“Okay love birds,” the studio manager snapped her fingers. “Let’s get started with something different! Today we will be fine tuning the fox trot!”
I pulled Selena up and positioned her arms in place. The manager gave a brief demonstration and turned on the music. Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” began to play.
All of a sudden, I was happy. I was gentle with Selena, helping her with every misstep, praising her whenever she did a sequence correctly.
The dance instructor played the song again and again, interrupting every now and then to perfect our spacing.
“Okay now this time,” she clapped as the song came to an end, “I won’t interrupt. I’ll just let you two go at it and I’ll comment at the end. Okay?”
“We’re ready,” Selena looked into my eyes.
Frank Sinatra’s voice filled the room and she followed my lead. I pretended she was Melody as I added extra steps—lifting her up, dipping her, and twirling her around. As the song approached the bridge, I closed my eyes and pulled her close. The next thing I felt were her lips on mine.
The song came to an end and the producers clapped. I opened my eyes and drew back from the kiss.
“My fiancé and I need to talk privately everyone,” Selena said. “Could we get five minutes?”
The OWN staff left their cameras on the floor and followed the dance instructor out of the room. Selena pulled me into an adjacent studio.
“I need to talk to you about something important,” she looked down at the floor.
“Why?”
“Could you for once be civil with me? You were just kissing me for Christ’s sake.”
“I didn’t mean to. What do you want?”
“OWN wants to capture the birth of our child.”
“Seeing as we don’t have a child, just tell them no. Is that all?”
“Do you really hate me, Matt?”
“No. I don’t hate you Selena, I just—I’m not very happy about your threats to ruin my career.”
“It was the only way I could get you to go through with the wedding.”
“So that makes it okay? Right.”
“No, it’s not alright,” she grabbed my hands. “I’m sorry.”
“I mean, it’s bad enough I signed that stupid TV contract, but I can’t believe you went and attached everything else to this. When were you going to tell me that you got a book deal to write about our relationship?”
“I was going to text you that later. How’d you find out?”
“Are you serious? How did I find out? The woman who will stop at nothing to get her name in the news is asking me how I found out? How ironic!”
“Calm down, Matt,” she pleaded. “I said I was sorry and I had every intention of telling you this week.”
“Is that all you have to say to me? I need to get some sleep.”
“Can we start over?”
“What?”
“Can we start over? I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, a lot of reminiscing and…I want us to be like we used to be.”
I couldn’t move. I was speechless. Utterly speechless.
She hesitantly reached up and touched my face. “I miss the days when you used to show up to my shoots with flowers because you wanted to—back when we weren’t caught up in the fame…After the wedding, we can both just disappear and start over and go back to whatever we used to be…Can we do that?”
She stood on her toes and kissed me on the cheek. Memories of our past flashed through my mind: We were kayaking on the Hudson River. We were struggling to paddle properly, flipping our kayak over. We were having a picnic on a rooftop, throwing bread crumbs for the pigeons. We were biking across the city, smiling behind our shades as the paparazzi gave chase. But then we were just existing—talking about ways to remain in the press, scheduling our lives around their cameras. We weren’t having fun anymore, all the excitement was gone. It was staged and pre-meditated, never natural or spontaneous.
I felt her kissing me and broke away. “No. We can’t do that. We don’t belong together.”
“Will you at least help me come up with a way to get rid of the baby? Will you confirm I miscarried on our honeymoon?”
“Goodbye Selena.”
I didn’t call Melody beforehand. I just showed up to her apartment. I banged on her door, not caring if it scared the neighbors.
“Hey! Stop that!” an unfamiliar voice cried. I stepped back to make sure I was knocking on the right apartment.
The door swung open and a Melody look-alike—only with blonde hair, stared back at me.
“Mel!” she ushered me into the apartment. “It’s your boyfriend!”
I laughed. “I take it you’re her sister, Jen? It’s nice to finally meet you in person.”
“Nice to meet you too, Matt Sterling. I was just leaving so—”
“You and your sister are both bad liars. Am I interrupting something?”
“Not really. I was just stopping by to catch up. We were making margaritas. You want one?”
“Sure,” I followed her into the kitchen. “Did you use a juice mixer or did you make the juice yourself?”