Eight Weeks to Mr. Right (6 page)

“Has she never had shrimp before?” Megan asked in disbelief, and I shook my head.
 

“I guess not!”

Brandi, the gossip lover, had gotten seated on one side of Andrew, and a woman he’d end up eliminating at the end of this episode was on the other. Now, in an embarrassing display, Brandi was trying to feed Andrew some tuna tartare on a cracker, and laughing way louder than the situation called for, as though the whole thing was hilarious and they were having such an amazing time, just the two of them. I rolled my eyes.
 

The rest of dinner was fairly uneventful. The episode showed Andrew telling us all that we’d be going out dancing after dinner, and Ben turned to me and said in the teasing but kind tone I’d come to recognize from him when he talked about the show, “Dinner and dancing, how quaint.”
 

“Ugh, that’s so cliché!” Megan said. I frowned. It was a bit cliché, but she seemed to be forgetting that I was actually on the show. I could handle Ben’s gentle chiding — I enjoyed it, even. But didn’t Megan know that her words were an insult to me too?

Cut to commercial break. It was disappointing not to have gotten much airtime yet this episode, though we had a long way to go. I tried to remember what had happened that night. I knew I’d danced with Andrew, had commented on his cologne, but it had been a fairly uneventful evening as far as I was concerned.
 

“So, like, tell me about the girls,” Megan said while a tampon commercial blared.

“I honestly didn’t get to know them much,” I said.
 

She stared at me. “Weren’t you sharing a house with them for like two months?”

“Yes,” I said. “And for part of the time, I was even sharing a dorm room with some of them. But…I don’t know, I just wanted to stay away from the drama.”

She gave me a yeah-right look. “No one goes on reality TV to stay away from the drama,” she said.
 

When the show came back on, there I was. We were in the back room of a bar that the producers had rented out especially for us, with our own band and everything. Andrew asked me to dance first, and the shot cut to all the other women’s eyes following us to the dance floor.
 

“It was kind of awkward dancing with him in front of all these other women who thought they were in love with him,” I said.
 

“You’re telling me you didn’t fall for him?” Megan asked skeptically. “That hair? Those arms? I bet he’s got a huge cock too.”

I blushed and swallowed. “I…might’ve gotten a little swept up in the competition after a while,” I admitted. “But not here in the beginning.” There was no way I’d admit that I’d actually fallen for Andrew.
 

As I watched us dancing together in front of the band, I thought back on that night, several months ago. Andrew was attractive, there was no denying that. But this was the night that I’d started getting to know him, just the slightest bit. I could see it in my eyes, watching myself on the screen: I was wondering, just the slightest tickle of wonder at the edges of my mind, whether he could possibly hold more interest to me than as the CEO of the company I wanted to work for.
 

While one of the other women made a snarky comment about us dancing, I couldn’t help it: I pulled out my phone and checked Twitter. “Love her!!!” someone had tweeted. “January looks like Cinderella in that dress,” someone else chimed in. I smiled.

But then the scene cut back to the confessional, an early interview. I’d been nervous back then because this was all so new, and I’d started chattering a little. Maybe this had even happened after I’d had some wine. I hoped I hadn’t said something dumb that would now be broadcast to the nation.
 

“I want to make perfumes,” I was saying on-screen. “Andrew’s company is one of the best in the world.” I did remember the producer asking me about my career aspirations, and whether I’d been familiar with Andrew’s company before applying for the show. I’d assumed they asked everyone the same thing, and hadn’t thought anything of it.

Then cut to me, later on the night of the dancing. We’d been there for hours, and I was exhausted. Andrew had danced with each of the women in turn, and standing around waiting and watching it all had gotten tedious, to say the least. Brandi had made a snarky comment about how much Andrew had looked like he’d enjoyed dancing with me as compared to the others, and I’d gotten irritated. She’d been petty and rude all night, and I just wanted to say whatever it took to get her to leave me alone.
 

“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.”