Lucky in Love (A Reality TV Romance)

One (the part where Alex finds out)

"What is this?"

"It's a dating show!"

"Yes. I mean... I see that." Alex glances at her phone again before turning the screen back to her best friend. "But." She can't exactly find the words as her brows furrow, settling on a flat, "How."

"We nominated you."

Alex's eyes narrow, tone wry. "Yes, the email mentions that."

"By filling out a little form." He looks too gleeful, pale twiggy fingers tapping giddily at the rim of his $6 latte.

"Uh huh..."

"And attaching some pictures."

"Right, but..."

"It's actually really straightforward and easy?"

How Ren manages to sound so upbeat and positive - and completely innocent - she can't comprehend. His expression, at least, has that puckish delight. Like the evil little imp he is. He does realize this is kind of... a lot to put on someone, right? "But..." Why? How did he - how did they, 'cause that was a plural he used there - how did they think this was a good idea?

"Alex, consider your dating history."

She feels heat creeping over her cheeks, her ears, turning amber skin flushed. It's not exactly the best record. Her hookups are plentiful and varied, but the long term relationships are invariably the hot mess types; live fast, go out in a blaze of glory, usually accompanied by bitter aftermaths, and occasionally inappropriate retaliation.

"It can't exactly be worse, right? And— honestly, okay, maybe potentially I saw it as like 40% joke, but Nona made a point that it's about time you found someone amazing, and she's kinda a sucker for the idea-" Ah yes, the guilty pleasure of reality TV, Alex is distantly aware of their bad habit as a couple. "-And I think she sincerely believes you can make something great of this."

"It's reality TV."

His eyebrows raise skeptically, nearly lost under unruly dirty blond curls. "Don't think I've forgotten when we were kids. How often you'd talk back to Endurance or the Amazing Race or— Room Raiders—" Ren snorts, tugging at one of his gauges absently. "You always said you'd handle it better than the people on TV could. And seriously Al, at the very least it would be an iconic experience."

"At the very least I'd be cast as a villain and hated by the whole country," she muses, twisting a strand of turquoise blue hair around a slim finger.

"Not the whole country," Ren argues, "Just the demographic watching Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8pm!"

Alex kicks him under the table, but she's snorting a laugh. "You're supposed to tell me I'm not a villain, dumbass."

"Says the woman who just cracked my shin-"

"Oh my god, get over it," she snickers, rolling her eyes as her attention drifts back to the email pulled up on her phone screen, scanning over the words again, considering.

Hi Alexandra,
Hope your day is going great so far. I work for Lucky in Love on PBC and received a nomination on your behalf. I'm emailing to see if you're interested in being considered for the second ever season of Lucky in Love. If you're interested, there's an application attached that I'd ask you to email back, along with some recent photos of yourself (don't worry, there's some examples to give you an idea of what we're looking for). If you want to pursue casting, the next step in the process would be submitting an audition video through our website. There are some instructions attached for how to do that, and feel free to give me a call if you have any questions or want to discuss the details.
Do you feel Lucky? ❤
Christine
PBC Casting

Her finger taps against the screen briefly, scrolling down. There's a post-script. A little note tagged on at the end. Like an addition to the boilerplate response. "'You seem like a great fit for the program, and you deserve to find a special someone in your life. Please consider applying. It's about time your luck changed.'" She reads it off in a murmur, lips downturned.

"Christ, really putting it on the table like that, huh?"

"Yes, everyone seems to have an opinion on my love life," her look is pointed, "—even complete strangers." There may be a little bitterness under her smooth sarcastic drawl as she flops the phone down again and leans back in her chair.

They're just grabbing coffee at one of the many trendy minimalist Portland cafes Alex usually ignores. Can't afford to drop $6 on a latte, personally. But Ren can, with his all casual all the time record company gig up in Seattle, and everything is his treat while he and his fiancée are in town, so she's loading up on the premium A-grade Good Shit that she usually doesn't care about. Her foot jiggles absently, knocking the toes of her floral Docs against a leg of the table, and a thumb flicks at the inside cuff of her denim jacket. She's thinking.

"I don't suppose daring you to do it would do any good?" He leans back to match her posture, an elbow propped over the back of his seat, a crooked grin on his face.

Alex's lips twitch into a smirk. "This isn't high school." Or college. "Besides, anything requiring more than a couple months of commitment on my end isn't exactly a casual dare."

"You know, I don't think I've ever seen you take so long on a decision in your life. Didn't you pick up and move to Portland over the course of like a weekend?" He knows her too well. Best friends since they were 'wee potato babbies' (his words, not hers, occasionally accompanied by a truly cringeworthy Irish accent). "Why the sudden hesitation? You might not even get cast."

Alex chews at her tongue briefly. He's right that she tends to lean into spontaneity and see what sticks. Hell, she'd dyed her hair at 16 and never let it go brown again. And that impulsive, self-destructive part of her is rising to the bait. But under it - curling little strands of darkness around her bravado to squash it down - is a simmering doubt. A roiling stew of uncertainty and fear. A disgusting feeling that she really prefers to shut off and/or spite whenever possible.

Which is probably why her chin lifts slightly before tossing her head to flick blue hair out of her face, decidedly. "Fine."