This Is 35

by Stacey Wiedower

Erin clicked publish post and swiped away the tears that traveled in slow rivulets down both cheeks—misery that stood in marked contrast to the post's playful tone. At this late stage in the game, with so much to lose and so much to gain, she hated being disingenuous with her readers, but she couldn't tell the whole truth right now about her list or her life.

  The tears had come when she'd written that part about trying to get pregnant. She'd started her period two days ago.

  All those years of diligence with birth control made it sort of shocking to not get pregnant after unprotected sex. But pregnant she definitely was not, and thinking about it now, she couldn't see how it would ever happen.

  One weekend. That was how long they'd tried. One weekend of blissful, delicious, romantic sex with a side intent of procreation. They'd hardly touched each other since, and right now they were barely on speaking terms.

  Ben was stunned when Erin kicked him out of their bedroom…so upset he'd slept in his contacts because he didn't want to "disturb her" by walking through their room to get his contact case out of the bathroom. That led to an eye infection, which exacerbated his irritation, which fueled Erin's resentment, which put them in a vicious circle Erin didn't know how to escape. And now it was Monday afternoon, and he was in Florida again.

  They hadn't talked any more about Thursday night, and he hadn't gone to Coyote Ugly with her Saturday. She knew if he read the line in her post about the Stetson Guy incident, which she hadn't told him about, he'd be pissed. Nothing had happened, the bouncer had made sure of that. But still, it smacked of revenge for his night with Melody, even though that wasn't her intent.

  For twenty-seven years she and Ben had been best friends, no matter what else they were to each other at any given time. With other friends, namely Hilary, she'd experienced ups and downs, bumps in the road, even short-lived breakups. But never, not even when Ben was with Cat and Erin thought for sure she'd lost him, had she felt the helplessness—the hopelessness—she was feeling right now.

  Their friendship had never failed. But it had never had to survive a marriage.

  Why is it so hard?

  Is it this hard for everybody?

  Probably not. Most people didn't have their problems played back on national television and made worse by meddling producers. Erin recalled that MTV show from the early 2000s about Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey. Newlyweds. She'd tuned in and been glued to the drama of their relationship as much as anybody else. How much of it was crap, she wondered now. Contrived dramatic angst that brought life to the show and death to their marriage.

  She didn't want her marriage to have the same fate.

  She willed the next two weeks to pass quickly so she could get to New York, right her wrongs on live television, and hopefully put an end to all the stupid drama.

  * * *

  Late Thursday morning Erin's phone rang, and Ben's name appeared on the screen. They'd barely spoken since he'd left Monday, most of their communication happening in texts. Just landed. Him. You traveling this week? Him again. When are you coming home? Her.

  Just as noteworthy were the texts they hadn't sent. Have you seen Melody? Her. Is she in Florida with you? Her again. Will I still be sleeping in the guest room when I get home? Him.

  Erin sighed and glanced at the clock before answering, torn between wanting to hear his voice and needing to finish her last Glamour column, which was due by end of day. She'd been struggling with it all week. With the mood she was in, she couldn't think of anything to say that would inspire others. How could she pen a walk-off home run for a column called "Living the Dream" when she was in the middle of a personal nightmare?

  All day she'd focused on easier tasks, like an ongoing series of short posts she did each month for a Millennial travel website. All she had to do was research cool neighborhoods in major cities that appealed to twenty and thirtysomethings, gather info on a few bars, restaurants, hotels, and attractions, and write up three or four paragraphs on each location. It sounded cool, but it was mind-numbing, and it was a great anesthetic to thinking. She'd also gone to yoga that morning. It hadn't cleared her head at all, but at least it kept her body busy.

  Her phone stopped buzzing, popping up a missed call notification. She sighed and waited for the voicemail, frowning when she realized she was chewing on another fingernail. She hadn't bitten her nails since at least middle school, but this week had kicked her back to the habit. The nails on both hands were a wreck. She'd bitten one down so far it had bled, turning her cuticles an angry red.

  She wondered if Ben was finally ready to talk—no, strike that. If she was finally ready to talk. He'd apologized a thousand times Thursday night for what had happened. Erin had thought and thought about it, and she knew she owed him an apology, too. She couldn't help what the show had done, but she'd been the one to sign them up for it. She'd placed unrealistic expectations on Ben during filming in part because of how it made her look.

  He was busy building his own career, and she'd failed to respect that. In retrospect, she wished she'd kept the show focused on her own bucket list and avoided dragging him into it. And she especially wished she'd avoided dragging their wedding into it.

  Hindsight, 20/20.

  It had been nearly a week since the lab incident—enough time for her to pin down exactly why she was pissed. Ben couldn't help Melody's behavior any more than Erin could help the show's plot twist, but he could have handled it without putting her through hell. That thirty minutes she'd spent waiting for him to call back the other night still burned fresh in her brain. It was agony, knowing Ben and Melody were locked in a room alone together and not knowing how Melody was taking advantage of it. He'd never told her what happened during those thirty minutes. Did she take her clothes off again? Kiss him again? To what lengths would she go to get him to betray Erin?

  Not knowing was torture. It was hard to forgive, but she was ready. She wanted to start fresh, to start over…but it couldn't happen until two things took place. One, she had to get through the final show. Two, Ben had to get rid of Melody.

  Her phone buzzed with the new voicemail, and Erin clicked to listen.

  * * *

  "I thought you were still pissed that I made you sleep in the guest room." Erin reached back to pull her hair over her shoulder and gasped when her fingers clutched air. When would she ever get used to this short haircut?

  "I thought you were going to make me keep sleeping there." Ben's voice crackling over the phone line was soft and drenched with relief.

  So far, so good. They weren't yelling at each other, and Erin felt like the axe blade wasn't dropping quite so close to the cord of their relationship. But there were things still unsaid, and they hung above the conversation like thought bubbles waiting to burst.

  "So…" Erin started.

  At the same time, Ben said, "I need to—"

  They both laughed nervously.

  "You go first," Erin said. She wasn't looking forward to finishing her own sentence.

  Ben inhaled sharply. "I need to tell you something." His voice was serious, and Erin's heart missed a beat. When Ben sounded like this, it meant the news was bad.

  "What?" Her hand flew to her mouth, and she started gnawing on a nail.

  "It's about the other night. In the lab. I…never really told you everything that happened."

  Erin's hand dropped from her mouth. So there was something. Something Melody had done. Or was it something Ben had done with Melody?

  She didn't answer, just braced herself.

  "Melody, she…she did something."

  Her heart dropped like a chair had been whisked out from underneath her, like she was floating in that split-second instant before a plummet. Each tick of the clock felt like an eternity before he continued… "She took some pills."

  Her eyes had closed, but now they flew open. "She what?" She'd predicted the start of his story but not the end. She was bracing herself for "She kissed me again" or "She grabbed my crotch." Not "She attempted suicide."


  "Ohmigod," Erin said. "What kind of pills? Is she all right?"

  "Yes, she's fine." He paused. "I wasn't entirely honest about the other night, though. I didn't take her home. I took her outside and called an ambulance. She wasn't unconscious, but she wasn't responding like she should have been, either. As for what she took, it was a Lanakin drug. You know, that company that's involved in the Lester therapy trials? After she threw my phone, she grabbed a case of samples off my desk and ran out of the room. She'd downed a whole bottle of pills before I caught up with her." He squeezed his eyes shut. "She OD'd on an experimental cancer medication."

  Erin was speechless for several seconds. "Is she still in the hospital?" Her voice was faint.

  "No." He sighed. "They released her the next morning. She didn't take enough to really hurt herself, but she hasn't been back to work yet, either."

  Erin's mind was reeling. Well, that explained why Ben hadn't called her back. It still didn't explain why he'd lied to her about taking Melody home, though. The question was on her lips when he continued.

  "I didn't lie about going to her house. I left the hospital after making sure she was OK, and then I went to her house and explained things to the sitter, who turned out to be Adrianne. She begged me not to tell anybody what had happened, even you. Especially you." He said it all so fast that he had to pause to catch his breath. "I shouldn't have listened to her. I'm sorry."

  Adrianne was Melody's sister. Erin had only met the women a couple times while she was going out with Nate. Why would Adrianne have told Ben not to tell her about Melody?

  "Why…" she started, but Ben cut her off.

  "I know. It doesn't make sense, but she said with you being high profile, with the show…" He trailed off, his voice growing embarrassed. "I think she knew Melody had a thing for me. She was trying to protect her sister."

  Erin didn't say anything. It was a lot to process.

  After thirty seconds of crackling air, Ben finally said, "You were going to tell me something, too?"

  Erin huffed out a laugh, and it took her another few seconds to respond. "I was just going to apologize." She licked her lips, her mouth dry. "For dragging you into this mess. For making you go on the show. I never really asked you if you wanted to do it."

  "I knew what I was getting into. I did the interviews, and I was fine with doing it. For you." He paused. "I'm sorry that my job kept getting in the way."

  "You couldn't help that. I know you couldn't help it."

  There was sadness in the seconds of silence that followed. Erin wished badly that they were having this conversation in person so she could try to read his thoughts on his face.

  "Just for the record"—her voice was hoarse, and she felt hollowed out—"I won't make you sleep in the guest room when you come home."

  * * *

  Ben was still in Florida that night, the night the last regular-season episode of YOLO was set to air. The dance class episode. It seemed inevitable that they were apart.

  She'd talked to him three more times that afternoon. He'd called again when he finished his meetings for the day. They'd talked for a few minutes, and she'd had to let him go to squeak in her column before deadline. She'd called him back just after five his time. She sensed he felt the same way she did. She hated fighting with him, hated having this distance between them while things were so tense. If she couldn't have his arms around her, if they couldn't show each other physically that they were OK, at least they could wrap up in each other's voices.

  She'd talked to him all the way up until Sherri arrived, about thirty minutes before the start of the show. Sherri had left work early and driven up three hours from Austin just to give Erin moral support. She hadn't told Erin she was coming. She'd called when she was already on her way up so Erin couldn't protest.

  Erin hadn't made any plans for tonight's show. She just wanted to get through it, not celebrate it. The only people she could have tolerated in the room with her tonight were Ben or Sherri, and she was so grateful for her friend she couldn't put it into words.

  If things were different and she was proud of the show instead of mortified by it, she'd be having another party tonight. And Ben would probably be home. And they'd be having fun, and laughing, and happy. What the hell happened? How has my life gone from amazing to awful in such a short span of time?

  As if in answer to her question, Leo's face appeared on the screen. Erin plopped onto the couch beside Sherri as the familiar intro music played. Instead of the usual montage of scenes that ran at the start of each episode, tonight's intro depicted snippets of key moments from throughout the season. Which, of course, included tonight's featured course…Erin and the man who was not her husband.

  She glowered at the screen. This wasn't even supposed to happen. It was breaking, like, a cardinal rule of reality TV for a crew member to show up on-screen. Of course, nobody knew Leo was involved with the show. To viewers, he was just the dark, mysterious stranger Erin was in lust with.

  Sherri, who knew every detail of what had happened at the dance studio and every detail of Erin's theories about Leo's manipulation, flung a handful of popcorn toward the TV and shrieked, "A-hole!"

  "Sorry." She glanced at Erin. "Got carried away."

  Erin laughed and shook her head. She wasn't that worried anymore about what the episode would bring. The damage was done. The footage that had already aired was damning enough to condemn Erin and cause viewers from coast to coast to peg her as a cheater. Even if this episode showed the truth, if it showed the full story, which it wouldn't, Erin knew viewers had already made up their minds about her. Trial without a fair jury. Guilty despite being innocent.

  In the end, the scene was brief. The only part that took Erin by surprise was an on-camera interview with Leo that she didn't know the Jeffs had shot where he didn't explain who he was but did tell why he was filling in—because Erin's husband hadn't shown up. He left off the "as usual," but it was implied, as was some sort of intimacy between him and Erin. When he talked about her, his eyes lit up, and his voice got all low and throaty, making the skin crawl on the back of Erin's neck.

  It was an entire season of buildup for three minutes of entertainment. Her life, crushed to pieces, for a segment that was shorter than the following commercial break. And that, Erin knew, was because that three-minute dance was all they had on her. She hadn't given in to Leo's advances in L.A., hadn't gelled with him at all during the dance lesson except when she pretended he was Ben.

  They had nothing.

  And yet it was enough.

  Erin knew if she dared to look that social media was blowing up right now with people attacking her for messing around on her adorable, if absent, husband. Hashtag cheater. Hashtag ho. Hashtag busted.

  She wondered, not for the first time, why the show would damage its own producer for ratings. Didn't they realize this might hurt more than it helped? That people might not tune in to watch a show written by a blogger the world was currently attacking on Twitter and Snapchat and Instagram?

  She knew better than that, though. She knew the answer to her own question: scandal sells. It didn't matter what type of attention Erin and YOLO were getting. All that mattered was they were getting attention.

  It was solid gold BS. Hollywood's very favorite kind.

  She tried to pay attention to the rest of the show, but her mind kept wandering—to Ben, to the friends and family she knew were watching, to next week's finale—even though the other segments were also built for maximum drama. Angela Oberman, the Michigan waitress, hiked the Grand Canyon, and the camera caught it when her hiking boot skidded on the edge of the rock as she went around a curve. She pitched forward and caught herself, but it was terrifying to watch. Lucas, the Amish settlement crasher, fought in a semipro wrestling ring, ending the match with a loss and blood all over his face. Eric Armistead, an engineer from Omaha, came out to his parents on national TV.

  All that, and yet Erin's so-called affair would still catch the most headl
ines because YOLO had given it the most play. She'd have to be on the lookout for paparazzi again…awesome.

  Actually, "paparazzi" probably wasn't the right word, because that implied pretty pictures of red carpet celebrities buying artisanal ice cream while pushing strollers in thousand-dollar shoes. The photographers who'd be after her picture were more aptly called "vultures"—they swarmed in to pick the carcass of a smelly scandal while everybody else gawked at a distance. These were the ambulance chasers of the celebrity photo world.

  As soon as the screen faded from the teaser of next week's live show, Erin's phone started blowing up. Her mom. Dave. Hilary. Angie. Both Joey and Jarvis, which was interesting. All those could wait because the only voice she wanted to hear right now was Ben's.

  When his call began buzzing in her hand, she picked up, mouthing to Sherri, "It's Ben," before jumping up and half jogging down the hallway to her room.

  "What'd you think?"

  He took a second to answer, a second in which her heart froze.

  "It wasn't as bad as I'd thought it would be."

  "Because they'd already shown everything in the promo spots."

  That wasn't completely true, but the new footage contained nothing more incriminating than what they'd already used. Along with Leo's interview, they'd shown more of the dance, giving context to the close-ups viewers had seen in the teasers—Leo's hand intimately squeezing her waist. Erin's eyes closed languidly, her cheek nestled into the curve of his shoulder. Leo's lips grazing her hair. That had been hard to watch.

  "Exactly. Isn't that kind of cheap, from a viewer standpoint?"

  "Yes, and that's the point. They'd already hooked the audience, who'd already drawn their conclusions. All they needed was a solid ending to the story."

  "What now?"

  Erin drew in a sharp breath. The only thing standing between her and the ending to this nightmare was the finale, and she was leaving for New York on Wednesday.

  "Now I get to see what they have in store for me next week. Greg is going to put me on the spot, and I've got to be ready. And Ben?"