Page 12 of Fan Favorite
A t the end of a long hallway, behind a heavy wooden door meant to evoke the grandeur of California’s finest Spanish Colonial estates, there was an artificially moonlit patio and thirteen gorgeous women in a kaleidoscope of formal gowns, sipping champagne and brilliantly smiling/laughing/tossing their hair as they circled like sequined vultures around Key suitor Bennett Charles.
And at the other end of the hall, thirty feet from that door, The Key ’s newest arrival was hyperventilating into a paper bag.
“I have dinner reservations,” Key host Adam Fox said, shoving his Rolex at Jessa in annoyance. “Will she be ready to go, I don’t know, before awards season?”
“Edie?” Jessa said, rubbing circles on Edie’s back. “You can do this, hon.”
Edie continued to puff into the bag, the essence of a Jimmy John’s sandwich assaulting her nostrils.
The mic pack Velcroed around her waist had begun to sag, pulling with it her Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress, which, despite claiming to be “universally flattering,” was clearly not made for chesty gals who were pleasantly round in the middle.
Edie had just assumed the producers would give her something to wear for her big entrance.
But apparently contestants wore their own clothes and did their own hair and makeup, so here Edie was with her tits hanging out of a four-hundred-dollar dress she’d purchased on her credit card without even trying it on because Jessa gave her approximately two seconds to choose something before the flight back to LA.
Of course Jessa and the Nordstrom salesgirl had assured her it was a fantastic choice, that a “Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress never goes out of style.”
Bitches.
“All you need to do is stand up, take a deep breath, and walk through that door,” Jessa encouraged. “Everything you’ve ever wanted is waiting for you on the other side.”
Was it? Edie wondered. Because during the past three days of interviews and an assembly line of business operations—the three-hour consultation she’d had with the show’s psychologist, the meeting with The Key ’s lawyer, signing the massive contract and nondisclosure agreement, the STD testing and HPV vaccine, the hurried promotional photo shoot where Jessa had promised her it was no big deal that she was still wearing her UW-Madison sweatshirt, plus the whirlwind twenty-four-hour trip to Chicago to shoot her “intro package”—the fantasy of Charlie Bennett had felt very far away indeed.
How was Edie supposed to know if this was the bravest, most romantic thing she’d ever done, or if she was about to become a total laughingstock every Tuesday night?
She stared at Jessa’s feet, which were now encased in Edie’s very own Birkenstock clogs.
Back at the production offices, Jessa had taken one look at the clogs and found them so offensive and “English major-y” that she’d taken off her own suede mules and made Edie trade.
Then she’d arranged Edie’s sporadically curled hair around her shoulders and spun her toward the bathroom mirror for a final look.
From the boobs up, the dress wasn’t too bad.
A lot of cleavage, but Edie had a good collarbone and nice skin.
They’d smiled at each other in the mirror and Edie had felt warm and excited, like Jessa was her friend and that this was about to be the best night of her life.
But then Jessa stepped away, slipped the Birks onto her feet, cuffed her jeans, and somehow instantly looked chic, and suddenly Edie felt unsettled, like she and Jessa were from entirely different planets and there was no way Edie belonged here, not even for a second.
It was like her “entrance look” was a metaphor for her entire life.
She knew enough to go to Nordstrom and spend an entire car payment on a dress, but she still managed to fuck it up by choosing the wrong thing once she got there.
Edie tried to picture what was waiting on the other side of that door.
She could very clearly see the army of women who didn’t choose the wrong dress or smudge mascara all over their face mid–panic attack.
But what she couldn’t see was Charlie. Just when she needed to call upon their unshakable history the most—the backyard campouts where they’d have to pack it in early because he couldn’t stop sneezing, or the basement Ping-Pong tournaments that Lauren always won because no one could return the serve she perfected at summer camp when they were twelve—it suddenly all felt hazy and stupid and insignificant.
“I’m not kidding,” Adam Fox continued. “This little stunt is already over my contracted hours.”
People grow up. They change. They leave.
“Edie, babe,” Jessa said. “I know this is scary, but you’re fucking fabulous, and Bennett is gonna be thrilled to see you. How could he not be? You’ve gotta trust me.”
Maybe that was the problem. She didn’t trust Jessa.
But any time Edie questioned something, Jessa was right there to tell her she was “overthinking.” Throughout the unbelievably quick trip to Chicago, they’d kept asking her to do things she would never do, like stare longingly into a Wicker Park bar at a pack of dudebros day drinking and watching football for “B-roll.” Or how about when they’d wanted to film in her childhood bedroom, and she’d told them it had been converted to a guest room years ago, so they’d gone out and bought what seemed to be an excessive number of stuffed animals to put on the bed and tacked a Britney Spears poster circa 2002 to the wall.
Thank God for Lauren. When the producers suggested they sit on the bed in literal pajamas and giggle about how cute Charlie is (and was) and maybe also braid each other’s hair (??
?) or have a lighthearted pillow fight (!!
!), Lauren had laughed right in their faces and said, “Please. I have a career.” She did, however, agree to be interviewed after the producers told Edie that she needed her best friend to give her intro package “dimension.” Edie clutched Lauren’s arm and said “Do-this-for-me-do-this-for-me-do-this-for-me,” but then Lauren refused to film with the boxes everywhere (she thought it would make Edie look like a hoarder), so the PAs were sent to haul the boxes to the second bedroom and bring in throw pillows and a couple of lamps and a rug from West Elm (all Edie had to do was post a photo on her Instagram when the show was airing and tag West Elm, #ad #sponsored) and voilà! Edie had an apartment.
Later, Lauren’s confidence had inspired Edie to refuse when they’d asked her to dance— literally dance!
—down her street yelling, “I love you, Bennett Charles!” which seemed not only presumptuous (it’s not like she’d been pining for him since high school) but also completely psychotic.
Jessa assured her this was just the sort of exaggeration the show was made of and that it would all make sense in the end when she was standing on a mountain top, engaged to Charlie Bennett.
But Edie still hadn’t been sold, so eventually they’d compromised on Edie skipping and yelling, “I’m coming for you, Charlie Bennett!
” and then they’d filmed that over and over again, with all her neighbors peering out their windows and stopping on the sidewalk to stare while their dogs shat in the grass, until Edie was finally so mortified that she gave the producers one quick “I love you, Charlie Bennett!” just so they could go back inside.
Jessa had this way of soothing her, of working her, that seemed entirely suspect, but that Edie nevertheless succumbed to repeatedly.
She was just so goddamn good at it! Edie worried that Jessa was working her now.
Preparing to sacrifice her to the reality TV gods.
She continued to huff and puff into the bag and desperately wanted to text Lauren, who was quick to assess any situation and provide a reasonable course of action.
But Edie’s phone was gone, dropped into a Ziploc with her name scrawled on it by a production assistant when they’d landed back in LA, and it was unclear to Edie how much of this current panic was brought on from suddenly being untethered from her entire life, the threat of seeing Charlie again, or simply the speed with which everything had happened.
The first wave of panic set in last night when Edie realized she was actually going to leave her entire life for seven weeks on basically zero notice.
Should she have thought about this before?
Sure. But had she really believed she was going to be on this show?
Exactly. But Jessa was always quick with solutions.
She’d rubbed Edie’s back and signaled to her assistant, Dan, to bring Edie a glass of wine while she hyperventilated on the couch.
Who would take care of Nacho Bell Grande?
No problem! Dan hired a tween who lived in Edie’s building (a girl so starstruck by the cameras that she would’ve worked for a signed headshot of Adam Fox alone) to take care of the cat, check the mail, and generally watch over the apartment while Edie was gone.
But how was Edie supposed to leave work for two months?
Easy! The Key ’s lawyer would interface with her company’s HR and negotiate Edie’s leave.
But what in the hell was she going to tell Alice?
Wasn’t it obvious? That Edie would be engaged in less than two months!
Jessa called Alice herself and somehow charmed her so thoroughly that Alice dusted off a Chanel suit and even agreed to appear on camera.
But—and perhaps most alarming, once thoroughly considered—Edie had absolutely nothing to wear on TV.
No worries! They’d have plenty of time to shop back in LA, and they’d just make a quick pre-airport pit stop at the Michigan Avenue Nordstrom and pick up something sexy and fabulous for her grand entrance.