Page 21 of Fan Favorite

01:00:00 EDIE AND BFF LAUREN / EDIE’S APARTMENT / SITTING ON COUCH

LAUREN: Did I always think Edie and Charlie would end up together? I mean, not really.

EDIE: She’s kidding.

EDIE AND ALICE PEPPER / MOTHER’S KITCHEN

EDIE: We never went to prom. I got the stomach flu, and really, he should’ve gone anyway, with our friends. He had a tuxedo and chipped in on the limo and everything. But he came over and sat on the couch with me. We watchedSteel Magnolias.And I fell asleep and he still didn’t turn it off—he watched the whole thing. He used to say to me “Drink your juice, Shelby!”

ALICE: I don’t understand what “adventurer” means. Do “adventurers” have 401Ks?

EDIE AND BFF LAUREN / EDIE’S APARTMENT / SITTING ON COUCH

EDIE: Do you have any advice for me as I embark on this journey?

LAUREN: Well, just be yourself because you are kind and funny and smart and wonderful and we don’t have time for any man who doesn’t see that, ok? And I love you.

CLOSE UP: EDIE AND BFF LAUREN HUGGING

LAUREN: [whispering] And if Charlie Bennett gives you any remind him where he came from. And that I will happily kick his . I don’t givea about his extreme sports , I remember his headgear, ok?

EDIE / CHILDHOOD BEDROOM / SURROUNDED BY OLD PHOTOS

EDIE: A lot of time has passed. But I feel like if there’s a guy you risk it all for, it’s him.

EDIE SKIPPING DOWN CHICAGO STREET

EDIE: I love you, Charlie Bennett!

7

At the end of a long hallway, behind a heavy wooden door meant to evoke the grandeur of California’s finest Spanish Colonial estates, there was an artificially moonlit patio and thirteen gorgeous women in a kaleidoscope of formal gowns, sipping champagne and brilliantly smiling/laughing/tossing their hair as they circled like sequined vultures aroundKeysuitor Bennett Charles. And at the other end of the hall, thirty feet from that door,The Key’s newest arrival was hyperventilating into a paper bag.

“I have dinner reservations,”Keyhost Adam Fox said, shoving his Rolex at Jessa in annoyance. “Will she be ready to go, I don’t know, before awards season?”

“Edie?” Jessa said, rubbing circles on Edie’s back. “You can do this, hon.”

Edie continued to puff into the bag, the essence of a Jimmy John’s sandwich assaulting her nostrils. The mic pack Velcroed around her waist had begun to sag, pulling with it her Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress, which, despite claiming to be“universally flattering,” was clearly not made for chesty gals who were pleasantly round in the middle.

Edie had just assumed the producers would give her something to wear for her big entrance. But apparently contestants wore their own clothes and did their own hair and makeup, so here Edie was with her tits hanging out of a four-hundred-dollar dress she’d purchased on her credit card without even trying it on because Jessa gave her approximately two seconds to choose something before the flight back to LA. Of course Jessa and the Nordstrom salesgirl had assured her it was a fantastic choice, that a “Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress never goes out of style.”

Bitches.

“All you need to do is stand up, take a deep breath, and walk through that door,” Jessa encouraged. “Everything you’ve ever wanted is waiting for you on the other side.”

Was it? Edie wondered. Because during the past three days of interviews and an assembly line of business operations—the three-hour consultation she’d had with the show’s psychologist, the meeting withThe Key’s lawyer, signing the massive contract and nondisclosure agreement, the STD testing and HPV vaccine, the hurried promotional photo shoot where Jessa had promised her it was no big deal that she was still wearing her UW-Madison sweatshirt, plus the whirlwind twenty-four-hour trip to Chicago to shoot her “intro package”—the fantasy of Charlie Bennett had felt very far away indeed.

How was Edie supposed to know if this was the bravest, most romantic thing she’d ever done, or if she was about to become a total laughingstock every Tuesday night? She stared at Jessa’s feet, which were now encased in Edie’s very own Birkenstock clogs. Back at the production offices, Jessa had taken one look at the clogs and found them so offensive and “English major-y” that she’d taken off her own suede mules and madeEdie trade. Then she’d arranged Edie’s sporadically curled hair around her shoulders and spun her toward the bathroom mirror for a final look. From the boobs up, the dress wasn’t too bad. A lot of cleavage, but Edie had a good collarbone and nice skin. They’d smiled at each other in the mirror and Edie had felt warm and excited, like Jessa was her friend and that this was about to be the best night of her life. But then Jessa stepped away, slipped the Birks onto her feet, cuffed her jeans, and somehow instantly looked chic, and suddenly Edie felt unsettled, like she and Jessa were from entirely different planets and there was no way Edie belonged here, not even for a second. It was like her “entrance look” was a metaphor for her entire life. She knew enough to go to Nordstrom and spend an entire car payment on a dress, but she still managed to fuck it up by choosing the wrong thing once she got there.

Edie tried to picture what was waiting on the other side of that door. She could very clearly see the army of women who didn’t choose the wrong dress or smudge mascara all over their face mid–panic attack. But what she couldn’t see was Charlie. Just when she needed to call upon their unshakable history the most—the backyard campouts where they’d have to pack it in early because he couldn’t stop sneezing, or the basement Ping-Pong tournaments that Lauren always won because no one could return the serve she perfected at summer camp when they were twelve—it suddenly all felt hazy and stupid and insignificant.

“I’m not kidding,” Adam Fox continued. “This little stunt is already over my contracted hours.”

People grow up. They change. They leave.

“Edie, babe,” Jessa said. “I know this is scary, but you’re fucking fabulous, and Bennett is gonna be thrilled to see you. How could he not be? You’ve gotta trust me.”

Maybe that was the problem. She didn’t trust Jessa. But any time Edie questioned something, Jessa was right there to tellher she was “overthinking.” Throughout the unbelievably quick trip to Chicago, they’d kept asking her to do things she would never do, like stare longingly into a Wicker Park bar at a pack of dudebros day drinking and watching football for “B-roll.” Or how about when they’d wanted to film in her childhood bedroom, and she’d told them it had been converted to a guest room years ago, so they’d gone out and bought what seemed to be an excessive number of stuffed animals to put on the bed and tacked a Britney Spears poster circa 2002 to the wall.

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