Page 7 of The Love Rematch
Everyone around the table nods and Jake hastily joins in. He flew in on the red-eye this morning after two weeks of shooting intro footage for the male suitors, then came straight to the office—he barely knows what his name is, let alone what Nick’s talking about. Butfake it till you make itis practically gospel in this town.
“Good,” Nick says, then leans so close Jake can almost smell his putrid, eggy breath through the screen. “What the FUCK are we going to do?”
“It’s not that bad,” Trish Levithan, their other executive producer, says with a tired voice. They have a nickname for her on set—the Ice Queen. Partially due to her white-blonde hair always pulled back into a severe bun plus her sharp, inscrutable features, and partially due to her heartless, albeit brilliant, ability to break even the toughest contestant into a sniveling mess of emotions. If there’s anyone allowed to be exhausted by Nick, it’s her. The two of them have been together since the first season ofThe Love Match, in more ways than one if the rumors are true.
And they are.
Last season, Jake caught the two of them going at it like bunnies behind the mansion. He thought it was a rogue contestant and took a camera crew out there. If he were as cutthroat as some of his coworkers, he would have sold the footage to TMZ for a pretty penny, but Hollywood hasn’t completely broken his moral code…yet. Still, he didn’t say no when they offered him the promotion. MeetThe Love Match’s newest field producer. That title is the only reason he’s in this room right now, along with a handful of other senior crew.
To his left is Nina Chen, his co-field producer and the rebellious counterpart to Jake’s all-American pretty boy. He has dark brown waves, baby blues, and the build of a natural-born athlete, though in reality he avoided all sports until he moved to California and began surfing. While Nina has half of her stick-straight black hair buzzed to the scalp, a dark strip of liner across her monolid eyes, an endless supply of leather jackets, and a pair of well-worn biker boots to provide an extra few inches to her meager height. She’s intimidating, but with an open smile that cajoles everyone into believing she’s their best friend. It’s a lethal combo that’s made her incredible at this job, which she’s already held for six long years and twelve successful seasons.
Next to Nina sits Fred Jones, their director. He’s a former weight lifter who could double as their bodyguard, but behind his bulging muscles, he’s the sweetest person in the entire crew. A jar of homemade chin-chin rests in the center of the table, a gift his wife often supplies during filming. It’s amazing what those little Nigerian fried cookies do for morale.
Across from Nina and Fred are Craig Bolander and Eva Chase, the story producers who compile the raw footage into workable episodic storylines. They don’t get out much, and they look it. Both a little pale, both a little pudgy, both a little ’90s film geek in their attire. Eva’s a quintessential mousy brunette, and Craig’s balding with glasses.
And at the far side of the table sit the suits. Two network execs and a lawyer. Or is it two lawyers and a network exec? Honestly, Jake has a hard time keeping them straight. But he does know one thing—their presence spells disaster.
What the hell did I miss?
“Not that bad?” Nick retorts, cutting Trish off. “Not that bad! We have thirty suitors headed to set next week, an entire show to produce in the next two months, and no female lead! How much worse can it get?”
“Well,” Nina offers, “we—”
“That was rhetorical.”
“It was bound to get out eventually.” Trish steps in. “We’ve been working on a plan—”
“Yeah, well, that plan just took a big, steaming shit on all of our faces. Say goodbye to an on-air pregnancy test, followed by a surprise visit from Brad and a romantic proposal under the stars. We’ve lost control of the storyline—and I fuckinghatelosing control of the storyline! Now the whole goddamn world knows she’s pregnant, and anything we do will look like a hack job. She’s off the show—I don’t even want to mention her name. I mean, for fuck’s sake! We only learned about the pregnancy last week at her medical exam. How the hell did this random woman from bumfuck USA figure it out?”
The vein in the middle of Nick’s forehead pulses, an effect made all the more terrifying by the fact that nothing else on the upper part of his face can move.
Random woman?Jake wonders.
“Is one of you the leak?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Trish says.
“Maybe you got a little loose with that sidepiece you’ve been banging at the gym,” Nick continues, though as far as Jake knows, Nick’s the only person in the meeting who has any side-anythings. “And she told her friend, who told her friend, who told her mom, who told her knitting club, who told the whole fucking world?”
In a shocking display of emotion, Trish sighs and closes her eyes.
“None of us said anything,” Nina cuts in, while everyone else hastily concurs.
Again, Jake finds himself agreeing to something with less than a hundred percent honesty. Two nights ago, when his mom melted down on the phone—something about grandbabies and always being alone and a bunch of other things Jake blocked out—he caved and gave her the one sliver of information that would make the tirade stop. A bit of juicy gossip about her favorite show. But his mom knows better than to say anything to anyone else.
Doesn’t she?
“There was that reddit post a few days ago,” Fred says, ever the peacekeeper. “Someone got a photo of Ashleigh at the beach and her bikini left little to the imagination.”
Thank you, Fred.
“We quickly shut it down with some comments about body-shaming,” Nina adds. “It didn’t gain much traction, but if mommy dearest saw it…”
Mommy dearest?
Jake’s lost again.
“That’s all well and good,” one of the suits intervenes. “But we have a bigger problem—the new season starts filming in a week. It’s too expensive to adjust the schedule, and this franchise is too big to risk missing a season. We need a new lead, yesterday, and we have permission from the higher-ups to make it happen.”
