Jules’s words cut as deep as the image on the magazine cover, exposing the fear he carries around with him, always. Still.
“In case I’m right, I want to make sure you know that I love you for who you are, even when you’re a cowardly asshole who bails on his friends for three months,” she says in a very Jules Lu–like fashion. Then she does something very un-Jules. She reaches for both of his hands, gathers them to her heart, right over the face of J. C. Chasez. “You are deserving of my love just as you are, and you’re deserving of his love, too.”
He starts crying again, but Jules doesn’t let go of his hands, doesn’t let him hide the evidence of his tears. “You deserve the love you’ve been orchestrating for other people for the last six years. You deserve a happily ever after.”
“A happily ever after?” he snorts, and an unseemly wad of snot gathers on his upper lip. Jules kindly pretends not to notice while she lets him reach for a tissue. “You don’t believe in happily ever afters. You think our show is stupid.”
“Our show is stupid. We once made women downhill ski in Switzerland while wearing bikinis. In the dead of winter. People come on our show so desperate for marriage, they delude themselves into thinking they’re in love. Barely half the couples make it past six months.”
“What about Brad and Tiffany? They’ve been married for fifteen years, and they have three kids.”
“Yes, we parade them around a lot.”
“Or Luke and Natalie, or Greg and Jane, or Brandon and Lindsey—”
“The point is,” Jules interjects, “most people don’t fall in love in two months. But sometimes you meet someone, and you just know. And then we put them on a boat in Bali, because who can resist falling in love on a boat?”
“Don’t quote me to me.”
She squeezes his hands impossibly tight. “That list you just recited of our rare successful couples… do you notice any patterns?”
“They all have names you can easily find on a souvenir license plate?”
“They’re all white, yes. White and passably straight and middle class and Christian and incredibly hot.”
Dev laughs, narrowly avoiding another snot situation.
“Ever After is good at selling one very particular kind of love story. Most of the people who come on our show are all the same, but Charlie—”
Just the sound of his name makes Dev’s heart punch into his throat.
“Someone like Charlie never should’ve come on our show, but he did. He’s so special.”
“I know he is.” Dev bristles. “He’s the most incredible person I’ve ever met.”
She looks like she wants to slap him across the face. “So what’s the fucking problem?”
“What if I’m like our na?ve contestants? What if… what if the love I’ve wanted my whole life isn’t real? What if there are no happily ever afters?”
Jules takes their knotted hands and drops them into her lap, but still, she refuses to let go of him. “I don’t think happily ever after is something that happens to you, Dev. I think it’s something you choose to do for yourself.”
Story notes for editors: Season 37, Episode 10
Story producer:
Jules Lu
Air date:
Monday, November 15, 2021
Executive producer: Ryan Parker
Scene: Interviews with Angie Griffin, Lauren Long, and Daphne Reynolds at the live finale Location: Studio in Burbank Mark: Are you disappointed at all with the way things turned out?