Page 37 of Heart to Heart
“I have the results of last night’s voting,” he proclaimed, far more excited than a grown man with an Ivy League education ought to be by the results of a reality dating show.
John had barely finished the sentence before Wanda sprang into action, snatching the paper out of his hand with the accuracy and stealth of an osprey plucking a fish from the sea. Stunned, John stood with his hand held up for several seconds, before his hand fell back down to his side.
“Huh,” Wanda muttered, inspecting the list. “I guess a cake to the nether regions is considered endearing nowadays.”
Avery. She’d made the cut from the audience. Not that I was surprised. She’d been one of the more relatable women. However, as quickly as my heart soared, it crashed back down to the ground even quicker. If I was going to take her out of the competition, I would have to use my one and only veto, which meant she would know that I most definitely wanted her out myself. It would be worse than me simply not choosing her. It would be singling her out, giving her the impression that she’d done something wrong when nothing could be further from the truth.
“Eh, this list isn’t necessarily a shocker,” Wanda announced, suddenly bored as she shoved it in my face. I grabbed it and inspected it further, seeing Avery perched at the top of the list. In second place, no surprise, was Bianca.
“You’d better get to deciding who you’re going to choose out of the fifteen girls who didn’t make the top ten from the audience vote. Unless, of course, you want to really shake things up and throw out your veto now. I wouldn’t recommend that, though. You need to save that and spring it out as a surprise later in the season. Make it a real shocker.”
I glanced up at Wanda’s now bored face incredulously. These were people’s lives she wanted to toy with and use as entertainment. I would venture to guess that at least some of them may develop real feelings for me, and to utilize a tool created by the show to drop a metaphorical bomb on one of them for a ratings grab made me want to walk off the set.
If only my career didn’t depend on this.
“Well, I’d better leave you to it,” Wanda said, patting me on the shoulder. “Wear the burgundy suit. You don’t see that color worn much. It will make you stand out and bring out your eyes. A win-win.”
Giving Wanda a salute in response, I glanced back down at the ladies who’d made the top ten, wondering what the hell I was going to do now.
“Oh, and Tristan,” Wanda said, drawing my attention back to her. “Let’s keep surprises to a minimum today, okay?”
Without waiting for my response, she walked out of my trailer with John behind her. He threw a pitying look in my direction as he ambled out the door.
It was because of me that Avery was even here. Plucking her from her life, I’d thrown her into the circus that is my life. Even from what little I knew about her, I could tell she was too good for all this. These ladies were going to chew her up and spit her out.
I didn’t want to see the look I’d witnessed on her face after Bianca kissed me again. It’d hurt me just as much as the kiss had hurt her, and maybe I was a coward, but I couldn’t bring myself to face her again that night. Instead, I’d told producers that I’d suddenly felt ill and had gone back to my trailer. In the words of Miley Cyrus, Avery came into my life like a wrecking ball, and if I don’t send her home, she might just demolish every chance I had to salvage the life I lost.
CHAPTER 21
AVERY
“Arewe going to stand here all night?” Brittney Q. asked no one in particular. We anxiously awaited to be called into the rose garden, where we would learn our fate like lambs being led to slaughter. Brittney Q. was wearing a high-neck chiffon dress to nix the possibility of one of her boobs from making a break for it again, or at least, I suspected that was the reason.
Stomach in knots, I was glad I’d worn my flats. I didn’t need to be both sick and in pain at the same time. I’m sure neither would translate well on television. If Tristan was going to eliminate me, at least I wanted to maintain some form of dignity. Well, whatever dignity was left.
About the only one of us who seemed perfectly fine was—shocker—Bianca. Women like Bianca never lost at anything in their entire lives.
“If this doesn’t wrap up soon, I’m going to get hangry,” Sasha grumbled next to me. “Why did I opt for putting on my eyelashes over grabbing one of those crepes in the kitchen when I had the chance? Curse you, past Sasha, and your vanity. Maybe one of the viewers at home will sense my suffering and send me a box of cookies.”
I giggled, my stomach also making noises of its own. Great. How I could be sick and hungry at the same time, I didn’t know. Leave it to my stomach to contradict itself. “If we survive this together,” I said, as though we were getting ready to storm the beaches of Normandy instead of waiting for the results of a dating show, “we’ll lock ourselves inside the pantry and throw ourselves our own victory picnic.”
“That’s the best idea I’ve heard since coming here. You, my friend, have a deal.” We fist-bumped to solidify our plan just as Kamila walked inside the mansion to cheers.
The first forty-five minutes of the live show were spent recapping the last episode with soundbites and interviews from us and Tristan intermingled within, all designed to make the audience at home try to guess who made the top ten or who may have made the best early impression on Tristan. Results of the audience vote and Tristan’s personal picks would take up the rest of the time.
“Okay, ladies, we just broke for commercial. I need you to walk single file and start filtering onto the risers we’ve set up outside. Be careful, but also be quick because we have roughly fifty-three seconds before we’re back on the air again.”
Kamila threw open the door as they finished their sentence and gestured for us all to go and go now. In a powerwalk from hell, we rushed to the garden where the tiered risers were set up in front of a camera. Common sense would dictate that those in the front of the line would fill in the top tier, with those in the back delegated to the bottom tier. And for the most part, that happened. Until it was Bianca’s turn to climb the riser. Instead of climbing up to the third tier, she opted to stand at the bottom tier, right smack dab in the middle, putting her front and center with the camera and forcing the rest of us to scoot around her. By the time it was my turn in line, we had approximately twenty-five seconds and were in the middle of filling up the second tier.
Sasha took a spot on the riser beside me, with Taylor standing next to her. Exhaling a nervous breath after we were firmly in place, I smoothed my hands down the satin fabric of the buttercup yellow dress I’d picked out for the evening, trying not to feel even more self-conscious than normal among the slew of beautiful women wearing dresses I’d have to sell a kidney to afford.
“We’re back in five…four…,” the cameraman began his countdown and Kamila appeared, taking their place on the mark drawn on the patio in chalk. The camera turned at an angle so that only they, not us, were in the shot.
“Welcome back,” they greeted. “You’ve seen the beginning of Tristan’s journey in his quest to find his new leading lady. Introductions were made; impressions that no doubt stuck with Tristan were left. But who made an impression on the audience, and, most importantly, which of these lucky ladies made the biggest impression on Tristan’s heart? The results are in.”
Kamila turned to face us, and a queasiness overcame me. My heart beat so erratically I thought it would tear through my chest like a scene fromAlien. It was one thing to be on camera for a taped show; it was a completely different animal to be in front of one during a live show, where every mistake you make would be in full view of the audience at home. And here I was, having to smile for the camera while the rest of me wanted to run away. Although before I could move to make a leap from the riser, Kamila began speaking again.
“Results have been tabulated after a record number of votes were cast. Which of these twenty-five women will be staying in the competition for Tristan’s heart and which five will be going home brokenhearted?”
