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“Oh. Can I call you Lannie?”
“No way.”
“That’s fine. You can still call me Debbie. Anyhow, these peanuts taste different. I guess ‘cause they’re Italian peanuts. They taste, I don’t know, just different I guess,” said Deb, rubbing her bloated little tummy. She belched quietly and dropped a wadded up tissue into the peanut bowl. “That ought to keep me from eating the rest. Or maybe not. Knowing me, I’ll just keep on eating them anyway. I hope Bellamy likes curvy girls. By curvy, I mean fat. Isn’t he amazing? He’s exactly like I thought he would be, but a million times better. I wish he’d just pick me to be his wife. His wife. That sounds so amazing! No offense, Alanna, or you either Emma; it’s not that I wouldn’t want him to pick one of you, but I really love him. I told him that even. Have either of you told him that yet?”
“What?” we all asked in unison. Vanessa who had been pretending to be asleep was now sitting up, gawking.
“I love him. I am in love with him. And I told him so,” said Deb.
“You did?” asked Vanessa.
“Am I supposed to keep this a secret?” Deb asked, turning to address a cameraman. He just shrugged a little.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“I just knew,” she said. “Have any of you told him yet?”
We all looked at each other. None of us said anything. Then Alanna spoke up: “I did. I had to explain why I was back here, so I told him that I’m in love with him.”
“Are you?” asked Jessica, reappearing on the scene.
“Yes,” said Alanna.
“Are you ever going to tell us what happened with you and Antonio?” asked Vanessa.
“I suppose I might as well. You’ll all just read about it in magazines anyway. This definitely isn’t going on the show though,” she said, raising her eyes at a producer who was sitting off on his own playing with his phone. “Hello, Jules. I know you’re listening. Tell me that I can say something off the record or I’m not going to tell them. Luca, turn your camera off.”
“You’ve got five minutes,” said Jules. “If anything big happens we’re going to film it, so be prepared to shut your mouth or what you say could make it on the show.”
“Thank you,” said Alanna. “Okay, I will make this fast. I really did love Antonio, but I also liked Bellamy. I mean loved Bellamy. I mean, I still love him. But back to Antonio. I felt pressure to pick one, so I did.”
“So you didn’t want to get engaged?” asked Deb.
“That’s not what I said, Debbie. I felt pressure, but I did want to get engaged.”
“Okay. Sorry,” said Deb.
“A week after Antonio and I got engaged he told me that he is a virgin, except for one brief encounter where his older male cousin gave him a hand job at a movie theater. I was devastated, but I told him we could try to work through it with counseling or therapy, or maybe a trip to some place tropical. I really wanted to go to Saint Maarten.”
“Ooh, I love it there,” said Vanessa.
“I’ve never been,” said Alanna.
“Wrap up your story. The girl who didn’t get kicked off is coming back soon and we want to be able to film that,” said a producer.
“Okay, no problem Jules. So, we signed up for some counseling in Santa Monica and it was way too new age for me. The counselors were married. Have you ever heard of that? A married couple doing counseling together?”
“Ick! That sounds like a recipe for disaster,” said Deb.
“It was! They were super old. Like fifty probably. They used crystals and made us soak our feet in olive oil baths. There was so much incense burning that I could barely breathe. I had to pretty much burn my clothes after a session, because of the god-awful stench.”
“Terrible,” said Vanessa.
“Tell me about it! They played bongo drums and they liked not having the lights on very bright. They seemed to think light was disruptive or bad, and they told us to ‘talk things out’ by candlelight. How dumb! And they tried to make us plant a garden in paper cups because they thought we needed something to nurture together. One whole session was about dirt and seeds and Dixie cups. Can you imagine? Can you even imagine? Worst of all, I could tell from all their shenanigans that they didn’t comprehend that we had real problems! Like Antonio’s compulsive lying! He told me that he never eats junk food, and I built my perceptions of him on statements like that. I was building feelings based on lies.”
“What do you mean?” asked Vanessa.
“It turns out, he does eat junk food! What did I find in his car when he came back from visiting his brother at college? A Mulliver’s hamburger wrapper! A gross, greasy, skanky, unhealthy hamburger wrapper! Actually, actually, hang on. I think it might have been a cheeseburger wrapper.”
