“Fair.” She takes a deep breath. “Erica’s helping me pitch a queer version of Before Midnight. We’re going to start with a bisexual suitor.”
“Oh my God, that’s amazing!” That would be huge for a show this big to expand like that. It would definitely send a very clear message. Besides, queer people deserve to have their bad romantic decisions documented for the whole country to consume, too.
Beck tells me all about her vision for the show and how she wants to stage it and what kind of singles she would hope to cast. She’s even done some preliminary scouting.
When she’s finished her beer, she rolls out of my bed with a groan. “It’s late. You need to sleep. I need to sleep.”
“Can I ask you something? It’s okay if you can’t answer.”
She drops her bottle in the recycling bin under the desk. “Sure.”
“Was Henry really going to send Addison home this afternoon?”
She takes her robe off and drapes it over the edge of the bed. “Yes.”
“Why? They just went on a date last night. She’s so hot. All someone like her has to be to win a competition like this is semi-agreeable.”
Beck shakes her head. “I don’t know. It was a whole ordeal…I can’t say much, but it wasn’t her time yet and Henry didn’t care. He wanted her gone. She said something that didn’t sit right with him, I guess.”
“You guess?”
She sighs heavily. “You know what I said the other night about Henry’s list?”
I nod.
“Well, we have some girls who we just point-blank tell him are off-limits until we hit a certain number of episodes. I know it sounds gross. But they’re the kind of girls people tune in for. I might have a total gay agenda, but I didn’t say I was a saint.”
“And Addison is one of those girls?” I ask.
“Yeah. But Henry fought with us on it. He went head-to-head with Wes and then Erica and then the network. He said either it was him or her. One of them was going home.”
“But when Anna volunteered, he chose to send Samantha home and not Addison?”
She shakes her head. “When you can crawl inside that man’s head and tell me what’s going on, let me know.”
I laugh dryly and get to my feet. “You said she said something to him that didn’t sit right with him. What did she say?”
She rubs her chin for a moment, thinking. “It was about you, Cindy.”
“About me? Why would she say something about me?” I ask, confusion wrinkling my brow.
“She’s a mean girl, Cin. Addison is a classic mean girl. She knows how flash-in-the-pan fame works, and playing into a stereotype is part of that. She knows the fastest way to get people talking is to do or say something shocking.”
I sink down on the edge of the bed, wishing there were a few more sips at the bottom of the bottle. “Was it about me being fat?”
Beck shoves her hands in her pockets and nods.
“And it’s going to be in the next episode?”
Again, she nods. “We’ve got a story to tell.”
Erica warned me. She promised me there would be some things she couldn’t protect me from.
“I wasn’t kidding about people loving you,” she tells me. “Some girls out there have never seen someone who looks like them kiss a guy like you did in that boxing ring. Good night, Cindy.”
“Night, Beck,” I say softly as she lets herself out.
I really like Henry, and of course I want that prize money, but being here, as a plus-size woman, is turning out to be something bigger than I had imagined. It’s exciting, but mostly terrifying. I want people to talk about whatever Addison said about me. The morning after this episode airs, people are going to be talking, and it’s a conversation that’s been a long time coming, if you ask me. I just never hoped to be at the center of it.
“Hello?” I ask into the walkie-talkie as I curl up in bed at nearly two in the morning. “Henry?”
I’m convinced he’s already fallen asleep, when finally his crackling voice comes through. “Is that you, Cabbage Patch? Mon petit chou?”
“Mon petite what? I think the last time I could be described as petite, I was still in pull-ups.”
“My little cabbage,” he tells me. “It’s French.”
“Oh, fancy boy knows French, does he?”
“How hard would your eyes roll if I told you I went to a boarding school in France for three years?”
“Excuse me,” I say, “my eyes are stuck to the back of my head.”
He chuckles. “I guess I shouldn’t tell you about the two years in Germany and four years in Edinburgh….”
“I used to dream about going to boarding school when I was a kid, and there you were casually living my childhood fantasy.”
His laugh is disjointed thanks to the bad connection. “It wasn’t so glamorous,” he assures me. “School years on my own with a couple hundred strangers and summers spent being my mom’s sometimes on-trend, sometimes off-trend seasonal accessory.”
I might not have had as much time as I should have with my parents, but they were mine. All mine. Never once did I feel out of place in their lives. The thought of Henry being anyone’s accessory makes me wish I could reach over and squeeze his hand. “Are you close with your mother?”
He barks a laugh. “Yes. No. Too close. Not close enough.”
“You—you said…On that first night, you said you were here for her…. What did you mean by that?”
“I am,” he says plainly. “I’m here for her. I’m here as a last-ditch effort so her life’s work doesn’t do a swan dive into a pool of hot, flaming financial ruin.”
“I thought…LuMac seemed to be doing okay. It doesn’t seem so bad from the outside?”
I can hear him shifting, and it sounds like he’s sitting up. “She dreamed too big, I think…. Cindy, I’m trusting you not to share this with anyone…. My mother was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.”
My jaw drops, and for the first time, I’m so glad to not be in the same room. Arthritis is an awful thing for anyone to have to deal with…but for those of us who very specifically rely on our hands…it’s a death knell. “That’s really awful. I’m so sorry.”
“I guess you can understand why it would be bad for business if word got out. We’re publicly traded at the moment, so stocks would plummet. Accounts would bail. It would be…devastating, and things are already bad. She was diagnosed a few years ago. We thought she could power through and just sort of…lead without being so involved, but I guess once a workaholic, always a workaholic.”
“Wow, that’s so much to deal with,” I say with a yawn as the city lights blur in the distance, and I pull the blanket up over my shoulders. “So what does all that mean for the show? No offense, but if things are so bad, shouldn’t you be there and not…here?”
He coughs out a painful laugh. “You would think, but no, the idea is that the show will drum up support for the brand. Sort of relaunch it for a new generation. Trust me when I say it wasn’t my first choice. There’s also the potential for future partnerships with the network…. It’s just…I didn’t come here expecting to be invested in—Shit, the little red battery light is blinking at me. I think this thing is about to go.”