One To Watch(11)

Bea knew that pining after him was fruitless. One drunken, sloppy kiss five years ago; one perfect, awful night six months ago. He wasn’t the love of her life—he wasn’t even returning her texts. So why the hell couldn’t she move on?

Bea dragged herself out of bed and ran through her calendar for the day—more or less empty since L.A. was slow to get back to the grind after the holidays. Nothing until her meeting at the Standard at three.

Lauren Mathers. How totally strange.

When her post blew up, Bea vaguely expected—okay, fantasized—that someone from Main Squeeze would reach out to her, maybe invite her to consult on the show, participate in some way? But the show’s producers had refused to acknowledge Bea’s post at all, not even with a bland press statement. Their strategy had been to ride out the criticism in silence—and it had worked, more or less. Bea’s post was only a story for a couple of weeks; there’d been a subsequent bout of thinkpieces debating the impact of the lack of body diversity in pop culture, but then those died out too.

So it was incomprehensible to Bea why the new executive producer of Main Squeeze would be reaching out now that her post was all but forgotten. Bea had emailed her agent, Olivia, immediately after Lauren DMed her, but Olivia couldn’t dig up any dirt from her sources at ABS, so Bea was going into this meeting essentially blind.

It’s probably just a get-to-know-you, Olivia had emailed, to make you less inclined to drag them through the mud again when the new season starts in March. Which reminds me—we should DEF get you booked on some morning shows around the premiere. Maybe some late shows too. You’re funny, right?

Figuring out what to wear to drinks at the Standard was a futile endeavor. That particular part of town was the epicenter of L.A.’s looks-obsessed culture, where everyone was either an aspiring movie star or aspiring to sleep with one—people who couldn’t possibly fathom that Bea could be proud of her body. But Bea was determined to go to the meeting in a bold, dare-you-to-look-away style, so after an hour of weighing options, she settled on one of her favorite looks: lavender coveralls with a playful snake pattern from Nooworks, cinched with a top-stitched taupe corset belt to suggest a more defined waist, decadent cognac booties with a stacked wooden heel, all topped off with her favorite Tom Ford aviators and oversized rose-gold hoop earrings studded with rhinestones.

She arrived ten minutes early, but Lauren was already waiting—she rose from their table and rushed to greet Bea as soon as she walked out onto the pool deck.

“Bea! So great to meet you.” Lauren’s voice matched her appearance: rich, sharp, and deliberate. Rail thin in skinny jeans, a silk tank, a hunter-green blazer, and sky-high mules, Lauren looked every inch the moneyed Yale grad Bea had Insta-stalked earlier that day. Her glossy auburn hair was thick and straight, her skin creamy and freckled, her hazel eyes vividly alert—it was instantly apparent to Bea that this was a woman who missed nothing.

“Lauren, hey.” Bea smiled, instinctively patting down her own wild waves (made more ungovernable by her universal insistence on driving with the top down on her clunky vintage Saab convertible, which was avocado green and affectionately nicknamed Kermit the Car).

“So you’re early to everything too?” Lauren asked as they got seated at a table overlooking the pool and the sprawling Hollywood hills beyond. “Not the way people roll in this city.”

“Not usually,” Bea admitted, “but traffic was nonexistent. I love L.A. from Christmas to Sundance.”

“Oh God, same!” Lauren laughed. “The only thing better is Coachella—it’s like every asshole in the city gets raptured and you can park wherever you want. Hey!” She turned to the waitress Bea hadn’t seen approach. “Can we get some chips and guac, and maybe some of those good off-menu summer rolls? And I put in an order for two French 75s with the bartender—are those coming?”

“Yep! Let me grab them for you.”

“Great.”

Lauren handed their unopened menus to the waitress, who bounced off without bothering to engage with Bea at all. Bea turned to Lauren, her suspicion rising.

“So you know my favorite drink?” Bea asked.

“Bea, I think you’re going to find I know an unnerving amount about you.”

“And why is that?” Bea asked, unable to quash her curiosity. A delicious smile spread across Lauren’s face.

“What would you say,” she said slowly, turning the words over in her mouth, “if I told you that you’re my pick to be the next Main Squeeze?”

“Excuse me?”

“French 75s!” The waitress was back, depositing their drinks. Lauren lifted hers to clink glasses with Bea, but Bea couldn’t think, let alone move.

“Okay,” Lauren said gently, “I’m seeing now that maybe I should have worked up to that a little better. But fuck, Bea, isn’t this exciting? You’re going to change the face of reality television.”

“So …” Bea’s throat felt dry. “You’re saying …”

Lauren put down her drink and leaned in. “I’m saying, I want you to be the next star of Main Squeeze. I want to handpick twenty-five men to compete for your attention, and I want you to get engaged to one of them on television. I want to transform the way America sees plus-size women. I want to explode your career and change your life.”