After I hung up, I handed the phone back to Manaia, and he looked at me somewhat sheepishly. At least he hadn’t called my mom.
“I get it,” I said to let him off the hook for being a tattletale. “Fritz has explained many times that your job is not only to protect me from others but from myself as well. Call Brook anytime you think you need to.”
“Will do, Boss,” Manaia said, and then turned to demolish my bagel supply.
Now, eating all my food might get him fired.
◊◊◊
It was back to the grind of filming the J-drama. We gathered in the now-familiar conference room and listened to Mr. Otsuki share his vision of the final episode. This was the one where my character came to his senses and begged Haru’s character to take me back. I would change my evil manly ways and become the doting lapdog all girls wanted.
I was told that in most romance novels, the bad boy would be transformed into the perfect husband because he so loved the heroine.
That was when one of those life lessons that you only gain through experience kicked in. I hated my uncle for making me realize that there were some things I wouldn’t know until I experienced them. It wasn’t only girls who tried to change their significant other; I’d been guilty of it myself. I thought back to all the times I thought if a girl did X, Y, or Z, everything would be better.
It had happened over and over again, to be honest. It started with Tracy when I thought that the answer was open communication. If we just talked about it, we could fix it. Apparently, it wasn’t fixable. Of course, that didn’t mean that having open discussions was wrong. The point was, I’d tried to get Tracy to change when she wasn’t able to at the time.
Most recently, I’d had it in my head that Brook and I were ‘all in’ as far as our feelings for each other were concerned. But then she admitted that she didn’t love me as deeply as I did her.
Granted, I’d tried to justify the imbalance by telling myself that not all love was equal, and if I loved her more, it was okay. I guess that deep down, I hoped that she would come to love me as much as I loved her.
Discovering this made me uneasy. First of all, I’m a guy. We think we can find a solution to everything. When you add that I consider myself a leader, it compounds the issue. It was the feeling of disquiet that helped me connect with the story.
Girls must view ego-driven guys and their need to be in control in the same way. Getting a guy to change had to be an ultimate fantasy.
It might also be why girls went for bad boys or guys they knew weren’t right for them. If they could change them … Heck, Chloe had gone on and on about the men she’d dated and how self-centered they were. The clear message was she wanted them to change by growing up.
Another revelation hit me. Could the pendulum have swung in the other direction? Would that explain the explosion of the culture of the hookup? You’re attracted to someone in a physical sense, and you spend time together for a brief encounter instead of investing your emotions. Chuck had seemed fine with it. It sounded like he was seeing enough action to keep him happy without having to actually date.
Thankfully, we had to get to work, so my mind would stop spinning in circles.
◊◊◊
When I walked in to get my makeup done and dressed in my ‘surfer dude’ attire, I noticed that my castmates were all watching me. I caught the younger girls twittering about something, and then they would break out into giggles. More than once, I checked to make sure my fly wasn’t open, or I had something in my teeth.
I waited until I saw Misaki go to makeup so I could corner her. I was sure she would tell me.
“What did I do?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?” Misaki asked to play it off.
“Come on, we’re friends. Something’s up,” I said.
“Well …”
“Oh, please. Just tell me, already.”
She pulled her phone out and showed me a picture of me from the yacht outing. I happened to have my shirt off since the picture was taking right after I’d come back from being shot out of the slingshot. That meant I was all wet. It was surprisingly quite a good picture. Since it was in Japanese, I couldn’t read the headline.
“What does it say?” I asked.
“America’s heartthrob,” she said, and burst out laughing when she saw my face. “You are now every Japanese single woman’s dream guy.”
“My girlfriend is going to love this,” I complained.
“It gets better,” she said and pulled up another website.
It was a picture of me dancing with Bec Carson with Haru looking on.
“Okay,” I said, confused.
“Haru gave a long interview about how much she is in love with you. There are a series of pictures of you with different girls.”
I swiped the phone to go to the next page, and there was one with Isabel on my arm with Groper’s hand in an inappropriate place. I chuckled because they’d blurred out her hand, which made it look ten times worse.
“The comments are running ten to one that you are the perfect bad boy.”
“What are the other comments saying?” I asked.
“You’re a cheating jerk.”
“Great!”
