Page 58 of One to Watch

Producer: What kind of man would you like to see Bea end up with?

Sue: Someone who wants children!

Producer: You’re ready for some grandkids, huh?

Bob: We have six, we see them every Sunday.

Sue: But it’s different with Bea. She’s my only daughter, and she’s so far away—oh, I would just love for her to have a baby and come home a little more. And a wedding! With all her style, wouldn’t that be a treat? Bob, we could do it at the church, and Ernesto’s could cater.

Bob: Let’s meet the men she’s dating before we start planning the reception, okay?

Sue: If she gets engaged on the show, do you think they’d get married this year? A fall wedding would be so romantic with all the leaves.

Bob: We want Bea to be happy. That’s the main thing. We really want her to be happy.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM WYATT AMES’S MAIN SQUEEZE APPLICANT SURVEY, AS POSTED ON ABS.COM

Name: Wyatt Ames

Occupation: Wheat farmer

Hometown: Boone, Oklahoma

Where would you most like to travel? Maybe Finland, or Alaska? I’d love to see the Northern Lights.

If you could have any career, what would you do? I love working with my family. But if that weren’t a factor, I might like to work with horses, or maybe in an animal hospital.

Do you have any tattoos? My sister and I both got our dad’s initials on our shoulders after he passed. We took his truck and snuck up to Tulsa to get them. When we got home, our mom was waiting up for us—we thought she was going to be so mad. But the next day, she drove us back to the parlor so she could get one too.

“Okay,” Alison tittered, “open your eyes!”

“What the hell is this?” Bea blurted before she could stop herself. She was in the designated hair/makeup/wardrobe conference room at the Econo Lodge where they were staying, and she was positively surrounded by long, sparkling dresses.

“They’re for your date with Wyatt,” Alison clarified, as if this explained anything at all.

“In Cheshire, Ohio?” Bea was incredulous. “The only time I’ve ever even seen anyone in town dress this formally is—wait. No. Alison, no.”

Alison laughed with unbridled glee. “It’s prom night, baby!”

And so it was that Bea ended up in a slinky Badgley Mischka gown embroidered with ombré sequins that shifted in the light from navy blue to deep turquoise. With sky-high heels and her hair pinned back in glossy curls, Bea felt like she was finally getting the glamorous pre-prom experience she’d yearned for in high school.

“See?” Alison reassured her. “Not a disco ball at all.”

“More like that sparkly dress Ariel wears when she comes out of the water at the end of The Little Mermaid.”

“Oh my God, a forever look,” Alison exclaimed. “My little mermaid finally has her legs.”

“Changing her body to please a man, just like everyone,” Bea quipped.

“Not you.” Alison draped her arms around Bea affectionately.

“Yeah, well. Couldn’t if I wanted to!”

Bea thought back to her adolescence in this place, the years of fad diets and attempted starvation that never resulted in a loss of more than five or ten pounds (always immediately regained the second she ate a normal meal). No matter what she did, Bea was always the fattest girl in school, and maybe also the quietest, doing whatever she could to escape unwanted attention. As she rode in a limousine toward the small park in the center of town where she was meeting Wyatt—towering oak trees, a picturesque gazebo strung with fairy lights, and a small crowd of people cheering and waving posters, waiting to welcome home their town’s most famous daughter—she had the sense that if she wasn’t quite rewriting history tonight, she was, at least in some small way, righting it.

It was all a little surreal, but as Bea emerged from the limo, she thought the craziest part of all might just be the man who was waiting for her: Tall, broad, and golden, Wyatt looked every inch the football hero Bea remembered—except, in a perfectly fitted tuxedo, he was no longer the casual farmer in boots and jeans.

Tonight, he was the prom king.