Page 21 of The Love Rematch
The hairs on the back of her neck rise.
He’s watching her. She knows he is.
It takes all her willpower not to look, to keep her focus on the men as she lifts her glass high into the air. “I guess all that’s left to say is ‘Thanks, Mom!’ Cheers!”
Clink!
Thirty-one champagne glasses meet, the bubbles catching the light as laughter fills the air. Beaming smiles fix on her. Sexy, attractive, smart, eligible men surround her on all sides, and her hope swells like a rising tide.
This is her time.
Emily downs her drink and dives in.
CHAPTERSIX
jake
This is fucking torture.
Jake crosses his arms and leans against the doorframe, trying to appear casual when in reality his fingers dig so deep into his skin they practically draw blood. His every muscle spasms with the effort to keep still, to not charge across the room and rip every one of these assholes away from her. She’s so much better than them, so much better than this show, so much better than him. He doesn’t understand what she’s doing here, how she’s single, or why that douchebag is lifting his hand to her face and brushing back a strand of her hair.
What’s his name? Ben M.? Ben K.?
Ben who-the-fuck-cares lets his fingers linger on the spot beneath her earlobe, then strokes her skin. His head tilts. His chin dips.
He’s going for it.Jake sees red.He’s actually going for it. On the first fucking night!
The suitor’s face inches closer, the world moving in slow motion. Jake’s not usually one for misogynistic tendencies, but all he wants to do is run over there, grab that jerk’s hand from her neck, and smash his face into the floor. He knows—he knows—violence is never the answer. But god, he wants to anyway.
And the poor guy hasn’t even done anything yet.
I need to get out of here, Jake thinks, pushing off the wall. Emily hasn’t glanced his way once in nearly seven hours. It’s as if he doesn’t exist, which was fine in theory, when she lived all the way across the country and he could shove any and all thoughts of her into the forgotten corners of his mind. But it’s different with her here, talking to every other man in earshot. She’s so close and yet so fucking far away. It’s driving him insane.
“I’m going to go check in with Trish,” he mutters to an assistant as he storms down the hall in search of his EP. He finds her in the video village, frowning into a set of monitors as the camera zooms in on Emily ducking away from the incoming kiss.
Jake grins.
“God.” Trish sighs and presses her fingers to her temples. “This is a complete disaster.”
“Trish?” he asks cautiously.
She turns to him sharply. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to check in.” He steps into the room, already feeling better with a little distance—littlebeing the operative word, seeing as Emily’s face is on about a dozen different television screens. Her doe eyes stare at him. But the air is fresher somehow. He can finally take a breath, unlike his boss.
“Good.” She refocuses on the screens. “Because if I hear the phrasethat’s so niceone more time, I might blow my brains out.”
“What do you mean?”
“Emily—she’s so…” Trish waves her hand through the air, searching for the word, then scoffs. “I can’t even think of a word. That’s how dull she is.”
“Really?”
Jake fills the spot next to his boss, putting his producer hat on for what feels like the first time that night, and stares at the screens, trying to see what the viewers see instead of the girl he’s loved for the better part of a decade. She’s always been on the quieter side, with a serene sort of confidence, but that was what Jake loved about her. Sam was the loud one, the boisterous one, the attention seeker. When Emily smiled, it felt as if it were just for him, a secret he was lucky enough to be let in on, making him feel special, chosen in a way he’d never been before. Sam was the more obvious leading lady—the bold star of an action film or a mainstream rom-com, the typical blockbuster hit. But Emily was the type of character he preferred—a headliner at the Sundance Film Festival, the sort of film that spends hours peeling back the layers but leaves the audience walking away with more questions than answers. He could have filmed her for hours. Hell, he did. And still, he always wanted more.
ButThe Love Matchisn’t a show built on nuance. There’s no time to waste on layers. They have ten episodes to get through thirty men. Ten episodes to build an epic love story. Everyone is an archetype, fitting neatly into a comfortable set of preconceived notions. On these cameras, Emily doesn’t come off as an introspective woman with mysteries to uncover. She comes off shy, reserved, maybe a bit stuck up. She’s too polite to be entertaining, but even worse, she’s too demure—not with the men, but with the camera. This show only works when the lead bares her soul right from the start. The men should have to fight to learn about her, but the audience should already know. They should be like her diary, accepting all her secrets, all her hopes and dreams. Right now, she’s giving them a blank page.
It’s not the Emily he knows.
