Chapter Seven
Troy
Fabian smiled smugly at the camera and began his rehearsed lines as all the contestants and I stood in the courtyard, all dressed up again. The tux I had on was itchy as hell, and I couldn’t wait to get out of it. Judging by the looks on some of the girls’ faces, they couldn’t wait to get out of their six inch heels either.
“Welcome to our first elimination ceremony. Seeing as it’s our first one, Troy will have to send eight women home. Tonight, there will be tears, heartbreak, and regret for those eight contestants…but for the other sixteen, they will be one step closer to finding true love with this season’s Stud.”
Fabian turned and gestured to me before looking back at the camera. “As you know, each contestant is given an empty charm bracelet in the first episode. Those who our Stud finds the most charming will receive a charm to add to their bracelets tonight. Those who don’t have enough charm will find theirs empty, and they must say their goodbyes and pack their things.”
I almost rolled my eyes at that. How many lame ‘charm’ puns could they seriously fit in one speech?
I’d had a whole week since my arrival to prepare for this ceremony. After the cocktail party, where I’d had a chance to speak to all of the contestants one-on-one, there had been two other big group activities, designed to get me to hang out with the women whose company I’d enjoyed the most at the party, while still allowing the stragglers a chance to talk to me again.
Now it was time to cut eight of them, and I had to say, I was starting to feel like shit about it. I’d initially thought that it’d be easy, and leading these women on didn’t matter because they were all doing the same to me. But now I felt guilty; some of the women already had tears in their eyes at the thought of possibly being sent home. Maybe they were just crocodile tears, or maybe they were real tears borne of frustration from not being given more of a chance to get attention, but there was always a chance they were genuine tears of sadness. What if some of the women who came here actually really did want to find love? I hadn’t even considered that when I made the decision to come on the show; I’d been so hell-bent on seeing Eden again that I’d lumped all the contestants into the same ‘attention seeker’ category and didn’t feel a shred of guilt about doing so.
Fuck, maybe I really was an asshole. No wonder Eden hated me—she’d probably seen my true colors years ago and realized what a dick I’d likely become later in life, and that was why she’d dumped me.
Upon Fabian’s prompting, I finally picked fifteen women who’d seemed the most down-to-earth and honest to give charms to, and soon there was only one charm left to give. Blair Gilbert was one of the remaining nine who hadn’t received a charm, and she looked very anxious. There was no way I was going to eliminate her, though. She was Eden’s friend, and if I wanted to get Eden on my side again, then a good way to do that would be to keep Blair around as a contestant.
“There’s just one more charm for Troy to hand out,” Fabian said, flashing a serious look at the cameras. “Who will it be? Find out after the break…”
We stopped filming for a few minutes so that some people from the makeup department could come in and quickly give everyone touchups—standing out here for hours made us all look pretty sweaty and shiny—and then Glenn called for action again.
“Welcome back to The Stud,” Fabian said with his trademark toothy grin aimed right at the camera. “If you’ve only just tuned in, tonight is our first elimination ceremony, and fifteen charms have already been given out. That leaves us with just one charm and nine women….so who will the lucky lady be?”
I flashed a big fake smile at the camera too, and then I stepped forward to Blair. “Blair, I’d really love it if you’d stay,” I said loudly enough for my mic to pick up.
Her tense shoulders slumped with relief, and she smiled and mouthed the word ‘thank you’ to me as she hugged me.
“What, you didn’t really think I was gonna let you go, did you?” I said in a teasing voice, covering my mic as she broke away a second later. “Don’t worry, you’ll be sticking around for the long haul.”
“Thanks, Troy,” she said again. We could both see Eden from where we were standing, and Blair gave her a thumbs up. Eden smiled back at her, but before she could even look at me, an intern on the show took her attention away by asking her something.
The eight women who I hadn’t picked quietly went back to their rooms to pack, except one, who started having a complete meltdown, screaming about how she’d placed a lot of money on a bet that she could go all the way to the top four. Glenn looked exuberant; this tantrum was going to make excellent viewing for all the drama addicts out there.
Filming wasn’t over for the night, though, not by a long shot. The sixteen remaining contestants were meant to join me for a dinner party in the courtyard, and Glenn gave us all half an hour to get changed and ready (god forbid anyone ever wore the same outfit twice in the same episode). By the time we got back to the courtyard, I was fucking starving, and I was glad to see that the catering staff had laid out a massive spread of food on the long table which had been set up.
As usual, alcohol was also flowing freely at the dinner party, and some of the women eventually began to make fools of themselves for the cameras by getting into tipsy fights with each other over petty things. One even tried to attract my attention at the head of the table by stripping off her dress and demanding that we all abandon the dinner and go for a swim instead.
“C’mon, guys,” she slurred, waving her arms around at everyone as the cameramen stepped closer to capture every embarrassing moment. “Screw the food, let’s have fun! I want to…” Her voice suddenly faltered, and her hands flew to her taut, spray-tanned abdomen. “Oh, shit, I don’t feel so good.”
“Well, that’s what happens when you don’t touch your dinner and drink almost a whole bottle of wine,” Anya said from the far end of the table, rolling her eyes.
“I did eat something. The hummus dip,” the drunk contestant said, still clutching her stomach. “Oh, god, I really need to…”
She took off running towards the bathroom, and within the next five minutes, at least ten of the other women were moaning and clutching their stomachs too.
“What the fuck is going on?” Glenn said as he told the crew to stop filming and stepped over to the table. The producers had all stepped over as well, including Eden.
“My stomach hurts,” a pretty contestant named Emily mumbled. “I think I have to go before I literally explode.”
She stood up and began to run off towards the house, but she only made it as far as the pool, which she promptly began to vomit in. As she did so, the rest of the groaning women got up and made a run for it too, and one of them quite literally got the runs, right there in her tight white pants as she desperately tried to make it inside. Fuck, this was awful. The only silver lining to all this mess was that the crew was no longer filming. I couldn’t imagine how humiliated the women would be if they were.
“Jesus Christ!” Glenn shouted as the producers and other crew members dashed after the sickly girls to make sure they got through the sudden illness. “Eden, get over here!”
Eden was the only producer who hadn’t gone after the eleven sick contestants—she’d stayed behind to keep an eye on the other five to ensure they drank plenty of water to lessen the symptoms in case they eventually got sick too. She headed over to Glenn when he called her, and he immediately began verbally laying into her.
“What the fuck is going on?” he said. “I expect crazy stuff to happen on this show—hell, I want drama—but this? Turning my show into a literal shit-show? No fucking way!”
“Glenn, I…”
“Obviously, someone’s put some fucking laxatives in the food or wine. This is not the kind of drama I fucking want!”
Eden’s eyes were wide, but I could tell she was trying to remain calm through Glenn’s tirade. “I don’t know if that’s true about the laxatives, it could just be a stomach bu—”
“Of course it’s true!” Glenn roared. “Every season these bitches get crazier, and like I said, this is disgusting. This is not the kind of drama that gets good ratings! So you need to do your fucking job and sort these women out. We obviously have some rogue contestant who thinks it’s funny to make everyone else’s lives miserable, and you need to find out who it is and nip it in the bud before I—”
“Hey!” I said, cutting in with my fists curled up by my side. I wasn’t going to let him speak to Eden like this; none of this was her fault, and she didn’t deserve this outburst. “Look, man, you’re not being fair here. It’s not Eden’s fault this happened.”
Glenn gave me a scathing look. “She’s a junior producer on my show, and it’s a producer’s job to ensure everything runs smoothly with the girls. But allowing someone to slip laxatives in the food makes everything run a bit too fucking smoothly, if you know what I mean,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “So that counts as her not doing her fucking job.”
“You have no idea that someone put laxatives in the food,” I replied. “I mean, I feel fine, and I ate and drank here tonight. So maybe it’s food poisoning from one of the dishes that some of us didn’t touch, or it’s some sort of stomach bug going around. You can’t expect your producers to be fucking microbiologists and predict bugs like this, and on top of that, you have six other producers on the set. So why is Eden the only one you’re yelling at, huh?”
Glenn’s chest heaved with anger, but he finally took a few deep breaths and nodded. “You’re right,” he said before turning to Eden. “Sorry, Eden. We’ve lost a whole night of filming now, so I’m pretty pissed. But Troy’s right; this isn’t your fault.”
Eden nodded. “I get it. I’d probably be angry too. I’ll make some calls and get someone to find out if this is just a bug, or if someone really did tamper with some of the food.”
Glenn nodded. “Right. If it turns out that someone did put something in the food, then you need to find out who it is. I have no problems with contestants doing bitchy stuff to each other—makes bloody great viewing—but risking their health is another story. The last thing we need is for us to get sued or shut down for health violations.”
“I’m on it.”
Glenn strode away to speak to some other crew members, and Eden looked over at me.
“Thanks for sticking up for me,” she said softly, her eyes not quite meeting mine.
“No worries. Needed to be done.”
“I…um…I have to go sort this out. I’ll see you later. Thanks again.”
She smiled at me, and aside from the ghost of a smile she’d directed at me the other night when I helped fix her friend’s hair—which barely counted—this was the first time she’d smiled at me in seven years.
It might’ve just been a small gesture, but from her, that smile meant the entire world.