One To Watch (47 page)

Once they arrived in Paris and the producers let Bea into her hotel room, she double-locked the door and crawled into bed, fully clothed. She was exhausted from being up most of the previous two nights—first a night of bliss with Luc, then a night of agony tossing and turning and wondering how this all could have gone so wrong. She was grateful that her first day in Paris was a travel day with no scheduled filming so she could finally get some rest, but try as she might, bone-tired as she was, sleep still wouldn’t come. Bea thought back to the first night of filming, to that anonymous man who’d taken one look at her and walked away. How ironic that Bea’s fears that others would follow in his footsteps never materialized until now—and when a man she truly cared for finally did choose to leave, it wasn’t because of Bea’s looks, but her lies.

Bea knew on some level that she wasn’t the only one to blame—that Asher was jealous and judgmental, that he’d made her feel insecure throughout this process, that he was probably already looking for an excuse to bail in order to have done so that quickly and completely. But here in this lovely hotel room with a view of the Seine, Bea felt hollow without him, like some essential part of her had been scooped out.

The sun rose, and Bea’s start time for her day of shooting came and went. The producers called and called, so she turned off the ringer on her hotel phone. Who was she even supposed to see today—Sam or Ray? She hadn’t technically said that Ray could stay, but she suspected Lauren would insist: It would be an awfully boring finale if Sam were the only man left.
And besides,
she thought,
Ray broke off his engagement and flew all the way here.
To see her. To try and work things out between them. To stop her from getting engaged to someone else. Someone else like Asher … the man she’d thought might really be her husband. And now, because of Ray, he was gone for good. Was that reason enough to dismiss Ray outright? Or was there a chance, after everything, that they really were meant to be together?

There was too much to think through, too many conflicting emotions to parse with no clean point of entry. Lacking any better ideas, Bea decided her best available option was to take a long, hot bath.

Her suite’s bathroom had bleached wooden floors, gleaming slate walls, and a gigantic soaking tub made of smooth white ceramic. Bea piled her hair into a bun and slipped into the steaming water, feeling like some tiny portion of the awfulness of the past twenty-four hours was beginning to leach out of her. Bea closed her eyes and willed herself, for just a moment, to relax.

That’s when the knocking started.

“Fucking fuck,” Bea muttered, keeping her eyes closed and willing the knocker to leave her alone. She ducked her head under the water, but when she came back up a few seconds later, the knocking was even louder, and was now accompanied by shouted entreaties.

“Bea, come on!” Lauren’s voice was muffled from the hallway, yet still had a piercing quality that was completely impossible to ignore. “I’ll stand out here and scream all day if I have to, you know I will! We have the whole floor, so there’s no one to complain! Come on, Bea! We have a finale to shoot, and you can’t hide in there forever! Aren’t you hungry? I brought pastries!”

Bea exhaled audibly. The truth was, she was starving. And as much as she wanted to shut herself away in this bathroom until everyone she’d ever met (and the collective consciousness of the Internet) had forgotten she’d ever agreed to do this show, she knew that wasn’t entirely tenable. So she dragged herself out of the tub, toweled her hair dry as best she could, and wrapped herself in an all-too-thin cotton robe before opening her door.

“Du Pain et Des Idées is your favorite, right?” Lauren affected an air of nonchalance. “That bakery up in the tenth? I sent a PA to get these for you.”

“You think you’re going to bring me a pistachio elephant ear and all will be instantly forgiven?” Bea narrowed her eyes, but she took the pastry Lauren held out to her all the same, and couldn’t help but utter a small groan of pleasure as she took the first perfect bite. Lauren came into the room and shut the door behind her.

“Bea.” Lauren looked contrite—and, Bea noted, a good deal more haggard than normal. She was in leggings and a sweatshirt herself, a far cry from her normally polished attire. “I need to tell you again how sorry I am about Luc.”

“What about Ray?” Bea’s voice was soft, but firm. “Are you sorry about him too? And Asher?”

“I had no idea Asher would walk out on you.” Lauren shook her head. “I mean, really, he couldn’t stick around to have a conversation? Couldn’t even wait to see if you would let Ray stay? I expected him to handle Ray’s arrival more maturely—didn’t you?”

“Maybe if you had warned me,” Bea argued, “I could have done something differently, or at least told him first about Ray being engaged.”

“Bea, come on. I’m still making a TV show here, I can’t just give you a quick heads-up about the biggest twist of the season.”

“But why do it!” Bea demanded. “Why bring Ray here at all?”

“Because I thought it was the right thing to do!” Lauren looked genuinely confused. “You decided that you wanted to find love on this show, and from everything he told me, the guy is genuinely in love with you—and he seemed to believe that you felt the same way. He insisted that you wouldn’t want to get engaged to someone else without knowing how he felt about you first, and I believed him. Yes, I orchestrated his arrival for maximum drama, but I never, ever thought you’d be so upset about it—and honestly, I’m still not totally sure why you are.”

“Because he hurt me,” Bea said quietly. “He hurt me more than anyone else in my life ever has.”

“And don’t you think,” Lauren asked gently, “that the reason he was able to hurt you so badly is because you care about him so much?”

Bea buried her face in her hands, knowing that of course Lauren was absolutely right, but desperately fearing what it could mean, after all this time, to open her heart back up to a man who had treated her so callously.

“I don’t know,” she rasped. “I honestly don’t know if I can do this.”

“Bea, I know you’re in pain. How could you not be? Yesterday morning, you thought you had Luc and Asher, and now you don’t have either of them. Of course you’re reeling; it would be insane if you weren’t. But I also need you to see the good in your situation. You’re in Paris. Sam is here, and he loves you. Ray is here, and he broke off his engagement for you. Millions of people are rooting for you to find love, and they think Asher and Luc are jerks. They want you to be happy. The question is whether you want that too.”

“And if what I really want, more than anything, is to walk off this set, buy a plane ticket, and go home?” Bea asked.

Lauren sighed. “Is that actually what you want? To shut yourself off from these men, to deny yourself the chance to find out whether you could really be with one of them? If you’d told me that when I first met you, Bea, I would have believed you. But after everything that’s happened, and how much you’ve changed? I don’t believe it now.”

“Even if that’s true,” Bea conceded, “I don’t know what to say to Sam, and I
really
don’t know what to say to Ray, and I—”

Bea’s voice broke. She’d never experienced this many intense emotions in her life, and she was starting to feel extremely ready to shove them all in a box to be shut in an attic and never seen again.

Lauren looked at her with sympathy. “Would it help if you talked to Marin?”

“Really?” Bea felt a small lurch of hope. “How?”

“Magic!” Lauren joked. “No, Skype, obviously. The camera guys will bring a laptop with a line to Marin, and you can video chat.”

“I’m really looking forward to the day when everything I do won’t be documented for an audience of millions.” Bea sighed.

“I’m getting a taste of that myself this week,” Lauren groused. Bea shot her a puzzled look.

Lauren picked up her phone and handed it over to Bea, who frowned.

“I’m not allowed to see a phone.”

“And I’m not allowed to sleep with a cast member, but here we are. Just look. It’ll make you feel better.”

Bea looked down—Lauren’s phone was open to an article on TMZ revealing, in big bold letters, that Lauren had slept with Luc.

“Holy shit,” Bea muttered.

“See?” Lauren prodded. “And you thought you were the only one having the week from hell.”

“One might argue you brought this on yourself,” Bea countered.

“Yeah, well.”

“Is this true?” Bea looked up from the article. “They really might fire you?”

“I’d like to see them try,” Lauren scoffed, but Bea could sense a chink in her usually steadfast confidence. “Last night was the highest-rated episode seven in franchise history.”

“Really?” Bea put down the phone. “Even higher than the time those two women ditched the Main Squeeze to run away together?”

“Yes!” Lauren beamed. “What did I tell you, Bea? People love you! Also, that lesbian plot was totally fake, but Farmer Greg was so boring, I had to do
something,
you know?”

Bea closed her eyes and smiled, happy to have any absurd situation to think about other than her own.

Lauren left her to get dressed, and a few minutes later, a camera crew arrived with a laptop, as promised.

“Babe!” Marin yelped from her window on the shiny screen. “What’s happening? Are you okay? They wouldn’t tell me anything, they just said you needed to talk.”

“Ray’s here,” Bea said, the gravity of the situation seeping back in as she spoke the words aloud.

“I saw that—what the hell is going on?? They just cut to black at the end of the episode, after you walked out of the kiss-off ceremony. What’s happened since? Have you heard from Asher?”

Bea shook her head. “I think he’s really gone, Mar.”

“Bea, no.” Marin covered her mouth. “He’s crazy about you, I know he is.”

“Not anymore.” Bea exhaled heavily. “You heard what he said.”

“He was just hurt,” Marin consoled her. “And insecure, and definitely jealous—you were totally right about that. But let’s come back to him. What’s happening with Sam? And Ray?”

“I haven’t seen either of them since the ceremony.”

“OUTSTANDING! Send Ray home immediately!”

“Without even talking to him? Mar, he broke up with Sarah and came all the way here—”

“He came all the way there when
he
wanted, to suit
his
needs, without a thought in the world for how it would affect you. He heard you might be getting engaged, and did he think,
Wow, maybe Bea finally has a shot at being happy with someone else
? No. He thought,
Hey, I’m Ray, I need to get on an airplane and make a mess of Bea’s life, because that’s my signature move.
And when his actions caused a really great guy to walk out on you, he was probably cheering internally that he managed to improve his odds. He’s a selfish asshole, Bea. That’s who he’s always been, and it’s who he’s always going to be. Send him home.”

Bea took a breath. “Asher didn’t leave because Ray showed up. He left because I lied to him.”

Marin rolled her eyes. “You have a right not to tell the world on television that you slept with someone engaged, okay? Wouldn’t you have discussed it privately with Asher at some point if Ray hadn’t shown up and forced your hand?”

“I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

“It does matter, Bea. It matters a lot whether you allow this man who has hurt you so much to hurt you even more.”

“I only have two men left,” Bea argued.

“Yeah, and one of them is a nice, sweet guy who’s head-over-heels in love with you, and the other has been doing his level best to make you miserable for the better part of a decade.”

“Well—doesn’t that mean something?” Bea pushed back, her anger rising. “That I’ve loved him for so long, that I’ve wanted to be with him all this time, and now, finally, here he is, saying he wants the same thing. How crazy would I have to be to throw that away?”

“Not as crazy as you’d have to be to waste another second on him. Do you want to turn back into the person you were last year? Breaking plans, crying every day, refusing to go on a single date? You were unglued. Why would you
ever
let him back into your life?”

“You don’t know what it’s like.” Bea felt bitterness creeping into her voice. “To think about someone so much for so many years, to dream about him and picture your life together. You’ve never felt that way about anyone.”

“Don’t do that, Bea. Don’t deflect. This isn’t about me, it’s about him. This is exactly why I told him to stop trying to contact you.”

Bea’s face went dark. “When did you do that?”

Marin opened her mouth, and then closed it.

“At the beginning of filming,” Marin admitted. “He texted me to tell you he’d been trying to reach you, but that none of his messages were going through …”

“Was this before or after you came to set to see me?”

Marin looked down. “It was before.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” Bea was horrified. “After all the months I spent begging for him to talk to me, you lied and kept it from me when he finally did?”

“Bea, I liked the guys I met so much, and I didn’t want Ray to ruin things with them—which, by the way, is exactly what he did.”

“It’s not Ray’s fault the producers orchestrated things so Asher would be totally blindsided!” Bea shot back. “Maybe you don’t always know best about my life, Marin. Maybe sometimes I get to make my own decisions—even if you’d rather I stay single like you forever.”

Marin shook her head. “You’re going to feel like a real idiot when this is on television and you hear how spiteful you sound.”

Bea turned to the camera operators. “I’m done with this conversation. Can we be done now?”

But they didn’t say anything—they just kept rolling.

“This isn’t you, Bea,” Marin pleaded. “He brings out the worst in you, because he makes you think he’s all you deserve.”

Bea couldn’t take it anymore. She slammed the laptop shut, then stormed back into the bathroom and closed the door.