Page 7 of Fan Favorite

“I don’t mind unloading the dishwasher,” Edie said, biting her lip and staring at yesterday’s dishes.

“Don’t get mad, but I’m gonna ask you again: Is this about Brian?”

Edie huffed. Just because the breakup with Brian had broken Edie into a million little pieces didn’t meaneverydecision Edie made now or in the future was about Brian! And those million little pieces weren’t even really aboutBrianas much as they were about the existential crisis the breakup with Brian had caused. Sure, Edie had been hurt many times before, but this was a thirty-five-year-old woman’s hurt. A hurt that encompassed every disappointment, every broken dream, and every bad decision she’d ever made and knotted them up into one big blanket of despair that Edie had wrapped around herself like a shroud. For two weeks after he’d broken things off, Edie had told her boss she had mono and laid in bed watchingThe Great British Bakeoff(when she needed to be soothed) or early seasons ofGrey’s Anatomy(when she needed to sob). Periodically the iPad would go black and demand to know “Are you still watching?” and Edie would watch the tears snake down her face in its murky reflection.

She looked like an old, sad person.

Shewasan old, sad person.

Eventually Edie had been forced from her bed when the movers started pounding at the door. She’d stupidly given up her apartment and signed the lease and paid the deposit on the new place herself because Brian was mid-divorce and blah blah blah it would be easier that way. And so, when he’d lefther, she’d still had to move. Move out of the little one-bedroom in Lakeview where she’d become an adult. Edie suddenly felt nostalgic for every part of her old apartment, even though every spring it had ants, and the bathroom was tiled pea green, and it was on the third floor and hauling groceries up there was a real pain in the ass. The day the movers arrived, Edie had done such a poor job of packing that they’d just started shoving her things into boxes while grumbling and exchanging angry looks. Edie had stood in the kitchen, sort of wrapping dishes but mostly just standing there with a tape gun stuck uselessly in her hand, until Lauren had shown up and taken over.

It wasn’t that Edie didn’t know she was a mess. She did. She was just somehow helpless in the face of it.

The thing was, for the past thirteen years Edie Pepper had lived in a major city filled with men. And for the past thirteen years, she’d been dated and dumped and dated and dumped, yet somehow, after every bad date or unreturned text or bad sexual encounter where some man tried to gag her with his dick, Edie had always been able to replenish her wellspring of hope. Because facing the possibility that this might be it, that none of life’s big joys were meant for her—no husband, no house, no babies, no family vacations, no Disneyland!—was even more painful than nursing her hope for a great big love back to health over and over again.

And then she’d met Brian.

Their first date was at Guthrie’s, a bar in Wrigleyville that had endless stacks of board games. Edie thought it was perfect and adorable as they drank draft beers and played the game of Life. At the end, instead of counting their individual monies and assets, he’d taken his little blue peg man and his little blue peg child out of his little blue car and put them in her little pink car with her little pink peg woman and said, “Life’s better together, dontcha think?” And then he’d leaned over the board and kissedher. Can you even imagine? He was smart and thoughtful and laughed at her jokes, and even though he preferred to have sex the exact same way every single time, she always came.

This is it, she’d thought.This is finally it.

On the day she moved to the too-big, too-expensive apartment in Roscoe Village, she’d told the movers somewhat hysterically not to put anything in the second bedroom that had been meant for Brian’s two-year-old son, Cayden. After the movers left, she’d stood in there, running her fingers over the vintage built-in bookshelves she’d planned to fill with books about bears and frogs and pigeons finding their way in the world. Losing Cayden, a little person she had absolutely no claim to, broke her heart. For the love she felt for him, for the warm feeling of family she felt when the three of them were together, and for the ever present and suddenly screaming fear that because of all of her flaws, she would miss out on the fundamental human experience that was motherhood.

But that had been weeks ago, and Edie was basically all better now.

“It was literally the craziest thing I’d seen on television since that dragon burned up the Iron Throne—like, it understood the quest for the throne itself was what killed Daenerys, which was like, wait, does this dragonactuallyunderstand Westerosi politics right now?” Edie said in a rush. She paused and took a breath. More calmly she continued: “What I’m trying to say is, I was a teensy bit drunk and a whole lot shocked to see Charlie Bennett on my TV, and I’m sorry I wasted your time. I was out of my mind tweeting at you last night.”

“Are you kidding me? We’rethrilledyou tweeted at us,”Keyproducer Jessa Johnson enthused. Her voice was bouncy,Californian. “Peter—that’s our showrunner—thinks you’re the rock Bennett needs to get through this process, and he can’t wait to meet you!”

“Wait, what?Really?”

“Oh, yeah, of course. We’re hoping you’ll come to LA tomorrow for a chat.”

Edie could not believe what she was hearing—fly to Los Angeles in what, less than twenty-four hours? “Are you serious?” Edie asked. “I have to work tomorrow.”

“I don’t know how familiar you are with the show,” Jessa continued, “but after Wyatt Cash, we’re more focused than ever on telling stories about true love. And you and Bennett have all thishistory—I just loved that photo of the two of you. Can you send more? We really think you would inject the show with authenticity, you know? Totally different from the other girls.”

Oh, yes, Edie did know. Obviously, the other girls hadn’t known Charlie Bennett since kindergarten like Edie had. She could already envision the kind of conversations they were having, sitting on some romantic moonlit patio.

The other girls: So, what’s your favorite color? What’s your favorite food?

Edie: Remember that time we learned all the moves toDirty Dancingin my basement? Except I was Johnny and you were Baby because you were still smaller than me, and that’s the only way we could execute the lift?

“I don’t see this as just a one- or two-episode arc,” Jessa continued. “I see you and Bennett engaged. What’s more romantic than falling in love with your high school sweetheart all over again? I’m excited just thinking about it.”

As much as Edie tried to keep Lauren’s warnings top of mind, Jessa’s enthusiasm easily ignited Edie’s manic optimism all over again. Whatwasmore romantic than falling in love with your high school sweetheart all over again?

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Jessa added.

Edie pictured her life as it was now and would be in the foreseeable future. Snooze her alarm five times instead of getting up and working out (even though her intention was always to work out). Finally roll out of bed. Commute downtown. Arrive at cubicle. Scour the internet. Write and copyedit boring things until lunch (the highlight of her day, because Edie always paid extra for guacamole). Return to office. Scroll on her phone. Sit in boring meetings about boring things. Try to find someone to go to happy hour with, but everyone’s married. Go on an internet date that would inevitably be awful, even though she’d put makeup on. Return home. Pizza. Wine. Bravo. Despair. Go to bed with a cat instead of a man. Rinse and repeat.

The way Edie saw it, there were only two options: go to Los Angeles and reclaim the love of her life, or stay here and, what,unpack her spoons?

What Edie understood love to be was this: Love was the future. It was the way out. Love was what would change everything. Being in love and getting married and buying a home and starting a family, this was how Edie—since she was a little kid watchingFamily TiesandRoseanneandThe Cosby Show—saw her life playing out. And so, sure, theKeyof it all seemed insane(it was insane), but wasn’t Edie at the end of the line? She was thirty-five years old, and she’d made enough life choices that they’d all started to stack up and stack up and now she was left trying to shove her foot in a closing door before she was locked out for good.

“We believe in your love story,” Jessa said.

And just like that, Edie was calling in sick and packing her bags for Los Angeles, because she believed in it, too.

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