The True Love Experiment

twenty-eight CONNOR




A perusal of my Google history from the early hours of Saturday morning will yield the following results:

Why sex with a coworker is bad

What to do if I slept with someone I shouldn’t have and it was great

How to avoid sleeping with someone you’re attracted to

How to avoid sleeping with someone twice

Can my boss fire me in California?

Producing jobs in San Diego

Producing jobs near San Diego

Jobs in San Diego

The effect of an absent father on daughters

Time machines



Unsurprisingly, none of these were much help.

I didn’t go to Fizzy’s intending to have sex. I went over wanting to celebrate a great first week of filming, to see what we could do better, see how we can make things more comfortable for her. But I also went over there already knowing that if I kissed her, she would kiss me back. And I went over there knowing that I want her intensely, have fallen a bit in love with her, and I don’t manage jealousy well. I wanted her to be mine, still. She’d been right, what she said at the beach; I hadn’t realized how hard it would be to share her once the show began.

In hindsight, I realize it was inevitable that we would have sex. And that sex inevitably would be messy, hard, tender, and spectacular. And now I am royally fucked, because all I can think about is doing it again.



* * *



A few hours before the premiere, I find Nat in my kitchen, where she’s opening a bottle of wine. None of the Heroes will be joining us tonight—they won’t spend any time with Fizzy that isn’t captured on film for the show—but most of the crew is here. A few have already descended on the extravagant catering spread set up out back (another budget perk), and the rest are chatting among themselves, anxiously waiting to see if our little show will be a hit or if we’ll all be looking for jobs tomorrow morning. There’s so much money being poured into this that, success or failure, the scale will be massive either way.

Fizzy should be here any minute, which is why I’m hovering in the kitchen doorway like a creep.

Nat must sense me behind her because she glances over her shoulder. “Hey,” she says, and pulls the cork free from the bottle.

I move to stand near the stove, not sure I want to have this conversation, but knowing I will go insane if I don’t talk to someone. “Hey.”

She reaches into one of the cabinets for a glass. “Where’s the kiddo?”

“In her room.” Stevie was prepared to wait in the front yard for Fizzy to show up, but I convinced her that Ocean Beach traffic is always bad this time of night, especially on the weekend. She relented but only after I promised I’d let her know the minute Fizzy arrived. “Who knew it only took a visit from Felicity Chen to get our daughter to finally clean in there?”

Nat snorts while she fills her wineglass. “Fizzy is a good sport. The hero worship is strong in our offspring.”

The reminder twists my stomach because it’s not just my life that will be affected if this all goes wrong, but Stevie’s, even Nat’s. We’ve never gone through this before, because I’ve never really been involved with someone. Not that we’re involved-involved, I remind myself. It was sex. People have sex every day.

But… people do not have sex like that every day.

My silence earns another look in my direction. “Everything okay?”

“Sure, sure.” Another moment passes and I change my mind no fewer than five times regarding simply turning around and dropping the whole thing. “I had sex with Fizzy last night.”

Nat’s mouth opens; she blinks. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Do you really need me to say it again?”

“I just…” she says, rightfully at a loss for words. “The last I heard, you turned her down because it wouldn’t work. That was weeks ago.” I grimace, because I haven’t told Nat about the beach. “I thought you told me it was just a professional relationship.”

“It was.” But that’s not entirely true. Our relationship was professional for approximately one millisecond; the crumbled boundaries look like a pile of rubble in the rearview mirror. “And then it wasn’t.”

I look up when my best friend Ash’s voice booms down the hall. “Everyone relax, the chips are here!” I groan as he and Ella walk into the kitchen carrying at least a dozen bags of tortilla chips between them. He’s also got his sweater on backward, but at the moment I’m too anxious to be entertained.

“You know there’s only going to be fifteen people here, right?” I ask. “And you’re two of them?”

“I was so excited I don’t even remember being at the store!” Ella says. “We went on a shopping spree—” She mimes pulling everything off a shelf. “Straight into the cart!”

Oblivious to what they walked in on, she drops her collection of bags onto the counter.

But while Ash can’t focus on physical details to save his life, he is far too observant when it comes to people. He’s gone still beside Ella, looking from me to Nat. “What’s with the mood? Did we interrupt something?”

Nat gives me a look that says it’s my story to tell. This isn’t how I wanted to do this, but I’m positive they’ll find out eventually anyway. With a quick glance around to make sure there’s nobody else nearby to overhear, I whisper, “I was telling Nat that I had sex with Fizzy last night.” The silence that follows is so long, the depths of it so dark, I finally add, “Somebody say something.”

“Fizzy?” Ella asks. “As in the star of the dating show we’re all here to watch?”

Ash follows up with the hottest of takes: “That seems like a bad idea, Connor.”

“I didn’t intend to do it,” I explain.

He frowns. “I’m trying to picture accidental sex and am confused by what I see.”

“Okay, back up,” Nat says. “You are the least impulsive person I know. You were dead set against this. What happened?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” I say. It was like a drain stopper was pulled and every bit of my objectivity and reason went spiraling down. I had no right to critique her behavior; she’s been fantastic. I had no right to feel jealous, I still don’t. “I got a bit peeved when we were talking about the other blokes, and—”

“Other blokes meaning the men you cast as Heroes on the show?” Ash asks with a you’re such a dipshit wanker lean to his voice.

“Right, fuck off, but then she seemed to get it,” I say. “Honestly, she sees right through me.”

Nat lets out a happy little whimper and I point at her. “Not helpful.”

“Sorry, I just like the idea of her seeing through you.”

“Well, it’s got us in a fucking mess now, hasn’t it?”

“You’re not suggesting you put your dick in her because she’s perceptive,” Ash says, and Ella smacks his shoulder.

“No. It’s because”—I scrounge around for an answer—“Fizzy is so…” I end the thought with a growl. “Fizzy.”

“Connor,” Natalia says gently. “You like her. A lot.”

“I do.” My shoulders go slack like I’ve been punched in the stomach because now the truth is out there: my feelings are a pile of tangled complications and there is no way to safely maneuver myself out of any of it. “And I’m supposed to find her soulmate.”

“What are you going to do?” Ella asks.

“My job,” I say with a shrug. “What choice do I have? I’m definitely not having sex with her again.”

“Unless it’s another accident,” Ash says.

“Fuck off.”

He laughs. “Well, maybe the show will flop.”

Ella smacks his shoulder again. “It’s not going to flop,” she insists. “Why would you say that?”

“Because maybe that’s Connor’s way out! He didn’t want to do this. It was their idea. If it flops, then clearly it wasn’t a good idea, and that’s not on Connor, that’s on Blaine!”

“Blaine was pretty clear about what I’m supposed to do. And they’ve sunk a fortune into this, so I have no excuse. It has to work.”