“Hey, Hayden, good to see you again,” Meredith says. It’s been a week, and I’ll admit I’ve pretty much zombied my way through the past seven days. I go to the gym because I’m supposed to. I talk to Jay because he calls me, but other than that, I just sleep or veg. “How have you been?”

“I’ve been fine,” I reply, tugging at my jeans. Fuck getting dressed up for this.

“Hmm, really? Because I gotta tell you, gorgeous, you look like shit,” Meredith says. “I mean, really hot shit, but still shit.”

“I think I picked up a bug in Vegas,” I lie through my teeth. “You know those buffets aren’t the cleanest places, and after filming wrapped, I sorta went on a bender for a day or two while you guys were footing the bill.”

“That’s just fine. You’ve got time to get yourself back into shape,” Meredith says. “Okay, down to business. Check this out, this will be airing the day after the finale. Edited down, of course. They took a half hour for what’s probably going to end up being five minutes on the morning shows.”

Meredith picks up a remote on her desk, and the TV mounted on the wall fires up. I get to watch their fucking interview on TV, not wanting to but at the same time forcing myself. I want to see what Emily says about me and the other guys. Hell, I want to see what Lee says.

As the interview continues, I feel my hands clenching in my lap as I listen to Lee. That asshole, figures he’d talk trash. Not just about me, but everyone. He does it in a passive-aggressive way that makes it seem natural, but that’s Lee. I took a moment to chat with Dean two days ago, and he explained it best.

“Lee’s the straw on the camel’s back sort of asshole. None of his comments, by themselves, are worth punching him in the mouth over. But you add them all up, and eventually, you just hate the guy and want to kick his ass. The moment you do, though, he gets to look all innocent and shit because you look like a petty asshole listing a hundred and fifty pieces of pitty-pat shit. And nobody who isn’t the target of his words is going to get it. They just laugh it off like it’s nothing. But when you’re on the receiving end . . . you wanna go Tyson on his ass.”

That’s Lee to a T. And while he does make a couple of comments about being the best match, he seems to be fully in his “camera personality”, not his real self. I saw it too much over the weeks of filming. The guy would save all his backstabbing and his comments for when he knew nobody would be able to call him on his shit.

I wonder if Emily has spotted the difference yet. Nope, I’m stopping that train of thought in its tracks because it doesn’t matter. She picked him, not me. And that’s all that matters. I wonder if she knew she was gonna pick him even when she was with me. Hell, maybe she fucked him too. I don’t think so, but I thought I knew her. Maybe I didn’t.

“Hayden?” Meredith asks, and I look over, realizing that the interview’s over. “What do you think?”

“I . . .” I start, but before I can half bumble-fuck some answer, my phone rings, and even though I don’t want to talk to anyone, I’m grateful. I look down. It’s Jay, and I look up at Meredith. “Gimme five minutes to talk with my agent?”

“Jay?” Meredith asks. “Sure. Tell him I said hi, and I’m sending over some contract paperwork to him soon.”

I answer in the hallway, leaning back against the wall. “Yo, Jay.”

“Hayden, my man! Way to roll a runner-up slot into an even better gig! Listen, I know I’m not supposed to know, but Meredith was nice enough to reach out to me. She showed me some of the early edits on the first few episodes, at least the parts where you’re on screen. I didn’t think you had it in you, but you were napalm fucking fire on that screen. Women all over the US are gonna be wet for you this fall!”

That’s just what I want to hear, Jay, totally makes up for what I’ve been through. “Yeah, uh . . . thanks, I guess? It played out how it did. I’m not sure I want to do that again though.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line, and I know Jay’s sitting in his office, probably trying not to drop his feet from his desk to the carpet and tip over his coffee. “What are you talking about, Hayden? Of course you’re doing it again! It’s the best gig you’ve ever been offered. You’re going to be a fucking one-name celebrity right now, and we’re capitalizing on that. Hell, you need it. While you’ve been gone filming, Frances has been flaming your unprofessional ass all over the industry.”

“I know. It’s just . . .”

Jay sighs, and this time I can hear his feet come down off his desk. “She fucking got to you, didn’t she? Man, I saw the videos. The bitch played you. Don’t you dare let that fuck up your career. No way in hell, I’m not letting you do that to yourself.”

I can’t help but feel a twinge of anger at the words, ‘the bitch’, but I know he’s just trying to show he’s got my back, so I shrug it off. I lean back, bumping my head on the wall and rubbing at my eyes. “Just give me some time, okay? We’ve still got the reunion show to film, and I did actually drag my happy ass down here to talk to Meredith. By the way, she said she’s sending you some paperwork or some shit. Maybe after the reunion show, I can move on.”

“Uh-uh. No maybe bullshit. After the reunion show, filming starts in three months and you’ll have some promo gigs before that. Get your shit straight and get ready. If I need to, I’m gonna pull out the sofa bed in my house and put you into Matchmaker boot camp. You’re gonna walk onto that second season set ready to own it.”

I sigh. Why is Jay so worked up about this? The modeling contracts? What? “Okay, whatever, man. I’ll keep it all in mind.”

After Jay gets off the line, I talk to Meredith for a few more minutes. Nothing big, I don’t think. I hardly hear anything she says. I’m just going through the motions right now.

“Listen, here’s some of the girls we rejected for the first season. We already reached out to them, asked if they would be interested in being in Season Two. Take a look through the videos. Get back to us if there’s any, in particular, you might want to see on the show.”

Leaving the studio, I look at the flash drive, tempted to throw it into the street. I don’t know if I can do this . . . any of this. I need to talk to someone about all of this, but I signed a fucking NDA. Fuck it, I know someone who’ll keep quiet and listen to me. I ride back to my apartment and load up the saddlebags of my Harley before hitting the road.

I drive all night, pulling into my childhood home just as the morning sun is rising over the horizon. The lights are already on, and as I shut off the loud bike, the door opens, my mom smiling warmly at me. She’s dressed for work, looking a little surprised as she sticks her head out of the ranch-style house I grew up in. The paint’s a little faded, but Mom looks just like she did when I last saw her six months ago.

“Hayden? Baby, you surprised the shit out of me! Get in this house before the neighbors start yelling about the racket at this time of morning.”

Bending down to give her a big hug, I finally feel myself relax. Five minutes later, I’m sitting down at the table, coffee in front of me, my mom and dad both giving me inquisitive looks as I poke at the plate of bacon and eggs with toast that Mom put together for me. Dad sets his cup down before giving me a tentative smile. “Good to see you, Son. I gotta ask you, though, what brings you here with no call at six in the morning?”

I thought, as I was riding, that talking about the show would be easy. But sitting here, at the same wood table where I ate countless meals, the same wood table where I learned I’d have to have surgery, and the same wood table where I gave up on baseball forever, I find it hard to talk about. The words come slowly, haltingly at first. Mom and Dad are patient though, listening as I tell them about Frances, about the cattle call for Matchmaker, and about the show itself.

“And you really have feelings for this young lady?” Dad asks.

“Something just clicked with us, and it was like no matter what, I wanted to see her, talk to her. I mean, I risked getting kicked off the show over it with all the sneaking around we did. I thought it was mutual, I really did. But I found out I was wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Mom asks worriedly, and I realize she and Dad are going to be late for work. She glances at the clock and gets up, grabbing the phone and going into the living room. She comes back five minutes later, hanging the phone up. “I called in. We’re taking a half day off. Family emergency.”

Her simple, unadorned sign of love touches me and I have to clear my throat before I continue. “The producer showed me the videos,” I explain. “Emily and Lee, their confessionals, their . . . dates. It was like a knife in the gut. And so I took the deal Meredith offered. They want me to be the Match for next season.”

Mom nods like she understands while Dad looks a little perplexed. Then again, his idea of reality television has usually involved touchdowns and strikes. Mom reads him perfectly and explains it quickly to him while I finish my coffee, Dad sitting silently through it all before he speaks.

“I saw the ads. The premiere episode is supposed to be on tomorrow. I watched what I could just because I knew you were in it, Son. One of the girls at the office told me.”

“Thanks, Dad, sorry to ruin the ending,” I reply. “Guess you can spend that time watching Baseball Tonight.”

“Perhaps, but there was something I saw,” Dad says. “Hayden, they showed a lot of the kissing. I guess they wanted to up the heat in the preview or something. Lee, I’m guessing he’s the slick looking one?” When I nod, Dad shakes his head. “Well, one thing I noticed, she never kisses him. He always kisses her for the most part. In the five-minute preview they stuck on the network last week, it seemed like he was the one pushing the issue every time. Seems a little convenient to me.”

“Okay, so what are you getting at here, Dad?”

He smiles softly, the same sort of smile he’d get when he was my Little League coach and his hard-headed son was missing something in the game that he knew would be obvious once he explained it right. “No, just seems to me that you thought y’all had something real, and maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. But Lee seems like he’s swooping in all Prince Charming-like, and that’s hard to resist, especially when you don’t see you’re getting set up. Did Emily seem particularly cunning? Skeptical?”

I shake my head, still not quite getting it. “No, she’s sweet, seemed a little uncomfortable about the whole thing initially. But she seemed to play the game in the end.”

Dad leans back in his chair, rubbing at his receding hairline which I swear I’ve added at least an inch to over the years. “Okay, let me put it more plain. Who’s the most likely one to get played by a game show . . . you, Lee, or Emily?”

I realize what he’s saying, understanding dawning. Emily. She’d be the one to get played. She’s just too sweet and wouldn’t suspect that of someone. But how? What’s Lee’s payoff? Dad raises his coffee mug to me, saluting. “Just a little something to mull over in that big head of yours. If you have feelings for her, tell her. Maybe she did play you, but you’ll never know unless you try. Find out if you misread things or if you both got played.”