F@k you donovan lassar, p.3
F#@k You, Donovan Lassar, page 3
Cat sighed. “I couldn’t do it. It would have been the worst sort of betrayal.”
“For who?” CR asked.
“For myself,” Cat answered.
CR nodded.
“What about your parents?” Cat asked. “How do they feel about you being on this show?”
“My dad died a few years ago,” CR said.
“Oh, Christopher Robin. I’m so sorry.”
“He was sick for a long time before he passed,” CR said. “A business deal had gone bad around the time I graduated high school, and his health kind of just started spiraling from there. He died three years ago, and in some ways, it was a relief. He wasn’t suffering anymore.”
Cat reached over and squeezed his hand in silent sympathy. CR squeezed back and threaded his fingers through hers.
“How’s your mom?” Cat asked, trying not to think too hard about the hand holding. Maybe he was just being polite.
“She was diagnosed with cancer around a year and a half ago,” CR said. “But she’s doing fine.” He paused. “At least, that’s what she says. But she knows that we worry about her and doesn’t want us to.”
“Us?”
“My siblings and I.”
“Ah.”
“I just talked to her, and she said she’s fine, that the next round of chemo isn’t for another week and a half, but she also didn’t tell us she had cancer for eight months after she found out.”
“Wow.”
“Yup. So, I’m not really sure how she’s doing.”
“That’s why you wanted to be distracted?”
He nodded.
“Well, I’ll try to keep you so busy that you won’t have time to worry about her,” Cat said, trying as best she could not to think about all the ways she could be distracting him. Most of them involved significantly less clothing than both of them were currently wearing.
His mom has cancer and you’re thinking about all the ways you want to get him naked. Good going, Cat.
“I appreciate it,” CR said. Still holding onto her hand.
Fort Worth, pre-filming
“Okay, so we’ve discussed your family, we’ve discussed your jobs, we’ve discussed that you want to start a family.” Belle looked up from her interviewing checklist. “We haven’t discussed what kind of family you want to start. What exactly ‘starting a family’ means to you.”
CR shoved his hair out of his face, only for it to fall back to where it had been. “What do you mean?”
“What do you mean when you say you want to start a family? Beyond finding a wife. We already established that part. What comes after a wife? A house? Dogs? Cats? Picket fences? Tropical fish? Children?” Belle gestured. “Any and all of the above?”
“I’m fine with dogs or cats, or both,” CR said. “Not sure about needing an actual picket fence—I guess it depends on where we end up.”
“What about children?” Belle asked. “Do you want any?”
CR was silent.
“CR?” Belle prompted. “You do want kids, don’t you?”
“It’s complicated,” CR said.
Belle rolled her eyes. “Kids usually are complicated. Nobody ever walks into parenthood going, ‘Oh, yes. Children. Not complex at all to raise a human being.’”
CR grinned. When Belle wasn’t an enormous pain in the ass, she was really funny. “Of course kids are complicated,” he agreed. “And I think I do want them.”
“Think?”
CR sighed and told the truth. Well, as much of the truth as he would admit to Belle. “I don’t think I would be a very good father.”
“Why don’t you think that?”
“I just don’t,” CR said. “I’m going to stick to being an uncle for now. See what happens next.”
“Do you think it’s going to be one of those things where you meet someone and all of a sudden you can imagine being a father to the children you would have with them?” Belle asked.
CR shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.” He paused. “But if I ever found myself in a place that I was comfortable enough with the thought of parenthood, I think I would want to foster children. There are a lot of kids who’ve already been born who need parents.”
Chapter Four
“Oh, thank God you’re here,” Kathleen said, pulling open the door. “I’ve already cried three times today, and Molly won’t stop asking when her daddy is coming back.”
“Auntie Cat!” shrieked Molly, running out the door and tackling Cat. “There was a big storm and Daddy is still on a boat!”
“No, poppet, he’s not on the boat yet,” Kathleen said, in a voice suggesting they’d had that conversation more times than she wanted. “He’s still in Cala.”
“But he was on a boat.”
“And then he went off the boat in Cala. Remember? We went there before? And saw the butterflies?”
“Daddy went to the butterflies?”
Kathleen sighed. “Maybe he did.”
Cat laughed and picked up Molly. “I brought you some presents.”
“For me?” Molly looked thrilled. Then she noticed CR. “Who’s Man?”
“That’s Auntie Cat’s friend Christopher Robin,” Cat replied. “He came with me to help fix the house up for when your daddy comes home.”
“Sisapher?” Molly wrinkled her nose and then lowered her voice to a very loud whisper. “Auntie Cat, you has friends?”
There was a muffled cough from CR, who looked as though he was trying very hard not to laugh.
“Bless children and their ability to say the most ridiculous things at all the worst times,” Kathleen said. “Christopher Robin…wait, aren’t you the one filming in the castle?”
CR shook her hand. “Guilty as charged.”
Kathleen looked from Cat to CR back to Cat. “Huh.”
Cat shot her a glare. She didn’t know what Kathleen was thinking, and she probably didn’t want to know either.
“Well, thank you for coming,” Kathleen said. “I’d offer you some tea, but our hot water seems to be a bit temperamental at the moment.”
“I can check that if you want me to,” CR offered.
“No, I couldn’t impose. You’re a guest here.”
“Kath, he wants to help.” Cat peered at her friend. “We’ve got a couple of hours now. How about you go have a bit of a lie-in, and we’ll watch the babies and do some tidying for you?”
“Cat, I couldn’t.”
“Kathleen Mary MacEarn, you most certainly can.” Cat gently put Molly back down and ushered her into the living room. Keeping her voice low, she turned back to Kathleen. “You look like shit. This amount of stress isn’t good for you or the baby, and the last thing you need right now is to go into early labor, especially when Michael isn’t home yet.”
Kathleen wilted into tears. “I’m so tired, Cat.”
“I know.” Cat hugged her, only to get kicked by the baby, making both of them laugh. “Go have a nap. I promise, neither of us are going to judge your house for its current state. I’ll get CR to do some fixing, we’ll watch the babies, and you just nap, okay? The boats will be starting up again tomorrow morning, and Michael will be back then.”
“They said that already.”
“James spoke to Captain Taylor, who said he was going to do a run tomorrow and bring us supplies. Might be a smaller boat than usual, but he’s coming over. And he’s bringing Michael with him.”
Kathleen burst into tears again. “I miss him,” she sobbed. “And I’m so pregnant.”
“You really are,” Cat agreed. “Go nap.”
“Okay.” Kathleen wiped her eyes. “And don’t think we aren’t going to have ourselves a chat later about that absolute gorgeous man out in the parlor.”
Cat rolled her eyes. “Sure, Kath.”
Kathleen smiled. “Can’t say no to the pregnant friend,” she sang, and then yawned. “Okay, I’m sleeping now. Georgie is in her crib, finishing her nap.”
“Don’t worry, we have this.”
Kathleen blew her a kiss and headed to her room.
Cat turned and headed back to the parlor, where she found CR sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Molly, who had dragged out her treasure box. “This is a shell,” she said, dropping it into his waiting hands. “From the ocean.”
“It’s very beautiful,” he agreed. “What color is the shell, Molly?”
“Pink,” Molly replied. “Pink a’ white.” She pulled out a small rock and handed it to him, before looking up and seeing Cat. “Auntie Cat, I make friend.”
“Good for you,” Cat said, smiling.
“Sisapher is behaving,” Molly informed her.
“I’m glad,” she said, watching CR smile. “Okay, missy. I brought some surprise presents for your mama, and I need some help putting them away.”
“I a big helper,” Molly announced, scrambling up.
“I’ll go check the boiler,” CR said, after he put Molly’s treasures back into her box.
“Thanks.”
The next few hours flew by, CR and Cat managing to make a big dent in the mess that surrounded Kathleen and Michael’s home. They had gotten lucky—the tree that had fallen down had missed the roof by mere inches.
It was early evening, and Cat was packing away leftover dinner and lunch for Kath. Georgie was cooing quietly to herself as she tried to build some blocks, and Molly was teetering toward the edge of sleep.
Molly hated going to bed. Always had. She would protest about not being tired, over and over until she fell asleep mid-protest. Cat finished putting the containers in the refrigerator, wiped the few drying dishes clean, and headed to the parlor to see if she could coerce Molly into going to sleep without it bothering Kathleen.
She walked into the parlor and stopped dead. CR was pacing around the room slowly, a very tired Molly cuddled on his shoulder as he hummed something quietly.
He didn’t see her, and she slipped behind the doorway before Molly could see her too. But she couldn’t help a peek back into the parlor again, making sure she hadn’t fallen into an alternate dimension, where Christopher Robin Westing, the most attractive man she had ever seen in her life, was rocking her goddaughter to sleep.
It was hormones and evolutionary something-something, she told herself sternly. That was why she found it so attractive. Any tall, beautiful man rocking a child to sleep would do something funny to her insides. It would.
It wasn’t just that it was him.
When this was all over, she reminded herself, before the show aired, she was going to go to Inverness, and she was going to find herself a one-night stand.
And he was not going to be anyone that reminded her even remotely of CR.
Text Conversation, Catriona Darrow and Celeste Citron
Cat: FML.
* * *
Celeste: Oh no.
* * *
Cat: How does one stop having an enormous and completely ill-advised crush? Asking for a friend named me.
* * *
Celeste: Ohhhhhh boy.
* * *
Celeste: Also, you should know better than to sincerely ask me that question. You remember Jean Claude, don’t you?
* * *
Cat: THE MIME!! Oh my goddddd I totally forgot about him!
* * *
Cat: Wow. We both had questionable taste in men back when we were young and dumb, didn’t we?
* * *
Celeste: Between me making an idiot over myself in front of Jean Claude and your doomed relationship with Kansas Steven, it’s really a surprise we survived being 22.
* * *
Cat: Don’t I know it.
* * *
Cat: This is worse than Kansas Steven.
* * *
Celeste: How can anything POSSIBLY be worse than Kansas Steven???
* * *
Celeste: Also, this is not helping me feel charitable for my boss because we still haven’t FaceTimed and I am dyyyyying here. Dy. Ing.
* * *
Celeste: I should tell my boss that he needs to let me call you before I start a grease fire in his very large expensive kitchen. If things are actually worse than Kansas Steven, I need to hear every single detail.
* * *
Celeste: And book a flight to come to visit you.
Chapter Five
“You know, I have never felt like I wasted more makeup than I have on this show,” Lauren said later that night as all the girls sprawled over the couches. “Make all of us get all fancied up and all we do is film them telling us that there’s going to be a date with everyone tomorrow?”
“Well, it’s better than them telling us we’re having some late-night date,” Brennan rationalized. “Honestly, I just want to put on a face mask and then get a human number of hours of sleep.”
“Hard same,” agreed Hannah, who was going to spend at least a good chunk of her evening trying to reconfigure the scenes she had already written, and the ones she had planned. Brennan didn’t seem like the type who would bother her when she lay on the floor and whispered obscenities while she tried to index card her career back together. “Face masking sounds amazing.”
“Break for makeup removal, meet back here in fifteen?” Megan suggested.
“Deal,” Aless agreed.
“Perfect,” Selena said.
“Great, girl chat time!” Jennifer clapped.
Zara groaned quietly. Lauren rolled her eyes, and Selena just shrugged.
“There’s got to be a way we can get rid of them,” Dominique hissed as the girls headed back to their rooms.
“Hopefully they’ll have some sort of meeting, and they’ll all have to go,” Rita said. “We’ll just hold off on the shit-talking producers until they leave.”
“Make this into a whole spa day kind of thing,” Selena offered. “Mani-pedis too. That’ll take long enough for them to get bored, right?”
“Jesus, I hope so,” Aless said.
“You know the cameramen are still going to be there even if the producers leave,” Nadine pointed out. “Not to be a downer or anything, but we still won’t be able to fully relax.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Rita said. “I have faith in us and our ability to shit-talk people without them knowing it.”
“What a specific talent we seem to have,” Nadine said, holding the door to their room open for Rita.
“There are worse ones.”
“True.”
“So,” Hannah said a little while later. The girls were all back in the main room, and thankfully, the producers had left. Nobody was asking too many questions, but also nobody was certain they wouldn’t just pop back in at some point, startling the shit out of all the girls. “Anyone have any ideas what’s going to be happening tomorrow?”
“Seriously, Hannah?” Lauren asked. “This is what you want to talk about?”
“If we give them enough of what they want to hear, maybe they’ll leave,” Hannah said, nodding toward the three cameramen.
Noah smiled and shrugged.
“What activity could we possibly all do together?” Aless wondered as Noah smiled encouragingly.
“Probably something fairy tale-themed,” Megan said, catching on. “They do love them a theme here.”
“We’re running out of fairy tale-based group activities, though,” Rita said. “Unless they want us to go hunt down a dragon or something.”
“I think that’s even out of their production budget,” Zara deadpanned. “Also, I’m pretty sure there were no waivers for being murdered by a dragon in that ream of paperwork they made us sign.”
“Knowing them, they probably hid it in some sub-clause somewhere,” Selena said. “Well, whatever it is, I’m sure we’re all going to be woefully underdressed or overdressed for the occasion. Or both at the same time.”
“Wouldn’t be an episode of Fated unless we were all underdressed or overdressed, would it?” Dominique asked.
“Not so far,” Nadine agreed, and leaned back on the fainting couch. “You know, a spa day would be a nice date idea.”
“How would that involve any of us having any sort of conversation with CR?” Alessandra wondered.
“How does any group date involve any actual conversation with CR?” Nadine asked. “They’re not really built for intimacy.”
“Well, that’s what the tea parties are for, I guess,” Selena said.
“When this is over,” Rita said, “I don’t think I’ll be able to drink another cup of tea for a hell of a long time. At least, not black tea.”
“I’m going to go swan diving in coffee when I get home,” Nadine said.
“You practically do go swan diving in coffee here,” Lauren pointed out.
“Yeah, but my coffee is better.”
“Snob,” Rita teased.
“And proud of it,” Nadine replied.
There was silence for a few long blissful minutes, broken when Selena asked a question that had been on everyone’s mind, whether they cared to admit it or not. “Who do you think he’s actually going to pick?”
“I have no fucking clue,” Lauren replied.
“You went on a double date with him,” Selena said. “Nothing?”
“Not really,” Lauren said. “I was kinda surprised he let Clover go, though.”
“It feels too early to have any idea of who he’s going to pick,” Nadine mused.
“Except for there are only nine of us left,” Selena pointed out. “Don’t you think we’d be able to at least kind of tell by now? Every other season, you could tell.”
“There’s a shit ton of editing that goes into these, though,” Megan said. “And they don’t edit until the end of filming. So they already have a storyline that they know they’re going to go with.” She turned to Selena. “Don’t you kind of do something like that too?”
“For who?” CR asked.
“For myself,” Cat answered.
CR nodded.
“What about your parents?” Cat asked. “How do they feel about you being on this show?”
“My dad died a few years ago,” CR said.
“Oh, Christopher Robin. I’m so sorry.”
“He was sick for a long time before he passed,” CR said. “A business deal had gone bad around the time I graduated high school, and his health kind of just started spiraling from there. He died three years ago, and in some ways, it was a relief. He wasn’t suffering anymore.”
Cat reached over and squeezed his hand in silent sympathy. CR squeezed back and threaded his fingers through hers.
“How’s your mom?” Cat asked, trying not to think too hard about the hand holding. Maybe he was just being polite.
“She was diagnosed with cancer around a year and a half ago,” CR said. “But she’s doing fine.” He paused. “At least, that’s what she says. But she knows that we worry about her and doesn’t want us to.”
“Us?”
“My siblings and I.”
“Ah.”
“I just talked to her, and she said she’s fine, that the next round of chemo isn’t for another week and a half, but she also didn’t tell us she had cancer for eight months after she found out.”
“Wow.”
“Yup. So, I’m not really sure how she’s doing.”
“That’s why you wanted to be distracted?”
He nodded.
“Well, I’ll try to keep you so busy that you won’t have time to worry about her,” Cat said, trying as best she could not to think about all the ways she could be distracting him. Most of them involved significantly less clothing than both of them were currently wearing.
His mom has cancer and you’re thinking about all the ways you want to get him naked. Good going, Cat.
“I appreciate it,” CR said. Still holding onto her hand.
Fort Worth, pre-filming
“Okay, so we’ve discussed your family, we’ve discussed your jobs, we’ve discussed that you want to start a family.” Belle looked up from her interviewing checklist. “We haven’t discussed what kind of family you want to start. What exactly ‘starting a family’ means to you.”
CR shoved his hair out of his face, only for it to fall back to where it had been. “What do you mean?”
“What do you mean when you say you want to start a family? Beyond finding a wife. We already established that part. What comes after a wife? A house? Dogs? Cats? Picket fences? Tropical fish? Children?” Belle gestured. “Any and all of the above?”
“I’m fine with dogs or cats, or both,” CR said. “Not sure about needing an actual picket fence—I guess it depends on where we end up.”
“What about children?” Belle asked. “Do you want any?”
CR was silent.
“CR?” Belle prompted. “You do want kids, don’t you?”
“It’s complicated,” CR said.
Belle rolled her eyes. “Kids usually are complicated. Nobody ever walks into parenthood going, ‘Oh, yes. Children. Not complex at all to raise a human being.’”
CR grinned. When Belle wasn’t an enormous pain in the ass, she was really funny. “Of course kids are complicated,” he agreed. “And I think I do want them.”
“Think?”
CR sighed and told the truth. Well, as much of the truth as he would admit to Belle. “I don’t think I would be a very good father.”
“Why don’t you think that?”
“I just don’t,” CR said. “I’m going to stick to being an uncle for now. See what happens next.”
“Do you think it’s going to be one of those things where you meet someone and all of a sudden you can imagine being a father to the children you would have with them?” Belle asked.
CR shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.” He paused. “But if I ever found myself in a place that I was comfortable enough with the thought of parenthood, I think I would want to foster children. There are a lot of kids who’ve already been born who need parents.”
Chapter Four
“Oh, thank God you’re here,” Kathleen said, pulling open the door. “I’ve already cried three times today, and Molly won’t stop asking when her daddy is coming back.”
“Auntie Cat!” shrieked Molly, running out the door and tackling Cat. “There was a big storm and Daddy is still on a boat!”
“No, poppet, he’s not on the boat yet,” Kathleen said, in a voice suggesting they’d had that conversation more times than she wanted. “He’s still in Cala.”
“But he was on a boat.”
“And then he went off the boat in Cala. Remember? We went there before? And saw the butterflies?”
“Daddy went to the butterflies?”
Kathleen sighed. “Maybe he did.”
Cat laughed and picked up Molly. “I brought you some presents.”
“For me?” Molly looked thrilled. Then she noticed CR. “Who’s Man?”
“That’s Auntie Cat’s friend Christopher Robin,” Cat replied. “He came with me to help fix the house up for when your daddy comes home.”
“Sisapher?” Molly wrinkled her nose and then lowered her voice to a very loud whisper. “Auntie Cat, you has friends?”
There was a muffled cough from CR, who looked as though he was trying very hard not to laugh.
“Bless children and their ability to say the most ridiculous things at all the worst times,” Kathleen said. “Christopher Robin…wait, aren’t you the one filming in the castle?”
CR shook her hand. “Guilty as charged.”
Kathleen looked from Cat to CR back to Cat. “Huh.”
Cat shot her a glare. She didn’t know what Kathleen was thinking, and she probably didn’t want to know either.
“Well, thank you for coming,” Kathleen said. “I’d offer you some tea, but our hot water seems to be a bit temperamental at the moment.”
“I can check that if you want me to,” CR offered.
“No, I couldn’t impose. You’re a guest here.”
“Kath, he wants to help.” Cat peered at her friend. “We’ve got a couple of hours now. How about you go have a bit of a lie-in, and we’ll watch the babies and do some tidying for you?”
“Cat, I couldn’t.”
“Kathleen Mary MacEarn, you most certainly can.” Cat gently put Molly back down and ushered her into the living room. Keeping her voice low, she turned back to Kathleen. “You look like shit. This amount of stress isn’t good for you or the baby, and the last thing you need right now is to go into early labor, especially when Michael isn’t home yet.”
Kathleen wilted into tears. “I’m so tired, Cat.”
“I know.” Cat hugged her, only to get kicked by the baby, making both of them laugh. “Go have a nap. I promise, neither of us are going to judge your house for its current state. I’ll get CR to do some fixing, we’ll watch the babies, and you just nap, okay? The boats will be starting up again tomorrow morning, and Michael will be back then.”
“They said that already.”
“James spoke to Captain Taylor, who said he was going to do a run tomorrow and bring us supplies. Might be a smaller boat than usual, but he’s coming over. And he’s bringing Michael with him.”
Kathleen burst into tears again. “I miss him,” she sobbed. “And I’m so pregnant.”
“You really are,” Cat agreed. “Go nap.”
“Okay.” Kathleen wiped her eyes. “And don’t think we aren’t going to have ourselves a chat later about that absolute gorgeous man out in the parlor.”
Cat rolled her eyes. “Sure, Kath.”
Kathleen smiled. “Can’t say no to the pregnant friend,” she sang, and then yawned. “Okay, I’m sleeping now. Georgie is in her crib, finishing her nap.”
“Don’t worry, we have this.”
Kathleen blew her a kiss and headed to her room.
Cat turned and headed back to the parlor, where she found CR sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Molly, who had dragged out her treasure box. “This is a shell,” she said, dropping it into his waiting hands. “From the ocean.”
“It’s very beautiful,” he agreed. “What color is the shell, Molly?”
“Pink,” Molly replied. “Pink a’ white.” She pulled out a small rock and handed it to him, before looking up and seeing Cat. “Auntie Cat, I make friend.”
“Good for you,” Cat said, smiling.
“Sisapher is behaving,” Molly informed her.
“I’m glad,” she said, watching CR smile. “Okay, missy. I brought some surprise presents for your mama, and I need some help putting them away.”
“I a big helper,” Molly announced, scrambling up.
“I’ll go check the boiler,” CR said, after he put Molly’s treasures back into her box.
“Thanks.”
The next few hours flew by, CR and Cat managing to make a big dent in the mess that surrounded Kathleen and Michael’s home. They had gotten lucky—the tree that had fallen down had missed the roof by mere inches.
It was early evening, and Cat was packing away leftover dinner and lunch for Kath. Georgie was cooing quietly to herself as she tried to build some blocks, and Molly was teetering toward the edge of sleep.
Molly hated going to bed. Always had. She would protest about not being tired, over and over until she fell asleep mid-protest. Cat finished putting the containers in the refrigerator, wiped the few drying dishes clean, and headed to the parlor to see if she could coerce Molly into going to sleep without it bothering Kathleen.
She walked into the parlor and stopped dead. CR was pacing around the room slowly, a very tired Molly cuddled on his shoulder as he hummed something quietly.
He didn’t see her, and she slipped behind the doorway before Molly could see her too. But she couldn’t help a peek back into the parlor again, making sure she hadn’t fallen into an alternate dimension, where Christopher Robin Westing, the most attractive man she had ever seen in her life, was rocking her goddaughter to sleep.
It was hormones and evolutionary something-something, she told herself sternly. That was why she found it so attractive. Any tall, beautiful man rocking a child to sleep would do something funny to her insides. It would.
It wasn’t just that it was him.
When this was all over, she reminded herself, before the show aired, she was going to go to Inverness, and she was going to find herself a one-night stand.
And he was not going to be anyone that reminded her even remotely of CR.
Text Conversation, Catriona Darrow and Celeste Citron
Cat: FML.
* * *
Celeste: Oh no.
* * *
Cat: How does one stop having an enormous and completely ill-advised crush? Asking for a friend named me.
* * *
Celeste: Ohhhhhh boy.
* * *
Celeste: Also, you should know better than to sincerely ask me that question. You remember Jean Claude, don’t you?
* * *
Cat: THE MIME!! Oh my goddddd I totally forgot about him!
* * *
Cat: Wow. We both had questionable taste in men back when we were young and dumb, didn’t we?
* * *
Celeste: Between me making an idiot over myself in front of Jean Claude and your doomed relationship with Kansas Steven, it’s really a surprise we survived being 22.
* * *
Cat: Don’t I know it.
* * *
Cat: This is worse than Kansas Steven.
* * *
Celeste: How can anything POSSIBLY be worse than Kansas Steven???
* * *
Celeste: Also, this is not helping me feel charitable for my boss because we still haven’t FaceTimed and I am dyyyyying here. Dy. Ing.
* * *
Celeste: I should tell my boss that he needs to let me call you before I start a grease fire in his very large expensive kitchen. If things are actually worse than Kansas Steven, I need to hear every single detail.
* * *
Celeste: And book a flight to come to visit you.
Chapter Five
“You know, I have never felt like I wasted more makeup than I have on this show,” Lauren said later that night as all the girls sprawled over the couches. “Make all of us get all fancied up and all we do is film them telling us that there’s going to be a date with everyone tomorrow?”
“Well, it’s better than them telling us we’re having some late-night date,” Brennan rationalized. “Honestly, I just want to put on a face mask and then get a human number of hours of sleep.”
“Hard same,” agreed Hannah, who was going to spend at least a good chunk of her evening trying to reconfigure the scenes she had already written, and the ones she had planned. Brennan didn’t seem like the type who would bother her when she lay on the floor and whispered obscenities while she tried to index card her career back together. “Face masking sounds amazing.”
“Break for makeup removal, meet back here in fifteen?” Megan suggested.
“Deal,” Aless agreed.
“Perfect,” Selena said.
“Great, girl chat time!” Jennifer clapped.
Zara groaned quietly. Lauren rolled her eyes, and Selena just shrugged.
“There’s got to be a way we can get rid of them,” Dominique hissed as the girls headed back to their rooms.
“Hopefully they’ll have some sort of meeting, and they’ll all have to go,” Rita said. “We’ll just hold off on the shit-talking producers until they leave.”
“Make this into a whole spa day kind of thing,” Selena offered. “Mani-pedis too. That’ll take long enough for them to get bored, right?”
“Jesus, I hope so,” Aless said.
“You know the cameramen are still going to be there even if the producers leave,” Nadine pointed out. “Not to be a downer or anything, but we still won’t be able to fully relax.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Rita said. “I have faith in us and our ability to shit-talk people without them knowing it.”
“What a specific talent we seem to have,” Nadine said, holding the door to their room open for Rita.
“There are worse ones.”
“True.”
“So,” Hannah said a little while later. The girls were all back in the main room, and thankfully, the producers had left. Nobody was asking too many questions, but also nobody was certain they wouldn’t just pop back in at some point, startling the shit out of all the girls. “Anyone have any ideas what’s going to be happening tomorrow?”
“Seriously, Hannah?” Lauren asked. “This is what you want to talk about?”
“If we give them enough of what they want to hear, maybe they’ll leave,” Hannah said, nodding toward the three cameramen.
Noah smiled and shrugged.
“What activity could we possibly all do together?” Aless wondered as Noah smiled encouragingly.
“Probably something fairy tale-themed,” Megan said, catching on. “They do love them a theme here.”
“We’re running out of fairy tale-based group activities, though,” Rita said. “Unless they want us to go hunt down a dragon or something.”
“I think that’s even out of their production budget,” Zara deadpanned. “Also, I’m pretty sure there were no waivers for being murdered by a dragon in that ream of paperwork they made us sign.”
“Knowing them, they probably hid it in some sub-clause somewhere,” Selena said. “Well, whatever it is, I’m sure we’re all going to be woefully underdressed or overdressed for the occasion. Or both at the same time.”
“Wouldn’t be an episode of Fated unless we were all underdressed or overdressed, would it?” Dominique asked.
“Not so far,” Nadine agreed, and leaned back on the fainting couch. “You know, a spa day would be a nice date idea.”
“How would that involve any of us having any sort of conversation with CR?” Alessandra wondered.
“How does any group date involve any actual conversation with CR?” Nadine asked. “They’re not really built for intimacy.”
“Well, that’s what the tea parties are for, I guess,” Selena said.
“When this is over,” Rita said, “I don’t think I’ll be able to drink another cup of tea for a hell of a long time. At least, not black tea.”
“I’m going to go swan diving in coffee when I get home,” Nadine said.
“You practically do go swan diving in coffee here,” Lauren pointed out.
“Yeah, but my coffee is better.”
“Snob,” Rita teased.
“And proud of it,” Nadine replied.
There was silence for a few long blissful minutes, broken when Selena asked a question that had been on everyone’s mind, whether they cared to admit it or not. “Who do you think he’s actually going to pick?”
“I have no fucking clue,” Lauren replied.
“You went on a double date with him,” Selena said. “Nothing?”
“Not really,” Lauren said. “I was kinda surprised he let Clover go, though.”
“It feels too early to have any idea of who he’s going to pick,” Nadine mused.
“Except for there are only nine of us left,” Selena pointed out. “Don’t you think we’d be able to at least kind of tell by now? Every other season, you could tell.”
“There’s a shit ton of editing that goes into these, though,” Megan said. “And they don’t edit until the end of filming. So they already have a storyline that they know they’re going to go with.” She turned to Selena. “Don’t you kind of do something like that too?”
