Page 8 of The True Love Experiment

She leaps off the couch, long, coltish limbs propelling her to the stairs. I swear she’s taller than when I saw her on Sunday. The dog races behind her.

“Whereisyour mum, by the way?” I call after her.

“She was outside. Insu is building a shed in the garden and she’s watching.” She looks down at me from the top of the stairs. “He’s really strong.”

“I’ve noticed.”

Insu is Natalia’s boyfriend. He’s twenty-six… so there’s that. It took us a few years to iron out the kinks of divorced co-parenthood, but the care and respect we show each other now is better than when we were married. Watching Nat fall in love again eased a weight I hadn’t fully realized I was carrying. Having that person practically be a teenager (a slight exaggeration, but I’m the single one here, so let me have this) is a flavor of joy I couldn’t have anticipated.

Stevie’s footsteps sound overhead and then she falls silent, presumably throwing things into a bag. In the quiet, I pace the living room, and my mind rolls back to my work dilemma.

I could make some hybrid of eco-conscious and reality programming, but the truth is that I don’t really want to bump up against my documentary colleagues in this setting. It’s taken me years to build the credibility I have, and I suspect one adventure race through the jungle will squash all of it in a single go. Besides, Blaine wants something salacious and sexy, and nothing in my current repertoire could be described as such.

I’ll have to think outside my current box. Dating shows have been done ad nauseam, so a new show would need a hook to make it stand out above the rest. I’m an amateur in a very well-traversed space, but the more I sit with it, the more I keep coming back to the idea I had at the bar after hearing the GeneticAlly news. My gut says there’s something there, but I’m still missing a piece…

I find myself in front of one of Nat’s many bookcases. Without question, Stevie got her fangirl genes from her mother, but where my daughter loses her mind over pop stars, Natalia is an avid romance reader. Upon inspection, I register that the shelf before me has over two dozen books all by the same author. I pull one free.

Ravenous on the High Seasby Felicity Chen.

The cover features two beautiful people wrapped up in each other on the deck of what appears to be a pirate ship. It’s a great photograph—sweeping, sexy, atmospheric—and when I open the cover, there’s an even more detailed version inside. I glance at the summary: a lost heir, a sword-wielding heroine, a country on the brink of war, and hidden treasure that could save them all. When I flip open the back cover, I freeze. The author photo staring back at me is the gorgeous woman from the bar.

Over at the family computer, I enter the password and typeFelicity Cheninto the search bar. The screen instantly populates with results. Publication interviews, fan edits, social media accounts, retail sites, and her publisher’s page. I click on one of the news hits and see a commencement address at UCSD Revelle College.

By the time footsteps sound on the wood floor behind me, I’ve watched the commencement address and half a dozen short interview clips, read threeEntertainment Weeklyreviews of her work, and scrolled through much of her Instagram feed. Felicity Chen is funny, charismatic, smart, and great in front of a crowd. She would be a natural on TV…

Natalia is suspicious. “Why is my favorite author’s face all over that screen?”

I spin in the chair to face my ex. “What do you know about her?” Felicity’s bio is frustratingly lacking in personal details. Wikipedia isn’t any more helpful. “Is she single?”

“If you date her and break her in some way and I don’t get her next book, I may have to kill you.”

“I don’t want to date her, Nat.”

“Do you want to dateanyone? You don’t have to live like a monk, you know.”

“This again.”

“The thing with Stevie walking in—”

I stick two fingers in my mouth and let out a sharp whistle. “Yellow card, Garcia.”

Nat bursts out laughing. This little troublemaker knows I am legitimately scarred after four-year-old Stevie walked in on me going fully at it with a date’s ankles on my shoulders. It was the first and last time I had someone over while Stevie was staying at my place,and I’m not sure I’ll ever recover. I swear I am only waiting for the day that memory surfaces and my daughter can never look me in the eye again.

“Sorry,” Nat says, sounding not sorry at all. “Just put a bell on her door. Works like a charm.”

I hook a thumb over my shoulder at the computer monitor. “Can we focus?”

Her eyes drift past me to Felicity’s face on the screen. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure she’s single. She’s talked about dating in past interviews. Why?”

“I want her for a show.”

Nat’s eyebrows drift upward. “Like a documentary on romance and feminism or something?”

I laugh. “No.”

“What’s the laugh about?” she asks, scowling.

Careful, I think. Nat has busted me in the past for giving her shit about the kind of books she reads. I don’t want to step on a land mine here when I need her help. “Sorry, no, it’s just that I might be making a dating show.”

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