Eight Weeks to Mr. Right

by Archer, Amy

  At the hotel check-in, I gave the clerk my assigned name and was given a key card to a fifth-floor room. Curiosity got the better of me, and I asked, “Are you able to tell me who the other person is in my room?”

  He peered at the computer screen in front of him. “Jessica Bartholomew?”

  Of course. We were all using fake names. That could be anyone. I thanked the clerk and took my bag upstairs.

  Outside the room, I took a deep breath. Please don’t let me be roommates with someone who hates me, I thought. Then I slid the key card and pushed open the door.

  And there was Abby.

  “Oh thank god,” I couldn’t help but say in greeting, and she grinned at me.

  “Hey, stranger!”

  And then I realized what it meant that Abby was here in the hotel with me. I took the news with a much greater sense of calm than I’d expected.

  Isabella had won. Prissy, self-involved, fake-lashes Isabella. Andrew had chosen her out of all of us.

  And all I thought was, Okay.

  Well, there it was.

  We chatted for a few minutes about how odd it was to be in the national spotlight, and she told me about the job she’d taken after filming had ended. Like me — like many of us — she’d quit her waitressing job when she’d gotten accepted for the show. On her return, there hadn’t been a position open in the restaurant anymore, so she was taking on any available shifts but had gotten a job at a sex toy shop in the meantime.

  “You wouldn’t believe some of the people we get in there,” she said, and told me about a customer who came in every single day for two weeks asking if they had any edible lube yet.

  “He didn’t understand that we weren’t out, it just wasn’t something we carried,” she said, laughing.

  “Maybe he was hoping you’d make a note each time, and realize that fourteen people had requested it in two weeks,” I suggested.

  “Yes! We’d be stupid not to stock it.”

  Abby looked happy. It was refreshing to see a friendly face, and to realize that not everyone from the show had been shredded by their TV appearance like I had. “So…I take it you’re over being dumped, then, huh?” I ventured.

  She looked at me quizzically. “January? Did you not watch the show?”

  This was not the response I’d been expecting. “No,” I said. “Actually I didn’t. After my episode, I couldn’t face it anymore. The thought of seeing Andrew propose to one of you…” I drifted off. It was painful just saying it.

  “You should really watch the show,” she said.

  “Why?” Clearly something was up here. I searched her face, but she refused to give anything away. “It still hurts,” I explained. “And it caused me so much trouble. I was dating this really amazing guy, but…” Thinking about Ben made me sad, so I rushed to get back on topic. “I just don’t want anything to do with Mr. Right anymore, aside from the fact that I’m contractually obligated to be here for the live show.”

  I was astonished that she seemed to be in such good spirits about it all.

  Abby sat down next to me on my bed. “I get that. But you should really know what happened before you go out there tomorrow,” she said. “Come on, I’ll watch it with you. This will be the first episode of the whole show I’ve even seen.”

  I stared at her in amazement. “You haven’t been watching?”

  “Nope! I saw some of the previews, and that was plenty.”

  Abby was no Ben, but watching with someone else did made it easier. And she was right: I should know how it ended before going out there tomorrow in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers. I took a deep breath. Reluctantly, I said, “Okay. Let’s watch.”

  We settled against the headboard of my bed and rested Abby’s laptop on a pillow bridge between our legs. She easily found a site where we could stream the episode, and as the opening music came on I cringed. I couldn’t believe I was watching this, after all my promises to myself to stay away. Despite myself, I wondered whether Ben had watched this episode, and remembered how safe and secure I’d felt watching with him in our apartment all those weeks, like he would protect me from anything that could happen on the show.

  Almost anything.

  Carson Carmichael explained that this week’s episode was called “Thinking about the future,” and that it was a week in which some big decisions would be made. I rolled my eyes.

  First we watched Abby and Isabella getting ready to meet up with Andrew, putting on makeup and fixing their hair, with their voiceovers talking about how nervous they were. Isabella, in typical style, was bubbly and effusive, talking about what an amazing experience this all had been, and how she couldn’t believe she had met such a perfect man. So far, I was still the only one who had mentioned love, though, I realized with displeasure.

  Abby, on the other hand, was much more calm and collected, though she too said she was nervous. She brushed through her long, wavy brown hair and looked through dresses in the closet, picking out a summery peach-colored dress and green teardrop earrings.

  The producers sent both Abby and Isabella on dates to stereotypical proposal spots, which I found cruel to whoever got dumped. Isabella and Andrew ate dinner in front of the setting sun at an al fresco oceanside restaurant at the top of a cliff. They had the whole patio to themselves, and Isabella plastered on a goofy, lovey-dovey grin as she stared at Andrew and pulled strands of wind-blown hair away from her face with her pinkies.

  Everything about her seemed so carefully planned, so optimized to appear a certain way to both Andrew and the viewers. I wondered what she looked like without makeup, what she acted like when cameras weren’t around. I’d seen glimpses of her petty, grumpy side after sharing a dorm room with her during filming, but even then she had come off as both self-conscious and strategic.

  Then the show had interspersed moments from Abby’s date. They’d gone to a glamorous rooftop restaurant in downtown Los Angeles where they had a view of the sparkling lights of the city below. They too had the whole space to themselves.

  “This has been a wild ride,” Andrew said, eyes crinkling in a smile at Abby, who nodded.

  “It’s been a lot of fun,” she said.

  Back in Isabella’s date, Andrew reached across the table and took her hand. She sighed dreamily. “I could spend every night of my life here,” she said.

  “I could certainly eat that steak every day,” he said.

  The producers were doing everything they could to avoid giving away which of them was about to get a proposal — if either — and which would be dumped. I had a knot in my stomach just watching, and was glad I hadn’t been subjected to this torture.

  Abby and Andrew were drinking after-dinner cocktails, pretending they didn’t have a care in the world, and then took a horse-drawn carriage around a park. Was there even a park near the restaurant where they’d eaten, or was this another fabrication, a cut-and-paste by the show to make these moments look seamless? I didn’t bother asking Abby about it.

  After their dinner, Isabella and Andrew had walked down to the beach below, and Isabella had pretended not to struggle walking on the sand in high heels. There was a silhouetted image of them walking into the sunset together, and then what would’ve been a commercial break, if this site had streamed with commercials.

  Instead, the show was back instantly. It was the moment of truth. Andrew looked at Isabella. He took a deep breath. “Isabella,” he began. “You and I have had some great times together, starting with our very first date. You suggested we all take blue shots and really made things fun.”

  I couldn’t resist. “Ugh, that was the worst! You liked that?” I asked the screen.

  It really seemed like Andrew was about to propose to Isabella. This was hard to watch. I wished I hadn’t told Abby I’d watch with her. Why had she wanted me to see this?

  “And throughout our time together, you’ve lightened the mood and made me feel comfortable. I’m really glad you’ve been here these past few weeks.”

&
nbsp; She smiled sweetly at him. “I’m glad I’m here too,” she said.

  “But…” he continued, and you could see the panic emerge on her face at the word, “I’m looking for someone to make my bride. I think you’re a great girl, but at the end of the day, you’re not the one I want to take home to my mom.”

  “What?” I said, whipping toward Abby. “She didn’t win?”

  “But at least he was nice about it,” she said with a sarcastic roll of her eyes.

  Isabella’s face fell. Despite how I disliked her, I felt sorry for her. I knew what that moment of getting dumped on camera felt like, and it wasn’t fun. On the screen, Andrew and Isabella said their goodbyes, and she appeared tearfully in the confessional for her final thoughts.

  I hardly listened as she sobbed about how she’d thought she was going to marry him and she hadn’t seen this coming at all. My mind was whirring. So if Andrew hadn’t proposed to Isabella…did that mean he was engaged to Abby? Was that why Abby seemed so happy?

  But then why was she here, sharing a room with me instead of him?

  Maybe he didn’t propose to either of them, I thought. Maybe Ben had been right: it really was impossible to fall in love with someone in just eight weeks, to really love them enough to know that you wanted to be with them for the rest of your life. Seven weeks, really, since the eighth episode was tomorrow’s live show.

  With the commercials cut out, the show went straight into the conclusion of Abby’s date. She and Andrew got out of the carriage and stood in a lit rose garden under the full moon.

  “All those lights?” she said to me. “They put them in just for us.”

  On the show, Andrew held Abby’s hand and faced her. “Abby,” he said. “You’re a vivacious woman, and I’ve had so much fun with you over these last few weeks.” He’d used the word fun for both of them, I noticed, even though they were two very different people. Maybe that’s all he was looking for in a woman: fun. “From the moment we cooked dinner together in the second week, I knew that you were really special. And now…well, now I know just how special you are. We haven’t known each other long, but we’ve spent a lot of time together during the weeks we’ve had, and I’m falling in love with you.”

  I bit my lower lip, trying to hide from Abby how much it hurt to watch Andrew say those words to her. Though not as much as I had expected, come to think of it. It was like watching a long-lost old boyfriend propose to someone, rather than a current flame.

  Long-lost old boyfriend? my brain inquired. Like Ben?

  No. Not like Ben at all. At the mere suggestion of Ben proposing to someone else, my body tensed up.

  Before Abby could respond, Andrew fell to one knee. “Abigail Nelson, will you marry me?”

  There was an awkward pause. Then Abby said, “Andrew…I’m sorry, I thought you were going to give me a chance to respond before you did something like that.”

  I turned to Abby in shock. She glanced back at me and gave a guilty shrug.

  Andrew popped to his feet, his face already reddening. “Look….” she continued. “I think you have a lot of great qualities. And I’m glad I had the chance to get to know you. Honestly, I came on this date not knowing what I would say if you asked me to marry you today, because we have a lot of good things going for us. But when I looked inside myself, it just didn’t feel right.”

  “I can’t believe you rejected him,” I said, stunned.

  “Yeah, well, I wish he hadn’t proposed so quickly,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to embarrass him. The Internet really crucified me for that one.”

  I laughed. “I can imagine.” I turned back to her. “But…why didn’t you want to marry him?”

  She looked contemplative. “I don’t even really know him, for one,” she said. “But there were things I’d seen that I didn’t like about him. He’s pretty focused on himself. And he all but admitted to me during our night alone that he only came on the show to promote La Joie.”

  “He did?” I asked. “I mean, I kind of guessed that’s how it started, but I’m surprised he said that.”

  “Honestly, he was probably thrilled I said no. He got to appear sympathetic to consumers around the country, and squeezed some extra publicity out of the show.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, doubtful. “He seemed really into you. He seemed into several of us, really.” Then again, I’d seen how that had ended.

  “He did. But cooped up with the same few women for seven weeks, he was bound to fall for someone. But once he got back out in the real world, I guarantee you his interest would’ve waned.”

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “You’re probably right.”

  “And same for us,” she added. “Do you really think you would’ve chosen Andrew out of everyone in the world if he weren’t the only choice? If you weren’t in competition for him?”

  Slowly, I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  But I knew exactly who I would choose, if I’d had my choice of everyone. Ben. And whether he wanted to hear it or not, I needed him to know how I felt. And as soon as I got back to San Francisco, whether he wanted to hear it or not, I would tell him.

  WEEK 8

  The next day was a whirlwind of activity, starting with interviews for TV and magazines, none of which were allowed to air until after the finale. Then, at three-thirty, I headed back to my hotel room to get dressed for the show.

  I put on the sleek navy-blue dress I’d bought several weeks back, not nearly as revealing as I knew most of the women’s would be, but that wasn’t my style. I was done trying to be someone I wasn’t. There would be a makeup artist backstage to help us all get camera-ready before we went on, so I didn’t bother with makeup.

  Maybe just a touch of lip gloss, though. In the depths of my purse, my fingers closed around a tiny tube. But when I pulled it out, it wasn’t my lip gloss. It was the La Joie cologne sample I’d gotten from the perfume counter.

  Andrew’s scent.

  I hesitated, then found a cotton ball and spritzed the cologne on it, careful not to spray myself. Then I lifted the scented cotton to my nose, closed my eyes, and breathed in. Memories of our weeks of filming rushed back to me. The cologne was musky and powerful. I could smell the tobacco and cherries, along with subtler hints of vanilla, cardamom, and ginger. I thought of the way Andrew ran his fingers through his hair when he was thinking, the way he’d kissed me that evening in the kitchen while we were cooking, the way I’d fallen for him.

  His cologne reminded me of all these things, but more importantly, it put me back in my body during that time, reminded me of how I’d felt. I remembered the feeling of competition, the fear of rejection, the push and pull of wanting to be friends with the other women and feeling that I needed to keep my distance. Andrew’s cologne smelled like fear to me, and like the pain of rejection. It smelled like pretending to be someone I wasn’t, trying to shove myself into a mold that didn’t fit.

  And then there was the scent itself. I’d liked his cologne when I’d first smelled it, several years ago, and had come to like it even more once I associated it with him. But now it smelled like one of those heavy scents Ben had mentioned, one of the scents designed to cover up what was real about someone’s smell, rather than enhance it.

  It smelled contrived. Just like Andrew.

  I threw the cotton ball in the trash and dug through my bag until I found Ben’s jacket, then held it against my face and breathed in deeply. The fabric still smelled like him. I could smell all the components that made up his scent — the rosemary body wash, the orange-pine hand soap, the spicy deodorant. And beneath it all, holding it all together, I could smell the light, familiar fragrance that was Ben’s natural scent, the way he smelled when I buried my face in his neck.

  His scent was comforting. It calmed me down, slowed my heartbeat, made me feel safe and warm and protected. The scent made me feel stronger, more powerful, like a better, truer person. Just like Ben.

  I couldn’t wait for this orde
al to be over so that I could find him, tell him how much he meant to me, see if we might, possibly, still have a chance.

  But first, it was time to face Mr. Right.

  I stepped out into bright lights alongside the other women from the show, and we took our places on the stage. I forced myself to put on a smile, one last effort to appear as someone I wasn’t.

  Backstage, I’d seen the other women for the first time. Most had said hi with a friendlier expression than I’d expected, though more than anything they looked nervous. I could understand; it had been a long time since any of us had seen Andrew, and we’d all been rejected by him, except for Abby, of course.

  Only Brandi and Isabella were outright unfriendly, Brandi ignoring me entirely and Isabella rolling her eyes when she saw me. Oh well, I thought. Can’t win them all.

  The audience in the studio, on the other hand, seemed significantly more suspicious of me than were most of the women who’d actually spent time with me on the show. I could see a few audience members lean in together and whisper, glancing over at me, and I wondered what they were saying.

  I’d checked out of the hotel already, bringing my one small suitcase with me and leaving it backstage. As soon as the show was over, I was out of here. Back to the airport, right away.

  At five o’clock sharp, the cameras went on and Carson Carmichael stood in front of the audience, talking about what a fun show it had been, and how he looked forward to many more seasons.

  “And despite being only eight weeks long, we’ve really had some drama, have we not?” he asked, and I tried not to glare. “We have a lot of women up here today that I know you’re all dying to hear from, so let’s get started.”

  And then Andrew walked out, sleek and well-groomed as usual, with his perfectly coiffed hair made to look effortless, in a trim gray suit. He smiled at all of us and gave a little, apologetic wave, then gave the audience a broad grin and a bigger wave. “Hello!” he said to all of his potential customers.