Most Hated, page 20
Sabrina walked away. She took the outside steps all the way to her room and hid there in the dark, smoking from a hidden pack of cigarettes until the property went quiet.
33
Zoe
Once packed up for the night, the crew decided they had earned a drink. Zoe was positively elated. Some of the others seemed to think things hadn’t gone entirely perfect. Or at least, Zoe guessed that was the problem judging by the fact that they weren’t jumping up and down.
Fiona turned out to be a real powder puff. She fled the location after the whole Mick-Dahlia showdown, before the Aubrey scene, saying she had a sour stomach. Zoe could tell it was guilt over the set-up. Loser. She had a lot of toughening up to do if she ever wanted to make it in this business.
Even Aleksandr had stopped furrowing his brow for the moment and had cracked a smile. She put on a little makeup on her way to the bar.
Maybe tonight was the night she could try flirting with him a little.
Awkward to plan out flirtation like that, but at this point Zoe was used to doing things in a prescribed, planned, and manipulated way.
Living the life Zoe had, things rarely happened that surprised her. Think about it. The good surprises are things like:
•finding out the guy you like likes you back, or better yet, a secret admirer
•a marriage proposal
•desired pregnancy
•financial windfall
•unexpected job success
Well, she seldom had a crush anymore. She gave that up a long time ago. As for the financial windfall, she didn’t play the lottery. The job stuff was pretty much her only focus and goal, and it would not be a surprise when it happened.
Bad surprises:
•getting dumped
•undesired pregnancy
•financial loss
•unexpected job failure
•illness
Due to the same reasons, she was unlikely to have romantic or family-life surprises, so she didn’t have to worry about those. Financial loss—she bought almost nothing and had no real earthly possessions. Illness could strike her; that was true. But since she always assumed the worst, she could pretty much count on being emotionally prepared (read: dead inside) to handle whatever.
When she found out she got the job on Aleksandr’s project, that was a good, unexpected twist. And tonight went better than she could have ever predicted.
She would get his attention, try to stand out. Make sure he knew she was the reason for his success. Like, what was he even doing? He was editing, which was way beneath him. Zoe was sure he was a magician though, and she was eager to see what he had put together. The crew hadn’t seen any of the footage; they only made notes on the scenes they wanted to manipulate.
The bar was a total dive—the ironic destination for the tipsy rich and the “right at home” place for the vacationers who were packing twenty people into an off-shore house.
Aleksandr ordered a round of shots, and they raised them high and said, at Zoe’s suggestion, to the ladies who will make us richer than them!
It was a lofty and unlikely goal for the others, but Zoe thought it quite likely this was her real ticket to the big time.
“That wasn’t Everclear, was it?” Zoe asked Aleksandr playfully. “If it was, I’d think you were trying to get me to spill all my secrets or take off all my clothes.”
Aleksandr shook his head, then looked at her for a moment before calling, “Jason, get your camera, I want to do some more behind the scenes stuff. Everyone mic up.”
Jason grinned, gobsmacked—but didn’t move.
“Jason, what’s the problem?” Aleksandr asked.
“No, yeah, I’ll go get my gear.”
Milo followed, “I’ll get the mics.”
Within fifteen minutes they were all wearing one—they were pros after all—and Jason was behind the lens.
“Carry on as normal,” said Aleksandr, with an easy, breezy air. “This is mostly for us at the end, and I’d like to show—show how human we are.”
He winked at Zoe.
She didn’t know what the wink meant, but she smiled at him before ordering a Long Island Iced Tea and drinking a quarter of it quickly to cool her nerves.
It was after midnight when she was finally alone with Aleksandr.
They sat out by the fire pit in the sand. She was on her third Long Island, and he was on his third gin and tonic. At least that’s what it looked like; she knew he often drank them, and he was drinking something clear and bubbly with a lime.
His hair was a little mussed. He wasn’t much different tipsy or being social, but he did seem to be in a good mood.
“What did you think of filming tonight?” she asked, tossing her hair and leaning toward him from her chair.
“We got a lot of good footage didn’t we?”
“Yeah I’d say so,” she enthused.
“That was all you, wasn’t it?”
If she were the type of girl who blushed, like Sabrina, she would now. But she wasn’t.
“I can’t take all the credit. But I can take most of it.” She laughed.
“Let me ask you something,” he said, leaning closer.
Zoe leaned in. “Yeah, what’s up?”
“Do you ever feel bad about it?”
“Bad about what?”
“The manipulation. These are real people, real lives. Real marriages, mother-daughter relationships. That doesn’t bother you?”
Zoe screwed up her face and shook her head. “Let me tell you something, these people are stupid enough to fall for it. And they willingly signed up, they knew what they were getting into. Okay maybe not this bad, but we have to keep elevating things, that’s why we picked such—”
“Such what?”
She took a sip, “Not to be an asshole, but that’s why we picked people the world already doesn’t like. People love to watch an antagonist get what they deserve.”
“And you think these people deserve this?”
He was testing her, seeing if she had the guts to back up her actions. And she did. It wasn’t her first time being questioned. “Look, if they wanted it easy, they could stay private. But they chose not to. They should know by now a little arguing isn’t going to capture the attention of a viewer. We want to see things collapse .”
“You think that’s sort of human nature, is that what you’re saying?”
“Absolutely. Look at gladiators, now we have running water and electricity, but that didn’t change our truest nature. People love watching other people suffer. Reality TV hasn’t made it decades by showing a bunch of best friends getting along. Nope. We can’t send them out to the dust of a colosseum and let them kill each other anymore, but we can watch them break, cry, insult, throw drinks at each other. Think of them as our gladiators of emotional warfare.” She let out a sigh. “If you let it be human, let them destroy each other and themselves, it’s more fun.”
He nodded. “Got it. So no regrets.”
“No regrets.” She held her cup up to him. “Cheers!”
He clicked his plastic with hers, and took a sip, never taking his eyes off her.
“I wonder about the privacy you’re taking away from them. By getting them to tell their secrets for the world to hear, or broadcasting an affair—”
“At this point it’s an ‘emotional affair,’” she said with sarcastic air quotes. “And that was the start of half of this. Mick Irvine needs new press. Mick Irvine needs to be with a celebrity, not some small-town ex-soccer player. My friend is his publicist, you know that right? I wrote it all up in the emails.”
“I don’t think I do.”
Zoe was getting too buzzed to realize how unlikely it was that he didn’t know.
“My friend Regan, his publicist—she’s had a thing for Mick forever—and she doesn’t want him with Dahlia. Even in sports, you need press, you need a story, you need celebrity. Tom Brady married a model because he could and because it kept him relevant. All the religious and political stuff, that’s a way for these players to get people to pay attention. Anyway, Mick needs a reinvention. This guy is a white wall; you can paint him any color you want. Regan met him, before Dahlia was ever on the scene, and he was all in. But then I guess Dahlia broke him down and broke him down.”
“You look like you admire your friend’s method.”
“I do! She told me that a few years ago she asked him what is the most important thing to you, and he said football.” She splayed her fingers. “Football. That’s his—that’s what he said. Not love, family, friends. Which I also admire because really it’s honest. So yeah, he said that and when he got traded, things weren’t the same between Dahlia and Mick, and Regan got in there. She was doing her job. She introduced him to Nicole. Told her to act this way, act that way, and she came off like the perfect girl for him. And now here we are, he’s going to leave his real-life-wife. She can go back to nowheresville and he can get on the map as part of cultural history instead of ending up some football player no one ever remembers.”
“What about Dahlia?”
She scoffed. “Oh please. She’s got a bunch of girlfriends, I’m sure, and they’ll all build her up and tell her how crazy he was and how right she is, and then she’ll marry some normal guy that she’ll appreciate. Look, if she knew half of this, she’d want to leave him. He’s not even a real person, he’s whatever people tell him he is. That’s what you get when you’re raised to be, groomed from a very young age, to be a star athlete.”
“I had no idea how valuable you would be, Zoe,” said Aleksandr.
She beamed. “Thank you. I try. It’s an art. To get her to be the crazy bitch, have him come out on top even though he’s going to leave her to be with another girl? We’re doing them all big favors. And I’ll tell you something better.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s not even the biggest twist for the end of the season.”
“It’s not, then what is?”
“I can’t tell you that. I may not even be able to tell you how I do it, either. It’s like a magic trick. I’m something of a magician, you see, Aleksandr.” She crossed her eyes and pursed her lips at him.
He smiled. “I’m going to need you to tell me how you do it.”
“Maybe if…”
“If what?”
“If Jason isn’t crouching behind me while I’m mic’d up.”
Aleksandr laughed and the two of them turned to see Jason and his camera filming.
“He is good though, you are good Jason, I only noticed you a minute ago. That’s why they pay you the big bucks, right?”
Jason, who was not paid big bucks shook his head. “You’re something else, Zoe.”
She shrugged. “You’ll thank me when we make history.”
34
Dahlia
Mick was not there when I got back to the suite at the hotel. His things were gone, and it occurred to me that he must have packed up before he met me for filming. I’d shared enough hotel rooms with him to know how long he took to collect his belongings and still leave behind one rogue T-shirt. That meant he knew he was going to leave.
My head spun in practical, logistical questions, where did he go, how did he get home. It was easier to be irritated because it was too unsafe to access my utter, absolute grief. No, not even grief, fear of grief—putting me further from resolution. I didn’t even know for sure yet what was happening.
So often in our marriage I had been marooned, during training camp or certain team-only events, but this instance of separation seemed radically different. There was a finality that left me feeling paralyzed.
How did this man who I had spent years with … how did he change so immediately?
This is what the internet will say about me and Mick. She managed to hold onto him for six years and then one day … he was gone. Not even a note.
Or was it more brutal than that? Would my marriage end—the gravity of which was still well out of reach of my mind’s grasp—and then the few friends I had left and my family would sort of do that cringing, “yeah, I was afraid of that…” or “I can’t say I’m surprised…”.
The only closure for me being that I had tried my best.
I couldn’t tell what was worse: the shock of him being gone or the revelation that there had been clues along the way that I likely missed.
All of it was worse. All of it was worse than when, a few months ago, I would have confidently thrown my relationship to the wolves, knowing it would come back in one piece.
That’s what I’d done by going on this show. And here my broken relationship was, returning limping, bleeding, torn apart, and hobbling right past me.
Despite the dizzying reality of the exchange with Mick, I kept feeling like I was being dramatic. Irrational, over-reading into things to imagine there was any way a marriage was ending without me seeing it. Relationships, like cheap relationships, young ones, those end in a second. But how can you have a life together and then one day find out you can’t have it anymore. We were married. Everything else felt unimportant, like what it might mean for Sabrina that her daughter showed up; and stopping to remember any of the night made me sick to my stomach.
Each time I tried to call him or text him, I reminded myself that I was his wife and had every right in the world to try to reach my husband. My attempts went straight to voicemail, his location tracker disabled.
Cool Mick, I remember high school.
What kind of man—what kind of man did any of this? But what kind of man walked away, really left after dropping a vague bomb like that?
He never answered. My options here were limited. Leave and go back to the city. Stay, make the ones in charge of my edit happy and film day after tomorrow—the last day before a break.
Dig a hole, climb in, wait to die?
That sounded best, but wouldn’t work. My anger would unbury me too fast.
This show might be the worst decision I’d ever made. Whatever future scenario played out in my mind, it circled back to the show. The show. The worst mistake I ever made. Looping thought.
After a silent hour of sitting motionless on the sofa, staring at my phone waiting for the call or text that never came, I decided to change and get into bed. I washed my face, used all my products, and brushed and flossed my teeth. Routine always centered and calmed me. In my soccer career, a strict timetable of workouts in the morning, scheduled meals and practices in the afternoon gave me a sense of control in an otherwise unpredictable situation. Train your body what to expect and what it should be doing, sports psychology 101, you’ll perform best when the game is on the line.
I got into my side of the bed and made a wall of pillows around me. Ridiculous as it was, I needed a physical way to feel less exposed and vulnerable.
Early the next morning, sleepless and hazy, I devised a plan: pack up my stuff, and Uber to Sabrina’s. Returning to the scene of last night’s events might help me find a piece of evidence, a conversation, anything that would assure me it wasn’t as bad as I remembered.
The property was dead quiet, when I got there, like a sleepy town seconds after a tornado has ripped through and destroyed lives; those moments before everyone emerges to take stock, and the EMS vehicles arrive on site.
Inside the house was dim and so different without the frenetic crew around every turn. The stillness of real life was now unfamiliar to me.
I found a vanilla cupcake in the kitchen, bit into it like an apple, and walked out onto the deck. The temperature had dropped, and the sky was leaden. Sabrina’s housekeeper and another man were tying down the umbrellas in the pool area and collecting the outdoor cushions. When you prepare for inclement weather, nothing gets damaged.
The smell of cigarette smoke lured me toward the cluster of Adirondack chairs positioned to look out over the water. A stone pathway through the short grass guided me to them.
Clearing my throat so as not to startle whoever it was, and hoping it was anyone but Mariana, relief washed over me as Sabrina turned in the chair. She beckoned me with a lazy hand, patting the arm of the one beside her.
“Take a seat, Miss Lonelyhearts.”
Sabrina was barefoot, still in her pajamas and wrapped in an oversized blanket that looked like rabbit fur. Even vulnerable, she was an icon. She swigged from a bottle and then offered it to me. Dom Perignon was the last thing I wanted but I took a sip, because whether you want to keep drinking or not, you take a bottle of champagne from Sabrina Verroye when it’s offered.
Having a drink off-camera felt completely different.
“This is all I have to offer you,” I said, holding up my cupcake.
She looked at it for a moment, then had a bite, and handed it back. She wiped some icing from the corner of her mouth and let out a heavy sigh.
Her eyes remained fixed on the water. “I need to apologize for my part in last night,” she said. “I can’t blame Fiona for my own stupidity, but can I suggest I’m acutely accustomed to taking direction? It was never my intention to have everything blow up on you. I believed, maybe led to believe, I was giving you a place to share your side of the story. I feel awful for what I did, Dahlia, and I want to fix this for you somehow.”
“Please,” I countered. “You didn’t do anything to me. You sped up the big reveal.” She made eye contact. Neither of us laughed.
We sat together in silence for a few seconds, watching as the waves slammed the shore with increasing energy. The breeze lifted sand off the surface of the beach down below us, and I tightened my sweater around me, the big chunky sweater wrap I had bought for the weekend, envisioning sleepy mornings with Mick and a cup of coffee by the water.
“I thought I could use this show to change my trajectory,” said Sabrina.
The beach was deserted except for a man running in our direction near the surf, and for a millisecond I thought it was Mick.
“When I left Robbie, I never would have imagined that the world would hate me for it. I didn’t think I would be left without my daughter. What scares me for Aubrey is that once the press tires of supporting him…,” she waved her hand above her head, “and they will. I’ll still be the evil fame whore. But they’ll come around to hating him, and they’ll hate her too.”
