The Confused Heart

chapter 3

Charles leans and this total stranger reaches around his back and untucks his shirt, warm fingers sliding across his skin. And yes, in the past few days, he’s learned LA types are very weird about both personal space and naked bodies, but Charles not an LA type. He’s not accustomed to being groped in cars by men wearing truly hideous cargo shorts.

Peter’s fingers feel like pinpricks every time they make contact as he fondles the nude-colored mic belt wardrobe put on Charlesback at the studio. After fifteen excruciating seconds, which Charlescounts out one Mississippi at a time to stop himself from spiraling, Peter pulls away and slumps back against the seat. Charles finally exhales.

“Holy s**t, dude. You were hot.”

“I—what?”

“Your mic.” Peter points to the place where Charles ’s shirt is now untucked in the back and then points to his own earpiece, where someone is presumably shouting things. “Someone left your mic on from earlier, and you’re back in receiver range. Always be wary of a hot mic. Consider this the first lesson from your new handler: anything you say can be taken out of context. Your soliloquy about letting me touch you could easily be inserted into a very different kind of scene.”

“Oh.” He’s suddenly reminded it’s June in Southern California, and he is sweating without the air-conditioning. “Right. Okay, right. Yeah. Sorry.”

From two feet away, his new handler studies him carefully behind his glasses. Charles holds eye contact for one Mississippi, two Mississippi, then looks down and nervously adjusts his cuffs.

“Did you get hurt? When you fell out of the car?” Peter asks softly. “You look like you’re in pain.”

“Oh. Uh, no.”

Peter dives back into his shoulder bag. “I’ve got pain killers and Tiger Balm and Band-Aids. What do you need?”

“N-nothing,” he mutters. “I’m fine.”

Peter is cradling an entire first-aid kit in his arms. “But your face. It’s all pinched together like you’re in pain.”

“Um. That’s just. My face.”

At that, Peter throws his head back and laughs. One of Charles ’s chief failures in life is his inability to understand when someone is laughing with him versus laughing at him. Nine times out of ten, it’s the latter.

“It’s confusing,” Peter notes in a tone that almost makes Charles think he’s laughing with him, “because you look like the guy in a fancy cologne commercial, but you’re distinctly acting like the guy in an IBS medication commercial.”

“I can be both of those guys simultaneously.”

“Not on this show you can’t.” Peter pulls the People magazine out from under him and jabs a finger at the face on the cover. “If this whole thing is going to work, you’ve got to be this guy for the cameras.”

Charles stares at the magazine version of himself, fumbling for a way to explain. I’m not that guy. I don’t know how to be that guy. This was a huge mistake.

The petite foul-mouth shoves her arm toward Charles . “Jules Lu. Nice to meet you. I’m your production assistant. It’s my job to make sure you’re where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there. And you are not where you’re supposed to be right now.”

“Sorry.” He stares at her hand but doesn’t take it. “Uh, you… also meet.”

“Does he think that was a sentence?” Jules asks Peter. “God, we’re screwed.”

Jules yanks Peter out of the car, and Peter yanks Charles out of the car, and anything Charles was going to say to Peter gets swallowed up by the madness all around them. They head up a path toward the set, which is supposed to look like a fairy tale. The castle is lit up in the distance, and the show’s host, Mark Davenport, waits in front of an ornate fountain. There are twinkle lights and flowers and a horse-drawn carriage ripped straight out of Cinderella.

It should look like a fairy tale, but the castle is actually just a millionaire’s house in Pasadena, and there are crew members dressed in black, shouting and vaping. Mark Davenport screams at his assistant about kombucha until she cries.

So, like, not quite Walt Disney’s vision.

“Stand here for me.” Peter motions to a little tape x, and he warns Charles before he slides his hands around Charles ’s back again to click on his mic. Charles tenses. This is it. He can’t undo it, can’t back out, can’t hide. If he thinks too hard about the past year and all the things that led him here, to this single act of desperation, he knows he won’t be able to keep it together.

“Remember,” Peter says low and close to his ear, “everyone in Command Central can hear you now.”

Charles swallows the lump forming in his throat.

“You look miserable.”

“Oh, that’s probably because I am miserable.”

“Mic.”

“I’m… ah… miserably happy to be here.”

“Very convincing save. You’re a natural at this.”

Charles smiles despite himself, and Peter explodes with an enthusiastic, “Yes! Yes!” He turns his fingers into a box and squints one eye like he’s lining up the shot. “Just like that! Smile just like that when the cameras are on.”

Unfortunately, Charles ’s smile collapses in on itself as soon as Peter draws attention to it.

“Well, now you look like you’re going to vomit.”

“I probably am.”

“You’re not going to vomit! You’re about to meet twenty women who are all here on a quest to find love with you!” Peter seems to think this is a delightful prospect, as if all of Charles ’s fairy-tale dreams are about to come true. As if Charles has fairy-tale dreams. “This is going to be amazing!”

Peter forgets the advance-notice-for-touching rule, and his hand folds around Charles ’s bicep, burning through the layers of his tux. Charles isn’t sure what’s happening to his body right now, but it’s not good. It’s maybe very, very bad.

Peter leans in even closer. His breath is hot on Charles ’s cheek. He smells like sugar and chocolate and something else Charles can’t quite place. “I know you’re freaked out right now, but at the end of all of this, you’re going to find love,” Peter whispers. “In nine weeks, you’re going to have a fiancée.”

And that’s when Charles truly does vomit, all over Peter.

Peter

There is vomit on his Chucks.