"I'm doing it."
"YES!" Another ear-splitting shriek. "Okay, I'm coming over. We have planning to do."
The contract arrives via email within an hour, twelve pages of legal terminology that basically boils down to: we own your image, your story, and your dignity for the next three months. In exchange, we'll make you famous and maybe rich.
I sign it anyway.
The next two weeks pass in a blur of paperwork, medical exams, psychological evaluations, and Maya treating my impending television debut like a military campaign. She creates spreadsheets. Color-coded spreadsheets. With subcategories.
"You need a signature look," she announces, dumping shopping bags across my kitchen table. "Something that says 'approachable but memorable.'"
"I have a signature look. Flour-dusted apron and exhaustion."
"That's not a look, that's a cry for help." She holds up a soft green sweater. "This brings out your eyes."
"It's a dating show, not a job interview."
"Everything is a job interview if you're smart about it."
The bakery gets a deep clean and a fresh coat of paint on the front door. Maya installs a professional ring light "for when the cameras come to film your hometown segments." She's more excited about this than I am, which is saying something because I've been walking around with a permanent flutter of nerves and anticipation in my stomach.
Three days before I leave, Mrs. Patterson corners me while I'm restocking the display case.
"Heard you're going on that television show."
News travels fast in a town of eight hundred people. "That's right."
"Shame you have to leave town to find a man. We've got perfectly good ones right here."
Perfectly good ones like your nephew who still lives in his mother's basement and collects vintage beer cans."It's more about the business opportunity."
"Hmm." She purses her lips. "Just remember where you come from, dear. Fame changes people."
So does poverty, but apparently that's less concerning.
The morning I leave, Maya drives me to Portland to catch my flight to Los Angeles. The bakery is closed for the next month—I've posted signs directing regular customers to the competing bakery two towns over, which feels like professional suicide but necessary sacrifice.
"Text me everything," Maya says at security. "Every detail. Every conversation. I want to live vicariously through your romantic adventure."
"What if it's a disaster?"
"Then it'll be a memorable disaster. Either way, you're doing something brave."
Brave.There's that word again.
The plane to LAX is half empty, giving me three hours to second-guess every decision I've made in the past month. But when we land and I see a driver holding a sign with my name, the flutter in my stomach shifts from anxiety to excitement.
I'm really doing this.
The production compound sits in the hills outside Los Angeles, hidden behind gates and security guards who check my ID twice before waving us through. It's like entering another world—sprawling mansions, manicured gardens, and enough camera equipment to film a blockbuster movie.
"Miss Lewis?" A young woman with a clipboard and the kind of smile that doesn't reach her eyes approaches as I climb out of the car. "I'm Ashley, your production assistant. Ready for orientation?"
The next four hours are a whirlwind of contracts, costume fittings, hair and makeup tests, and interviews with producers who ask increasingly personal questions about my dating history, my fears, my dreams, and whether I've ever been in love.
"Never been in love?" Jessica Powers looks up from her notes, eyebrows raised.
"I've been in like. Strong like. But love?" I shrug. "I've been focused on other things."
