“Well, that certainly is enticing, isn’t it?” TJ said with another grin. Olivia wondered if his lips were capable of relaxing over his teeth or if they stayed peeled open even when he slept. “Surely that will keep things interesting until we meet again,assuming you can make it that far.” He turned to Dan in a signal that the segment was over, and the backyard took a collective exhale.
Parker swooped in with his own eager grin. “That was great, you guys! The sentimentality will play nicely on screen.”
Chuck had already stood up and began disentangling his microphone from his shirt. “Great. Excuse me.” He seemed to be in a hurry to leave.
“What’s his deal?” Parker asked when Chuck dumped his mic pack on the table and walked off.
“I don’t know,” Olivia said with a curious shrug.
Parker mirrored her shrug and then turned to her. “Olivia, I actually wanted to talk to you for a minute, if you don’t mind.” He held out an arm to direct her a few steps away.
“What is it?” she asked as she kept an eye on both Chuck retreating into the bedroom door and TJ doing a poor job of pretending not to eavesdrop on her and Parker’s conversation.
Parker took off the sunglasses he’d been wearing the whole time and gave her a serious look. “I watched the playback from this morning, and I saw when you found out about the article online.”
She hadn’t expected this turn, nor had she been prepared for the topic to come back up so suddenly. A thick lump formed in her throat. She fought to swallow it down, fearing where he was headed. “Okay. And?”
“AndI first wanted to say I’m sorry you found it upsetting. I can only imagine what it would be like to have your parents, rest their souls, talked about in the tabloids. And second, I’m wondering”—he paused and took a step closer before he lowered his voice—“I’m wondering if you’d reconsider doing a small segment on it for the show.”
Olivia reeled back and gaped at him. “Are you serious? Parker, you just said in the same breath how upsetting it was, and now you’re asking me to do an interview about it?”
“I know!” he blurted, and held up his hands. Her voice had risen, and a few heads turned to see why. “I only ask because the word is out now that you are on this show, and things will only continue to snowball.Everyoneis interested in this story—they have been for decades! With you locked in here and inaccessible to the outside world for the next month, we can get a leg up on owning it.”
She folded her arms and glared at him. “Did you hope that this would happen? Was this part of your plan all along, touseme just to get to a story about them?”
“Of course not, but I can’t ignore an opportunity, Olivia.”
Her anger only continued to multiply. “This is not anopportunity, Parker. Even if I weren’t locked in here, I wouldn’t talk to anyone about my parents. I never have before, and I am not going to start now.” She turned on her heel and marched away fuming. She made it three steps before she turned back, unable to let the unjustness of it all go. The anger that had boiled up inside her threatened to push tears out her eyes. “If you’re so interested in a story about them, why don’t you go talk to people who actually knew them instead of preying on their daughter who never met them?”
The remorse she expected to see on Parker’s face was not there. Instead, he looked inspired. Determined. “Becausethat’sthe story, Olivia!That’swhat people will want to know! How has this impacted you, their daughter, having grown up in the shadow of scandal and tragedy?”
She reeled again. “In the shadow of— Do you even hear yourself, Parker? My life’s tragedy is not entertainment!” she shoutedwith her arms out, and all the turning heads from the crew present to literally film her life for entertainment made her feel like she’d lost her mind. She blinked and pivoted back toward the house. Before any of them could further invade her personal life, she slid open the back bedroom door and slammed it shut behind her.
Chuck was inside looking like he might have been in the middle of his own struggle. He stood between the bed and the closet staring at the ceiling while he unbuttoned his shirt like he was meditating or talking to a higher power.
The slice of his bare chest exposed by his undressing snared Olivia’s eyes for a second before she sat on the bed’s foot to remove her shoes, which had taken to feeling like bladed boa constrictors on her feet.
“What’s wrong with you?” Chuck asked.
“Nothing,” she spat, and lifted her right foot. She struggled with the buckle, which was disguised in part of the strap that wound up her ankle. Only a misogynist could have designed such torture devices and called them fashion.
“If you’re going to lie, at least try to make it convincing.”
When she finally got her shoe unbuckled, she hurled it at the closet. She missed and it hit the wall with a thud and fell to the floor.
Chuck quietly walked over and picked it up. He examined it as if it were an object from space before he bunched the straps dangling like noodles and carefully wound them around the sole. “I’m not going to press because I don’t want to become the victim of flying footwear, but you can tell me if you want to.”
She unbuckled her other shoe with much more ease and calmly dropped it to the floor. She took a deep breath and looked up at him. “They want me to talk about my parents.Parker just pulled me aside and asked if I’d do a segment because he thinks since the news is out that I’m on this show, interest is going to snowball, and they want to get ahead of any story since they have me captive in here for an interview. It’s all because of that damn article.” Her voice wobbled, and he instantly stepped toward her, as if the sound of her distress pulled a string he was tied to the other end of.
He stopped just short of the bed like he’d hit an invisible wall. He bent down and picked up her other shoe, gently repeating his process of winding the straps, and set the pair beside her.
“Thanks,” she said, doing her best not to sound weepy.
He sat on the bed next to her with the shoes between them as a small but meaningful barrier. And then he said something she didn’t expect at all. “I mean, he’s kind of right about it being an opportunity.”
She turned to him in surprise. “What?”
He shrugged. “If I’m honest, I’ve never really understood why you’re so reluctant when it’s right there for the taking.”