The One


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 G. P. Putnam’s Sons
 Publishers Since 1838
 An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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 Copyright © 2023 by Julia Argy
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 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
 Names: Argy, Julia, author.
 Title: The one: a novel / Julia Argy.
 Description: New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2023] | Summary: “A razor-sharp and seductively hypnotic debut novel about the very fantasy of falling in love”—Provided by publisher.
 Identifiers: LCCN 2022049215 (print) | LCCN 2022049216 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593542781 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593542798 (ebook)
 Subjects: LCGFT: Romance fiction. | Black humor. | Novels.
 Classification: LCC PS3601.R478 O54 2023 (print) | LCC PS3601.R478 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20221024
 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022049215
 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022049216
 Cover design: Stephanie Ross
 Cover images: (composite) Colin Hutton / Millennium Images, UK; Nosyrevy / Shutterstock; Aarrows / Shutterstock
 Book design by Alison Cnockaert, adapted for ebook by Maggie Hunt
 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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 Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed is female. Thus she turns herself into an object of vision: a sight.
 —John Berger, Ways of Seeing
 
 
 
 Night One
 Miranda wants me to act like I’m about to meet my husband. She says I should walk toward him like I’m walking down the aisle. Through the dark tinted window of the limousine, Dylan looks like the model in a Folgers commercial, so blandly hot that he could be anyone’s husband, which is exactly why he was picked for the role. Miranda starts counting down for the woman across from me to exit the car first. The next time she gets to one, it will be my turn. I’ll step out of the limo and make my debut on national television. The first woman seems composed as she greets him, her cornflower blue silk dress flowing over her thin frame, and her skin like the skin of a regal baby in a painting. They hug, talk back and forth a bit, laugh, and hug again.
 I want him to look at me the way he’s looking at her already, his eyes crinkling at the edges with a smile. I can be desirable if I try hard enough. In my regular life, I do it all the time, pouting about the heat so my downstairs neighbor will install my window A/C unit for me, laughing too hard at barely a joke from a man on the phone to get a discount on my renter’s insurance. It’s never come naturally to me, not that it needs to. I learned how the world works by being a quick study. When the tall double doors of the mansion close behind the first woman, Miranda starts counting again.
 On the ride over, all of us took tequila shots. I sweated through each curve of the desert road, up the scrubby hills toward my potential future husband. We bit down on pristine wedges of lime from the minifridge, careful to not smudge our lipstick on the rinds, and then we screamed. I tried not to think about what I was getting myself into. Earlier today, when I modeled different outfits for Miranda, she said it was an asset that I never watched the show.
 “What’s he going to be like?” I asked her for what felt like the hundredth time. I was in a ribbed butter yellow dress, so cheaply made that it pilled beneath my armpits within fifteen minutes of wear, as though it was only ever supposed to be looked at and never used.
 “Tall,” Miranda said. I spun, and Miranda shook her head no, vetoing the dress. “Stop overthinking. He’s going to like you.”
 “And if he doesn’t?”
 “Then eventually you’ll go home, and then three months from now, you’ll see yourself on TV and think, ‘My whole life is different now. Better. Thanks, Miranda.’ Trust me,” she said.
 “I do trust you,” I said.
 “Good. You’ll need to.”
 When Miranda gets to one, the driver opens the door and the damp skin on my thighs, exposed through the slits of my jumpsuit, shears off from the leather seat. In my peripherals, there’s an encampment of tents, travel trailers, filming equipment, and porta-potties. Two women dressed in black sit on a grassy slope behind the limousine, staring at a phone. The blue light illuminates their faces. My own phone was taken away as soon as I landed at LAX, and I miss its pretty, sedative glow. I had trouble falling asleep the first few nights at the hotel away from it, my brain unable to slow down without the anonymous lull of my Instagram suggested page, filling in square after square of lithe dancing teens and reports of dogs elected as small-town mayors. Next to the women on the grass, a cameraperson sits behind a rig the size of a medieval catapult and turns the camera toward me.
 “Thank you,” I say to the driver as he shuts the door behind me, a habit ironed into me by my mother. Thank the bus driver when you leave. Thank the men who hold doors for you at church. Thank