Meet Cute

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  “Oh, but thanks,” he adds just as he’s swarmed by people armed with cell phones and itineraries.

  As he’s quickly whisked away, crew members buzz around us like bees, changing the lighting for our contest. My throat goes dry, and my stomach feels suddenly heavy. It’s that same feeling I get when I’m driving somewhere and I know—I just know—I’ve taken a wrong turn or missed my exit no matter what my GPS says.

  “Okay, girls,” says Jill as she hands us each an apron and ridiculous chef hat, both emblazoned with the show logo. “It’s just like they said. You get an hour to cook and five minutes on the Internet with these bad boys.” She hands over two tablets, provided by sponsors too, I’m sure. “We’ll start rolling in a bit, and we won’t interfere, really, unless there’s an emergency. Oh, and uh, no talking to each other during this or trading secrets or something.” She smiles. “Not that you’d want to, right?”

  We both nod.

  After she walks away, Martha looks to me and says, “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.” It comes out like one of my brother’s long burps that he does on command.

  I laugh. “It’s just a dumb challenge,” I tell her. “Dylan doesn’t really care if you can cook.” Or maybe he just doesn’t care in general.

  She shakes her head. “You don’t get it. I really, really can’t cook. And not to be a total pain in the ass, but I’m a vegetarian, too. Just the sight of raw meat makes me want to puke.” The color begins to slowly drain from her face.

  I take a step closer. “Listen,” I whisper, my lips nearly brushing against her hair, “I know we’re not supposed to be helping each other, but just, like, do what I do.”

  For a brief moment, she squeezes my hand. “I don’t know how much that will help, but thank you. I really appreciate it.”

  As we’re carefully positioned with our tablets and notebooks in our own personal kitchens, facing opposite each other, cameras hover around us. I search for things like baking instructions and tips for breading and ketchup recipes. I’m not sure what Martha is searching for, but she looks downright manic.

  As our time ends, our tablets are taken away and we’re left with our notes, our ingredients, and our intuition.

  I decide to bake instead of deep-fry—mainly because I think it might be easier for Martha to follow along. I start in on the chicken, pounding it into submission. I search my supplies and come up with a few different shapes of dinosaur cookie-cutters. I push through the chicken, using my weight. It’s not easy, but it works.

  As I mix my bread crumbs and beat my eggs, I glance over to Martha, whose once beautiful velvet dress is covered in flour, despite her apron. She mumbles a stream of curse words, and I try to offer an encouraging smile, but she’s lost in her frustration. I feel awful for her, but the camera guys seem to be really into her cooking-nightmare meltdown.

  I don’t think that cooking is specifically for women, but in my house, my mom was always the one in the kitchen. It was her happy place, and she let me share that with her. But unfortunately, the kitchen was her one and only happy place in our house, so when she split when I was in seventh grade, her kitchen became mine.

  Nothing about being on camera makes me comfortable, but being in a kitchen can almost make me forget that millions of people will be watching me from the comfort of their homes in a few weeks’ time.

  As our hour fades into minutes, I put the finishing touches on my ketchup, including a sprig of parsley.

  “Time!” Jill shouts.

  Martha and I wait in silence for a few minutes as Dylan is summoned from his trailer. We both look and feel like messes.

  Nate and Dylan stand between Martha and me in front of a table with our presented entrées. Mine is a pile of dinosaur nuggets—some more misshapen than others—alongside what I hope is not-totally-disgusting ketchup made from scratch. And Martha’s dish is fury personified. On her plate is one uncooked chicken breast covered in ketchup with a giant chopping knife sticking out of it.

  I sigh. There’s no competition. One is edible and the other is decidedly . . . not.

  We quickly regroup, and Daria swings through to lightly powder our faces, but she takes no pains to hide the mess we’ve made of our hair and clothes.

  “Well,” says Nate as the cameras begin to roll again, “I guess we won’t be doing a blind taste test this time.”

  I look to Martha and can practically hear her gulp.

  “Uh, yeah,” says Dylan as he chuckles nervously. “Looks like some kind of horror movie over there.”

  Martha shrinks back a little. I guess there’s a chance she could still win, but it doesn’t look good.

  “June, let’s give your dish a go,” says Nate.

  I nod and hold my plate for the two of them, and they each swipe a nugget through ketchup before chomping down.

  “Hey, this is pretty great!” Dylan says, his mouth still full.

  “My wife’s gonna kill me if those bread crumbs have gluten in them,” says Nate. “But it was worth it!”

  I roll my eyes.

  “Cut!” shouts Jill. “Let’s get the girls all cleaned up and ready for the rose gazebo.”

  Daria waves for us to follow her back to the makeup trailer, and once again Dylan is ushered away by a crowd of assistants and managers.

  I practically jog to catch up to Martha. “Hey, are you okay?” I ask.

  She shakes her head, but says, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “It’s just a dumb TV show,” I tell her as we come to a stop at the trailer, the door swinging shut behind Daria.

  Martha turns to face me, and I can see that she’s pressing her lips shut in some attempt to hold back tears. She shakes her head again before finally bursting, tears streaming down her flour-coated cheeks. “I just thought that if I came on this show, and won some dumb date with this ridiculous singer who I don’t even really like . . . I just thought it would give me some kind of closure.” She uses the tips of her fingers to press under her eyes, like she’s trying to push the tears back in.

  I reach for her sticky hands and hold them tightly in mine. “That’s not silly or dumb or whatever,” I say. “I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to lose a sibling. Shit. I don’t even like my brother and I’d still be a wreck.”

  We stand there for a moment, hand in hand. We’re just two people who were randomly driven together in the most ludicrous of ways by some reality TV show that I can now say, without a doubt, is more fake than it is real. But standing here with her. This is real. There’s just something about her that makes me feel like we could really be something to each other in real life. For reasons I don’t know how to explain, Martha makes every nerve in my body light up like a Christmas tree. It’s like when Joey Scheck kissed me after eighth-grade graduation and for the first time ever I felt like my life was a movie and I was finally the star.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen with this ceremony, but I hope that there was a reason for all of this,” I finally say. “And maybe it’s not something you’ll understand anytime soon.”

  She looks up and squeezes my fingers tight before giving me a floppy shrug. “Or maybe I will.”

  The door swings open and we startle apart, like we’ve been caught doing something much more than holding hands. “Ladies! I can’t do my job without your faces!” says Daria.

  — — — —

  We look much more glamorous than we feel. In the makeup trailer, we gave ourselves glorified sponge baths in an attempt to rid ourselves of sweat and kitchen smells before Daria performed transformations on each of us.

  My waves have been refreshed and lay perfectly over my shoulders. Wardrobe has put me in a royal-blue chiffon dress that sweeps the floor. And Martha is downright stunning in a lacy burgundy dress with a trumpet skirt.

  After a few hours of waiting to be beckoned, we’re driven on a golf cart to one of the far-off lots behind the studio. The set looks like a small town square with a gazebo, and the whole place is dripping with twinkly lights.
I recognize it as the usual backdrop for the rose ceremony. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to me that this was a set and not some tiny little town center outside of Los Angeles, but it’s just as fake as the rest of the show. Still, it’s hard not to get swept up in the beauty of it—if you can manage to ignore Jill’s shouting and all the grunting camera operators.

  Nate is in his signature tux and Dylan wears his same holey jeans, but with the added touch of a slim-cut, flat, black button-down shirt.

  I think I’m going to win. How can they even pick Martha after the kitchen fiasco? But do I even want to win anymore? It’s hard to imagine my “date” with Dylan doing anything more than ruining the version of him that lives in my head. The version of him whose voice cradled me, letting me know that even in my darkest hour, I was not alone. Already, there’s this sense of mourning settling inside me that I can’t quite explain except to say that maybe the version of Dylan I’d built up in my head never existed at all. It’s nearly impossible for me to even recall the edge-of-my-seat excitement I felt this morning at the prospect of this moment.

  Nate and Dylan wait for us on the steps of the gazebo, where a propmaster stands with one yellow rose.

  Dylan wipes his brow as we take our places. “These lights are killer, huh?”

  I squint up at them, but they don’t seem so bad to me. Not any different from the interview lights at least.

  Nate pats his forehead to avoid messing up his makeup. “Yeah, they must be testing out something new.”

  Dylan cringes a little and calls out, “Lissa, we gonna wrap on this soon? I’m not feeling so hot.”

  “Yeah, babe,” someone answers from behind the sea of crew and cameras. “One and done. We’re out.”

  Dylan nods as Nate lets out a loud burp.

  I reach for Martha’s hand one last time, and her fingers intertwine with mine. “Almost over,” I whisper.

  She winks. “Maybe it wasn’t such a bust after all.”

  Jill counts down, and our hands drift apart as we await our completely unreal reality-TV-show fate.

  “Ladies, our time together has come to an end, and in just a moment one of you will move on to a very romantic one-on-one date with Dylan.” Nate gestures to Dylan.

  Dylan steps forward, the rose in his hand, and says, “I’ve had so much fun getting to know you both.”

  Getting to know us? Our paths barely even crossed.

  “And I want you to know,” he continues, “that I didn’t make this decision lightly. June, I’m so impressed by your dedication to not only me, but to my fans. Mega fans like you are what keep me going. And you slayed the kitchen challenge this afternoon. And, Martha, I feel like, whoa, for you and your family. It means so much to me that the last thing your sister heard was my voice. It’s so, like, meta.”

  My skin crawls at the thought of that information feeding his ego.

  He holds his stomach for a minute before adding, “But after what happened during the kitchen challenge today, it’s hard for me to tell if your—” He burps into his fist. “Excuse me.” And then again. “—if your heart is in it. Oh fuck. I feel like shit. I think I’m gonna—”

  And then I swear to God, everything that happens next occurs in slow motion. Dylan projectile vomits in my and Martha’s exact direction. The only thing that saves me is Martha pulling me out of the path of puke.

  “No, man, don’t do that,” says Nate. “You’re just gonna make me . . .” And then Nate is puking, too.

  Crew members and posse members crowd both Nate and Dylan, and Martha and I are pushed back even farther, reminding us both how very unimportant we actually are.

  “Those gross-ass chicken nuggets!” Dylan moans. “It’s food poisoning. That bitch poisoned me!”

  I turn to Martha, my eyes wide.

  Her hand flies up, the back of her palm pressed to my forehead. “How are you? Are you feeling all right?”

  I shake my head. “I was too nervous to eat all day.”

  She laughs. “Me too.”

  I clap a hand over my mouth, stumbling back. “Oh my God. I poisoned Dylan. The Dylan.”

  She waves off that notion. “Psh. He’ll live. They’re probably pumping him with fluids and gold as we speak.”

  We both take a minute to glance around. No one is looking for us or checking on us. It’s almost . . . a relief.

  Martha takes my hand. “Let’s blow this puke show!” She pulls me with her to a golf cart with the keys in the ignition.

  She slides in behind the wheel and I take my seat next to her as co-captain. “I gotta get out of this dress,” I tell her.

  “Me too. I feel like a total stranger.”

  As the sun sinks down behind the horizon she speeds off toward the makeup trailer where we left our street clothes.

  We both take turns changing inside the trailer, and when we’re done, it’s like a makeover reveal on a TV show except this time, it’s more of an un-makeover, where we just reveal ourselves. Our regular, normal, everyday selves.

  I stand beneath the dusky sky in my leggings and gold flats in my favorite dress—the bright yellow one covered in all kinds of food from, hot dogs and hamburgers to sundaes and doughnuts.

  Martha slinks down the steps toward me in the same stompy boots she wore earlier today and a short body-hugging violet knit skirt with a black T-shirt that says Do no harm, but take no sht. She’s the type of person who if you don’t want to kiss her, you probably want to be her. And I think I definitely want one of those things.

  “There you are,” I say, my words coming out breathier than I expected.

  “Here I am,” she says.

  A speeding golf cart stops to a halt next to us. “I was looking for you two,” says Daria, looking paler than I remember. She slumps against the steering wheel and groans.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “We just had to get out of there.”

  She shakes her head. “Trust me. Things got pretty bad back there.”

  “What do you mean?” asks Martha, taking the final step down. “Well, I guess we all ate whatever Dylan and Nate had and it was like a Puke Convention. Not a pretty thing,” she says.

  “Wait,” I say. “So it wasn’t me? I didn’t poison Dylan and Nate?”

  She shakes her head. “No way. No how. We think it must have been the crab dip from craft services.” She shakes her fist at the air. “Damn you, delicious crabs!”

  I laugh. Even when she’s been puking her guts up, Daria manages to be somebody I want to be friends with.

  She gets out and stumbles past us up the stairs. “You two had better head home. Jill will call you once she can pull her head out of a toilet, but my guess is we’re scrapping the episode.” She pauses for a moment, realizing that this might be crushing news for us. “You two were great, though. Really. I meet lots of shitty people on this job, and you both made my job a breeze. Go have fun tonight. For me.”

  Martha turns to me, one brow raised mischievously. “You got plans for tonight?”

  I bite down on my lip, forcing myself not to blurt something ridiculous, like I have to run an update on the fan site. “I had a date,” I finally say. “But looks like I got stood up.”

  “Still a good night for a date,” she says, taking my hand. “I’ve got a car.”

  I take an instinctive step toward her, like the only thing driving my body is nature. “What do you want to do?” I ask.

  And then she kisses me. Right on the lips. I expected it, but I didn’t. It’s the perfect mix of want and surprise, which aren’t two things I often find in the same place. She pulls back, lingering for a moment, her lips hovering above mine. “Something real,” she says.

  Say Everything

  — — — — — —

  HUNTLEY FITZPATRICK

  TO YOU HE’S that boy.

  The one who breezes through the door of the diner, blowing in fresh air and the pale green smell of still-distant spring. Always with the usual crew, the ones from the lacrosse te
am, full of high spirits and themselves. Your own age—you guess—but somehow younger—carefree, dead sure that the world is theirs to enjoy, with every intention of doing that. They swarm, laughing, jostling shoulders, into the biggest booth at the back, four on one side, four on the other. That boy sits on the outside, closest to the aisle. The others grab menus they don’t need, since they always order the same old things. Burgers, fries, milk shakes, hot apple pie overloaded with ice cream.

  All he ever gets is iced tea. Straight up, heavy on the lemon slices.

  Almost indistinguishable in their lacrosse clothes, those boys could be any team from anywhere. Except that when they wear their blue-blazer-and-khaki uniforms, it’s easy to know what school they come from. Private, preppie, one town over from here. In a different turn of fate, you would have been there, too. You might’ve been as carefree. No worries about money, certain someone would pick up after you. With a wince, you remember when you were like them, your major concern that the girls’ uniforms were ugly.

  The boys sweep through their meal—it barely takes ten minutes—crowd out, on to the next good time. That boy moves aside to let them go, flicks a glance toward you, as you hover by the cash register. He catches your eye for a moment, then ducks his head to take a long pull from his straw, the tea reduced to watery ice cubes by now.

  You walk up to his booth, heart hammering—why? You do this ten times an hour during your six-hour shift! But he’s always left with his friends before. Have they given him money this time or assumed he’d pay? “Rich kid” rolls off him like an overdose of Axe body spray.

  He’s been looking down, long lashes fanning his cheekbones, but glances up when you drop the check on the table, lips parting as though he’s about to say . . . what? Without a word, he flips his wallet from his jeans, pulls out cash. Bill after bill, slides them toward you.

  “This is the first time I’ve gotten a sixty-dollar tip on a two-dollar glass of iced tea.”

  Leaning back against the fake red leather of the booth, he gestures to the spaces where his friends had sat. A hasty scan shows you they’d barely covered their tabs, with bonus scatter of extra coins.