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

by Kate Stayman-London

  Bea closed her eyes and smiled, happy to have any absurd situation to think about other than her own.

  Lauren left her to get dressed, and a few minutes later, a camera crew arrived with a laptop, as promised.

  “Babe!” Marin yelped from her window on the shiny screen. “What’s happening? Are you okay? They wouldn’t tell me anything, they just said you needed to talk.”

  “Ray’s here,” Bea said, the gravity of the situation seeping back in as she spoke the words aloud.

  “I saw that—what the hell is going on?? They just cut to black at the end of the episode, after you walked out of the kiss-off ceremony. What’s happened since? Have you heard from Asher?”

  Bea shook her head. “I think he’s really gone, Mar.”

  “Bea, no.” Marin covered her mouth. “He’s crazy about you, I know he is.”

  “Not anymore.” Bea exhaled heavily. “You heard what he said.”

  “He was just hurt,” Marin consoled her. “And insecure, and definitely jealous—you were totally right about that. But let’s come back to him. What’s happening with Sam? And Ray?”

  “I haven’t seen either of them since the ceremony.”

  “OUTSTANDING! Send Ray home immediately!”

  “Without even talking to him? Mar, he broke up with Sarah and came all the way here—”

  “He came all the way there when he wanted, to suit his needs, without a thought in the world for how it would affect you. He heard you might be getting engaged, and did he think, Wow, maybe Bea finally has a shot at being happy with someone else? No. He thought, Hey, I’m Ray, I need to get on an airplane and make a mess of Bea’s life, because that’s my signature move. And when his actions caused a really great guy to walk out on you, he was probably cheering internally that he managed to improve his odds. He’s a selfish asshole, Bea. That’s who he’s always been, and it’s who he’s always going to be. Send him home.”

  Bea took a breath. “Asher didn’t leave because Ray showed up. He left because I lied to him.”

  Marin rolled her eyes. “You have a right not to tell the world on television that you slept with someone engaged, okay? Wouldn’t you have discussed it privately with Asher at some point if Ray hadn’t shown up and forced your hand?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

  “It does matter, Bea. It matters a lot whether you allow this man who has hurt you so much to hurt you even more.”

  “I only have two men left,” Bea argued.

  “Yeah, and one of them is a nice, sweet guy who’s head-over-heels in love with you, and the other has been doing his level best to make you miserable for the better part of a decade.”

  “Well—doesn’t that mean something?” Bea pushed back, her anger rising. “That I’ve loved him for so long, that I’ve wanted to be with him all this time, and now, finally, here he is, saying he wants the same thing. How crazy would I have to be to throw that away?”

  “Not as crazy as you’d have to be to waste another second on him. Do you want to turn back into the person you were last year? Breaking plans, crying every day, refusing to go on a single date? You were unglued. Why would you ever let him back into your life?”

  “You don’t know what it’s like.” Bea felt bitterness creeping into her voice. “To think about someone so much for so many years, to dream about him and picture your life together. You’ve never felt that way about anyone.”

  “Don’t do that, Bea. Don’t deflect. This isn’t about me, it’s about him. This is exactly why I told him to stop trying to contact you.”

  Bea’s face went dark. “When did you do that?”

  Marin opened her mouth, and then closed it.

  “At the beginning of filming,” Marin admitted. “He texted me to tell you he’d been trying to reach you, but that none of his messages were going through …”

  “Was this before or after you came to set to see me?”

  Marin looked down. “It was before.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?” Bea was horrified. “After all the months I spent begging for him to talk to me, you lied and kept it from me when he finally did?”

  “Bea, I liked the guys I met so much, and I didn’t want Ray to ruin things with them—which, by the way, is exactly what he did.”

  “It’s not Ray’s fault the producers orchestrated things so Asher would be totally blindsided!” Bea shot back. “Maybe you don’t always know best about my life, Marin. Maybe sometimes I get to make my own decisions—even if you’d rather I stay single like you forever.”

  Marin shook her head. “You’re going to feel like a real idiot when this is on television and you hear how spiteful you sound.”

  Bea turned to the camera operators. “I’m done with this conversation. Can we be done now?”

  But they didn’t say anything—they just kept rolling.

  “This isn’t you, Bea,” Marin pleaded. “He brings out the worst in you, because he makes you think he’s all you deserve.”

  Bea couldn’t take it anymore. She slammed the laptop shut, then stormed back into the bathroom and closed the door.

  ——Forwarded Message——

  FROM: Ray Moretti

  TO: Kiss Off Entertainment

  SUBJECT: I’m the man from Bea’s past

  Hi, whoever’s reading this. I don’t know exactly what to say here, but on last night’s episode in Ohio, Bea said that when she started the show, she was still getting over someone. I believe the person she was talking about was me. And the truth is, I’m not over her. Not even close. I know you’re already halfway through your season, and maybe I’m too late. But if there’s any way that I could see her, or even talk to her, I’ll go anywhere, I’ll buy a plane ticket, I’ll do whatever it takes. So, if there’s even the slightest chance here, I hope you’ll get in touch. Please. I’m just not ready to lose her.

  On some level, Bea was enticed by Marin’s suggestion to send Ray away without so much as a conversation—after all, it would be easier than confronting him, than admitting to him (and to the world) exactly how badly he’d hurt her. But even if talking to him was a terrible idea, Bea had to know, finally, the truth of what had happened between them, whether he had ever loved her the way that she loved him. She told Lauren she’d see Ray that afternoon, but that she didn’t want a planned date—just to go for a walk through her favorite city with a man who was once her best friend. Lauren agreed quickly, sounding frankly relieved that Bea was consenting to see him at all.

  Part of Bea wanted to spend hours in hair and makeup and wardrobe before she spent time with Ray, to transform into a powerful, sexy TV goddess—her “armor,” as Luc had described it. But tempting as that was, she put on her own jeans and an old flannel shirt instead, some mascara and sheer red lipstick. She knew she’d look a mess on camera, but at least she felt like herself. It didn’t make sense to be Main Squeeze Bea with Ray, all glamour and glitz. All the artifice of the show, the lavish romantic fantasies—none of that was them. They were just two old friends with too much history, too much pain.

  When he opened the door of his hotel room, he said, “Hi.”

  He looked wrecked, like he hadn’t slept either, maybe in days.

  So she said, “Do you want to take a walk by the river?”

  And he said, “Maybe north to the canal?”

  “I love the canal.”

  “Bea.” He smiled sadly. “I remember.”

  They barely spoke on the walk—it was as if they were acclimating, remembering how it felt to be in each other’s presence. It was chilly and gray by the Seine, the water churning, tourists stopping to ogle the Main Squeeze camera crew. But as they made their way out of the center, the crowds thinned, and Bea began to feel the same sense of ease she remembered from the months when she lived in this neighborhood ten years prior.

  Once they reached the canal, Bea ducked into a wine shop and bought a bottle with her own euros. Bea and
Ray sat on the steps of one of the canal’s dozens of bridges, drinking their paper-cup red, two cameras pointed at their faces, a boom mic over their heads. All of it so alien, but being with each other the pinnacle of normal.

  “I didn’t think I’d see you again,” he said, his voice that same come-hither mumble, the one you had to lean close to hear.

  “When? After last summer?”

  “No, the ceremony. I’ve never seen you that upset.”

  “Well, sure,” Bea said drily, “you usually take off before you have the chance.”

  “Usually?” Ray looked apprehensive. “How many instances have there been?”

  “Um, countless?” Bea was surprised to hear the anger in her voice. “Last July, for starters. The night we kissed at Chateau Marmont. The millions of times we were curled up talking in some bar and you ditched me for one of your L.A. girls.”

  “Come on, Bea.” Ray flushed with embarrassment. “You know I never cared about any of them the way I cared about you.”

  Bea sat up straighter, took a drink of wine. “Then why didn’t you act like it?”

  “I did,” Ray protested. “I spent every free minute I had with you.”

  “No—that’s not what I’m asking. Ray, you flew to Paris to tell me you left your fiancée for me. And I just, I’m having trouble understanding why you need to make this grand gesture now, all these years later, when you never even went on a single date with me when we lived in the same place, when I was completely in love with you.”

  “I didn’t know.” He hung his head. “Bea, I swear, I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t know that I was in love with you? Or didn’t know how you felt about me?”

  “Either one. I was a mess back then. You remember what I was like, going out every night, hungover every morning.”

  “Calling me to bring you a vanilla shake and a McChicken with sweet n’ sour sauce for the fries?”

  “Oh my God,” Ray moaned. “When you would show up at my door with that bag, it was like someone opened the gates of heaven.”

  “Yeah, and when I’d walk into your apartment and it was completely obvious that some other girl had just been there, I felt like I was in hell.”

  Bea shook her head, blinking back the first prickle of tears.

  “Ray, last summer—”

  “I know,” he cut in. “I know how badly I fucked up.”

  “No.” She stopped him. “You don’t, because you weren’t there. I loved you for so long, and then during the biggest crisis of our relationship, you just disappear, like I never meant anything to you? We’re not twenty-two anymore. You can’t keep saying you’re a mess and letting that excuse your behavior.”

  “Bea,” Ray implored her, “I was so fucking confused. I felt like such an asshole for cheating on Sarah, and I thought staying with her was the right thing to do, but whenever I talked to you … I wanted to leave. Not talking to you felt like the only choice I had.”

  “You could have said that to me! You could have taken five minutes of your life to explain why you wanted to end our friendship and never speak to me again.”

  “I kept thinking, Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and it’ll be okay. I’ll be able to talk to Bea, and I won’t love her, and she won’t hate me.” Ray took a drink. “But every day, I woke up, and I still loved you. And I was still so sure you hated me.”

  Bea was taken aback. “Ray, you’ve never said that to me.”

  “That I love you? I’ve said it a million times.”

  “I know, but—the way you said it just now, you made it sound like. You know.”

  Ray met her gaze, his face a mix of sadness and hope. “Like I was in love with you?”

  “Well?” Bea’s heart was pounding. “Are you?”

  He took her hands. “Yeah, Beatrice Eleanor Schumacher, of course I am. I am completely, inescapably in love with you.”

  Bea closed her eyes. It was the sentence she’d wanted to hear for eight years, the sentence she’d imagined him saying millions of times.

  But now, after everything she’d been through, Bea found that it wasn’t enough.

  “You still haven’t told me why.”

  “Why I’m in love with you? You want me to do one of those rom-com things where I enumerate the reasons? I mean, I can—”

  “No, Ray. You haven’t told me why this took so long. Why we never got together when we lived in L.A. Why you kissed me once, then moved away and never said another word about it. Why sleeping with me freaked you out so badly that you had to cut me out of your life.”

  “I told you, with Sarah—”

  “But why did you get engaged to Sarah in the first place? You always said you wanted to come back to L.A., so why did you follow her to Atlanta instead? Why didn’t you come home to be with me?”

  Ray shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  Bea didn’t know if there was even a point to pushing him on this, whether she was accomplishing anything more than pouring salt in her own wounds. But she needed the truth. If she was ever going to move on—either with him or away from him—she had to know.

  “I read this article once,” she said, “about this scientific researcher who analyzed people’s porn searches.”

  “I’m sorry, you what?” If Ray looked confused before, now he was downright bewildered.

  “Yeah, so, he got access to all this data, and he compared it to a survey of what people said they were looking for in a romantic partner, to try and figure out what people say they want versus what they actually want. And he found that some huge number of men, I forget the percentage, but it was really high, was looking online for porn of fat women. But when you ask men what kind of body type they want in a partner, almost none of them said they wanted someone fat.”

  Ray’s face clouded with emotion as he started to understand what Bea was getting at.

  “So the researcher talked about how this plays out,” Bea continued, “how all these women are trying to lose weight because they think that’s what men want, and all these men are trying to date thin women because they think that’s what they’re supposed to want. Do you know what he called it?”

  Ray didn’t answer—he just looked down.

  “He said it was inefficient. A waste of time.”

  Ray blinked rapidly. “I know I wasted your time, Bea. Years.”

  “But why?” Bea pleaded. “Ray, I can’t forgive you if you won’t say what you did.”

  “Back then I ruined things with every woman I slept with, and I couldn’t do that with you. I needed you too much.” He shook his head. “I thought I was protecting us.”

  “By my count, the last two women you slept with were me and Sarah, and you ruined those pretty well too.”

  He took a long drink of wine, and Bea saw his hands were shaking.

  “When we were in L.A., I knew I loved spending time with you. I knew how important you were to me. And I knew—fuck, Bea. I knew I wanted you.”

  “Is that really so hard for you to say?” Bea’s voice was cold and quiet.

  “Yes, but not for the reason you think. It’s hard because I’m ashamed of how small-minded I was. Back then, when I tried to picture the two of us together—really together—I just couldn’t. It didn’t make sense to me. When I met Sarah, I thought, Okay, this makes sense. I moved in with her because it made sense, proposed because it made sense. It wasn’t until last July that I realized what an idiot I’d been, how much I’d fucked up my own life—and yours, and hers—but by then I felt like it was too late. I couldn’t see a way out of it.”

  “And now?” Bea pressed. “Now—what? You saw me on TV and suddenly the clouds parted and your true path was lit from above? Ray, how am I supposed to believe you’ve changed? After everything? How can I believe it?”

  “Because I’m here.” He put his hands on her knees, and she felt the warmth of him spreading through her, the same way she had on the Fourth of July. “Because I stole Sarah’s copy
of People and stared at you in that gown for hours. I bought every single magazine you’ve been in, by the way. I started reading all the blogs, all the rumors, desperate for any information about you, about these guys who were trying to take you away from me.”

  Bea was so nervous she was trembling. “They weren’t trying to take me, Ray. You didn’t want me.”

  “You’re wrong.” Ray wrapped his hands around Bea’s wrists. “When I walked into that courtyard yesterday and saw you in that dress, I wanted you more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. I wanted to kiss you so hard you’d forget those other men existed. To make you remember you wanted me first.”

  He slid his hands up to her elbows, their forearms clasping, the movement bringing him closer.

  “It was never a question of wanting you,” she whispered.

  “Then what is it?” He was inches away now, and she remembered the taste of him, and he smelled of musk and spicy clove, just like she knew he would, the same as always.

  “The way you hurt me … I don’t know. I don’t know if I can trust you. If I even should.”

  “Let me make it up to you. I’m here, Bea. I’m in love with you. Let me show you. Let me show you for the rest of our lives.”

  Then he was kissing her, and it was all so strange and so familiar, to be cloaked in comfort and panic and the immutable weight of him, and something deep inside her clicked into place, the question finally answered of whether she would ever feel his lips on hers again.

  She didn’t know how long it went on like that, them making out on the bridge, their legs tangled together like a couple of insufferable teenagers. Eventually, a producer broke in to tell them they were losing the light; the crew needed to be let go for the day, and it was time to go back to their hotel.

  In the van on the ride back down toward the Seine, Ray asked Bea if they could spend the night together. A voice in her head screamed, Yes, please, yes, but she shoved it downward and told him she wasn’t ready, that she needed more time.