‘I thought your mum’s intense opposition to you coming on the show might have got to you at the last minute.’
‘She’s still not thrilled about it,’ I replied. ‘She thinks I’m throwing myself into a fantasy world instead of dealing with the real one. But I’m on such reduced hours at the shop right now that I’m not really making any money. She might not be a fan of me being on the show, but she is a fan of me having an income, and a hundred bucks a day is better than nothing.’
‘Aren’t mechanics considered essential workers?’
‘Technically yes, but only in emergencies. With everyone in lockdown, hardly anyone’s driving, so…’
‘I still can’t believe you’re a mechanic,’ Dylan said, shaking her head as we took our seats. The ones we were allowed to sit in were marked with stickers, carefully spaced for social distancing. ‘That blew my mind. Whenever you talked about the shop where you worked I was picturing, like, a cupcake shop or something.’
‘I’m more complicated than I seem,’ I said. ‘Slightly, anyway.’
‘Why cars?’
I shrugged. ‘I’ve always been good with my hands.’
‘God, men must love you,’ Dylan said. ‘You’re like a whole category of porn in one person.’
You should see how they react when they find out I like women,I thought, but didn’t say.
It wasn’t that I thought she would react badly. I’d developed a good radar over the years, and I couldn’t imagine Dylan having any kind of problem with me coming out to her.
But I’d learned from years of watchingMarry Me, Julietthat if you shared a secret with even one person, it would eventually get out. Even if that person was trustworthy – which I fully believed Dylan was – it’d get out. How could it not? They were filming you constantly. That was how a contestant had been outed as pan a few seasons back. She’d told her best friend on the show, and somehow – producers, probably? – it got back to the Romeo, and he’d immediately started angling for a threesome.
So no. No thank you. None of that for me, please. ‘Oh hey, I’m bi, BTW’ was a conversation that could wait until after filming.
‘Ladies!’ producer Murray called, standing on the little stage at the front of the room. ‘If I can have your attention, please?’
‘You see what I mean about the dad meets daddy vibes, right?’ Dylan whispered to me, leaning across the space between our seats. ‘He’s, like, perfectly in the middle.’
I stifled a laugh behind my mask.
Murray launched into a long lecture about how the show was going to work –about how we’d be locked down for two weeks in the hotel and tested regularly for the virus before filming started, about the virus-free closed-set bubble that the show was going to shoot in, about our contracts, and about how Tom Zelig is the host, not a second Romeo, besides, he’s married so please please please stop being horny for Z,he is not for you.
I listened intently. I always made sure I was clear on the instructions for things so I didn’t make silly mistakes. I took notes on my phone so I wouldn’t forget anything.
… which was why I saw the text from Jac the instant it popped up.
You’re going on reality TV? What the actual fuck, Mandie.
‘… shoot for six weeks – about two episodes a week, twelve altogether – then there’ll be a gap of a couple of months before the premiere,’ I dimly heard Murray say.
The second text came through a moment later.Don’t you have any self-respect?
I’d been punched in the stomach twice in my life: once in high school in a drama class incident gone wrong, and once when I was doing my apprenticeship, by a dude desperate to prove that chicks just couldn’t hack it in the industry.
Jac, it turned out, could deliver that same kind of blow – the one that doubles you over, that makes it impossible to breathe, that takes you down to the ground – in a single text.
‘Are you all right?’ Dylan whispered.
I couldn’t speak. I just showed her the phone.
‘Your ex?’ she asked.
I nodded. Murray was talking about money now and how much (little) we were all going to get paid, and I knew I should be listening, but…
Don’t you have any self-respect?How did Jac always know exactly which combination of words would hurt the most?
‘Delete it,’ Dylan said.
