As he’s primped and powdered by a tiny blonde girl who has to stand on her toes to reach his hair, Rachel shows up again, telling Blake without mincing words to lose his shirt. He does, but only because it’s hot as balls out here and his assets are good. If he’s going to be sweaty and irritable, abs on display might be all he has going for him, at this point. Rachel rewards him immediately with an icy bottle of water, and Blake grudgingly decides she might not be the worst person on the planet.
“They turned on fans out there,” Rachel says, patting his shoulder comfortingly and then making a face when her hand comes away sweaty. “They’ll read like wind on camera. And there’s alcohol. Lots of it,” she emphasizes. “You guys will walk out one by one, but those are really the last concrete instructions we’ll give you. Once you’re down on the patio, introduce yourself, drink, hang out, have fun. Be yourself, that’s what got you here.”
Blake hadn’t realized he’d grumbled his misgivings out loud, but after hearing what Rachel has to say, he’s not sorry about it. “Thanks,” he says gruffly, sipping some of the water and letting it soothe his dry throat.
“Loosen up,” Rachel tells him with a wink, waving his wrinkled shirt at him as she backs up towards the entryway down to the patio. “Everyone wants you, Blake.”
In response, Blake sighs and runs a hand through his sweat-damp hair. Even if that’s true, is it worth what he’s apparently gotten himself into? Just as he’s seriously considering flagging down the next asshole with a headset andbooking himself a one-way ticket back to Kansas, the brunette from earlier turns around from where she’s waiting to make her entrance. Aside from her, Blake’s alone in the courtyard now, having been saved for last (well, if you don’t count the makeup girl blotting frantically away at his forehead like there’s any chance of getting ahead of that mess).
She smiles gently, and she’s cute enough that Blake almost bothers to look up from the way her chest is squeezed into the barely-qualifies-as-clothing bikini she’s wearing. Yeah, alright. He supposes he could stay one night. From the middle of the courtyard, Blake watches her go, bikini-covered ass swaying beneath the gauzy sarong tied around her hips, and Blake just feels… empty.
Horny, but empty.
The assistant director standing at the top of the courtyard is coordinating each cast member’s entrance with the filming crew down on the patio. He waves Blake forward and then holds up a hand. “Wait for my cue,” he mutters, barely making eye contact with Blake at all. Already exhausted, Blake slumps against the wall of the house, trying to cop a little shade while he can.
The moist skin of his bare arm rubs against the stucco and comes away dirty, and Blake can’t help but fantasize about the pool once again. Maybe more so than the human eye candy he’s supposed to be dreaming about. Maybe he’ll talk someone into sex in the pool tonight — that has to be allowed, right?
The overhang above Blake’s head doesn’t jut far enough out for its shade to cover his entire body, leaving one shoulder crisping up further in the brutal sun. Tomorrow, he’s lotioning up like no one’s business. The last thing Blake needs is a sunburn getting in the way of his good time here. No one daydreams about fucking a lobster, let’s be real. Hell, maybe he can find a willing volunteer to put the stuff on for him… parlay that into… who knows?
At least the lower patio area they’re filming the meet and greet on is set beneath a big copse of tall trees and right off of the beach. With the fans and the ocean breeze coming in, it should be way cooler down there. Impatient, Blake braves the sun to lean out and around the A.D. blocking his way, trying to get a glimpse of what’s going on. From what he can see, it looks as if they’re making the hottie with a body redo her entrance.
God, Blake hopes they don’t do that to him. He’s no good at faking it. Those casting assistants were stupid as hell not to camera-test his ability to read back lines, if that’s what they’re expecting.
While Blake’s busy spying, trying to figure out who is checking out who (and who his competition might be in that department), he doesn’t hear the A.D. say, “Got it, go for Blake,” into his headset. “You’re live,” the guy adds, his tone annoyed as he taps the battery pack tucked into Blake’s shorts. The mic itself is wound around his neck like some kind of douchey hipster necklace, and Blake suddenly wishes he hadn’t been so easy about taking off his shirt. He probably looks like a complete tool.
On the other hand, he’s filming a reality show about emotionally stunted nymphos so, how much worse can he really look?
Despite those misgivings, Blake squares his shoulders, puffs out a bracing breath to psych himself up, and punches his fist into the palm of his opposite hand. “You got this,” he says out loud, only belatedly remembering that he’s being recorded. “Shit,” he murmurs, hoping they don’t use either of those moments in the final cut.
“Go,” the ornery director behind him hisses, shoving at Blake’s thigh with the toe of his Birkenstock. Blake makes a face but complies, glaring back over his shoulder at the guy and his clipboard as he walks. The cameras can’t see him until he rounds the corner of the house, so Blake has a moment to slap on his most charming smile, step into his “playboy” persona, and gear up.
As bad of an actor as he might be, strangely enough, Blake doesn’t consider this the same thing. Though he’s smart enough to know that at its heart, it is, playing himself is also something Blake’s been doing for as long as he can remember. Being the charming, aloof, hot but emotionally unavailable slut is easy, and it’s safe. It gets Blake laid, allows him all of the companionship with none of the risk, heartache, or time commitment. Obviously, that last thing’s a lot less of a problem now than it used to be.
It’s strange, though, doing it “on tap” and for an audience. Blake’s never questioned the way he acts before, never thought about whether it mattered, beyond what it did for him. Backwhen his dad was alive, it was necessary. Taking over parenting duties made him soft, made him a target — and Hayden was a goddamn kid who deserved someone soft. Their father certainly wasn’t up to the task.
So Blake made himself hard in every other way, so that his dad would leave him alone. He dropped out of school to work a dirty, manly job where he used his hands, the very minute Charlie would hire him. He drank beer, stole it from his dad’s stash, which — as long as the supply in the house never ran dry — his dad approved of him doing. He dated lots of girls, bragged loudly about using them and dumping them so that his father would clap him on the shoulder and say, “Atta boy, Blake!”
And because his father thought hewasthose things — a hard, manly, asshole, missing the genes for emotions, feelings, empathy — Blake was able to keep Hayden safe, keep him sheltered from having to twist himself into knots doing the same. He was able to knock out the tasks that his father would’ve expected from a wife, if he could’ve convinced a woman to stay. Did what needed doing when no one was around to see. It was Blake who kept their place clean, who vacuumed and cooked. Blake who did the dishes and the laundry, helped Hayden with math homework and let the kid cry about his dumb middle school problems with friends and girls. It was Blake who went quietly to tuck him in at night and kiss him on the head before tip-toeing away, cracked beer in hand, held out like a shield.
By the time their father died, that’s just how things were. Blake was who he needed to be, for Hayden. Because of that,the only things that changed after it became just the two of them were that Blake stopped tiptoeing around when saying goodnight, and he stopped hiding his interest in men. That was never for his brother, anyway. Hayden couldn’t care less who Blake dated; kid would happily wear any identity splashed across a t-shirt, on Blake’s behalf or anyone else, and he’d do so without a second thought about it.
The first time Blake brought a man home from the bar, Hayden barely looked up from his geeky AP textbooks and his endless SAT prep. He never said a word other than, “He was nice, Blake,” over coffee and bacon the next morning. And so Blake kept on keeping on; love ’em, leave ’em, replace ’em. Smash and dash, all interested parties welcome, long-term prospects need not apply.
For the most part, the years — and everyone he’s encountered in them — have been good to him.
But this — this long walk down super-heated patio pavers that Blake can almost feel through his sandals, this trek towards a group of strangers he’s signed up to literally screw on camera for money — this is the first time he feels uneasy. Like leaning so hard into that deeply-ingrained mentality might be a mistake.
What, is he going to be eighty and preying on singles in bars? Do eighty-year-old women go to bars? Maybe by then, scientists will have figured out how to pour consciousness into a younger body. Or maybe someone will have discovered the Fountain of Youth.
Blake can dream.
As he approaches the group, Blake can hear everyone chattering on about how hot he is, grinning wide, perfect smiles and turning hopeful faces towards his, waiting to offer a hug or to shake his hand. And that’s generally how his intros go — hugs from the girls and back-clapping handshakes from the guys, easy stuff. Blake learns that the petite brunette’s name is Leah, finds out she feels temptingly perfect in his arms, and gets a full-on confirmation that she’s interested when she’s slow to pull away and makes sure to press her chest tight against his, complete with a shimmy.
All through it, Blake keeps the smile plastered across his face, and he flirts like a goddamn champion. The three glasses of champagne he downs within the first ten minutes of being on the patio don’t hurt, but he must be doing something right, because no one yells “Cut!” or tries to make Blake redo his entrance.
Small miracles.
The co-ed group naturally separates into two at one point, which no one from the crew discourages. Clustering off to one side are Leah, another pretty brunette named Amber, who looks a lot like Leah but with darker skin, and an ultra-pale redhead who must be wearing SPF one hundred to not be suffering second degree burns in the unrelenting sun. Blake’s pretty certain her name is Ariana, but she pulled away from him quickly, going tense and ducking her head when he’d hugged her hello, so he can’t be completely sure.
