Page 22 of Fan Favorite

Thank God for Lauren. When the producers suggested they sit on the bed in literal pajamas and giggle about how cute Charlie is (and was) and maybe also braid each other’s hair (???) or have a lighthearted pillow fight (!!!), Lauren had laughed right in their faces and said, “Please. I have a career.” She did, however, agree to be interviewed after the producers told Edie that she needed her best friend to give her intro package “dimension.” Edie clutched Lauren’s arm and said “Do-this-for-me-do-this-for-me-do-this-for-me,” but then Lauren refused to film with the boxes everywhere (she thought it would make Edie look like a hoarder), so the PAs were sent to haul the boxes to the second bedroom and bring in throw pillows and a couple of lamps and a rug from West Elm (all Edie had to do was post a photo on her Instagram when the show was airing and tag West Elm, #ad #sponsored) andvoilà!Edie had an apartment.

Later, Lauren’s confidence had inspired Edie to refuse when they’d asked her to dance—literally dance!—down her street yelling, “I love you, Bennett Charles!” which seemed not only presumptuous (it’s not like she’d beenpiningfor him since high school) but also completely psychotic. Jessa assured her this was just the sort of exaggeration the show was made of and that it would all make sense in the end when she was standing on a mountain top, engaged to Charlie Bennett. But Edie still hadn’tbeen sold, so eventually they’d compromised on Edie skipping and yelling, “I’m coming for you, Charlie Bennett!” and then they’d filmed that over and over again, with all her neighbors peering out their windows and stopping on the sidewalk to stare while their dogs shat in the grass, until Edie was finally so mortified that she gave the producers one quick “I love you, Charlie Bennett!” just so they could go back inside.

Jessa had this way of soothing her, of working her, that seemed entirely suspect, but that Edie nevertheless succumbed to repeatedly. She was just so goddamn good at it! Edie worried that Jessa was working her now. Preparing to sacrifice her to the reality TV gods. She continued to huff and puff into the bag and desperately wanted to text Lauren, who was quick to assess any situation and provide a reasonable course of action. But Edie’s phone was gone, dropped into a Ziploc with her name scrawled on it by a production assistant when they’d landed back in LA, and it was unclear to Edie how much of this current panic was brought on from suddenly being untethered from her entire life, the threat of seeing Charlie again, or simply the speed with which everything had happened.

The first wave of panic set in last night when Edie realized she was actually going to leave her entire life for seven weeks on basically zero notice. Should she have thought about this before? Sure. But had she really believed she was going to be on this show?Exactly.But Jessa was always quick with solutions. She’d rubbed Edie’s back and signaled to her assistant, Dan, to bring Edie a glass of wine while she hyperventilated on the couch. Who would take care of Nacho Bell Grande?No problem!Dan hired a tween who lived in Edie’s building (a girl so starstruck by the cameras that she would’ve worked for a signed headshot of Adam Fox alone) to take care of the cat, check the mail, and generally watch over the apartment while Edie was gone. But how was Edie supposed to leave work for two months?Easy!The Key’s lawyer would interface with her company’s HR and negotiate Edie’s leave. But what in the hell was she going to tell Alice?Wasn’t it obvious?That Edie would be engaged in less than two months! Jessa called Alice herself and somehow charmed her so thoroughly that Alice dusted off a Chanel suit and even agreed to appear on camera. But—and perhaps most alarming, once thoroughly considered—Edie had absolutely nothing to wear on TV.No worries!They’d have plenty of time to shop back in LA, and they’d just make a quick pre-airport pit stop at the Michigan Avenue Nordstrom and pick up something sexy and fabulous for her grand entrance.

So, of course, Edie agreed. And then spent the entire four-hour flight back to Los Angeles working on her outstanding editing projects, passing off what she couldn’t get done to her cubicle mate, Jill, transferring the last of her savings into checking to cover next month’s rent and bills, and making random arrangements, like canceling her next haircut and becoming increasingly anxious when her laptop was confiscated by a production assistant at LAX. Did they really have to take every single communication device she owned? Wasn’t she a full-fledged adult who could both appear on a reality showandstay in contact with her friends? But what really pushed Edie over the edge was when they’d finally arrived at theKeymansion and she’d caught herself in a full-length mirror and noticed she looked like she was wearing some fancy geometric robe, at least one size too small.

“I don’t know, she won’t talk to me,” Jessa said to some-one new.

A pair of designer loafers appeared. Oh, great, they’d brought in the big guns. Edie hadn’t seen Peter since their initial interview two and a half days ago. He bent down until his face was level with hers. “How’re we feeling, Pepper?”

“Not great, Peter,” she yelled into the bag. “Like this is a really bad idea.”

“Well, you know, only when we’re confronted with death do we ever truly feel alive.”

Without thinking, Edie took the Jimmy John’s bag off her face and stood up, ready to go off on this morbid motherfucker, but when their eyes met, his were twinkling. He elbowed her in the side. “C’mon, that was hilarious,” he said with a smile.

God, he was the worst. Hot-and-cold guys like Peter were the ultimate siren song to Edie’s need to please. She wasn’t even here for Peter, but somehow his complete detachment and then sudden interest, compounded with his authority over the entire show, made her want him to like her. It didn’t help that he was extremely hot. It was like he’d stepped out of a J.Crew catalog from 1994 with this normcore hotness, this sort of restrained masculinity that snuck up on you. His understated, preppy clothes and everyman haircut put you at ease, but then the longer you were around him, suddenly it became impossible to ignore how his green eyes had this very sexy intensity, especially when he took his glasses off. And how thick and touchable his brown hair was. And that clearly he worked out, not in a bulging biceps sort of way, but in that perfectly trim waist in khakis sort of way. Everything he said or did seemed to be tinged with arrogance, and clearly Edie needed a shit-ton of therapy, because even this she found irritatingly attractive.

“Hand over the bag,” he said, and reluctantly she did, though her heart was still racing and her hands were shaking. It must be exhausting, keeping up with a man this existential. To his point, she did, however, feel very much alive, though she wasn’t going to admit it and wasn’t sure she liked it very much. Perhaps an existence dulled by wine andReal Housewiveswas more her speed?

Peter put his hand on her shoulder and pulled her toward him, so he could speak directly into her ear. “Trust me,” he said, his breath sending tingles down her back. “This is the best part.It might feel like the worst part, but right now, the moment before something happens—anything is possible. Anything could happen. It’s magic.” He pulled back and looked at her seriously. “Do you know what I mean?”

Edie stared at him, trying to assess how he was telling her this, as a friend or as a producer. Because on some level, what he was saying with his minty-fresh breath did make some kind of sense—this was the very last moment before the reckoning of Charlie Bennett, an event seventeen years in the making. What strange twists of fate had to happen to bring each and every one of them here tonight? And if she did believe in magic—at the very least she believed inromance, which was its own sort of magic—then what could be more magical than the moment she gathered all her courage and humbly presented herself to Charlie Bennett once again?

“Forget the cameras,” Peter whispered in her ear. “You get to choose who you are in this moment. You. And you’ve just got to roll the dice. Shoot your shot. It’s what you came here to do.” Peter pulled away from her and they stared at each other for a moment, Edie searching his face and finding, unbelievably, what looked to be a calm certitude, a solid belief in…her?

Suddenly she felt electric.

A knowing smile spread across Peter’s face, and he pulled her back to him. “Now why are you fucking around like you can’t do this? We both know you can handle whatever comes next.”

They separated, and suddenly Edie knew he was right. Of course she could do this.

Peter nodded and the energy around them shifted, like it was no longer just the two of them. “It’s just one foot in front of the other.” He clapped her on the shoulder like they were businessmen making deals on the golf course. “Ted’ll be with you the whole time.”

From behind a camera, Ted gave Edie a thumbs-up.

“It’s the beginning of your love story!” Jessa enthused, shaking Edie by the arms. “And I, for one, amsuperexcited.” Jessa pulled Edie into a hug, and over Jessa’s shoulder, Edie could see Peter walking away. “Just tell him you never stopped thinking about him and that you want to reconnect and see where it goes.”

“Let’s roll,” Peter said to the crew.

Edie took a deep breath and pulled together every ounce of hope and strength and grit she had to put one suede mule in front of the other. She could feel Ted filming her from behind as she walked, and she wondered how her ass looked. Suddenly her right mule slipped, and she stumbled on the uneven stone tile. The crew gasped. Edie broke her fall against the wall, only slightly upsetting a painting of a Tuscan vineyard.

“I’m okay! I’m okay!” she yelled.

“She’s okay!” Peter yelled. “Keep going!”

Edie recovered and eventually made it to the heavy wooden door in one piece. She looked behind her at Ted and his camera, at the sound guy following along with his boom mic, and at the rest of the production team at the other end of the hall, Jessa smiling at her with a big thumbs-up, Peter staring at a monitor with his arms crossed and holding his chin in one hand. Edie thought that though this wasn’t how she pictured falling in love, it did have its own modern storybook charm. And if she could choose who she wanted to be, Edie wanted to be a woman who loved and was loved in return. Who risked it all.

And so she took a deep breath and pushed open the door to her happy ending.

8

Bennett Charles was in love.

And he’d never been more in love in his entire life.

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