Chapter 16
Willa
As far as I knew, Justin hadn’t said anything to Alan, but they both were avoiding me and I wasn’t sure why. I had a feeling of foreboding that settled in and wouldn’t leave. But my instructions hadn’t changed, so I doled out a little bit of attention on set to Justin, and kept up my teasing of Doug.
Thankfully, there was no required viewing party for episode two, the path to the top twenty-five. Doug and I had planned to go to his brother and sister-in-law’s house to watch with them, but his brother came down with a stomach bug so we settled on Doug’s couch. His cat, Tiger, was not happy that I’d brought Dot with me. He raised his back and jumped on top of the entertainment center, ready to pounce from above. Dot didn’t care. She settled on a chair in the corner and dozed off.
“Alan is making me nervous,” I admitted to Doug.
“When is he not?” Doug brought back a bag of microwave popcorn and turned to study me. “Okay, you do look extremely nervous. What do you know about this episode that I don’t?”
I shook my head. I’d never found a good time to talk to Doug about spilling the beans to Justin, and since nothing had come of it so far, I’d let it go. I was a coward, and I didn’t want to admit to being the one who couldn’t keep her mouth shut after swearing Doug to secrecy.
The episode was starting, saving me from further questions. I grabbed the remote and turned up the volume.
“This is … Triple Threat!”The theme music started up, and then a montage of the candidates excitedly hauling in their suitcases and backpacks from taxis as they arrived in L.A.
Alan, the cheapo, made it look like they were there for a week of tryouts, but we’d crammed their auditions into a day and a half before sending most of them home.
It was pretty typical talent show stuff—groups of contestants singing, dancing, and waving at the camera. But then the camera focused on Doug and Justin chatting behind the judge’s desk before moving to an interview with Doug’s mom. She announced that Justin was a bully who had tormented her sweet Doug at the tender age of ten. Over the sound of her talking, they pulled up footage of a young Doug and Justin on the set of their short-lived sitcom. Then they cut back to Doug and Justin at the desk, right as both their eyes turned to watch me walk across the stage, their conversation abruptly abandoned.
“These two judges seem to have put aside their differences. Unless something else comes between them…”
Doug had his head in his hands. “This is bad. Justin is going to murder me.”
“Or he might challenge you to a dance off.” A nervous laugh escaped.
“How can you joke about this Willa?”
Good question. Inside, I was boiling with worries. What was Justin going to do now that he had no motivation to work with us? His reputation was definitely not better after this episode. He looked like a chump. Plus, Alan had doubled-down on the love-triangle thing, and I knew Justin wouldn’t go down without a fight. Doug needed to up his game, and fast. Who knew what they’d throw at us next?
I turned the show back on, but it was just the contestants running through practices and coming out on stage to perform. I’d seen enough of that to last a lifetime.
Doug was like a wound spring, his arms around his calves as he stared at the TV, the way you stare down a jack-in-the-box, waiting for it to scare the bejeebies out of you. He was wearing cargo shorts. I’d never seen his legs before, as weird as that sounded. Men, in general, don’t have attractive legs. I’d found that out in eighth-grade P.E. while running circular laps in the gym. Doug’s weren’t bad though.
And in an odd coincidence, the performances ended and the show immediately moved to Doug checking outmy legswhile I sat on the desk right next to him, looking through the piles of headshots. I’d really flustered him that day. It didn’t even take any creative editing to capture how nervous I’d made him with just my close proximity.
What Doug and I hadn’t seen, so focused on each other at the time, was Justin’s glare from the other end of the desk.
“They’ve turned this into a soap opera,” Doug muttered.
The episode ended with us announcing the top twenty-five, the contestants flashing across the screen as they announced their names.
As soon as the ending credits ran, I shut off the TV and scooted over to Doug, pulling his arm off his calf and holding onto it. He looked so forlorn.
“I can’t go back and undo this, Doug. I’m sorry. We’re in the messy middle and all we can do is plow through it. All of that is fake. We all know it. Just like Justin’s standing ovations and Victoria Lauren’s endless manhunt is fake. It’s all drama concocted to drum up interest in a bunch of has-beens, or in our case, never-beens.”
Doug’s hand moved to rest on my knee. “Except my backstory is embarrassingly real, and it’s not just mine. It wasn’t fair to Justin to dredge all that back up.”
I loved that he was as worried as much for Justin as he was for himself. But I hadn’t picked Justin for this role, and just because Alan decided to add him didn’t mean I’d changed my mind.
“Do you want to practice kissing?” I asked, turning so I was facing Doug. “We need to work on you not being bowled over in surprise if Alan suddenly demands it.”
Doug glared back at me. “That’s where your mind goes after watching that? I know how to kiss, Willa. I don’t need lessons.” His voice grew a little bit hoarse though as he said it, and I didn’t miss the trembling in the arm woven through mine. He was terrified of me. This wasn’t about knowing how to kiss anyone, this was about Doug knowing how to kissme.
I’d been thinking about this for a while, and we needed to be proactive. It was better to figure out the physical portion to our fake relationship now, on our terms, without an audience. I didn’t know what Alan had in store this next week and I wanted to be ready.
I was also more than a little curious. Would the attraction and the connection I felt with Doug go away if he tried to kiss me and it was just, meh? That would make things a lot easier. We could stay friends. I could stop worrying so much about losing him.
