One To Watch: this summer's must-read romcom to fill the Love Island-shaped hole in your life

by Kate Stayman-London

  “Kansas City—that’s in Missouri.”

  “Also Kansas,” Bea retorted.

  “But the barbecue is in Missouri.” Jefferson rubbed his belly, which was covered in curly red hair and hung over the waistband of his Hawaiian-patterned board shorts. “The secret’s in the smoking—you do a long, slow smoke, preferably over at least four different kinds of wood.”

  “Sounds delicious,” Bea agreed, “but probably not super safe for a boat.”

  “Just another reason I prefer dry land.” Jefferson laughed. “I installed a killer smoker in my backyard last year—maybe if things work out you’ll get to see it?”

  His expression was so sweet, almost hopeful, that Bea wondered if she should have listened to Lauren and picked this guy for her first kiss after all.

  “What about you?” he prodded. “What’s your favorite kind of food?”

  Bea opened her mouth to answer what should have been an easy question—Thai food, burgers, chocolate cake—before considering the wave of “If you love to eat so much, you deserve every health problem that overburdens our insurance system” ire such a response might prompt.

  “We have access to such amazing produce in California,” she said truthfully, but smiling wider than she otherwise might have. “I absolutely love to swing by the farmers’ market to see what’s in season.”

  “You’ll have to teach me your mysterious coastal ways.” Jefferson laughed and patted his belly. “I’m obviously more of a meat-and-potatoes guy.”

  There was something so appealing about Jefferson’s confidence. Sure, some of it was that he was a man, and therefore not automatically subjected to the same kind of judgment as Bea about his body—but there was something deeper there, an inner ease that Bea hoped might rub off on her if she spent a little more time with him.

  That would have to wait, though, because Lauren was approaching to get her ready for her next setup.

  “We only have a couple hours of light left,” she explained. “You ready to film your conversation with Marco?”

  Bea smiled tightly and followed Lauren over to the stunningly beautiful hot tub, which was built into a raised part of the deck, allowing for a 360-degree view from the coast to the horizon. Thick steam rose up in sheets, someone had set out an ice bucket of Prosecco and several glasses, and in the tub itself was Marco, his dark hair and olive skin slick with condensation. Bea felt another churn in her stomach with the realization that he was waiting here with the sole and express purpose of kissing her.

  “Okay, kids,” Lauren teased, “have fun!”

  She backed off to give them the impression of privacy (despite three nearby cameras), and Marco looked up at Bea expectantly.

  “I’ve been hoping you would come over to hang with me,” he flirted. “What good is a hot tub without a hot girl?”

  Bea laughed. “You’re really leaning in to that signature Main Squeeze wordplay, huh?”

  “Oh yeah.” Marco grinned. “Are you getting in? I promise, it feels amazing.”

  Bea was self-conscious for a moment as she removed her sarong, but between her tequila bravery and the goosebumps on her bare skin, she stepped out of it as quickly as possible and slid into the delicious heat of the water.

  “Oh my God, that’s good.” Bea exhaled heavily as she let the water rise up to her chest. “I’m already so mad about how cold it’s going to be when we get out.”

  “I don’t know about you,” Marco said conspiratorially, “but I don’t plan on getting out anytime soon.”

  He scooted closer to Bea, whose face flushed with nerves and heat—he wasn’t wasting any time, was he? Lauren hadn’t been kidding when she said she would take care of everything. But now that she had, Bea wasn’t sure she liked it; it was all too arranged, a speeding train she couldn’t exit even if she wanted to.

  “So”—she cleared her throat—“you work in politics?”

  “I do.” He smiled. “I work for a messaging firm.”

  “Does that mean, like, you do slogans for campaigns?”

  “Sure, sometimes. We conduct polls, figure out what ideas resonate with voters, and help candidates adjust their message accordingly.”

  “So you’re the reason people get labeled ‘inauthentic.’”

  Marco raised an eyebrow, taking in Bea with his sparkling green eyes. “No one is just one thing. We help candidates understand how to put their best feet forward.”

  “Like taking a picture from your best angle?”

  “Exactly.” Marco leaned closer. “Except you don’t have any bad angles.”

  She could kiss him now, she knew she could—but something was holding her back.

  “If you’re such an expert,” she said softly, “in peddling these polished versions of the truth, how can I know if you’re being honest with me?”

  “I’m not bullshitting you.” He dropped his voice. “I’ve thought about this before. A lot.”

  “Thought about what?” Bea asked lightly.

  “For years, I’ve wondered what it would be like with someone like you.”

  Bea’s whole body went tense.

  “Someone … like me?”

  His breath was hot against her earlobe, her neck.

  “Those arms, those lips, that body,” he murmured. “God, Bea, you’re so big. I bet I could just disappear into you.”

  He cupped her face in his hands, and he was so handsome, and her heart was pounding, and she felt so horribly ugly, she could taste bile as she remembered Ray’s touch, she missed him so much she could scream, but Marco just kept moving closer—

  “I really want to kiss you.”

  No, roared a voice inside her, not like this.

  His mouth was almost on hers, but Bea stood up so fast she sent water sloshing everywhere, knocking over one of the flutes of Prosecco and shattering it on the deck.

  “Can I get a towel?” she shouted at a PA, who came rushing over with one that Bea prayed would be large enough to wrap around her body.

  “What the hell?” Marco rose, wiping water out of his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Bea said, hating herself for apologizing to this asshole who’d made her feel like a freak, an oddity. “I’m just not interested.”

  Bea turned her back on Marco, hoping he wouldn’t see how badly he’d upset her. All she wanted was to get back to her dressing room to find a cozy robe, but she was interrupted by Kumal, one of the personal trainers on this date.

  “Hey, there you are!”

  “Here … I am!” After the shock of her interaction with Marco, Bea was so not in the mood for small talk—especially not while soaking wet and wrapped in a towel.

  “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Well, there are ten of you and just one of me, so …”

  “I know, but it’s such a big boat.”

  Bea nodded. That it was.

  “Anyway, I’ve been wanting to tell you, I think it’s so cool you’re here. I’ve wanted to meet you for a while, even before I knew we were going to be doing this show together.”

  “Really? You knew who I was?” Bea peered at this sculpted man—he didn’t seem the type to follow plus-size fashion bloggers on Instagram.

  “Yeah! I had this client who wanted to show me how big she used to be, except she couldn’t find any old pictures on her phone, so she pulled up your feed! And I was like, Wow, I could really help that girl. So it’s wild that now I actually get to meet you.”

  Bea’s expression went dark. “Help me how, exactly?”

  “I mean, obviously you don’t want to look like that, right? There’s so much we could do together! Diet, exercise regimen, but like, really holistic stuff, mind-body wellness—it wouldn’t be about changing your looks, per se. It’s more about helping you be healthy.”

  Bea could hear her heart pounding in her ears. She could deal with Ben K.’s absurdity and Nash and Cooper’s insults and Marco’s fetishizing, but this was a step too fucking far.

  “Tell me, Kumal,” sh
e said, her voice low, “what exactly do you know about my health? Have you seen my blood sugar? My heart rate? My cholesterol?”

  Kumal looked completely baffled. “No?”

  “No, you haven’t. Yet you assume I’m ‘unhealthy’ because of my weight. Is that right?”

  The conflict had attracted the attention of a few of the other men: The two Bens, Jaime, Nash, and Cooper approached to see what was going down.

  “I just think that you can change,” Kumal insisted.

  “No,” Bea countered, “you just think that I should change, because you can’t imagine I could possibly be happy and healthy and fat all at the same time. You’re presenting yourself as some great guy who’s just concerned for my health, but you and I both know you aren’t. You’re concerned with getting some camera time, and with telling everyone at home that it’s not okay to be fat and that you’re not attracted to me. All of which you’ve now done. Congratulations!”

  “You’re seriously overreacting,” Kumal said with a condescending laugh. “I was trying to help, but hey, if you want to die at thirty, that’s your business.”

  “Well, I don’t turn thirty-one until September, so I guess there’s still time.” Bea smiled. “And if you really want to help me, I know how you can: by leaving this show right now.”

  A stillness fell over the group. Kumal looked like he couldn’t quite believe it.

  “Don’t be upset, Kumal.” Bea smirked. “You don’t want to date me. And now you don’t have to.”

  She spun around and marched back toward the bar—she’d broken her glass of Prosecco getting away from Marco, and after those two interactions, she damn well deserved a fresh one.

  The men were still talking among themselves near the hot tub, so the bar was blissfully empty, save for the camera that never left Bea’s side. After a moment, though, Asher sidled up and took a seat next to her—it was the first time all day he’d left his book and his little table, far from the action of the rest of the group.

  Bea looked at him expectantly, but he didn’t say anything—just watched her drink, as if he were a field scientist and she were a rare breed of puffin.

  “What?” Bea asked curtly, pleased with how good it felt to stop giving a shit what any of these men thought of her.

  “Nothing,” he mused. “I’m just trying to figure out what you’re doing here.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Bea turned to face him, taking in the angled slopes of his frame, his jaw, his cheekbones.

  “Exactly what I said,” he clarified. “I was roped into watching a few earlier episodes of this series, and it’s my impression that usually, the leads come here looking for love. They spend every minute telling every suitor they can find how eager they are to fall in love—but from what I’ve observed, you haven’t done that once. In fact, you don’t seem eager to talk to us at all. So I’m trying to figure out what you’re doing here.”

  “Excuse me?” Bea was at a total loss for what this man wanted from her.

  “Maybe you came here to prove a point. Or to improve your career? Both of which are fair objectives. But you can understand how my participation under those circumstances would seem like a waste of time.” He took a sip of his beer; having made his logical point, he awaited her logical response.

  But Bea didn’t feel logical. She felt exhausted. She felt hopeless. She felt exposed—as a fraud, and worse, a failure.

  “Why don’t you tell me how you want me to behave,” she pleaded, her voice scratchy with emotion, “after I spend the day being mocked, and manhandled, and insulted. Do you want me to be flirty and coquettish? A tough vixen? A doe-eyed ingénue? Just tell me, Asher. Tell me how to be the woman you thought you came here to meet, tell me how you would handle it if every person you encountered found a new sadistic way to make you feel terrible about yourself and your body, and I’ll do whatever I can to stop being such a monumental disappointment.”

  Bea saw the pain in her expression mirrored in Asher’s face—he clearly hadn’t intended to hurt her. It was all much too much, this man and this place and her wet body and stringy hair and the awful things these men had said to and about her—nothing, she was sure, compared to the awful things America would say to and about her when this episode aired next week. Bea excused herself and went down to her cabin, and she wouldn’t come out again until Lauren promised that the little speedboat was waiting to take her home.

  When Bea finally made it back to her apartment at the compound, it was dark outside, and she wanted nothing more than to curl up and sob. She put on the comfiest clothes she could find, silently blessing Alison for leaving out some cashmere sweats. Cocooned in layers of softness, Bea turned on some music and tried to forget the sound of Asher’s words, echoing over and over in her brain.

  I’m trying to figure out what you’re doing here.

  After the events of this day, Bea was no longer sure she knew.

  She decided her best option was to go to bed and try again tomorrow, but instead, she heard a knock on her door.

  “Fucking Lauren,” she muttered under her breath, “can I not get one damn moment of peace without—”

  She swung the door open—it wasn’t Lauren.

  It was Luc, the devastatingly handsome Frenchman she’d met at the premiere, with a metal bowl full of ingredients in his arms and a camera crew at his back.

  “Bea, hello.”

  “Luc, um, hi? I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “I hope I am not disturbing you, it is just, I heard you had a difficult day, and I thought, perhaps, I could keep my promise to make you something sweet?”

  He held up the bowl hopefully, and Bea caught a glimpse of eggs and vanilla. He was completely right—this was exactly what she needed.

  “Sure.” She opened the door wider. “Come in.”

  As it turned out, Luc had come to prepare one of the desserts from his restaurant, a lavender-honey crème brûlée.

  “This way,” he said as he went through her kitchen in search of a whisk, “if you are angry at a man here, you can beat the sugar with the spoon and pretend you are cracking open his head.” He tapped Bea’s forehead gently with a silver spoon. “You see?”

  Bea laughed. “It’s very cathartic.”

  “Good! So you sit, relax, and I will bake.”

  “No, you have to let me help! I can be your sous chef.”

  “Ah, so you want to work under me? But this is a coveted position. I only hire the best.”

  “I think you’d be very happy with me under you,” Bea teased, wondering how it was possible this obscenely handsome stranger made her comfortable enough to flirt this brazenly.

  “Do you know how to separate the egg yolks?” he asked softly.

  “I know the gist.”

  “Here.” He put his hands over hers. “I’ll show you.”

  So together they cracked the eggs and gently tossed the yolks from palm to palm, letting the slippery whites run through their fingers.

  “You are a woman of hidden talents.” Luc chuckled as Bea deposited the final yolk in a bowl.

  “She blogs, she bakes, what can’t she do?” Bea laughed.

  “Tell me. You must have some weakness.”

  “Besides my obvious weakness for desserts?”

  She handed him the bowl of yolks, and he caught her arm for just a moment, running his thumb inside her wrist.

  “It is no weakness to enjoy something sweet.”

  It turned out the most time-consuming aspect of preparing crème brûlée was waiting for it to cool—for an hour or more—after it had been baked. The camera guys were on overtime, so Luc had premade a couple of dishes of cream that were already cool so they could skip ahead to the fun part: burning the sugar.

  “But wait,” Bea said, “when did you hear I’d had a bad day? I just got back an hour ago, when did you have time to make these?”

  Luc looked to the camera guys, who just kept rolling.

  “I don’t know if I am supposed
to tell you this, but Lauren called another producer earlier to come talk to me. Something about a swimsuit? She felt really terrible. She asked if I could think of a way to make your day better.”

  “Oh.” Bea looked down, the reality of the situation seeping in. This wasn’t a man who genuinely liked her—this was another staged scenario of Lauren’s, a backup plan to make sure the week wouldn’t end without Bea getting her first kiss.

  Well. If that was what Lauren wanted, it was Bea’s job to deliver. She forced her face into yet another smile, and readied herself for her final performance of the day.

  “I guess you’d better show me how to burn some sugar!”

  Luc showed Bea how to use the brûlée torch, and it really was fun to make the brittle crust and crack it gently with a spoon. The dessert was thick and sweet; they ate it sitting on the carpet in front of a roaring fire some PAs had surreptitiously built while they were baking.

  “The fire, the ocean, the homemade dessert … this is a lot,” Bea observed.

  “Yes, it’s a bit excessive, no? And I am French, so my tolerance for romance is very high.”

  “So that’s what this is? Romance?”

  “Is that what you want?”

  He leaned into her, his body just inches away. Maybe he really did like her—or maybe he was acting. Maybe it didn’t make a difference.

  “Luc, can I tell you a secret?” she murmured.

  His voice was barely above a breath. “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know what I want.”

  He ran a finger along her jaw, and she nodded, yes. He kissed her softly, playfully, searchingly, and she thought of Lauren, and she thought of Asher, and she thought of Ray, and finally she leaned into him until there was nothing left to think about except Luc and the taste of sugar and cream.

  EPISODE 3

  “IMPRESSIONS”

  (14 men left)

  Shot on location in Malibu, Anaheim, and Los Angeles, California

  MAIN SQUEEZE RECAP:

  IS BEA SCHUMACHER THE WORST MAIN SQUEEZE EVER?

  by Nichole Sessuber, vanityfair.com

  When plus-size blogger Bea Schumacher was announced as the star of this season of Main Squeeze, I was over the moon: Was it possible that, after all these years, my guilty little pleasure was going to be interesting, and even—forgive me for saying it—woke?