Nick, on the other hand… "No. Yes. No. No. No. Yes..." He sounded very matter-of-fact and to-the-point, and I noticed that I was the only one left staring at the first candidate printout, which was at the top of my pile.
A pair of memorizing blue eyes looked back at me from the picture attached to that application.
His name was Nathan Real, and I read and reread all that he wrote about himself. He noted that he was a private investigator and added that he's also a male model in a respectable agency I knew. In the field where he was asked to write how his friends would describe him to a potential spouse, he wrote: 'Sharp, direct and real, just like my surname.'
I nodded and giggled as he seemed to be accurate. His answer actually was sharp, direct, and real, but I expected a little more than that from someone who's trying to impress me.
"Hmm..." I purposefully hummed louder than usual, hoping that someone would ask me "What's the matter," but none of my filtering and screening crew members noticed the distress I encountered in deciding about the first applicant I came across, so I went back to contemplating about him in silence.
A male model? Honestly? Do I really want to marry a male model?
It suddenly occurred to me that these weren’t candidates for a boyfriend, but for a husband. I could no longer try them out and see what happens. At that moment, I realized I had to thoroughly consider if each candidate is what I want for myself, for the rest of my life, and… Did I really want to share my life with a model?
It may have been too hypocritical of me, being a model myself, to be so judgy of him for that, but…
"Oh, wow, he has a master's in forensic criminology!" I spat out, impressed, and declared in my head yet another defeat in trying to get anyone's attention.
I wanted to start filtering through the applications, but Nathan's blue eyes looked at me from the picture and wouldn’t allow me to do anything but to start the "Yes" pile of potential candidates to be my husband as I placed Nathan Real's form as the first in it.
I wished he and his crazy blue eyes hadn’t been the first printout in my batch, as I placed the following five applications in the "No" pile without any deliberation. Sexual attraction was the basis for my initial filtering process, and sadly, I feared that for as long as Nathan's eyes were left staring at me from the top of the "Yes" stack, the other applicants simply had no chance of catching my—
"Well, hello to you!" The air drained out from my body as I held an application of a guy called Emilio Fuerte." And you're a filmmaker? That's very interesting!"
"Quietly, Naomi. I said we each need to go over our stack quietly." Nick silenced me in what he thought was an elegant way, yet I smiled awkwardly as Dolly and Maya giggled at my expense.
I had no choice but to go over the printouts alone. I was on my own, and the sounds of my friends going, "Yes. No. No. Yes…" didn’t help in speeding up the process for me.
I quickly skimmed to read what Emilio Fuerte had written in the field where he was asked to describe himself and was smitten to read his answer.
"I live life as if it was a movie, so just like in the movies, I'm looking for my true love. Sadly, I haven’t found it yet, but even if it takes me forever, I won't settle for anything but true movie-like love. If need be, I'm willing to work hard so it'll be perfect, though it needs to be pretty damn close, to begin with."
There was no doubt about it. He clearly was landing in the "Yes" stack. Sorry, Nathan Real. You and your freakishly blue eyes will have to rest peacefully beneath Emilio Fuerte's application and his piercing look.
Emilio Fuerte… Naomi Fuerte. Hmmm... That didn’t sound so bad at all!
Quicker than I imagined, Mr. Fuerte was also covered by the next candidate's application who caught my eye, and he was also covered by the application which followed him into my "Yes" stack.
We all sat focused on our missions for an entire hour, and at the end of it, each of us had two stacks of print outs in front of us.
"Wow, Maya." I pointed at the fact that one of her stakes was significantly bigger than the other. "Did you hate almost all of them?"
"On the contrary," she corrected me, her face becoming flush. "How embarrassing." She started giggling. "I loved them all. I'd actually take each and every one of them home right now, and leave that no-good husband of mine on his own!"
Nick compared our piles and set aside the applications of the candidates who appeared on all of our "No" stacks. I then insisted on adding those that only I ruled out, explaining that even if they liked some of them, I wouldn’t be able to date someone I didn’t find attractive.
I thought that was the hard part of that evening, but I was wrong. The hardest part was when we dove into a long and tedious discussion about some of the candidates I wanted to get to know, and the rest of the crew thought wouldn’t suit me. We also had some loud, emotional discussions about candidates, which I rejected, and they were adamant about them being part of my project.
In the end, Nick suggested we send a more in-depth questionnaire to the remaining candidates, which led me to agree to bring some of the men I disqualified for reasons like living too far away or having some other challenging life circumstances into the "Maybe" stack, but only those who intrigued me.
Out of the one-hundred and fifty applicants, we were left with twenty-five smart, handsome, successful, and well-established men, who wanted a chance to win my heart, to kneel before me, and to make a married woman out of the single old me.
Nick placed the printouts of those candidates one next to the other on the carpet, and we all stood up to take a better look at them.
"Naomi, I want you to meet your future husband!" Nick proclaimed, and none of us dared speak for a few long minutes.
My eyes bounced from one picture to the next, and though my heart was pounding at a dizzying pace, a smile came over my face when I realized I'd never been so close to finding my husband.
That smile grew even wider as I glanced at the applicants' faces and knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was going to be hot as hell!
The house had returned to its former state, my faithful crew members returned to their homes, and their perfect little lives, while I was left too exhausted to watch the episode I missed and to catch up on Jennifer's recent choices.
"I'm beat, Mike. Don't look at me like that." I said, hugging him close to me and taking comfort in his warmth. Smiling I surrendered to a much needed night’s sleep.
Chapter 6
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes on the following Sunday morning was that Nick opened a new group on my texting app. It was called "The Bachelorette Project - Production Team," and I hurried to read the messages waiting there for me.
Nick: "Hello to the production team. I'd like to remind you all that you're supposed to send me the follow-up questions for the in-depth questionnaire I'll be sending to the final twenty-five candidates. Please make sure these questions will allow us to do a second round of screening to select our top finalists."
I thought I was going to catch up on all their correspondence, but I was surprised to see that no one had answered him since last night. I rubbed my eyes and really didn’t mind being the first to add a follow-up question to my handsome husband-to-be.