Eight Weeks to Mr. Right (14 page)

I liked that he chose me,
I thought.
He let other women go, but he wanted me to stay.
 

At least to a point.
 

But Ben had chosen me too. If being chosen was the main qualification, why should the presence or absence of other women make any difference?

“He’s fine, whatever,” Megan said. “We had another fight last night.” She rolled her eyes. A spot at the bar opened up, and we pushed in before someone else could. Megan leaned over the bar, resting on her arms and trying to make herself more visible in the sea of people waiting to get a drink.
 

I hung back. Taking a chance, I ventured, “You don’t seem super excited about him.”

She glanced back at me. “What do you want? Vodka? Tequila?”

“A vodka soda would be good.” She rolled her eyes and turned back to the bar.

The bartender lifted his chin at her to ask what she wanted. I couldn’t hear what she said, but she held up two fingers, and he nodded. A moment later, Megan turned back around with two amber shot glasses in one hand, wedges of lime on the rims.
 

I raised an eyebrow at her, realizing after I’d done it that I was mimicking Ben’s and-what-do-you-think-you’re-doing look.

She ushered me out of the crowd. “Just do it,” she said. “Come on.”

I sighed. We clinked glasses and downed the tequila. I tried not to gag. This was the first time I’d taken a shot since that first date on
Eight Weeks to Mr. Right
, when Isabella had wanted those horrid blue things. Before that, I couldn’t even remember how long it’d been.
 

“So,” she said, taking the lime wedge out of her mouth to talk, “Mario. No, I guess I’m not crazy excited about him. But he has a steady job, good pay, and I’m not getting any younger.” She shrugged as though this were as good a reason as any to marry someone, but I was taken aback.

“But don’t you love him?”

She considered. “Yeah, sure I love him. You spend long enough with anyone, you come to love them. We have dinner together, we go to the gym together, we visit my mom together. We even still come dancing sometimes!” she added, gesturing around us.

I nodded. Ben and I had those things too. Maybe not the dancing, or the gym, though perhaps that would come later. But the most important part of what we had together wasn’t the things we did together or the amount of time we spent together, it was the quality of that time. It was the conversations, the shared history. Ben understood me in a way that other people didn’t.

He certainly understood me in a way that Andrew hadn’t.
 

“Anyway, enough about Mario. Let’s dance!” Megan dropped our empty shot glasses off on a table and led me deeper into the pounding music. Surrounded by sweaty strangers, we danced and danced.
 

After a while, a guy with shaggy hair plastered to his forehead started dancing behind Megan, grinding closer and closer into her. She stepped away from him, but a moment later he was behind her again, reaching around her to try to encase her in a hug while they danced, pulling her closer.
 

She pulled away more forcefully this time and turned to him. “Hey,” she said firmly, wagging her left hand in his face. “I’m spoken for.”

The guy grumbled and disappeared into the crowd. “Not that it should matter!” she yelled after him, but he didn’t turn around. “Jackass,” she said to me. “Let’s get another shot.”

“I’ll sit this one out,” I said. The club was a great distraction from thinking about the episode tomorrow, but I still wanted to stay alert.
 

She left me at a table that had just opened up and went to the bar on her own. But when she came back, she again had two tequila shots in her hand.
 

“Megan…” I protested. “Really. I can’t do another.” My throat was hurting from yelling over the music, and I wished the crowd would thin out a little.

She shrugged. “Suit yourself.” And she downed first one and then the second shot and was biting down on the lime only a moment later.
 

“Anyone recognize you today?” she asked, and I glanced around us.
 

“Luckily, no, doesn’t seem like it,” I said.
 

She burped, then hit her chest with her fist a couple of times. “You seen any more of that paparazzi guy?”

“The — wait, which guy?” I asked, peering at her. I hadn’t told her about getting followed by the paparazzo, or about getting into the accident. In fact, I’d tried to steer clear of a discussion of my life altogether.
 

“Oh,” she said. “How’s Ben?”

I frowned. “No. Which guy are you talking about?”

She shook her head, as though she couldn’t remember.
 

“Megan,” I said. The realization was starting to dawn in my brain. “Are you the one who told him where to find us?”

“Ah…” She shrugged again, trying to brush off my words.

“Did you sell someone my information?” I was getting more disgusted by the moment.
 

“What’s the problem?” she asked then, switching strategies from denial to minimizing. “It’s fun being the center of attention, isn’t it? That’s why you went on that show anyway.”

I was starting to get angry now. “That is
not
why I went on that show! And you had no right to do that. Do you have any idea how much trouble you could’ve gotten me in? And — and how much trouble you caused me with Ben?”

I wasn’t the one who craved drama in my life. Megan was. How could I have trusted her?

“I didn’t think it was a big deal,” she said. “Tell Benny I’m sorry. And —” she leaned in conspiratorially toward me, “what’s going on with you and Ben, anyway?”

All I could do was laugh. It started in my chest and spread out to my shoulders and belly, and soon my whole body was shaking with laughter.
 

“What’s so funny?” Megan asked, and I laughed harder. What a mess it all had become.
 

“I think I’ll take that drink now,” I said when I was able to get the words out, and then stopped her as she stood up. “Vodka soda. Nothing else.”

By the time episode 6 came around, I was a nervous wreck. It was going to be so hard to watch myself get dumped all over again, to remember all the extremes of emotions I’d experienced that day. The Horrible Day.

The worst of it won’t be in the episode,
I reminded myself for what felt like the hundredth time. The viewers would never know the full story, and for that, at least, I was so grateful.
 

Ben made popcorn, and we curled up on the couch together under a blanket. He knew this was a hard episode for me, but I couldn’t admit just how hard. It was bad enough that he had to watch his girlfriend going out with another man — but to know how badly it had hurt when he’d dumped me? Ben may have helped me through some tough times surrounding this show, but that was too much to ask of anyone.
 

I took a few deep breaths as a commercial ended and the show began. Ben squeezed my knee. “You’ll be okay,” he said.
 

“Tonight,” Carson Carmichael announced, “the three remaining women, Abby, Isabella, and January, will get to spend some alone time with Andrew…overnight. No cameras. What they choose to do during that alone time is up to them. They can sleep in separate rooms, or they can spend the night together, and we may never know. But…” he grinned, “we may ask a few questions anyway.”
 

Okay
,
I thought.
This will be fine.
They’d asked me questions in the confessional, but I had been tight-lipped. I hadn’t told Isabella or Abby anything either. The producers would probably focus on Isabella this episode, because she was sure to be the one to tell all.
 

Isabella’s night was first. True to form, she was shown talking to Abby in the living room about how nervous she was to spend the night with Andrew. Abby nodded and said wryly, “Yeah, I’m nervous about you spending the night with him too.”

Cut to Isabella in the confessional, laughing like a maniac. “I don’t know if I should sleep with him!” she was saying. “I just don’t know.” Pause. “But…I probably will.” She fluttered her long, fake lashes for the camera and made a “who, me?” face.

Good ol’ Isabella. I knew I could count on her to tell all, even if it didn’t make her look good.
 

We watched Isabella and Andrew having a cocktail together by the long, blue-lit pool. Then he asked if she wanted to go inside, and the camera showed them weaving their fingers together and him leading her indoors.
 

Then there was me in the confessional, saying, “Do I think Isabella will sleep with Andrew? Who knows. I hope not.”
 

The scene cut to the hallway outside the main bedroom — the same bedroom where I would spend the night with Andrew two nights later. The door creaked open, and Andrew tiptoed out in only boxers. As he crept past the camera, he looked into the lens, held a finger up to his lips, and whispered, “Shhh.” The implication was clear.
 

“He slept with her?” I couldn’t help saying out loud. “He told me he didn’t!”

“Are you surprised?” Ben asked.

I wouldn’t admit it to him, but I was surprised — and hurt that Andrew had lied. Maybe I shouldn’t have been, but I had wanted to believe him so badly when he’d told me he hadn’t slept with the others that I supposed I had convinced myself it was true. It stung to know he’d betrayed me like that…even knowing what was still to come.
 

A moment later, we saw Andrew creeping back with a bottle of champagne toward the room where Isabella was waiting. And as the door closed, we heard something that made my skin go cold and my heart drop through my chest and land hard in the pit of my stomach. It was Isabella, whispering clear as day, “I’m glad you’re back. I missed you.”

Slowly my thoughts bubbled up from the frozen depths of my brain, and my heart started to beat again, faster and faster until panic overtook my body.
They were recording us?
 

The producers had told us there would be no cameras that night, that we were all alone.
 

And then I realized the loophole: No cameras didn’t necessarily mean no microphones. They had tricked me again.
 

And this time, it was going to be bad.
 

Everything would be revealed.
 

I could hardly breathe as I sat there in dread, watching the rest of Isabella’s night and her gushy comments the next day about how nice Andrew was. If I’d been able to think about anything else in that moment, I would’ve been furious with him for lying to me, jealous at what she’d experienced with Andrew.
 

But all I could think about was what was coming next.
 

I hardly watched as Abby’s night with Andrew unfolded. She too chose to spend the night in his room, and we heard their whispered conversation: “This is fun.” “Yeah, it is.” “I really like you.” “Me too.” Then there was Abby in the confessional, laughing and saying that she didn’t sleep with him, but not because she hadn’t wanted to.

And then it was my turn. I sat through the commercial break with my heart pounding, the horrible reveal spiraling toward us unstoppable, still frozen in place and unsure what to do. Finally, I turned to Ben and forced words out of my mouth. “We don’t have to watch this.”
 

But as soon as I’d spoken the words, before he could answer, the show came back on. Ben squeezed my knee again, but he looked worried.
 

We both stared straight ahead at the screen as the old me appeared in the confessional. “What I do with him in there is private,” I’d said, and I cringed to hear it. I sounded so much more prim than I’d intended. “And you’re not going to get me to tell. Even about whether we share a room or not!” I’d laughed, having no idea of how I was about to be betrayed.
 

On the screen, Andrew and I shared our own poolside drinks and talked about our families and what we imagined doing in our retirement years. He said he wanted to charter a jet to take him around the world to every single country. I said that I wanted to find a nice home in the country and watch the seasons change. It didn’t matter. It had felt so far away at that point that anything seemed negotiable. As I remembered it, I was just excited to be talking with him about being together still so many years from now.
 

Then my voice came on over the image of us sitting there talking and laughing. “I’m really looking forward to spending some time with him one-on-one, getting to know him without the cameras around.” Then we disappeared down the hall and out of view…only to see the camera creeping closer to the closed door a moment later.
 

And then the sound of my moan came loud and clear through the TV. I shrunk back in horror as the TV-me continued moaning. It was very, very obvious that Andrew and I were having sex. On national TV.
 

I sat perfectly still on the couch, staring straight ahead, hardly breathing, thinking about how the entire world was listening to me having sex. I was mortified. My parents were hearing this, my friends, my former employers, my sister, Megan, executives at La Joie. And, worst of all, Ben.
 

I couldn’t bear to look at him. I couldn’t imagine what he must be thinking and feeling at that moment. My cheeks burned with embarrassment and anger.
 

The shot on TV changed, and there was Isabella in the confessional, saying, “She’s so fake. She’s
so
fake. But I don’t think even January would stoop so low as to sleep with Andrew just for a job.”

I cringed, an accidental whimper coming from my throat, and sunk lower into the couch, wishing I could disappear. Wishing the whole world would disappear.
 

Then it was morning on the TV, introduced by the wholesome image of the rising sun and the sound of a rooster crowing somewhere in the distance.
 

And back to the door of our bedroom — more sex sounds. They’d made it look like we’d spent the entire night screwing, which was far from the truth.