Page 128 of The Fire Between High & Lo (Elements 2)

I let out a puff of air. “That’s not what mine says.”

“What does it say?”

“Mine says ‘our bachelor is looking for the one Zoe…is it you?’ And then a hefty stack of papers asked me to give up my right to privacy and go parade around on this demeaning show so that I can compete against other women for the affection of a man I don’t know.”

“Wait, what?”

“I’ve been invited to be a contestant on the show,” I clarified, running my free hand down my face. “I’ve been given a week to decide. Well, a week from when they mailed the packet.”

“Oh. My. God!”

I pulled my phone away from my ear, but the damage to my eardrum was already done.

Her words became garbled and then she continued, “Are you going to do it? You have to do it! When do you have to get it back to them?”

Glancing down at the paperwork, I skimmed the paragraphs until I found what I was looking for. “Tomorrow. By close of business.”

“You have to do it!”

I started pacing from one side of the room to the other. “I most certainly do not. That’s a big hell to the no.”

“I know you’re not a risk taker, but just think about it. If you win, you get prize money. That prize money, depending on when you get sent home, would be more than enough to pay for us to go on a shopping spree or for us to go to every Beyoncé and Rihanna concert on the West Coast.”

I stopped in my tracks, trying not to laugh. “So in this scenario, I, alone, whore myself out on TV and we, together, spend the earnings if I win?”

“Or if you don’t like those suggestions, it would be more than enough money for you to reapply to take the bar exam.”

My lips pursed. I walked right into that.

Before I could respond, she rushed on. “We would get to see each other all the time. I’m going to be there every day except Sundays. We can’t go that long without talking! The location is incredible. You’d be staying in a mansion with a pool, a hot tub, a steam room and a relaxing place to read. And, most importantly, the eligible bachelor is Julian Winters.”

We were both quiet for a second. She was likely waiting for a reaction, but I was waiting for clarification.

“Julian Winters?” I asked, starting to pace again.

“Yes!”

My eyebrows came together, perplexed. I threw my hand up in the air. “Who the hell is that?”

“Julian Winters, the music producer.”

As a music lover, I was still stumped. “I have no clue who he is or why you thought I’d care.”

“Well, he’s a song writer and a music producer and he’s totally your type. He kind of looks like that Resident Assistant we had a crush on freshman year. And he was caught up in that copyright infringement lawsuit with that socialite, Janna White. I can’t think of the song now.”

“Ohhhh, yeah,” I remembered, familiarity of the case and the names flooding my brain. “’Sweet’. That case ended her music career, didn’t it? I loved that song. I vaguely remember that he was the one who wrote it, but they settled out of court, right?”

“Yes. But do you know what he looks like now?”

“No… I just remember being fascinated by the case because—”

“I’m going to go ahead and stop you right there,” she interrupted, cutting me off mid-sentence. “We are not going to talk law right now. We are going to talk about you having the chance to bump uglies with Julian Winters. He is the—”

I frowned as I interjected, “The sheer fact that you said ‘bump uglies’ has disqualified you from giving me advice about anything in general, but sex specifically. You need to—”

A quick knock on the door followed by the sound of it being pushed open forced my sentence to end abruptly.

“Hi,” my mother greeted me as she poked her head into the room. Her bronzy skin glowed with a youthfulness most fifty-five year old women didn’t have. “Are you ready?”