My mother’s voicemail came three days later, after the tweet had gone viral and the think pieces had started and someone had created a Change.org petition demanding that Netflix produce the show immediately. Her message was seventeen seconds long. “Sloane. I saw your tweet. This is exactly what I mean when I say you do too much. Call me when you’re ready to discuss how you’re going to fix this.”
I ignored the call.
Eight months later, I had forty million viewers, a production deal, my face on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, and a throne.
The throne was a problem.
Not metaphorically — though that was also true — but physically, structurally a problem. It had been designed by someone who clearly believed that women in positions of power should also be in positions of extreme discomfort, with a back so straight it could double as a spinal realignment device and armrests positioned at exactly the wrong height for my arms. My dress — a custom confection of champagne silk and delicate beadwork that had required three people to help me into and probably cost more than my first car — did not allow for slouching, adjusting, or breathing in any meaningful way. The crown on my head was studded with crystals that caught every light in the studio and reflected my anxiety back at me in forty different directions.
I was the Queen now. Capital Q. Creator and star of The Good Boy Games, the most controversial dating show since someone had decided to strand singles on an island and make them compete for roses. I had transformed my drunken, rage-fueled tweet into a cultural phenomenon, a feminist statement, five seasons, forty million viewers, a franchise built on the revolutionary concept that men should actually pay attention to the women they claimed to want.
I was also thirty seconds away from having a panic attack on national television.
“You’re spiraling.” Tessa materialized beside the throne with her tablet in one hand and her producer headset slightly askew. She’d traded her usual jeans-and-blazer combination for sleeker armor tonight — black dress, hair slicked back, the look of a woman broadcasting I am in complete control of this situation even though nothing is actually under control. “I can tell because you’ve touched your crown six times in the last two minutes and you’re doing that thing with your breathing.”
“What thing with my breathing?”
“The thing where you forget to do it.”
I forced myself to inhale. It came out shaky. “I’m not spiraling. I’m… readjusting.”
“Mhm.” Tessa crouched beside me, lowering her voice so the three dozen crew members bustling around the stage couldn’t hear. This close, the exhaustion showed beneath her flawless makeup, the slight tremble in her hands that she was trying very hard to hide. Tessa Reyes had been my best friend since freshman year of college, when she’d found me crying in the bathroom at a frat party and handed me a tampon, a mini bottle of vodka, and a business card for her therapist, in that order. She’d held my hair back during bad breakups. She’d talked me off ledges — literal and metaphorical. She’d turned my viraltweet into a production deal through sheer force of will and a limitless network of television executives who owed her favors. “Talk to me. What’s happening in that head of yours?”
I stared out at the empty stage — at the ten pedestals arranged in a neat semicircle, at the cameras positioned to capture every angle of my impending emotional breakdown, at the giant screen behind me that would soon display my face to forty million people — and my throat closed around the truth.
“What if everyone was right?” The words came out smaller than I’d intended, fragile in a way I hated. “My mom. My exes. All of them. What if I really am just… too much?” I laughed, but there was no humor in it. “What if I created this whole show to prove a point that isn’t true, and now millions of people are going to watch me fail on live television?”
Tessa was quiet for a beat. She didn’t rush to reassure me, which I appreciated — she’d never been the type to offer empty comfort. She was the one who told me when my bangs looked bad sophomore year, when my business degree was a waste of my creative brain, when my ex-boyfriend was a walking red flag in a Patagonia vest. Her honesty was brutal sometimes, but it was honest, and right now that was what I needed.
“Listen to me.” She took both my hands in hers. Her grip was firm, her gaze fierce. “You didn’t create this show because you’re too much. You created it because you finally stopped accepting too little. Every woman who watched that tweet go viral — every single one of the millions who shared it and commented and demanded this show exist — they saw themselves in you. They saw their bad dates and their shitty exes and their mothers telling them they were asking for too much when really they were just asking for the bare minimum.” She squeezed my hands, hard enough to bruise. “You’re not too much, Sloane.They weren’t enough. And tonight, you’re going to find someone who proves it.”
I blinked back the tears that were threatening to ruin forty-five minutes of professional makeup application. The knot beneath my ribs unclenched, just slightly. “Since when did you become a motivational speaker?”
“Since my best friend decided to create a television empire and I had to figure out how to keep her from self-destructing on camera.” Tessa released my hands and straightened up, her producer mask sliding smoothly back into place. “First entrance in sixty seconds. Places, everyone!” She glanced back at me, one eyebrow raised. “You ready to meet your future husband?”
“God, don’t call them that. It makes this feel real.”
“It is real, babe.” She was already walking away, barking orders into her headset. “That’s the whole point.”
The first contestant through the doors was Julian Pierce.
He walked like he’d been engineered in a lab for this occasion — perfect posture, perfect smile, symmetrical bone structure that probably had its own Instagram filter. His dark hair was artfully tousled, his custom suit was immaculately tailored, and when he bowed before my throne, the movement was so fluid that it looked rehearsed. Which, knowing how these shows worked, it probably was.
“Your Majesty.” His voice was smooth, practiced, pitched to the millimeter. “Julian Pierce. I’m honored to be here.”
“Julian.” I tilted my head, studying him how I’d learned to study people over years of working in media — looking for the cracks beneath the polish, the real person hiding behind the performance. “Tell me a truth about yourself that isn’t on your application.”
His expression held. Not even a flicker. “I volunteer at a literacy program for underprivileged youth on weekends. I believe in giving back to the community.”
It was a good answer. It was the correct answer. And the correctness itself made my skin prickle with unease, because talking to Julian was like talking to a chatbot that had been fed too much data on what women wanted to hear. He was saying all the right things in the right order with the right warmth, and none of it felt remotely real. Like someone had typed “perfect boyfriend” into an AI generator and this was what it had spit out.
“Lovely,” I said, matching his polish with a veneer of my own. “Welcome to the Games.”
Mason Rivera came next, and he promptly tripped over a cable three steps into the room.
“Oh God, I’m so sorry — that was — there was a thing. And my foot, and—” He caught himself on one of the pedestals, nearly knocked it over, righted it with the desperate energy of a golden retriever who’d just crashed through a glass door, then turned to face me with a grin that was equal parts mortified and delighted. “Hi! I’m Mason! I promise I’m not usually this much of a disaster.” A beat. “Okay, that’s a lie, I’m exactly this much of a disaster all the time, but I thought I should try to make a good first impression before revealing my true nature.”
I laughed. A real laugh, not the television laugh I’d been practicing. “Mason. Deep breath. You’re doing fine.”
