persuading myself it didn’t all these weeks, that he would still see the benefit of hiring me despite everything, but maybe that was naive. And now La Joie was changing their formulations to use synthetic ingredients just to save a few bucks. Did I even want to work for a company like that?

  But if I stayed in San Francisco…if I stayed with Ben…what would I do? My odds of getting a perfume job were much better in L.A., even if I didn’t end up working for La Joie. If somehow I still did, moving to L.A. would be nonnegotiable. And my money was running out, so I’d need to make a decision of some kind soon.

  I bent my head and kissed Ben on the shoulder, unable to resist. His eyes slid open, and my worries melted right away. Now all I could think about was Ben. He smiled at me in the morning light, and I rolled on top of him, staring down into his face.

  “You’re so beautiful,” I whispered.

  “January…” he whispered back, and traced his fingertip along my arm toward my hand, then interwove his fingers into mine.

  “Ben,” I said back, and descended on his lips, gently parting them with my tongue. Soon I felt him getting hard beneath me, and a moment later he had slipped a condom on and slid back inside of me, and I was rocking against him, our bodies connected.

  On Monday my dad called. “How are you holding up?” he asked.

  “Okay,” I said. “Have you been watching?”

  He laughed. “Of course we’ve been watching!”

  That was embarrassing, though I’d expected it. Who else I’d known throughout my life who was now watching me make an idiot of myself on national TV?

  We talked about the show for a few minutes, and he tried to reassure me that no one would remember it soon, and I could go back to being just January, not January, Reality TV Villain.

  I hoped he was right.

  “Ben’s been helping me get through it,” I said. I wasn’t ready to tell my parents Ben and I were…whatever we were, but I couldn’t help but mention Ben’s name. He was on my mind all the time, and his name was constantly on my lips, ready to be spoken aloud. “He’s been really great. We’ve watched all the episodes together.”

  “I’m glad you have someone to help you out,” Dad said. “I always liked Ben.”

  “He’s a good guy.”

  “So it’s been a while since we’ve seen you,” he said then. “We miss you over here.”

  “I miss you and Mom too,” I said. It was true. It had been less than three weeks since I’d moved out of their place, but so much had happened since that it felt like ages.

  “Why don’t you come over for brunch on Sunday? If it’s nice, we can eat outside, have some mimosas.”

  “That sounds great,” I said. The weather had been surprisingly nice lately, and if it held, Sunday brunch outdoors would be beautiful.

  “And hey,” he added, “why don’t you bring Ben along?”

  I hesitated. “Oh, I…I don’t know,” I said. I imagined Ben sitting out on my parents’ deck sipping a mimosa, and I knew he’d fit right in. But I had my contract to think about. And more than just that, I didn’t want to appear in any more tabloids.

  Something had changed now that Ben and I had given into our desires. Whereas before I’d been willing to risk it going to the wine tasting with Sophie, now I felt that our mutual attraction was so palpable, so obvious, that no one looking at us wouldn’t be able to tell. And that could end very badly for me.

  “I’d like to bring him,” I told Dad. “But I can’t.”

  “Okay, well, if you change your mind we’d love to have him,” Dad said. “We’ll invite Sophie too, make it a party.”

  “See you Sunday, Dad,” I said, and hung up feeling sad. I wanted Ben to come to brunch. I wanted my parents to get to know him again, and my sister. I didn’t like having to edit my life for the show, for the off chance that someone would catch us together and sell photos to a tabloid.

  I wanted my privacy back. But it had been my choice to go on the show. Any consequences that now came out of that were my own fault.

  “I’m running out to get eggs,” I called to Ben one evening from the living room. “Need anything?”

  “Just a kiss,” he said, appearing in the doorway, and I shivered in delight at his words. It was all still so new, yet so familiar, like we’d slid right back into the place we’d left off all those years ago.

  His lips brushed mine, his hands snaking around my back to draw me in, and then, feeling exhilarated, I headed out into the chilly night.

  For the first time in months, days of the week were starting to mean something again: there were the days that Ben was home during the day, and there were the days he wasn’t. I started looking forward to the weekends just like I had in high school, time that he and I could spend together. And just like in high school, I was falling for him. And fast.

  There was a corner store down the street that sold everything from liquor to pantry staples to soft-serve frozen yogurt, and I popped for a dozen eggs, waving to the cashier, a Moroccan man named Ahmed I’d come to recognize in my short time in the neighborhood. Day and night, he was here.

  “Mrs. Right,” he said, nodding at me in greeting, and I shook my head, smiling. He’d taken to calling me that once he’d found out I was on the show, a fact he’d figured out from days spent reading the tabloids that lined the front of the counter. I didn’t mind when he said it, though, as from him I felt no judgment about my role, only mild interest.

  I grabbed the eggs, but before checking out picked up a tabloid on an impulse. It was the same magazine that had printed the photo of me and Ben, but today it featured an unflattering shot of a B-list celebrity on a beach vacation with the headline, “Fat or pregnant? Rumors fly!”

  It was exactly what I hated about tabloids, but at least this time it wasn’t about me. I flipped through the magazine, wanting to verify that there was nothing on Mr. Right this week — wanting, I suppose, to reassure myself that my status as a villain was old news, that the gossip world had moved on and I could get my life back.

  There was news of Hollywood breakups, flings, fashion disasters, parties, upcoming movies…and the
n, in the middle of the magazine, a photo of Isabella from our promo shots. I paused.

  “What’s in a name?” the headline asked. I read on. “Over the weekend one of our reporters made a startling discovery: Isabella Alderisi of the new reality dating show Eight Weeks To Mr. Right hasn’t always gone by her current name. In fact, a source close to the reality star confirmed that until taping of the show began in February, she’d spent her life as Isabel Holt. Our source, who wishes to remain anonymous, said that she believes the woman began going by Isabella and adopted her Italian maternal grandmother’s last name as an attempt to appear more interesting to the cultured Andrew Audrave, the male star of the show and eponymous Mr. Right.”

  I laughed to myself, closing the tabloid and replacing it on the shelf. So I wasn’t the only one whose personal life was getting examined under a microscope. Poor Isabella. Worried she wasn’t interesting enough as herself, had to become someone else before she could appear in front of the world.

  “Just the eggs, or the magazine too?” Ahmed asked, looking at me over the tops of his glasses.

  “Just the eggs,” I said. I’d had as much gossip as I could handle for the day.

  On Wednesday night, I snuggled with Ben on the couch, feeling the familiar sense of dread descend on me as the show’s opening sequence came on. I was grateful that this was the second-to-last episode I’d be in, aside from the live show.

  Carson Carmichael, the show’s host, appeared on screen to introduce the episode. “We’re getting down to the wire now,” he said. “There are only four women remaining: January, Isabella, Brandi, and Abby. On today’s show, Andrew will visit the homes of each of these women. He’ll get to know their parents and siblings…and give their families a chance to know him.”

  I’d been excited about Andrew’s visit to San Francisco, in part because it meant I got to take what was then a rare visit home. But as the date neared, I got increasingly worried that Andrew wouldn’t like my family — or worse, that they wouldn’t like him.

  I remembered the phone conversation with my mom when we talked about Andrew coming over for dinner: “What do I cook for a CEO?” “Mom, he’s not coming as a CEO, he’s coming as my boyfriend. What would you cook for any boyfriend Sophie or I brought over?” “For any boyfriend you brought over with a camera crew? Probably nothing in a red sauce.”

  They were all nervous. I was too. In the end, each of my family members had contributed to the meal: Mom had grilled steaks, Dad had made potatoes gratin, and Sophie had brought over an elaborate salad. I’d made pound cake with caramel sauce for dessert.

  At first, everything had seemed to go smoothly. I thought the meal turned out perfectly, a delicious treat. I’d wanted so badly for Andrew to think so too. He’d easily made small talk with my parents and Sophie, asking about their jobs and my parents’ recent vacation to Maine, but mostly talking about his own work with La Joie. But when I’d pulled him aside after dinner to ask what he’d thought, all he said was, “It was good. I usually take my steak a little rarer, but it was good.” And about my family, a noncommittal “they’re nice.”

  Why had I felt like we’d messed up? Looking back, it was clear to me that Andrew was the one who had been rude. But the episode was edited, once again, to paint me in a bad light — the producers had included every grimace I’d made, every eye roll with no context, and they were again using dark music over my scenes to suggest I was up to no good.

  I glanced over and saw Ben’s jawline harden as we watched Andrew dining with my family.

  “Look…” I started, feeling the need to say something but not sure what to say. “You don’t have to watch these if it’s too hard for you. I know it’s weird. I can…watch on my own.”

  He swallowed. “No, I told you I’d help you defend yourself, and I can’t do that if I don’t know what’s being shown. I’m here for you.”

  I was relieved. The truth was, I wasn’t sure I could do it without Ben. I’d really come to rely on him over the past few weeks, both for helping me online after the shows, but also to help me get through each episode as it happened.

  I snuggled into him on the couch, and he put his arm around me. “Thank you,” I said. “I may have gotten carried away while I was on the show, but now I’m all yours.”

  “I know,” he said. “It’s just hard to see this other guy spending time with you, meeting your parents and all.”

  After dinner, Andrew and my dad had gone out to the deck to talk. I didn’t know what they’d talked about, but of course I could guess.

  “Do you really like January?” my dad was saying on the screen.

  “She’s a great girl,” Andrew said.

  Inside, I was having a similar conversation with my mom, one that the cameras hadn’t caught. “I thought this was all about the job,” I remembered her whispering to me. “You don’t really think he’s the one, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” I’d said, unwilling to admit just how much of a 180 I’d done in the previous few weeks. “He could be.”

  In the episode, my dad was continuing to talk with Andrew. “But there are still two other women,” he’d pointed out.

  “Yes,” Andrew agreed. “I have some tough choices ahead of me, but January is very special. And I need to know: if it gets to the point where I want her to be my wife, do I have your support?”

  My dad hesitated. “You haven’t known each other very long. But it’s not my decision. If she’s happy, I’m happy.”

  Out in the backyard, before he left for the night, Andrew gave me a paper heart and kissed me gently on the lips.

  I took a deep breath. I could almost not stand to see this, and I couldn’t even imagine what Ben was thinking. I hated making him uncomfortable. I wanted him to know that he was the important one, that Andrew was less and less important to me every single day, despite what we were seeing on the screen.

  And I wanted him to come to brunch with me. My parents wanted him to come to brunch. The only people who didn’t want him to come to brunch were the producers. And as long as they never found out, what was the harm?

  “Ben,” I started, “I’m going to my parents’ house for brunch on Sunday. Do you want to come with me?”

  He looked at me, surprised. “Are you only inviting me because I’m pouting?”

  I smiled in spite of myself. “No. I’m inviting you because I want you there. And because you’re right, it’s silly to keep putting us on hold for a reality show that I’m about to get eliminated from anyway.”

  He lifted an eyebrow at me. “I would love to go to your parents’ brunch,” he said.

  Hesitantly, I added, “We will have to be careful not to be seen, though. I’m still under contract for one more week.”

  He wrapped me up in a hug and gently kissed my cheek. “Don’t worry,” he said lightheartedly. “If anyone follows us, I’ll just duck.”

  During Brandi’s segment, she pumped Andrew for information about his other dates, especially mine, but he didn’t say much. She normally kept her snark between the other women, but I supposed that with none of us around in her Alabama hometown, she had to let it out directly to him.

  “January is just using you,” she said, her blonde hair bouncing when she nodded for emphasis, staring at him wide-eyed.

  “Okay…but let’s talk about your family,” Andrew, to his credit, had said. “Tell me what I should expect from your mom.” She’d been cut at the end of this episode, and her tearful last interview in the confessional had consisted mostly of, “I can’t believe she’s still in but I’m gone. It’s so unfair!”

  After the episode ended, I gave Ben another squeeze, then together we turned to the Internet. I responded to a few mean tweets and wrote a quick post on my blog about how much fun it had been to have Andrew come to my house and meet my family. Ben advised me not to protest the way I’d been edited in the show, but only to talk about the positives.

  So I also didn’t mention my family’s impression of Andrew, which h
ad been lukewarm at best. None of them had said much after he left. I’d known what that meant, so I didn’t press it. But later, after I’d been eliminated from the show and come home, when I was in the deepest depths of my pain over being dumped, Sophie had said, “You can do better.”

  At the time I’d resented it. How could I do better than a CEO of a major perfume house? Who could possibly be more perfect for me than Andrew?

  But now, I was starting to agree.

  On Sunday morning, Ben drove us to my parents’ house for the first time in thirteen years. The weather was beautiful, starting out foggy and cool, but burning off around noon into a clear, sunny day.

  We sat outside on the back deck, as promised, and stared out over the lush green lawn. It felt so good to have Ben sitting beside me — so right. So normal.

  Sophie had brought Matt, and I got a little thrill at the idea of us being two couples plus me and Ben — three couples. For that day, I didn’t want to think about what might come next, whether this thing had to end. I just wanted to enjoy the sunshine, enjoy the good food and good company, and enjoy having Ben by my side.

  My dad had made a frittata and had big slices of watermelon soaking in lime and fresh mint. There were biscuits — the same ones I’d made with Andrew on our cooking date, which I’d learned to bake from my dad — and a honey-butter spread to go on them. It was delicious, and all of it reminded me of my childhood, when my parents had made big brunches on a regular basis. This was much more typical of my family than the meal they’d made for Andrew. It felt like they’d made what they wanted to eat, not what they thought would impress.