One To Watch (21 page)

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically small.

“What’s holding you back?” He wasn’t defensive, just genuinely inquisitive.

Bea’s chest felt tight with emotion, with some deeply buried feeling struggling to exorcise itself. She wanted to say something eloquent, but failing that, she said something honest: “I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of making a fool of myself. Or believing in the wrong person. Or getting hurt.”

“And a kiss could lead to all that?”

Bea nodded, her eyes wet. She hated herself for not being able to do this simple thing that came so easily to so many people.

“Okay, then.” Sam took a step back, then dropped dramatically to one knee and kissed her hand. “That’ll have to do for today.”

Bea laughed through her tears. “What the hell are you doing?”

“We’re in front of a castle, Bea! You gotta let me do the Prince Charming bit.”

“And that’s enough for you?”

Sam stood up and stepped close to Bea.

“If time is what you need, I can give you that. If reassurance is what you need, I can give you that too.”

Bea threw her arms around Sam’s neck and hugged him tightly.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

The sun was bright and warm, and Bea heard the distant shouts of children. The park was finally open, reminding Bea that this moment that had been just theirs would soon belong to everyone.

Avid viewers of
Main Squeeze
know that aside from getting engaged and living happily ever after, there are two prizes that contestants on the show are hoping to win:

The first is more Instagram followers, which leads to more #SponCon (that’s
sponsored content,
wherein advertisers pay ~influencers~ up to $10,000 per post, depending how many followers they have). The second is more camera time (which translates to more fame, which translates to, you guessed it, more Instagram followers)—and, if you’re really lucky, a coveted spot on one of
Main Squeeze
’s many spin-off series, such as perennial favorite
Main Squeeze Mansion,
where twenty castoffs from previous seasons spend the summer in the mansion looking for love.

These spots are usually reserved for fan favorites, but a couple always go to notorious villains—and this year, Nash and Cooper are in the clear lead for that title. The duo have become completely inseparable, spending seemingly every waking moment calling Bea a whale, a cow, a hippo, a hog, a heifer (which is another word for cow, for those keeping track at home!), and, perhaps most memorably of all, a bacon-wrapped ball of squishy lard.

Nash and Cooper might think these antics will increase their chances of being cast in a spin-off, but one
Main Squeeze
fan, Lilia Jamm from Helena, Montana, wants to make sure Nash and Cooper never bathe in the bright lights of the
Main Squeeze
cameras again.

“Nash and Cooper are bullies,” Jamm wrote in her petition on the website change.biz to ban the pair from all future
Main Squeeze
spin-offs. “They are MEAN, pure and simple, and they should not be rewarded for their rude behavior. What does a bully want? ATTENTION!!!!! So let’s not give it to them!!!!!!”

Jamm isn’t the only fan who feels this way—at the time of this article’s posting, her petition already had more than 20,000 signatures. It remains to be seen whether the
Main Squeeze
producers will listen, but one thing’s for sure: All of us watching this season are waiting on tenterhooks for Nash and Cooper to face some serious consequences for their constant belittling of Bea.

During the month before they started filming, Lauren had asked Bea if she had any particular dream dates, either in L.A. or around the world. In Los Angeles (aside from a free meal at any truly great restaurant, or In-N-Out, frankly), Bea had only one answer: She’d always fantasized about having the Los Angeles County Museum of Art all to herself.

LACMA was Bea’s sanctuary in L.A., the place where she felt most comfortable. When she left her home in suburban Ohio to start college at UCLA, one of the first things Bea did was get on a bus to visit this museum. She wandered through the galleries for hours, lost in the vivid colors, the ancient artifacts, the outsized sculptures that made her feel like a tiny person at home with giants, her favorite childhood story come to life.

Bea had dreamed of being alone in a museum since she was a kid reading
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
with a flashlight under the covers. So when Lauren told her she’d be doing just that for her date with Asher, she felt a mix of trepidation and elation. Of all the men in the house, Asher seemed the most averse to self-indulgent fantasies—so it made Bea a little uncomfortable that he was about to join in for hers.

Alison had a host of outfit options, but all of them felt wrong to Bea—a sequined Sachin & Babi cocktail dress was too fancy (it was just a museum, not a gala), but a pair of slacks and a sleek button-down from Roland Mouret seemed too businesslike. They finally settled on a Sally LaPointe silk pajama–inspired outfit in sapphire blue that matched Bea’s eyes almost exactly: easy, flowing pants and a matching blouse with an asymmetrical hemline, paired with nude strappy Prada sandals.

“Classy and sexy at the same time,” Alison said, but Bea struggled to feel either as the hair and makeup people gave her a fresh face and tousled waves.

As the production van made its way through West Hollywood’s crowded streets toward LACMA, Bea’s nerves seemed to coil more and more tightly, wondering if the night with Asher would be congenial, or if he had more accusations to levy—accusations she still had absolutely no idea how to answer.

She didn’t relax until the rows of lanterns outside LACMA came into view—the iconic sculpture where so many tourists snapped their selfies without ever bothering to venture into the museum beyond. There were no tourists tonight, though; the entire LACMA complex was blocked off for filming.

The lantern sculpture was called
Urban Light,
and it consisted of 202 immaculately restored antique streetlamps placed in careful rows of ascending height. The producers had Asher waiting in one of the middle rows, leaning against a lantern with his tall, easy posture, his lanky frame cast in warm light and blue shadow. With his gray jeans and a button-down shirt and backlit silhouette, Bea could almost imagine he was Ray as she approached him.

“Bea. Nice to see you. You look great.” His tone was awkward, stilted, like this was a real date. The thought made Bea smile—if this was a “real” date, what were all the others?

“Thanks.” She gestured toward the museum entrance. “Shall we?”

Asher nodded, and they walked off in silence.
This is going to be some really compelling TV,
Bea thought, and nearly laughed again as they walked inside.

“I always start at this one gallery on the third floor,” she explained. “Do you mind if we go there first?”

“Lead the way.”

They rode the elevator up, and Bea guided them through a maze of galleries to one you’d hardly know existed unless you were looking for it—or got lucky. Tucked in a corner past rooms full of modernist masterpieces was the museum’s sole impressionist gallery: precious Cézannes, scant Renoirs, and even a few Monets. Bea walked over to her favorite painting in the room, the bridge at Giverny at sunrise, Asher following in her wake.

“Hey.” Asher moved beside her, his arm brushing against hers. “I owe you an apology.”

Bea kept her gaze trained on the painting, tried to keep her tone casual. “Oh?”

He turned to face her. “This isn’t the way I want to say this, but I hope you’ll understand why I have to.”

She furrowed her brow. “What isn’t the way you want to say it?”

“Fuck.” Asher exhaled.

“No cursing!” a producer piped in.

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Bea, from my vantage point on that fucking boat, it seemed like you were goddamn pretending with every man you fucking encountered. I didn’t realize until much shit piss later how awful the other men fucking were to you that day. If I had, I never would have fucking confronted you the way I did. You have every fucking right to be angry with me, and I apologize for my goddamn behavior. I was feeling annoyed and insecure, and I fucking took it out on you. Which was, you know.”

“Fucking shitty?” Bea chimed in with a small smile.

Asher nodded. “Exactly goddamn right.”

“Asher, come on.” The producer shoved his way past the cameras and into their setup. “You know we can’t use any of that. We need to take the whole apology again.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.” Asher folded his arms. “The point is to assure Bea my apology is genuine. If I give you something that would air on television to make me look like a great guy, how is she supposed to know if I’m serving my interests or hers?”

Bea felt her whole heart lift—for the first time since this show started, she finally had a way to know that a man was telling her the truth. Bea was half-convinced Lauren would find a way to use this footage to make Asher into a joke on the show, but at this particular moment, she couldn’t find it in herself to care.

“Can I ask”—Bea took a step toward him—“if you felt like I wasn’t the person you came here to meet, why didn’t you leave?”

“I made a promise that I would really try to make this work.”

Bea smiled. “That’s funny.”

“Is it? Why?”

“I made the same promise. As recently as two days ago, in fact.”

“Yeah? And how’s that going for you?”

Bea looked up at him long enough for it to get uncomfortable—except it didn’t.

“I don’t know yet.”

Asher smiled at her. “Is it cliché if I ask if we can start over?”

Bea laughed. “Absolutely, it definitely is.”

“So I shouldn’t do the thing where I reach out my hand to shake yours and say, ‘Hi, I’m Asher.’”

“Not unless you want me to kick you off the show right here and now.”

“Ah, an escape hatch! Good to know.”

“Hey!” Bea faked being offended, but they were both still beaming.

“Do you want to go downstairs and see some modern stuff?” she asked.

He nodded, and without another word about it, they walked down the museum’s wide central staircase side by side.

The more time they spent ambling through the museum’s dozens of galleries, surrounded by Rothkos and Picassos, the more Bea found herself enjoying Asher’s company. He listened attentively while she talked about Picasso’s use of hats to add levity to paintings of his depressed friend, the photographer Dora Maar. She’d written her art history thesis in college about Picasso’s reduction of a fellow artist to her clothes and her emotions, as if that were the truth of her.

“Well,” he asked, “how do you find the truth of someone, then?”

“If not through their hats?”

“I’m serious.” He nudged her. “Tell me something true.”

Bea opened her mouth, then closed it again, her heart suddenly pounding.

“It’s okay,” Asher encouraged her. “I’m listening.”

“I’m afraid that at the end of all this, I’ll be alone. And all the people who’ve said horrible things about my body will say, ‘See? We were right about her. We were right about all of it.’”

“And if you never really take a risk, you’ll never have the chance to find out if they were?” Asher asked pointedly.

“You’re going to have to stop doing that.” Bea blushed.

“Doing what?”

“Seeing past my tough exterior.”

“I like your tough exterior.” Asher’s lips quirked in a small smile. “When I look at you, I like everything I see.”

When they walked out of the museum into the crisp spring night, Bea wasn’t ready to leave. The producers told her they had time for one more stop, so Bea led Asher to the cavernous Resnick Pavilion, which had a new exhibit showcasing some of the museum’s more controversial works of the last sixty years.

“This looks remarkably like a pot I made at summer camp,” Asher said, pointing to a lumpy brown sculpture.