“I’m not. I don’t care if I’m ever on TV again.” I threw myself onto one of the chairs. “What if I say no?”
“Then you say no.” Samantha waited a beat. “What’s that gonna change? Phoebe’s out no matter what. People respond better to Josef. He’s a brighter presence.”
“She’s going to hate me.”
My producer made a scoffing noise. “Phoebe hates everyone.”
“No—she was really kind to me,” I said. “In the elevator one day...”
“You know women in this world are often cast aside the second they do the thing they’re by nature supposed to do andage, right?” Samantha said. “Phoebe survived that. She’s employable. And rich. She’ll bootstrap her way elsewhere.”
“She’s going to think I was in on it,” I said miserably.
“You’re not like that. I know it and you know it, and that’s what matters.” Samantha handed me a bottle of water. “Look. The entertainment industry is fickle. The reason why I’ve lasted as long as I have, besides the fact that I’m irreplaceable, is because I’m off camera.”
I lowered my head into my hands, thinking of the click of the cottage fan. Wells had asked if I wanted to get dinner tonight to talk, but I’d said no, even though we needed to. Iwiggled my jaw. My ear finally, blissfully popped.
“Are they going toSopranosending orFriendsseason ten her?”I asked. A sharp break, a long parade.
“I predict quick and dirty.” Samantha slung a purse across her body, removed a pair of sunglasses from a case. “You’ve come a long way from being unable to read a teleprompter. Congratulations, Olivia. You’ve made it.”
But Samantha was wrong. When I went back to work the next morning, waking up viewers with a debrief on Friday night’s special, Phoebe’s farewell tour departure was announced. Special audience-favorite guest hosts, a party in her honor, and then, to my utter shock, the final line of the announcement delivered a twist. They’d fan-cast her replacement.
Post-show, I beelined for Samantha. “Fan-cast?” I said under my breath.
“Yep. They think it’ll help engage the youth.” Samantha waved her hand, as if this proverbial youth was seated in rows before us.
My heart thundered. “But I thought—is the deal they offeredyesterday off?” The possibility was both dazzling and terrible. The realization was spectacular: Ididwant this job. It was the only way I could be expert enough on the subject to resolve my love life, and the thought of the documentary support vanishing made my mouth go dry.
“Of course it’s not.”
“But what if the fans don’t vote me as the replacement?” My brow furrowed.
The look Samantha gave me was weary. “You have so much to learn,” she said.
My gut-slicked anxiety was my plus-one to my long-awaited meeting with Yvonne. She launched into the network’s plan forFrom Yes to I Doto focus on Soulmailed couples this upcoming season, handing me budgets (low) and shooting schedules (mid-November kickoff, mid-January wrap) and an episode table of contents (predictable).
I didn’t lie to her. Wells and I hadn’t agreed on getting married, but the date was still booked. It was impossible to tell a coworker that you barely knew that you’d been handed a picture-perfect life that you hadn’t chosen.
Weeks passed. As was the recent pattern, summer schedules might have ended with Labor Day approaching, but summer weather did not. After dozens of late-night conversations where Wells tiredly explained he had no justification to cheat and I tiredly did not forgive him, he suggested we start seeing a therapist together. It was exactly what I should want him to say, but even as I agreed, I balked. I was a huge fan of therapists and therapy in general, but my least favorite subject was the sext, and I dreaded explaining it to an eager-eyed doctor.
The first one we saw had appointments that were almosttooopen—healthcare, after all, was an impossible process—and during our consultation appointment, when the therapist confessed that I was her first celebrity client, I recoiled.
Meanwhile, the world waited for the next round of Soulmails. Because the second slew of them arrived one month to the second after they started, the general prediction was they’d come back precisely two months after the first, in that first week of September. People started slinging Vegas odds, which was something I’d never bothered to understand. The only thing I could grasp about it was that I could be accused of insider trading if I gave away information, so I stayed mostly silent.
In between, those who turned eighteen in America (or sixteen in Scotland, or fifteen in Indonesia) began a sort of Amish-like rumspringa, a new rite-like passage of becoming an adult the old way. Travel agencies devised trips for people who might settle with a partner within the next month, once their Soulmail was revealed. College attendance rates plummeted, but real estate interest rates dipped, rose, then stabilized.
Still, the stubborn ones—like Caleb—kept going the old way. They dated if they wished, or they remained single or stayed partnered in old relationships, happily in the dark. Many couples I interviewed made different choices, where one half read their Soulmail and the other didn’t. (Though they always promised to stay together no matter what, this worked an estimated fifty percent of the time, more often when the partner was silently the soulmate.)
Dad called, a rare choice for him. When I answered, he launched right into the most effusive tone I’ve ever heard him take. Seafood prices were the best he’d ever seen, and astronomical for gourmet versions of fish: king crab, Maine lobster, wild Alaskan salmon. People were willing to spend more when they were guaranteed happiness, he guessed. I made a mentalnote to determine if fish prices usually soared at the end of the summer, then promptly forgot.
I hung up, tossing my phone on my dressing room ledge.
“Olivia.” Josef leaned in the open doorway. His smile belonged on a headshot. For years, I’d watched him go from bubbles to quiet, depending on whether he was on camera. “Google just told me we’re sharing a bench now?”
My eyebrows shot to my hairline. “It’s official?”
He nodded. “Well, sort of. It was open on my browser, and I saw the breaking news headline. I asked to confirm.”
