Page 48 of Heart to Heart
“Avery,” he said tenderly, his hands gently pulling my hands away from my face so we could look each other in the eye. “Talk to me.”
“You actually care about what I have to say?”
Confused, he nodded slowly, his hand lingering on mine. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“I guess I just made a lot of assumptions about you, given that you’re, you know, you’re you. Tristan Tate, the movie star.”
“I’m also Tristan Tate, the human, despite what others may have reported about me.”
“I can see that now.” I smiled shyly at him, hoping that what I was about to tell him wouldn’t get me kicked off the show, as much as that contradicted my feelings from earlier in the evening. “Just know that none of this has anything to do with you. You’ve exceeded so many of my expectations.”
He laughed. “Geez, Avery, you must have thought I was an insufferable asshole.”
“No,” I giggled. “Okay, well, maybe. I mean, I hoped I was wrong. But, if I’m being forthright with you, whether or not you were a dick didn’t matter to me as long as I made it to the runner-up spot in this competition.”
He stared at me, confusion evident. “Why the runner-up spot? Most people want to avoid losing if they can help it.”
“Because the runner-up reaps more monetary rewards than the winner.”
Understanding dawned on him, and I felt like I was the asshole for admitting what I just had. Nodding, Tristan leaned back against the wall, his image of me probably shattering into a million pieces.
“You’re here for the money and only the money?”
“Yes,” I answered, feeling like a world-class asshole now, “but it’s not like it sounds. You see, the pandemic hit my family’s business hard. That cake you got up close and personal withthat first day is the result of my mom living her dream. A dream that’s in jeopardy of coming to an end without financial assistance. I’m just a student whose dream of being a lawyer is being funded by her parents. My parents made so many sacrifices for me that I wanted to do anything I could for them. So, when Kiki, my best friend—who’s a big fan of the show, by the way—saw that they were holding auditions and that you were going to be on this season, she basically forced me to enter. I never thought I’d be chosen, but here we are.”
“Yeah,” Tristan said, “here we are.”
“If you don’t want to keep me here now, I completely understand. Just know that no matter what happens, like I said, I won’t tell anyone what I heard. I promise you.”
Tristan softened. “Thank you, Avery. That’s very gracious of you.” He slumped down onto a chair, letting out a breath as though he’d been holding it for the last five minutes. In the course of thirty seconds, he looked as though he’d been relieved of the weight of the world. A smile returning to his face, he looked over at me. “I’m not going to send you home. I’ll keep you here for as long as you need to get the money you need to help your family. That’s a promise I’m making to you.”
My eyes glistened with tears, and I struggled to fight them back. “You know this isn’t a quid pro quo situation, right? I wasn’t expecting anything in return.”
Tristan nodded. “I know. That’s why I’m doing it.”
“Well, then it’s set. I’m officially fake-dating my favorite movie star. It’s like both my favorite romance tropes had a baby.”
“That’s one way to look at it.” Tristan laughed.
“But if someone or someones here finds their way into your heart, you can let me go, Tristan. I’ll understand. I want you to be happy. I do.”
He stared at me for a beat longer than I would expect for him to form a response, making me think I’d said something wrong.
“I mean,” I said, backtracking, “if things between you and— Rachel, is it?—fizzle out, that is. That must be why you can’t fall in love with any of the ladies here because you already have one?”
“Whoa. Whoa. No, Avery. Rachel is my sister, and the only person in the world I feel like I can be myself around. She’s in Rome on vacation. I couldn’t sleep; I knew she would be awake, so, I called her.”
I was embarrassed by how relieved I was to hear that Tristan was single. Like it somehow would benefit me.
“She sounds like a great sister. I hope my brother and I can have that kind of relationship someday. You know, when he’s done being an insufferable teenager.” That’s where I should have ended that conversation, but the word vomit I’d been suffering from all night was nowhere near coming to an end. “But I don’t get it. If you aren’t seeing anyone, why is it a problem for you to fall in love with anyone here? Why can’t you have a career and a relationship?”
“You haven’t been in Hollywood for very long,” Tristan said, amused. “In order to be marketable, I have to be available. It’s all to sell the illusion.”
“But then why are you on a reality dating show?”
“Because it’s a show. Viewers want to see the romance, to root for the hero to find love. But in the real world, if we were to meet each other on the street, they also want to believe that the man they fell in love with on television, the man they’ve perceived me to be, is also available to them, so that the fantasies they’ve conjured in their heads may come true.”
“Selling a fantasy.”
