Beefcakes

by Katana Collins

  “Of course,” Elaina said. “That would be a great addition to the clinic. It’s completely dependent on what doctors and hospitals we find to donate equipment and professionals, though…”

  “Oh, his doctor is incredible. Here,” she reached into her purse, scribbling something onto a post-it. “That’s my number and his doctor’s information. If you need anything, please, call me. This could change our lives.”

  “Well…” Elaina rolled her shoulders back. “This is all very helpful for my preparation for a meeting I have coming up soon with the city council. The first step is getting approval for this proposal. If the idea gets rejected, there’s nothing more I can do. But what if I have a couple of you ladies present with me at the meeting? You can talk about how hard the commute is for treatments and anything else you’re comfortable sharing.”

  “Absolutely,” Belinda nodded.

  “Absolutely,” Mom said.

  “Obviously,” Carlie added with a smile and linked her arms with Rita, who was nodding.

  Elaina’s eyes met mine, and I gave her a little smile. This is why she was willing to do the show with me. So that, if we won, I could use the prize money to help my mom, and she could use the prize money to buy the mill for this clinic. It was selfless—utterly and completely selfless in a way I had never seen before.

  A bit of her hair slipped free from the low bun twisted at the base of her neck and my fingers ached to reach out and tuck that stray hair behind her ear. “Whatever you need, Elaina,” I said, lacing my hands together to keep from touching her. And I meant that. Whatever she needed… I would make it happen. Because for all she’d done for this town… she deserved it.

  I couldn’t believe how fast the production team moved once I pushed through the permit for them. But here I was, three days later, sitting in the Beefcakes bakery beneath so many lights that I felt like my skin might melt off my body at any moment.

  I shifted in my seat, the backs of my thighs sticking to the pleather stool. A bead of sweat dripped down my spine, and I rolled my shoulders back against the tickle of it inching its way over each vertebra.

  “Keep still,” my makeup artist scolded me with a sigh.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “But, seriously, are these lights like a million degrees?”

  She smirked and bent toward my face, applying more powder.

  That was another thing. Why in God’s name did people on TV wear so much makeup? I understood that these insane lights would wash us out, so some makeup made sense. But she must have applied an inch of foundation and setting powder on my face in an effort to cover up every potential wrinkle that I may have.

  My phone rang and I jumped to answer it as the makeup artist sighed, dropping her hand to her thigh. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I have to take this… it’s for work.” I waited for some sort of acknowledgment, but she just stood there, staring at me deadpan. “You know, work.”

  “I do know work… I’m trying to work right now.” Another sigh and a flip of her hand. “Go ahead. You’re basically done anyway.”

  I gave her a grateful smile and swiped my thumb across the screen to answer. “This is Elaina Dyker, Town Manager of Maple Grove.”

  “Ms. Dyker, hi. This is Abigail Sumner. You left me a message a few days ago.”

  She was being kind. The truth was I left her five messages over the course of a few days. “Ms. Sumner! Thank you so much for calling me back!”

  “I saw your proposal for the outreach clinic,” she said. “I’m intrigued.”

  I had to stop myself from pumping my fist into the air. “That’s great—”

  “But I’m not without reservations, too,” she added. Cue deflated fist pump.

  “I understand that,” I said, keeping my voice even. “I want to address any questions or concerns you might have. Is there a good time to meet for coffee? I can come down to Boston or…”

  “I have tomorrow off. I’d love to come up to Maple Grove and see the property you’re considering purchasing.”

  I gulped. Wow, she doesn’t beat around the bush. “I would love that.”

  “Great,” she said. “Text me the address, and I’ll meet you there. Say, 9:30 a.m.?”

  “Perfect. I’ll see you there.” I hung up and texted her the address of the abandoned mill. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day.

  I crossed the room back to my stool, which sat second in a lineup that included three of Neil’s other ex-girlfriends, and took my seat. I was literally surrounded by his exes. None of them seemed as affected as I did by the lights and the makeup and the hairspray that made my long blonde hair feel like a helmet.

  The girl directly next to me smiled kindly at me, her bright, white teeth in stark contrast to her rich, brown skin and mauve lips. “You new to this?” she asked me.

  I swallowed and nodded. I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to answer without puking all over the designer dress they spent an hour shoe-horning my body into. “Yeah, I—”

  The girl on my other side snorted and flipped her curly, red hair behind her pale shoulder. “Of course she’s new. Look at her. She’s acting like she’s never seen a set before.”

  Well, it was true that I hadn’t ever seen a television set before, but I sure as hell wasn’t about to admit that now.

  The girl next to me rolled her eyes. “Not everyone makes their living as the first one kicked off of reality shows, Gretchen.” Then, as an aside only to me, she leaned closer. “Ignore her. I wasn’t exaggerating—she’s gotten voted off of every reality show she’s been on in the first week.”

  Neil dated a reality show star? Or, well, not quite a star if she’s never made it past the first week.

  Gretchen gave us a dismissive hand gesture. “Excuse me for being a pro.”

  My smile twitched. “Do professionals get voted off in the first week?” I asked. She turned slowly, glaring at me, and I batted my eyes innocently back at her. “I mean, as such a novice, how am I supposed to know one way or another?”

  The girl to my right put her fisted hand in front of her mouth and hid her laugh. It was the first time I smiled all day. And it felt damn good. “I’m Shayla,” she said, holding out a hand to me. I took it gently as she added, “I only dated Neil for a few weeks. What about you?”

  “Shh!” The brunette on the other side of Shayla hissed at us. “I’m trying to get centered.”

  “For this?” I pointed at the set around us. Which wasn’t a set at all, but Neil and Liam’s bakery that now just had a ton of lights and chairs set up inside. It was 4:15 p.m. and we were only just starting to shoot because Neil had stipulated that the show must not interfere with their business hours. Which meant we were going to have a hell of a lot of late nights.

  It was good for me, too, because unlike these girls, I still had a day job and could get to work for at least some of the day before I had to come here to start hair and makeup.

  “That’s Margarita,” Shayla said, hitching her thumb over her shoulder at the final girl of the four of us. “We met in the back while changing. She’s a soap opera actress.”

  My eyes widened. I knew I recognized her. Granted, I didn’t have a lot of time in the middle of the day to watch TV, but I must have seen her face on the cover of a magazine at the grocery store checkout line because she definitely looked familiar.

  She scoffed at Shayla. “We prefer to be called daytime television actors.”

  Shayla rolled her eyes at me. “Oh, right. Of course.”

  I pointed at Margarita. “So, you’re an actress. And you’re… a reality TV actress?” I asked. “Do all three of you work in entertainment?”

  Shayla shrugged. “Sort of, I guess. But I’m not an actress. I’m a dancer for the Los Angeles Rams cheerleaders,” she said. “Neil was one of the guest judges at a cheer competition I was in years ago. He actually got me the audition for the Rams. I owe my career to him.”

  I swallowed hard. Of all the women, I liked her the best. I’d never really thought about Neil
with any other women since he left. Of course, I knew he’d moved on—I’d seen pictures in the tabloids. A guy like Neil doesn’t stay single for long. But now, facing all these women he moved on with? It hurt. It hurt like a shiv to the kidney. Somehow, this would have been easier if all the other exes had been vapid and bitchy. But… I liked Shayla. I could see us being friends in a different world.

  “That’s exciting,” I said. “How long have you been with the Rams?”

  “Three years and counting,” she said, sitting taller. “But unfortunately, this sort of career? It just can’t last forever. I’m trying to save up to open my own dance studio.”

  “That’s awesome.” I said, and she grinned, her eyes flicking to Neil as he crossed to the fridge for a bottle of water. Her smile lifted higher.

  “He really is one of the good ones,” she said.

  Did she still have feelings for Neil? The thought entered my brain like a battering ram before I had the sense to stop it.

  “What about you, Margarita?” I asked, in an effort to change the subject. “Or are you still, um, getting centered.”

  Margarita sighed and dropped her hands from where they were positioned on her knees. “Silhouette Studios is on the same lot where we film our show. I saw Neil in the coffee shop there, and we went out a few times.” She shrugged, not really seeming to care all that much.

  “You just… went out a few times? That’s it?”

  “When I got the call for the show, they said he apparently didn’t have many exes in his past. But this show will be airing in prime time, and I’m really hoping Silhouette might cast me in something bigger. I’m ready to extend my skills beyond daytime TV.”

  “Well, you were on TMZ a few weeks ago as the girl who broke up The Bachelor star and his fiancé,” Shayla said, smiling. Wow, this girl liked to stir up some shit. She reminded me a bit of my sister, and I kind of liked that about her.

  Margarita sent her a death glare. “You know as well as I do that Ryan and Kelsie were only pretending to be engaged for the show. Besides, she works all the time. He never sees her.”

  My face heated as she said that. It hit a little too close to home with Brad. “Or at least that’s what he told you—that they were pretending,” I added my two-cents. “Maybe she had no idea he was sleeping around. Maybe he only said that to get you into bed.”

  Shayla’s brows lifted. “Sounds like you might know from your own experience?” she asked quietly.

  “Whatever,” Margarita rolled her eyes and flipped her glossy black hair over her shoulder. “I only lasted on TMZ for one news cycle, anyway. By the next day, it was like: Margarita Rodriguez who?”

  “And what about you?” I asked Gretchen.

  “Neil and I met six years ago,” she said. “He’d only moved to LA a few months earlier and I’d been there for a couple years.”

  “How long were you together?” Why was I asking questions that I didn’t want to know the answers to?

  “Two years,” she said. “We lived together for a year while he was training for his second Mr. Universe.”

  Oh, God. My stomach churned. That’s why I recognized her. It wasn’t from the reality shows… I had seen her in pictures with Neil from his competition days. Back when I used to Google stalk him to see what he was up to. She was the ‘aspiring actress’ on his arm. Did he only date actresses out there? Hell, did LA even have normal people with regular nine-to-five jobs?

  “Why’d you break up?” Margarita asked.

  “We both got so involved with our careers and auditions and competitions, we just grew apart.” She smiled, dipping her head to her hands. “I always regretted our break up, though. And now that we’re both more stable in our careers, I think I’m ready to try again. For real this time.”

  My skin felt hot. Flushed. Like all the blood vessels in my face had opened up, and the blood was rushing to my head.

  “Cut the shit,” Shayla said beside me. “I dated Neil after you, and he told me you cheated on him.”

  Gretchen glanced up from where she’d been looking down at her hands and huffed a sigh, her entire demeanor shifting immediately. “Fuck, he told you that?” She growled and tossed her hands into the air. “How did the speech sound otherwise?”

  My jaw dropped. “That was… that was a lie?”

  Gretchen shrugged. “Not all of it. I mean, we did live together. We met shortly after we both moved to LA. We definitely were both more interested in furthering our careers than in each other, but are you kidding? He’s got so many body hang-ups… I would not want to date that dude again.”

  I was totally shocked. “Body hang-ups?”

  Shayla rolled her eyes. “Oh, girl, yes. He hated himself during competitions. He loved working out but hated being on display. And he hated when someone assumed he wasn’t intelligent because of his career. I was like, hello?” She gestured to herself. “I’m a freaking cheerleader. The whole world assumes I’m a dumbass ditz.”

  “But the sex,” Gretchen whispered and closed her eyes like she could visualize something after all these years. “Now that I miss.”

  I swallowed hard, looking around at these three women. I couldn’t really picture Neil with any of them except Shayla. “So… none of you are here to, I don’t know, rekindle what you had with Neil for real?”

  In unison, their heads all snapped to me, eyes wide, their perfectly lined and glossed lips parted. Then, their shocked expressions morphed into uncontrollable laughter. “Oh, hell no,” Shayla said at the same time Margarita snorted and Gretchen shook her head. “Neil’s a nice guy, but we broke up for a reason,” she added.

  “Are you kidding?” Margarita said. “No one who does reality shows is in search of real love. That’s just what we all say when the cameras are on.”

  “And what about you, Daisy Mae?” Shayla asked. It was good natured, despite the Daisy Mae dig, like the way my sister would tease me.

  “Neil and I were high school sweethearts,” I said.

  “Aw,” Shayla’s voice went up an octave as she put a hand to her heart. “That’s sweet.”

  “It was. Until he dropped out of high school a week before graduation and left without saying goodbye.”

  “Whoa,” Margarita said.

  “Sounds like Neil,” Gretchen hissed.

  Shayla just stared at me, a small smile splaying her mouth. “He told me about you,” she whispered. It was my turn for my gaze to snap to her.

  “What?”

  “One night on a date. We talked about our biggest regrets, and he said he left his first love without a goodbye. He said it was his biggest regret and that, a year later, he went to her dorm in Boston to apologize and win her back, but she was on a date. He said you looked happy. You had moved on, and it was the kinder thing to let you continue moving on.”

  My chest felt hollow, except for the heavy drumming of my heart against my ribs. He came back for me? I must have been on a date with Brad. Shayla leaned in, gently elbowing me in the arm. “I hope you win, Daisy Mae.”

  I gulped. “It’s… it’s Elaina.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “Is that why you’re here?” Margarita asked. “To really reunite with Neil?”

  My mouth was suddenly dryer than the Sahara. “I… no… I need money.” I gulped. Well, it wasn’t a dishonest answer. Because I wasn’t here to reunite with Neil… was I? And yet, the thought of him with anyone else… any one of these girls or some fake girl who was a figment of my imagination… had my mind racing and my blood boiling.

  I grabbed the bottle of water and cracked the cap to take a sip. Just as I was bringing the bottle to my lips, all three girls shouted, “No!”

  “Your lipstick,” Margarita said, horrified. “You’ll ruin your makeup.”

  Gretchen rolled her eyes and sipped her water through a straw. “Newbies.”

  “Well at least lipstick is easy to touch up,” I stated. Then, pointing to her straw, I added, “That there? Will give you mouth wrinkles not
even Botox could fix.”

  Margarita snorted, but added under her breath, “There’s no wrinkle Botox can’t fix.”

  “Damn,” Shayla said below her breath. “New girl’s got a backbone.” She leaned closer to me, staring at my cheek. “Hey…what’s wrong with your face?”

  Ouch. That was harsh. And from the one girl I thought was kind of nice. “Uh. I don’t know. I was told I’m a little asymmetric—”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. There’s a splotch on your cheek.”

  “A splotch? Like… she went too heavy on the rouge type of splotch?”

  Shayla shook her head. “More like…” she lowered her voice to a whisper, “An allergic reaction type of splotch.”

  “What?” I shrieked.

  Margarita leaned in now, squinting her eyes at me. “Oh yeah, there’s another one on her chin.”

  “Oh my God.” I lunged for the counter behind us, trying to find a mirror or any sort of reflective surface to look at myself. Finally, I bent to inspect my face in the distorted reflection from Neil’s chrome milkshake machine. Sure enough, there were hives on my face. Not too many… yet. Two on my cheek. One on my chin and the beginnings of one of my forehead.

  “I need to wash this makeup off my face. Now.” I moved toward the back room just as my makeup artist blocked my way.

  “Wash your face? Why—ohhh, my God. What did you do to my makeup?”

  “What did I do to your makeup? How about what did your makeup do to my skin?”

  Elliott came out from the back room, clapping his hands together. “What the hell is going on out here?” he asked.

  The makeup artist sighed and gestured flippantly at my face. “She has an allergy she didn’t make me aware of.”

  I stared at her, my mouth agape. Was she seriously blaming me for this right now? “I wasn’t aware that I even had an allergy,” I snapped back.

  Elliott winced and looked at me, touching my chin and tilting my face toward the light. “Be nice, Cole,” he whispered to the makeup artist. “What did I tell you about Ms. Dyker? It might not seem like it, but she’s our star contestant.” His whisper was so quiet that I don’t think any of the other girls heard him. But I glanced nervously behind me anyway. The last thing I wanted was to make enemies. Or at least, more enemies. I was pretty sure that Gretchen already hated me. Then again, she might hate everyone for all I knew. Margarita seemed… fine. Not overly nice. Not overly mean either. But Shayla? Yeah. I really didn’t want to lose the one decent friendship I might get out of this.