His Choice

Aaron approached me from behind and smacked me lightly on the back of the head. “Did not.”
I rubbed where he had hit me. “Don’t mess up my hair. They spent three hours on it.”

The His Choice beauty team had taken one look at me before coalescing into a circle, whispering
conspiratorially, probably agreeing that they were facing the biggest challenge of their careers.

“We must cut this much shorter,” the head hairdresser had bemoaned. “This length on the sides is dragging
down your face, no? It makes you look like one of those unfortunate folk singers from the early nineteen
seventies.”

Somehow, they had added volume to the top, which I had never been able to do. The sides were cut
significantly, even though I feared the style would reveal how my ears stick out a bit. Then they shaped the hair
into what they called a flow, leaving longer, wavy locks meeting at the back of my head. It made me think of the
way Aaron had always cut his hair. Leave it to him to be on top of current fashion.

The makeup team had been next. I’d endured more hours of mud packs, serums, moisturizers, and a ‘soft
foundation.’ I wondered why they had gone through so much effort if they were going to cover their work with
makeup anyway.

“You have a rodent head,” the beautician had noted with a smile.

“Huh?” I had asked. I hadn’t been bullied since middle school, so it took me by surprise.

“It’s wonderful. C’est chic,” he had added. “Pronounced cheekbones, narrow chin, little round ears,
pointy nose, tiny cherry mouth. Very Tom Hiddleston or…Timothée Chalamet.”

When I had told Aaron that the beautician had compared me to a rat, I thought he’d laugh at me.
Instead, his expression had become stormy. “Want me to go kick his ass?” I explained that it was allegedly a
compliment, comparing me to Chalamet. “Are you kidding me? You’re way, way better looking than that
guy. Much better build than that twig has, too.”

If people ever wondered why I put up with Aaron’s quirks, that was my reminder. He might have teased, but
when he believed I had been hurt, he was quick to build me up and defend me against everyone else.

Once we’d unpacked and hung our shirts and pants, we loaded a dresser with our underwear and socks, then
dropped a box of toiletries on the counter in the adjoining bathroom. When we returned to the suite, Aaron jumped
on the bed like a child.

“Stop! You’ll break it and we won’t have the money to replace it. It looks like some kind of antique,” I chastised.

“So did one of the suitors,” Aaron remarked before lying on his back. “I saw him in the foyer. He told
Walker’s butler, that guy James, that he was one of the contestants and asked how to get to his room. I waited
for James to tell him that there was a back staircase with a chairlift.”

“Are you talking about that British guy?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Aaron nodded. “You already have him beat.”

I sat on a chair at the bedside. “You’re crazy. That guy was incredibly handsome.”

“He had gray hair,” Aaron pointed out.

“He had brown hair,” I corrected. “Four gray hairs on each sideburn doesn’t count. And he looked like he was
forty years old at most.”

“The only word I heard you say that I agree with is ‘old,’” Aaron countered.

“Late thirties or forty is old? Aaron, fourteen years will go by quickly, then that will be you and me. Will you
think the same then?”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Okay, maybe he was good looking for his advanced age. But why would Cliff
Walker, the richest dude around, settle for someone who’s gotta be like seven years older than him? He can
get someone seven years younger…like you. All fresh and virginal.”

“I’m not a virgin,” I protested. “I just haven’t done anal.”

“Virgin,” Aaron repeated. “There has to be penetration for it to be sex.”

“Says who?” I asked.

He thought about it for a moment. “Bill Clinton.”

I shook my head. “Agree to disagree with Bill Clinton, then.”

Aaron sat up, resting his back on the pillows that hid the headboard. “You never told me what you think of the
makeover they did on me.”

I looked his way, still unsure what they had changed. “You look the same.”

He smiled. “Yeah, well, they said they were struggling to find a way to improve my looks.”

“Hmm,” I mumbled. “Lost cause, huh?”

Aaron chuckled, then pretended to be hurt. “Don’t be that way, pookie.”

“You just love that they had to sandblast my face and bring in a team of scientists to make my hair look good,”
I complained.

He jumped off the bed and came over to the roomy chair, pushing me so he could join me. Once he settled in,
he put his arm over my shoulders. “They just highlighted what was already there. Confidence, remember?”

“We’re going to break Mr. Walker’s furniture,” I warned, though I didn’t want him to stop cuddling.

“I’ll just tell Walker that when I took a seat, it broke apart beneath me, and now I have a permanent injury.
You and I can travel to the Caribbean with my lawsuit award,” he joked.

“If you tell them the injury was to your brain, the jury will believe it, for sure,” I agreed.

“Don’t make me slap you upside the head again,” he cautioned, then tsked me. “You’ve been very bitchy since
this whole adventure started. You said people at work even asked why you were taking a vacation to do His
Choice, since you sounded so miserable about it."

I had shared that information with Aaron, along with my own parents’ disbelief that the show would cast me
as a potential suitor to a rich, handsome multimillionaire.

I massaged my closed eyes with my fingers. “Sorry. You’ve done all this work to get me on the show, and I’m
seeming ungrateful. I’m not. It’s just that I’m going to make a fool of myself. And everyone in the United States
will be watching wondering the same thing my mom and dad did… What the heck were the producers thinking?
It’s going to be humiliating.”

Aaron got off the chair, then grabbed my arm to pull me up. I resisted.

“Stand up,” he commanded.

“Why?” I asked, though I had already given in and
risen, Aaron’s hand still on my arm.

He dragged me to an old-fashioned full-length mirror encased in cherry
wood, perched on a stand. “Take a look at yourself. Not at what you grew up believing about your appearance.
See who you are now.”

I sighed. “I see a much better-looking guy standing behind me.”

Aaron slapped the back of my head, making some of the hairs stand up.

“Stop it!” I barked, patting the hair back in place. “We have our first introductions to Cliff Walker tonight, on
camera. With all the hairspray in my hair to keep it from curling, you’ll have it permanently looking like Albert
Einstein’s.”

“Then Walker will think you’re smart,” he countered. “Will you stop being a whiney poop and just take a good
look at yourself? Mikey, you’re a catch. I promise you. If Cliff Walker doesn’t see it, then let him run off with
geezer-guy. His loss.”

I smiled, though it made me feel guilty that I was joining in on trashing someone we didn’t know. “And
what if he chooses you, despite however you plan to dissuade him? I still think it blows that the producers are
adding this plot twist. If you end up winning and announcing you’re not into men, the viewers will end up
hating you.”

Aaron grinned. “I already have a plan how to prevent that from happening.