One To Watch(115)
“Hey, stranger.” Lauren grinned at Bea—she was waiting beside the stage door, where Bea would be making her big entrance after the commercial break.
“Hi!” Bea was surprised to see her. “I thought you’d be in the booth with the director?”
“I’m going back in a second,” Lauren explained, “but I wanted to see you before you head out there. How’ve you been? Single life agree with you?”
“Right, something new and different.” Bea laughed. “But I have to say, it’s exhilarating to wake up every morning and know there’s not a single man whose emotional turmoil is my responsibility.”
“See?” Lauren grinned. “You’re coming around to my way of thinking.”
“Really?” Bea was skeptical. “After everything we went through this season, you still have absolutely no interest in finding love?”
“Definitely not,” Lauren scoffed. “I mean, you saw the choices I make—Luc, of all people. No one should let me anywhere near a relationship, even if I did want one, you know?”
Bea recalled the first time she’d met Lauren, how envious she’d been of her disaffected attitude toward romance, wishing she could be equally blasé so she wouldn’t have to experience the excruciating pain of heartbreak. But now, she found she felt the opposite. Maybe Lauren really didn’t want a relationship, or maybe she was putting up a front to protect her own heart (Bea strongly suspected the latter). Either way, Bea had no desire to go backward. She treasured the openness, vulnerability, and wild possibility her life held now, and she wouldn’t trade that for anything, no matter how much it had cost to get here.
“Hey,” Lauren interrupted her thoughts, “did I do the right thing, asking you to do this? Did you do the right thing, saying yes?”
“Definitely.” Bea nodded. “At the very least, you did exactly what I hoped you’d do.”
“What’s that?”
Lauren looked puzzled, and Bea grinned warmly at her producer. “You changed my life.”
“Bea?” the stage manager called. “You’re on in thirty!”
He started counting down, and Lauren gave Bea’s hand a quick squeeze before she sprinted off toward the booth. As the cameras went live, Bea walked through the stage door and into a blazing spotlight—she waved and smiled, but she couldn’t see a damn thing. The audience roar was absolutely deafening; Bea had never experienced anything like it in her life. They were cheering and stomping and screaming her name, and Johnny came to guide her to the stage in the middle of the studio, where the infamous Main Squeeze couch awaited her.
“Wow,” Johnny said, once the screaming of the crowd had finally abated, “I don’t know that any Main Squeeze has ever gotten a reception like that one!”
That started the crowd cheering again.
“Thank you!” Bea exclaimed. “Honestly, it means so much to me that you’re here, and to have your support.”
“Let’s talk about that, Bea.” Johnny steered the conversation to the list of topics the producers had prepped for her. “What has all the public controversy around your season been like for you?”
“Obviously, some people didn’t think I looked the part of a romantic leading lady”—boos from the crowd—“but I knew that would be the case going into this. It’s one of the reasons I said yes to being on this show.”
“You said yes because you knew some people would object?”
“I wanted to prove that I had every right to be here,” Bea answered. “That I could star in a show about love just like any other woman.”
“How do you think that worked out, given that you were the first female Main Squeeze in history to turn down two proposals?”
Bea laughed. “I guess I showed that I deserve love and to be picky about it.”
The audience laughed, and applauded too.
“You talked about how the audience saw you—but what about how you see yourself? Did the show change that?”
“Yes,” Bea said, “definitely. The show took so many unexpected turns for me, right from the moment the first man stepped onstage the very first night. Seeing all these men who did conform to conventional ideals of what makes someone attractive—I was humiliated. Obviously, some of those men gave me reason to believe that they found me repulsive. And I’m ashamed to say this, but I think it’s important to be honest: There were moments when I believed them. I felt myself being dragged under by every bad thing that’s ever been said about me, and worse, every bad thing I’ve ever thought about myself.”
“In a way, you were your own worst enemy.”
“I don’t know that I was worse than Jefferson, but yeah, it wasn’t great.”
The audience laughed gently at this.
“And the hardest part was, because I was believing these terrible things about myself, I wasn’t believing the men who genuinely wanted to get to know me. I wasn’t even giving them a chance.”
“You were in a pretty bad funk, and you had to pull yourself out of it.”
“That’s right.”
“And how did you do that?”
“How does anyone do anything? With help! My best friend, Marin, came to set pretty early on, that was a real game changer for me. Then we went to Ohio, and I got to be with my family, which was great.”