1
‘Okay, Cece,’ Murray said to me. ‘We just need to get a few talking-head shots.’
I nodded, shifting around in my chair as I tried to find a comfortable way to sit. The black dress they’d given me for the First Night Party was gorgeous, but the skirt was all tulle and it was itchy as hell.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ I answered. I hoped the dress wouldn’t show sweat on camera. It was unbelievably hot under the bright lights of the improvised studio.
‘Then sit still. You’re going to look like you’re lying or you really need to pee. Neither is going to look good on TV.’
I sat still. Murray had one of those voices that you obeyed instinctively. He reminded me of a foster mother I’d had for a while as a kid. She’d been nice (if you were grading on a curve, anyway), but if she wanted you to do something, you did it.
‘Okay,’ Murray said. ‘Here we go. Remember to answer in full sentences. The audience isn’t going to hear my question, only your answer.’
‘Okay.’
‘Why did you come onMarry Me, Juliet, Cece?’
This was it.
I took a quick breath, and then I smiled the smile I usually reserved for especially difficult customers. ‘I came onMarry Me, Julietfor one reason,’ I said. ‘To find true love.’
Okay. Clearly, this was an enormous lie. I had not evaluated all the available evidence and decided that moving into a mansion with twenty other women and a million cameras was the best chance I would ever have to find the man of my dreams. The odds on Tinder might not be that much better, but at least the chances of getting humiliated in front of the entire country were significantly smaller.
This is how I actually ended up as a contestant on the nation’s favourite dating show.
Step one: after we moved in together several years back, my friends Flick and Ayo and I got super intoMarry Me, Juliet. It started out ironically, but before we knew it, we were the friends who hosted the annual finale watch party. We spent three hours decorating for our party last year and made everyone come as the contestant they thought the Romeo – Brett Sullivan – was going to pick as his Juliet. Suffice to say, it was very much not ironic by that point.
I came as Mary-Ellen the medical secretary, and I wasgenuinely very upset when Brett picked CJ the personal trainer instead. I still maintain that it was him, not me, who was wrong. He and Mary-Ellen had this date where they made out under a waterfall, and sure, it looked a bit like a shampoo commercial, but it was also really hot, and you can’t fake that kind of chemistry, you know?
The way he looked at her. Ooft. I just didn’t understand how you could look at someone like that and then try to date someone else.
There was a silver lining to my disappointment/Brett’s foolishness, though. We made everyone who came to the party chip in a couple of bucks for an expensive bottle of vodka and place a bet on how long they thought it would take for Brett and CJ to announce their break-up after the finale aired. I put my two bucks down for three months and two days, and I was exactly right.
I needed that vodka, too, because I’d had a shocker of a day. I’d had to give a seminar presentation in one of my criminology classes (there’s not a lot that I hate more than standing up in front of a room where everyone’s looking at me), and then I’d gone straight to my retail job, where I’d got I-want-to-speak-to-the-manager’d by three separate people. I was capital-D-Done by the time I pulled out my phone on the train on the way home, so when I saw Brett and CJ’s break-up announcement on Instagram and realised I’d won the party door prize, I was ecstatic.
Step two: Flick and Ayo and I promptly drank my victory vodka. We went too hard too fast and didn’t eat anything except for a handful of gummy bears, so next thing weknew, there we were, filling outMarry Me, Julietcontestant applications.
‘I’m single,’ Ayo said, typing furiously, pausing to knock back the dregs of her vodka orange, and then starting to type furiously again. ‘And hot. And I have a tragic backstory. Put me on your show, you fucking fucks.’
‘I… hate… my… ex-boyfriend,’ Flick said, focused intently on her tablet. ‘I want—no, fuck you, not “review”! “Revenge!” Who says that they want “review”, autocorrect?’
‘Does Adam know you hate him and you want review?’ I asked, shoving another handful of gummy bears into my mouth.
‘We heard the headboard smacking into the wall last Saturday,’ Ayo said. ‘If you really want review, I have some questions about your method.’
‘I definitely want review,’ Flick said. ‘The fact that hate-sex is very good and very hot does not change the fact that I want review.’
‘Should I put the review thing in my application too?’ I asked. ‘I know it’s been a couple of years since Jordan, but there’s no time limit on review.’
‘Yes, absolutely!’ Ayo said, sloshing more vodka into all of our glasses. ‘Go for broke. “Hello, I am Cece, a poor abandoned orphan. My childhood was very sad and lonely, and then I fell in love and he abandoned me too because he was a stupid tech bro with no taste.” Where’s the orange juice?’
‘We’re out,’ Flick said. ‘There’s pineapple juice, though.’
‘Is vodka pineapple a thing?’
‘I guess it is now,’ I said, getting up and going over to the fridge.
