The True Love Experiment

I know how this exchange would be written in a transcript. Overlapping, it would say. The staccato of words coming out one after the other, crowding the space, drowning us in bursts of noise. I laugh, shoving past the way he doesn’t want to hear what I’m going to say.

So I blurt it out, loud enough to drown out his protest: “I’m in love with you.”

And it’s a beat before I realize my words barreled right over his: “I can’t do this.”

Everything falls nuclear-winter-level silent. The stillness in the room is absolute. And then the sound of him carefully clearing his throat feels deafening.

“Oh God,” I say, laughing awkwardly, but inside I’m shriveling up in humiliation. “Did you just say what I think you said?”

His gaze is soft but steady. “I’m sorry.”

“If this is about the show,” I quickly say, “we can go back to our original plan. We can be secret if we need to.” Desperation rises in me the longer I face this stiff, cold version of Connor. “I’m not going to let anyone get in the way of this if you’re willing to try. What I said in the hotel about being crazy about you? I meant it. I’m all in. We can sneak around. I’m very small; I can be stealthy. In fact, my high school guidance counselor gave me two career paths: romance author or secret agent.”

I expect a grin but I don’t even get a flicker of a reaction. Instead, he breaks his gaze away and turns it toward the dark fireplace. With his profile illuminated, I see how tired he looks. His chiseled cheekbones seem gaunt, and I realize that it’s because there’s no smile in his eyes.

Dread falls like a weight in my stomach. Of course. I broke this. The way I left the hotel room, the way I revealed my fickle, impulsive side… was the exact wrong way to handle Connor. I knew he was guarded, knew he entered into things only after cautious deliberation. Knew he was trusting me with something he probably hasn’t told many people, and I smashed that laboriously constructed trust with the mighty Fizzy hammer.

“I fucked up, didn’t I?” I say quietly. “Leaving you last night blew the whole thing up.”

He inhales deeply and slowly. “I told you from the start,” he says to his lap, “that I didn’t want something if it was only sex.”

“I know.”

When he turns his eyes up to me, the distance in his gaze sends a chill down my arms.

“What we shared felt much deeper than sex, Felicity, but at the first sign of trouble you fled. I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours feeling angry and hurt and incredibly stupid for trusting you. It makes it very hard for me to believe you now.”

Mortification isn’t a swift punch to the gut; it is a slow seeping of ice-cold water into my veins. I can’t imagine what Connor thinks about me right now—I wonder if he’s regretting putting the Heroes’ hearts in my hands, let alone putting his own precious heart there. I agreed to do this show in the middle of my worst and deepest writer’s block, and I justified it by saying I was doing it for the audience. And now I’m telling him to date me in secret, putting his job and his life here in jeopardy after I fled the hotel room like a panicked idiot the first time he confessed that he might not be a perfect human. It was supposed to be us against the world, and I blew it all up.

I have never in my life felt like such a profound failure.





thirty-nine CONNOR




This time when Fizzy leaves, I only feel blank inside. I’d wanted to hold on to this anger—had spent the day going from indignant to hurt to disappointed and back again—but as I watched the excited flush drain from her face, breathless hope replaced by grim understanding, my anger slipped away, and I just felt… tired. Now there’s only the silence of my thoughts, and the flat bleakness of the door firmly shut, literally and metaphorically.

I should feel relief that it’s finally over and I can get back to focusing on what got me here in the first place, namely my job and my family, but I don’t. I feel like absolute shit.

And she told me she’s in love with me.



* * *



Blaine is the last person I want to see Monday morning, but he barges into my office just as I’m packing up to leave for the set.

“I can tell you’re on your way out, but we need to talk first,” he says, closing my office door.

“Did the final numbers come in?” Brenna’s text from about six this morning showed numbers up over week one, on track to break another record.

“Fuck the numbers right now,” he says. “Just tell me I’m not going to have to deal with any fucking drama on your crew.”

I go still, setting my car keys down on my desk. The possibility of photos of Fizzy and me together… “What’s this about?”

“Social media is raking Trent’s crew and Smash Course over the coals because of this doping bullshit.”

My first reaction is relief. And then I frown, leaning in like I need to be closer to his words to process them. I was so wrapped up in the drama with Fizzy this weekend that I feel completely disconnected from anything beyond her, and us, and The True Love Experiment. “What doping bullshit? Trent wouldn’t do anything like that.” The man used to make library documentaries and low-budget sitcoms, for fuck’s sake.

“What dope—?” Blaine asks, cutting off in abrupt disbelief. “Connor, he’s been dealing with lawyers for weeks. As of this morning it’s all over the goddamn Internet.”

I look past him, remembering. Trent came back to San Diego for meetings with lawyers. It didn’t even occur to me to ask why. “I haven’t been online yet,” I tell him. “I came straight here before heading to set.”

Blaine gives me the brief rundown: a facilities manager at one of the venues used for Trent’s show came forward with video proof that two of the other producers on the show were giving performance-enhancing drugs to a contestant.

“Okay, this is bleak, this is shit,” I say. “But it’s entertainment television, not the Olympics.”

“Yeah? Not the Olympics? Well, what do we tell the execs at SuperHuman and Rocket Fuel? Should I call our biggest sponsors and explain why we’re taking obscene ad money to promo their workout formulas during commercial breaks, but letting the contestants dope off camera? Oh, is that not enough for you?” He doesn’t let me answer this rhetorical question, not that I’d bother. “Well, how about this: one of the producers was also fucking this contestant in the tour bus bathroom, so you tell me if it still doesn’t matter.”

My stomach drops. “Jesus.”

“You’re the juggernaut, Conn, but Trent’s show also has the highest ratings in his time slot. You see now how the audience treats these things like their fucking lifeline. They get invested, and when you give them the power of a vote? They feel ownership. Let them have that kind of power and you’re finished the second you step out of line. We put everything we’ve got into this goddamn show and cannot lose our viewers because Trent’s team was breaking the law and banging the stars.”

“Okay.” I lean back against my desk, cupping my neck. “What do you need me to do?”

“I need you to reassure me that your shop is clean. I want to hear that these Heroes you cast are perfect goddamn gentlemen. That Fizzy could run for president if she wanted to. I want to hear that no one on your crew has wandering hands or a penchant for jerking off in front of people.” Dread fills my gut with a leaden weight. “I want to hear that the only fucking happening is the fucking Felicity Fucking Chen will do with the winner of this goddamn Fiji trip we are spending a small fortune on!”

With wry defeat, I exhale a laugh. I reckon it’s good we ended things; I’d have to end it now anyway. I fucking hate all of this.

Blaine takes a step closer, glowering. “Connor? I need the words.”

I swipe a hand down my face. “Yeah. We’re clean.”

“No bullshit, Connor,” he says, straightening. “You’re the only thing we have left right now, and if your show tanks, we go under. And you know what that means: you go under.”





forty CONNOR