The True Love Experiment

The roar of the audience feels like a hive of bees inside my head. I glance out, trying to gauge how many people are here, but the stage lights are blinding. I can’t see anything.

What just happened?

Did Connor just kiss me goodbye?

The set has been restructured, with a love seat inserted beside Lanelle’s chair, and the two sofas with all the Heroes put off to the side, one next to what I presume is my love seat, and the other behind, on a riser so they sit in two rows of four. I presume whoever wins the audience vote will come sit beside me, but the moment I sit down alone on the two-seater, I feel weirdly exposed and self-conscious.

My lips still tingle from the fever of Connor’s mouth.

I have a couple of minutes to get myself together as the video montage of my life plays; in the darkness, a SWAT team of hair and makeup artists rushes in to fix the damage. On-screen, I’m shown writing (LOL), jogging (there’s a lone cackle from the front row; I’ll discuss that with you later, Jessica Marie Peña), and body surfing in Pacific Beach (welp, that’s quite a wedgie). God, in hindsight, why didn’t I say no to any of these ideas! An accurate portrayal of my life would be me double-dipping tortilla chips into a giant bowl of guacamole with Crash Landing on You playing on the television for the seventieth time and my laptop gathering dust in the corner. But I guess that doesn’t scream Heroine material.

When the video ends, we cover what we already know: that I previously dated Evan and hated his tattoo; that Arjun and I had no chemistry; that Tex and Jude rubbed me the wrong way; that Dax and I looked like we wanted to eat each other but didn’t actually have that much in common; and that I had great chemistry with Nick, Isaac, and Evan.

We all banter, we all bicker playfully. We break for commercial, and while everyone is joking and chatting, I feel my pulse start to climb. We’re almost there. Almost there. Odds are good I’m going to puke on live television.

I want to be done with this, but also never want it to end. I don’t know how to maintain a relationship with Connor after the show is over, or even whether I should. It’s weird to be thirty-seven but only now learning how to do this: confess my feelings, go after who and what I want in my romantic life, manage rejection. I never expected to be the kind of person to have a hard time letting go.

The lights rise, signaling we’re back. My palms are sweaty and I resist the urge to wipe them on my dress because I’m sure it would be very obvious that I’m freaking the hell out right now. We’re going to find out the audience vote. We’re going to find out our scores. We’re going to find out the name of my soulmate.

But then Lanelle surprises me.

“Well, the eight of you weren’t the only Heroes with ardent fans,” she says. “There was also the surprise fan favorite; isn’t that right, Fizzy?”

The crowd goes insane.

I blink, caught off guard, but manage to recover. “I assume you’re talking about the hot producer, Connor Prince III?”

Lanelle laughs. “That’s exactly who I mean. Before we get to the big reveals, let’s spend a little time with the mastermind behind this show. Connor, come on out.”

If I thought the audience was loud before, it’s nothing compared to the greeting he gets. The reaction to the Heroes was cheering; this is cheering mixed with pockets of outright screaming, the kind of high-pitched hysteria I last heard at the Wonderland concert.

Connor steps onstage with a shy smile, all six foot five of him managing to look humble, and I am a real idiot because only now do I realize the other spot on this love seat is for him.

The entire time he walks across the stage toward me, his gaze is fixed on mine.

He sits down and smiles over at me. “Hi.”

His long, muscular thigh is pressed along mine, and not to be dramatic, but it is the most erotic sensation of my entire life.

“Hi, yourself,” I say, plummeting deeper into this intense eye-contact thing we’re doing. “I didn’t know we got to embarrass you on live television.”

Connor’s green eyes twinkle. “I had to give you one last go of it before the season ended.”

Lanelle cuts in. “This is the chemistry we’re talking about,” she says, gesturing to us. “Fizzy, I heard that the only reason Connor did the confessionals was because you put it in the contract?”

“In a sense,” I say, still smiling at him. “On our first day of filming, I told him I’d walk if he didn’t do it.”

Lanelle frowns dramatically. “That’s pretty extreme.”

“It’s also a lie,” Connor says, laughing. “She’s only saying that so she looks tough.”

“Let me have this!” I playfully shove him, and the audience breaks out into laughter. “He never lets me get away with anything.”

“In all sincerity, the lesson here is for me to never doubt Fizzy,” Connor says, and the audience Awwwwws.

“But listen,” Lanelle says. “The two of you really had an amazing connection on-screen.”

Unease thrums beneath my skin. I don’t want her to put Connor on the spot like this. “A corpse would have chemistry with this man, Lanelle. Be serious.”

The Connor fangirls in the audience scream.

“No, no, this is something special. Take a look.” She gestures to the screen, where a montage of photos begins and takes my breath away: Connor and me on set, huddled around a monitor; the two of us side by side at the café that first week, him holding his iced coffee for me, letting me drink from his straw. One where I’m feeding him a bite of pasta at a crew lunch break; another where I’m standing behind him making a screwball face and bunny ears while Connor and Rory stare at something on a clipboard.

I look over at him, wondering what the hell this is, what is going on, but he’s smiling giddily up at the screen and doesn’t turn at the pressure of my attention on his face.

Then the screen cuts to a photo we asked a passerby to take of us at the Broad—

My heart army-crawls up my throat, seeking emotional cover.

—then a selfie at The Rocky Horror Picture Show, then to me screaming as I dangle from a harness at the climbing gym and Connor laughs his ass off with his two feet planted safely on the floor. There’s a photo of the day we each tried to eat tacos on set in one bite (he won), and another from when he lifted me upside down and carried me to the confessional trailer because I was being too chatty with Liz and Brenna. There’s a moment I don’t even remember where I’m watching footage from the day’s shoot and Connor is behind me, both hands on my shoulders. When the slideshow cuts to an image of the two of us with Juno and Stevie just before the Wonderland concert started, the crowd’s cheering takes on a different tenor. Reality is setting in for them—and for me.

They’re watching us fall in love.

The girls’ faces aren’t blurred out, meaning Nat, Jess, and River had to have given permission for this to be shown, and I feel my shock spread into a canyon of confusion inside me. What’s happening? I look out into the audience, searching for where I know they’ll be, right up front, but it’s a mass of darkness. My pulse is gunfire in my throat, relentless.

“A real friendship,” Lanelle says as the screen stills on a photo of me laughing hysterically in Balboa Park and, just to the side, Connor gazing at me with unmasked adoration. “Some fans even thought the real love story was right here.”

The audience bursts into screaming cheers. A lone woman’s voice rises out of the dark theater, “Kiss her, Daddy Prince!”

I turn to look at Connor, who slowly turns to meet my gaze.

Lanelle asks, “Do you know how many fans the two of you have online?”

It takes a beat before I realize she’s asking me. I break my gaze from his, turning in slow motion back to Lanelle, shaking my head. My cranium weighs seven thousand pounds. “I’m not supposed to track the show’s activity online, and frankly it was a good excuse not to go on Twitter at all.” A ripple of amusement spreads through the room.

“Connor? What did you make of all of this?”

“Well, obviously I didn’t plan to be in front of the camera.” He swipes a hand over the top of his soft hair. “I admit it’s not where I’m most comfortable.”

A chorus of sympathetic coos drifts out from the audience.

“But Fizzy was right,” he says, holding up his hands as if defending me. “It worked. It was fun, wasn’t it?” He turns to look at me, and his eyes drop to my mouth. “Everyone knows it. Fizzy is smart, and funny, and makes everyone feel good.” He exhales slowly. “She is the best mood.”

The crowd absolutely loses its shit over this, and I gaze at him like No, seriously, what are you doing?

“I barely go on social media,” he says to me as if we’re the only people in the room. “But even I started to realize that people liked our dynamic.” He smiles. “I like it, too.”

Fuck, my heart.

“And from the sound of it,” Lanelle says, “there are quite a bunch of Cizzy shippers in this theater!”

“Cizzy?” I mouth to Connor, who shrugs sweetly. Into the mic, I say, “I had no idea we had a shipper name, Lanelle.”

“Can we turn the houselights up a bit?” Lanelle asks, and the audience becomes softly illuminated. “Raise your hand out there if you’re a Cizzy stan,” she calls out.

I blink in amazement at all of the hands that shoot up, and then turn when there’s movement beside me. Tex, Colby, and Dax are all holding up their hands, too.

Lanelle turns to them, laughing. “You three?”

Dax nods with a giant grin on his face. “It was easy to lose when I knew I didn’t have a shot to begin with.”

“I voted for them,” Tex admits.

“Me, too,” says Colby.

“We don’t even know the results yet!” I cry, struggling to maintain a grasp on what’s happening. “What is going on here?”

I look over at Connor, who reaches for my hand and folds it between his. A hush falls over the vast theater. “What’s going on is that I’m throwing my hat in the ring.”

Pandemonium rises, all around us. Most people in the front few rows are even on their feet.

Backstage he said, The hard part is coming, and I know now that he meant this: putting himself in the spotlight for me, inserting himself not only as a hero but The Hero, risking everything for us. Devotion squeezes my heart in a tight fist.

“Is this going to be okay?” I ask him quietly. His job, his life here, everything.

He leans forward, whispering in my ear, “I told you back there that you were right.” He’s read my mind. Connor pulls back just enough to smile at me. “Thank you for reminding me: Everything is going to be amazing.”

It hits me like a physical shove: He trusts me as much as I trust him. He came to me in the wings for the same reassurance I’ve always sought out in him. Somehow, even in front of millions, we have found a safe space in each other.

I can’t handle this, can’t handle what this is doing to my heart. If this is a grand gesture, I could never have written it, never have imagined the feeling that would swell inside me until I feel like I can’t speak, can’t even think.

Connor squeezes my hand, saying to the audience, “We figured I should get equal screen time, but of course that isn’t possible. So, I made you something myself.” Lifting his chin, he gestures to the screen again, and the houselights dim back down. The opening notes of my favorite Wonderland song, “Joyful,” begin, and I feel a swell of emotion I’m not sure I’ll be able to hold back.

There are video clips of the two of us joking on set, me throwing a wadded-up napkin at him. Footage of us eating lunch together, always separated by a few feet from the rest of the group; in another clip we’re sitting at a table alone, noodling on our phones but silently together. There’s footage of us trying to learn a TikTok dance together and cracking up, and then a quick-cut compilation of footage of me poking him in the ribs every time I walk past that has the audience in hysterics.

The next few clips show Connor patiently giving us feedback on set while I watch him with trusting, wide eyes, nodding. My love is as subtle as a brick to the face, and I’d be embarrassed by the way I’m obviously infatuated with him if it weren’t so obviously reciprocated. Whoever captured the footage of him watching me cook in the industrial kitchen and plant trees with Jude is a genius; Connor looks like he’s watching his favorite show.

The song ends, the screen turns black, and I think that’s the end of it until the starkly clear sound of my own voice surprises me, backed by quiet music: “Should we talk about last night?”

The audience laughs at the implication, and oh God. I know what this is. The very first day of shooting, when my mic was live. Mortification washes icy cold through me. I slap a hand to my forehead and the audience vibrates with excitement over the salacious things to come.

The video on-screen is still black, but Connor’s answering pause and then measured reply over audio leaves no question that he’s trying to cover for what I really meant: “You mean our conversation about today’s run of show?”

My blasting, “Yes! Of course that conversation! What other thing would we have to discuss?” sends the audience into waves of laughter.

Brenna appears on-screen, sitting beside Rory on the sofa in the confessional trailer. “Honestly, that those two were head over heels was obvious to all of us from the beginning.”

Now Rory: “God. She was constantly looking at him.”

This is followed by a hilarious quick-cut montage of all the times I glanced at Connor during filming. Sitting at the café table, in the industrial kitchen, at the park, in the spa looking for Connor when he wasn’t even there. The video speeds up, clip after clip of scores of times where I’m glancing over, looking for him. More than I ever imagined I’d done, and I knew I looked for him a lot.

It’s hilarious.

I bend, pressing my head into my hands as the audience cheers.

But then I straighten at Brenna’s voice again: “Yeah, but Connor was just as bad.”

Now there’s a montage of Connor’s face every time a Hero touched me, leaned in close, made me laugh, flirted with me. The compilation is hilarious—Dax and me on the first date, and a quick cut to Connor scowling at the monitor; Nick feeding me a cherry, and Connor appearing to breathe deeply with his eyes pointed at the ceiling; Evan braced behind me on the fishing boat, and Connor staring daggers at his back. The audience is eating it up, screaming with amusement. The Heroes, too, are in hysterics.

Isaac appears on-screen. “I think we all noticed it, but at first it didn’t feel like they were dating so much as just really good friends.”

Then Dax: “Those two are definitely hitting it.”

The audience cheers bawdily.

Nick says, “I think he tried to fight it, but there’s no doubt he’s got a thing for her,” and Colby, standing beside him some unknown night, says, “And Fizzy didn’t want any of us because she wanted him. It’s hard to be mad when you see two people falling in love.”

I look over at Connor and realize he’s been watching me. Of course he is; he said he put this together. And then it hits me—I’ve seen these outfits on Nick and Colby before. They wore them to the wrap party.

“You did this?” I ask quietly. “Just on Thursday?”

He nods, and then lifts his chin to the screen for me to watch what’s next.

We’re sitting in the confessional trailer, facing each other. We both look miserable and my heart bottoms out in my chest. It’s the first bit of footage from that agonizing confessional on our last day of filming.

The part of that confessional that never aired.

“How are you feeling entering this final date?” Connor asks.

“Relieved,” I say, and stare at him squarely. I remember that feeling, shoving my devotion out into the air between us, trying to get him to see how much I loved him. It’s written plainly on my face.

Connor’s expression tightens, his eyes searching mine. Seeing him like this, I don’t know how I kept it together.

His mask slips again. “Relieved why?”

“Because it means soon I can stop pretending I want someone other than you.”

“Fizzy,” he says, glancing in panic at the camera, “you—you can’t say that.”

I lift my chin. “Edit it out, then.”

With a long, slow exhale, Connor reaches to turn the camera off. The screen goes black.

The houselights come back on and it’s a silent beat before the audience erupts, thunderously, standing in their seats.

My hand is so slippery in Connor’s grip that I want to wrench it free and wipe it, but I don’t dare; he subtly turns it over, pressing it to his leg. The audience screams again as they watch him flatten my hand to his upper thigh.

These people would suffer from cardiac arrest if they ever saw this man perform in bed.

“Well, Connor, looks like you’ve officially entered this competition,” Lanelle says coyly, and for some reason my heart drops, like I’d forgotten why we’re all here. “I guess we need to find out how the audience voted.”

She explains that voting took place on social media, where it was tracked by an objective third-party contractor, and rattles off the statistics about how many votes came in the first week and how many came in for the finale. The numbers are staggering. The lights dim and then slowly turn red for, I guess, suspense. And then Lanelle says, “With 41.2 percent of the vote… the audience chose Isaac!”

There is a pause, and then loud—but polite—applause.

“However,” Lanelle says, smirking at the crowd, and I realize that of course she’s in on this, too. “There was a bit of a surprise. Anyone know what it is?” The audience shouts out about a hundred different unintelligible things before she motions for them to quiet down and makes a show of examining her cue cards. “In a completely unprecedented turn of events, Connor Prince appears to have received 38.6 percent of the vote, and he wasn’t even a contestant.” Mayhem erupts and she has to shout over the roar of the audience. Even the crew behind the cameras is cheering.

I don’t need Jess’s nerdy math skills to know that 38.6 percent of the vote is millions of people. Millions of people who want Connor to be with me. But the only two that matter are sitting together on the couch. I look at him; his smile hovers somewhere between shy, smug, and completely overwhelmed.

I lean in, which only makes the uproar around us intensify. “Did you know about this?”

Connor lifts a single shoulder, his smile widening, and my heart swells, way too big in my body.

“All right, all right,” Lanelle says, trying to get the show back on track. “But the real question is still in front of us: Did the audience—that’s all of you—predict which of these Heroes is Fizzy’s soulmate, as determined by the DNADuo?”

She goes in order of elimination. Surprising no one, Tex is a Base Match. However, Arjun turns out to be Silver. Jude and Colby are Base; Nick and Dax are both Silver. Sadly, Evan is a Base Match, but the audience vibrates, knowing what that means: Isaac is my Gold Match. With 41.2 percent voting for him, the audience got it right.

Lanelle confirms it; confetti blasts from hidden cannons in the stage. The bulbs on the retro logo flash and cycle in time with music; a cacophony of small, glittery fireworks goes off behind us. The camera zooms in on Isaac, whose handsome face appears on-screen. He throws his arms up in the air, waves at the audience, hams it up, and trades high fives and handshakes with the other Heroes. I stand up and give him a big hug. Even Connor is applauding.

But amid all the celebratory chaos, more questions linger.

Did Connor do the DNADuo, too? Do they have our score?

The audience settles and an anticipatory hum fills the theater. We all take our seats again, and Lanelle turns to me and Connor on the couch. “You’ve probably guessed there’s one more thing we need to discuss: Connor also submitted a sample for the DNADuo.”

My heart feels like it’s going to jackhammer its way out of my body. “I suspected that might be where this was heading.”

“So here we are,” she says with a small smile. “The moment of truth. How are you feeling?”

The answer is simple, and I direct it to Connor: “I don’t care what it is.”

“I don’t, either.” But then he grins.

“Do you know what it is?”

He nods.

“Do I want to know?”

The audience laughs.

“I can’t tell you that,” he says. “It’s up to you, sweet.” Connor takes my hand, setting it back on his thigh. “I certainly won’t force you to find out on live television.”

The audience protests vehemently, and I know that even if he doesn’t force me to, I have to. I’m not a dummy. If I leave this a mystery, I’ll get shivved in the alleyway behind the studio.

“What if it’s low?” I ask.

Connor reaches out and strokes a thumb across my cheekbone. He smiles, seeing only me in this enormous theater full of people, and in every grand gesture or emotional climax I’ve ever written, this is the expression I was going for. Being looked at this way is so much better in reality. “A smart woman explained to me that you’re many thousands of times more likely to find your soulmate with a Base Match than ever get a Diamond Match.”

It sinks in that this means he talked it out with Jess, that he went to her for context, or simply for reassurance, and I feel lit up like a flare inside.

My mind races through my last list of DNADuo matches, and how certain I was that knowing the scores would influence how I felt. But even if Lanelle told me we had the first zero in history, I would still choose Connor tonight and every night for the rest of time.

“Honestly, I’d be okay with anything as long as I have you.”

“You have me.” He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out the envelope. “You want to find out?”

I take the envelope with a hand that shakes like a feather in a hurricane.

Connor swallows, saying quietly—and very ardently, “No matter what it says, please know that I love you madly.”

And then, accompanied by the wild screams of the crowd, he leans in and sets his mouth on mine.

It is a kiss that starts small, mindful of the fact that we are on television, sharing this moment with millions. But a cocktail of emotion rises in me—infatuation, relief, elation, and desire—and I can’t help the way my hand rises to his neck, the way my mouth softens against the full bow of his upper lip, the delectable swell of his lower lip, the curved, amused corner. Without question, it will be clear to everyone watching that we have done this before.

As soon as our eyes open, a blast of a smile takes over my face. “I love you, too.”

And then I suck in a breath and rip the envelope open.