Page 22 of Heart to Heart
“Another Brittney. I wonder what would happen if you both had had the same last initial?” I asked, chuckling. “Heads would explode at the network, for sure.”
Sasha giggled quietly to herself, while Brittney L.’s eyes widened as though genuinely horrified by the thought. “Well,” she began, “one of us would just have to go by a synonym or something.”
With the level of confidence with which she’d made that proclamation, I almost wanted to agree with her.
“You mean a pseudonym?” Sasha asked. Her eyes met mine, communicating, I was certain, the same thought that was going through my head.
“Same difference.” Brittney L. waved her off as though she couldn’t be bothered with semantics.
“For fuck’s sake,” Sasha muttered.
“Hi, I’m Jennifer,” a voice from the back of the van called out. I squinted to see a cute blonde, resembling Mandy Moore back in her “Candy” days, in the last row of seats and waved back to her.
This was okay, not as bad as I thought it would be so far. Granted, I was a worst-case-scenario kind of girl. I could imagine a whole host of disasters. It was my superpower. But these ladies all—well, mostly—seemed somewhat normal. Who knows, maybe I would even make a friend or two. A friend who’s going to be dating the same guy as me with the same goal of making it far into the competition. Sure, it was complicated, but maybe we could form a camaraderie. After all,myultimate goal wasn’t to leave with Tristan.
The driver’s door opened, and Jay got into the driver’s seat, a cell phone to his ear. “The decoy van is off, and the paps aretailing it. We’re good to take off now. We’ll be there in about forty-five minutes.”
I looked around the van at the other women, none of whom seemed at all fazed by the events of the day. Almost as if this was all business as usual for them—totally normal to be ushered out of an airport and thrown inside a windowless van by a complete stranger.Punked. I was beingPunked. This was L.A.; it was feasible that Ashton Kutcher may have decided to reboot his old show and at any second, he would come sauntering around the corner. We’d share a laugh because that would make much more sense than reality did at the moment.
Jay set his phone down and turned to us. “We’ll be out of here in a couple of minutes. We just had a run-in with one of the rag mags, but we’ve been cleared to leave.”
“Where are we going?” I asked because no one else, it appeared, was going to.
“Seriously?” Brittney L. asked, flummoxed, as though she hadn’t just revealed that she had no idea what a synonym was.
“He’s taking us to the mansion,” Sasha answered.
I would bet even Kiki’s show notes—that I failed to read before leaving—wouldn’t have addressed the events that had taken place today. How could they have been as secretive as the producers had been? Had I paid attention to the show, maybe I would have picked up on the fact that the contestants are taken to the mansion before the show begins filming. It only made sense they would want to get them acclimated to the place. But their reactions whenever the limo doors opened always looked genuinely shocked, causing the audience to believe they were seeing the mansion—and their maybe future husband—for the first time.
I hope they didn’t expect that kind of Academy Award-level performance out of me.
The ride to our destination was largely silent, save for the occasional smacking of gum from Brittney L. and the usual cacophony of traffic, which began to fade away as we merged off the freeway and made our way out of the city and into the hills. I’d never been to California and couldn’t help but think to myself how nice it would be to take in my surroundings through, you know, windows, instead of the view from the windshield we were being treated to. Here's to hoping I would have at least a couple more days here before I was sent packing.
Minutes later, after the van turned down a road with decidedly less traffic, Jay made a left turn down a drive lined with Jacaranda trees, where a short distance down, we were greeted by a white privacy fence several feet taller than the van.
“It’s the fence from season twelve!” Hadley all but shouted, coming to life for the first time since our drive here began. “The one that Blaze tried to climb to chase after Veronica when she left the show.”
I inspected the fence as Jay came to a stop and rolled down the window to punch in a security code to open the gate. Either Blaze had a super-inflated sense of his athletic abilities, or he was hopped up on some sort of lovesick adrenaline because I could not see any way a normal human being could scale that thing—short of being Chris Hemsworth. I was pretty sure Chris Hemsworth could do just about anything.
The drive continued, and we met two more fences guarded by the world’s most bored-looking security guards before a sharp curve took us up a hill to the single most jaw-dropping home I’d ever seen in person. On television, theHeart to Heartmansion was impressive, but in real life, it was Mount Olympus personified. Spanning an obscene amount of square footage, the structure had been modeled after an Arthurian castle, with stone veneer siding providing a modern flair to an aesthetic that wassomething straight out of a fairy tale, which was exactly whatHeart to Heartattempted to sell every season.
A fairy tale.
Cinderella meets her Prince Charming, and they all live happily ever after for about four and half months—the average length of time a relationship from the show lasted after the season finale. That was one of the few facts I remembered from Kiki’s teachings.
Excited squeals and a flurry of chatter wound around me as Jay reminded us that no pictures were permitted, and if any were taken, we would be disqualified. In other words, Jay was a total buzzkill. However, that still did nothing to dampen the excitement of everyone, myself included, surprisingly. I’d never spent a night in a place like this before, and now I was going to be living here for at least a couple of days before being kicked to the curb.
“Do you think Tristan’s here?” Jennifer squealed from the back of the van, much to the misfortune of my eardrums.
“Of course, he’s not,” Brittney L. answered as though she were the authority on all things Tristan. “The guys never come to the mansion ahead of time.”
The van took a right turn down a circular drive, traveling counterclockwise, putting the fabled stone staircase in our view from the windshield. At the top of that staircase was where we would be meeting Tristan for the first time. Our one and only shot to make a first impression. A sudden end to the lighthearted glee in the van told me that the others were letting that sink in, too.
Don’t fuck up the landing, ladies.
Jay followed the curve of the circular drive, stopping at its apex, right in front of the stairs and the front door. He put the van in park, hopped out, and walked around the vehicle.Seconds later, the door opened, filling the space with blessed light.
“Okay, everyone, it’s time to get this party started. First, I’ll be collecting your cell phones though.” He no sooner got those words out than he began circulating large Ziploc bags labeled with our names. “You may send a quick text to your loved ones, letting them know you’re okay and that you will talk to them when you leave the mansion. After sending your texts, please turn your phones off and place them in your baggies before handing them to me and proceeding inside the mansion.”
