Hot Summer

Chapter 5

No sooner had Femi finished his sentence than the Voice of God rang out over the hidden speakers. “Lovers—everyone should report to the bedroom now and collect their phones. They’re on your beside tables and can only be used for photos and receiving texts from production.”

Jayden took the stairs two at a time, and Charlie and Brad jostled each other as they ran, Brad knocking into Charlie’s shoulder so hard Charlie tripped over a stray flowerpot near the kitchen. It was absurd, and absolutely the sort of thing that would make it into the show, or the weekly Missed Moments episode at the very least. These early moments were key in building out each lover’s personality, and Cas realized she should probably say something. Stand out a little.

“If I’d known we were going to be running, I’d have worn a different bikini.” She pressed her hands to her chest as she jumped over Charlie’s leg dangling out in the walkway, and Ada laughed.

“You think you’re having regrets.” She nodded down toward her own chest, her hands doing their best to press her breasts flat. “These things are no joke.”

One of the phones was beeping when they made it into the bedroom, and Femi dove across two beds to snatch it off the bedside table.

“?‘Lovers! Welcome to Hot Summer!’?” It was almost impossible to understand Femi through the laughter in his voice, but it was also endearing, his excitement. It softened him, made him seem real. A far cry from the chiseled model who’d walked through the door half an hour earlier. “You are free to get to know one another for the rest of the afternoon. Dinner will arrive in a few hours and will be announced by text. Until then, have fun.”

You would’ve thought they were in some kind of Olympic sprinting competition to get back to the garden. Sienna paused only long enough to kick her shoes off—“I’m going to trip and die if I keep running in these things”—and the other girls followed suit, shoes flying wildly across the bedroom as they stumbled toward their phones. Ada managed to get her shoes off first and grabbed her phone and Cas’s off the bedside table separating their beds. Ada tossed the phone to Cas, howling with laughter as Cas shrieked and turned away, her phone falling with a clatter to the floor.

“You’re such a baby,” Ada said as she slid past Cas toward the garden door. “It’s a phone, not a spider.”

“I’ve never been good at having things fly toward my face,” Cas said, snatching her phone off the ground.

“Good luck on this show then, mate.”

Things were still high energy when Cas and Ada made their way back into the garden. A few of the boys were jostling each other in the grass, kicking around some ball one of them had found, and Sienna and Femi were sitting on the pool deck, laughing their heads off about something. At the sound of their footsteps, Sienna turned around, her smile growing when she spotted Cas and Ada on the stairs.

“Hey!” She patted the edge of the chair she was sharing with Femi. “Come sit with us!”

Cas grabbed a seat on the pool lounger next to Sienna and Femi, careful to leave enough space for Ada to join her.

“We were talking about what we want in a relationship,” Sienna said.

Femi raised an eyebrow. “Were we?”

“We were about to be,” Sienna said. She smiled at Femi, and the corner of his lip twitched.

“Okay, then. What are you looking for?”

“I want something serious,” Sienna said. “I want to be able to have fun with them, I want us to have the same goals, and they need to be someone I can introduce to my mum. And they should be someone she actually likes this time... haven’t been great on that front.”

Cas and Ada laughed, but there was a new softness in Femi’s expression that hadn’t been there a few moments before. “That’s what I want, too. Someone who makes me laugh and that I can bring home to my mum and sisters.”

Christ, she was going to sound like such a monster compared to these people.

It wasn’t that Cas hadn’t dreamed—once—of meeting someone who she could introduce to her friends, who were her true family by any meaningful definition of the word. She just knew well enough now that that introduction wasn’t going to make someone stick around if they didn’t want to.

“I want a laugh and everything, but really, I want someone that I can trust,” Ada said. She turned and looked at Cas as she said it, and there it was again, that rush that ran straight through Cas’s middle. “And someone who cares enough to notice things, you know? There’s been a serious lack of both in my last few relationships and it’s getting exhausting.”

Cas knew she was supposed to speak up next, but there was no way for her to answer this question honestly and not seem like a complete arsehole. I’m not looking for anything serious was the truest answer, but to say that out loud? She might as well sign her death warrant with the public herself.

“I...” Cas shifted so she could lean back on her hands, startling when she realized her hand had brushed up against Ada’s hip. Ada muttered a little “sorry” and Cas looked up to tell her she didn’t need to apologize, when their gazes caught.

“I guess, I want trust, too.” Cas was speaking to the group, but her eyes were locked with Ada’s. Focused on the way Ada’s dark brown eyes seemed liquid, golden in the sunshine. “Trust is hard to come by, you know, I’ve—”

She barely caught the words before they came tumbling out of her mouth. She wasn’t ready to reveal all this, not until she could find a way to talk about it that didn’t make it sound like she was still desperately recovering from the one time that she’d fallen in love. She supposed that there was no way to make it sound “not sad,” because it was, in fact, incredibly sad that she was still recovering after someone broke her heart so many years ago.

It wasn’t that she was still in love with Saoirse. Cas didn’t even spend any time thinking about her. They’d broken up years ago; Cas had long since moved on, because there was no other choice when Saoirse had decided to move, permanently, back to Ireland. It was just that if Cas believed that you learn lessons from every relationship—and Cas did believe that—it made sense that the lesson she learned had stuck with her.

That getting attached to people before you knew that they were going to stick around was dangerous. And you could never predict, even when you’d made a commitment, that anyone would stick around, so what was the point in getting attached at all?

Her friends thought it was a desperately sad way to live, but Cas had a good time. She had a lot of great sex, had some really amazing first dates, and she hadn’t had her heart broken once in the last four years.

She could feel the words on the tip of her tongue, begging to be said. It would be good to let the audience see this about her. They’d feel like they knew her better, like they had something to root for. Cas finally “overcoming” her trust issues, finally “finding love”... it would be a story for the ages.

But she couldn’t talk about it yet. It was too much, too messy, and to excavate it now...

The silence sat, thick, between them all for a beat before Ada turned to look at Sienna.

“I’m really hoping that I find someone here,” Ada continued easily, as though Cas’s almost confession had never happened. “I love the success stories.”

Finally, something Cas could talk about without putting her foot in her mouth.

“The Yousefs and Amanis,” Cas said, and Ada nodded.

“They never would have met if it weren’t for this show, and there’s something about that that I think is really just... maybe ‘magical’ is dramatic, but really nice.”

“I know what you mean,” Cas said, though, in her heart of hearts, she was having a hard time believing it. Not believing that Ada truly wanted those things—she seemed like she was being genuine—but that those things could happen for people who weren’t like Amani and Yousef. That any random person could just come on this show and find someone that they clicked with, someone that they wanted to build a life with.

Ada shrugged, her smile soft. “I’m a catching-feelings type, I guess.”

“Uh-oh. I better watch out, then.”

Cas barely had time to register that it was Brad speaking when he sandwiched himself in on Ada’s left side, taking up the rest of the chair. He wasn’t paying attention to the fact that he was now squishing Cas and Ada together, Cas’s elbow stabbing into Ada’s hip, and was, instead, too busy laughing at something Charlie was shouting at him from across the garden. His laugh was too loud, too in-your-face, and it set off actual fight-or-flight signals in Cas’s brain.

She’d heard that exact laugh from these exact kinds of men on way too many nights out. Had had to suffer through their excruciating conversation more times than she could count.

She supposed she should thank him, though (however begrudgingly), for saving her from having to navigate the minefield that was their topic of conversation.

“Hey”—Brad finally spared a glance for Ada—“can you slide over a bit? I’m hanging off here.” He gestured down at his leg which, sure, was hanging off the edge of the chair, but there wasn’t any room for them to move.

“You should just sit there.” Cas pointed toward the chair behind them. He could also leave. Whichever.

Brad leaned forward, angling his head so that it was directly in Cas’s line of vision. Cas raised an eyebrow at him. A challenge.

“Cas, right?” Cas nodded, and Brad’s smile widened. “How have you found it in the villa so far?”

“Well, I’ve only been here for about ten more minutes than you have, so...” Cas thought the eye roll was more than obvious in her tone, but Brad either didn’t hear it or was choosing to ignore it.

Brad laughed and knocked her thigh with the back of his hand. “Fair enough. Anyway, I was thinking we should play a little game.”

“You can go back to playing football and leave us to our conversation.” It might have sounded like a suggestion, but the instruction was clear in Sienna’s voice. And, god, Cas loved her for it.

Brad just laughed again and spun, his shoulder knocking into Ada’s. “Jay! Come get your girl!”

Sienna scoffed. “Excuse me?”

Brad, though, ignored her, and continued shouting to the villa at large. “Guys! Come to the pool, we’re going to play Never Have I Ever!”

“Brad.” Ada turned toward him in a failed attempt to catch his eye. “We were having a conversation, we weren’t looking to play a game.”

“Nah, come on, a game’ll be jokes! We’ve got nothing else on anyway.”

“We were having a chat, mate,” Femi said, watching as everyone else came running from their corners of the garden and grabbed seats on the pool deck. “Next time just ask, yeah?”

But Brad was too focused on the gathering crowd to acknowledge Femi. “Okay, guys, sit down! We haven’t got drinks, so let’s, like, raise hands if we’ve done it. I’ll start first and then we’ll go round.”

There were only four deck chairs, but Jayden grabbed a few beanbags from the grass and tossed them over onto the deck for people to sit on. Lexi and Maddison perched on the end of the pool, their feet dangling in the water, and once everyone was settled, Brad clapped his hands, a shit-eating grin on his face.

“Never have I ever kissed someone of the same gender.”

And fucking hell. Of course he’d started with this. He was already leering around at them all, practically salivating.

Cas refused to bend to his gaze as she, along with all the other girls and Jayden, raised their hands.

“Okay,” Cas said, jumping in to take control before Brad could say something else stupid. This was a hell of a lot more people than she expected, and she needed to know the lay of the land. “Were we just experimenting or are we queer?”

“Experimenting,” Maddison and Lexi said at the same time.

Sienna rocked her hand back and forth in a so-so gesture. “Experimenting at the time, but possibly? I’m still sorting it out to be honest.”

“Same,” Jayden agreed. “Though I had a boyfriend last year,” he continued, laughing awkwardly, “so maybe I’ve figured it out.”

Cas grinned and tapped her toe to the outside of Jayden’s trainer. “Yeah, maybe. I’m very bisexual, though I’ve dated more women, if that means anything?” Cas flicked her gaze to Ada, who was nodding.

“Yeah, me, too.”

Brad pumped his fist. “Score.”

If Cas made it through this summer without killing Brad, she should be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

Femi frowned at him. “Mate. Don’t be gross.”

Brad had just opened his mouth to reply when, thankfully, Sienna swept in.

“Okay, never have I ever had a successful date off a dating app.”

“Wait, what about that app, uh...” Lexi was clicking her fingers together, trying to come up with the name she was missing. “That one where you go to live parties and stuff instead of swiping. Does that count?”

As soon as Lexi said it, Cas felt everything go still. Like she was an antelope, praying that the lion hiding in the grass wouldn’t see her.

“Friday,” Charlie said. “I went to one of their things once. I’d say it counts—it’s basically like live swiping, some of those events.”

Brad laughed. “Brutal.”

One by one, most everyone in the group raised their hands, and Cas had half a second, maybe less, to decide where she was going to fall. Her arm twitched at her side, almost rising, but it was dancing too close to the truth for Cas’s liking, the conversation. She didn’t want to get herself into a situation that she couldn’t get out of, didn’t want to accidentally cross the line in her ironclad NDA without realizing it. It hadn’t exactly forebade her from admitting that she used dating apps, but any and all suggestion that she was on the show because of her affiliation with Friday was expressly forbidden and this conversation...

It felt like a slippery slope that led straight to the courthouse.

Besides, she wasn’t technically using the app to meet people anyway—she was running the fucking events—so it wasn’t really a lie.

In the end, Cas was the only one who didn’t raise her hand.

Shit.

She’d miscalculated.

Lexi was the first to start shouting. “Never?!”

Cas half laughed, half shrugged, a piss-poor attempt at covering her arse. “I just prefer to meet people out, I guess.”

“It’s actually impressive, if you’ve just been dating casually,” Ada said. She laid a hand on Cas’s thigh, a simple gesture that made Cas feel like she was melting straight through the chair. “Are you a fairly outgoing person?”

Friday Cas was.

Cas nodded. “Yeah, I’d say so! I like being able to go up to people and, like, immediately read their energy, you know? You can’t do that as easily from a text conversation.”

“No, oh my god, I get that,” Sienna said. “I once had a guy off Hive take me to a cemetery on a date.”

Ada’s laugh shot out of her. “What?!”

Sienna was grinning, barely containing her laughter. “Yeah. He just sent me the address, and it looked like some kind of park when I googled it, so I didn’t know until I got there. And then he asked if he could have some of my blood for some ritual he was doing.”

And even though she should still be trying to read everyone’s reactions, decide if they believed her story about energy, all Cas could think about was the press of Ada’s fingertips into her thigh as she laughed, the brush of Ada’s hair against Cas’s biceps. Cas drew in a breath, and it was Ada’s perfume, peach and citrus and something almost smoky, blended perfectly with the warm sun and thick salty air.

“Jesus Christ,” Femi said, and Sienna dropped her hand onto his thigh, her own laugh finally rocking through her.

“Yeah, I definitely needed Jesus that day.”

@HotSummer : the summer’s first couples are OFFICIAL and they are looking

@fionamccarthy:everyone except Brad who looks like a sentient bit of pavement

@niamhmurray:as;ldkfj STOP

@cararyan:Femi is so cute I love him

@sadeadegbite:frrrrrr if he doesn’t come out partnered up with anyone, he can partner up with me

@dylancoughlan : can we talk about Sienna because like... holy hell she’s STUNNING

@katewalsh:I know, she’s gorgeous

@aoifebyrne:they really DID IT when they cast Sienna because she is on a whole other level

@steffancherry : my official #HotSummer rankings, as always, ladies first: lexi is lowkey annoying, I already know I’m going to hate her by like episode 3

@steffancherry : maddison... irrelevant

@steffancherry : Sienna is a goddess, no one can touch her, if they eliminate her, I’m not watching anymore

@steffancherry : ada is tbd, she seems kind of bland, but I’m a sucker for a redhead so idk

@steffancherry : cas thinks she’s a gift to mankind but defo has a big storm coming

@jamiedoyle:... Why did Cas say she’s never used a dating app???

@ronanflynn:what do you mean?

@jamiedoyle:i swear she works for friday, that hybrid in-person/app company

@jamiedoyle:I’ve been to a few of their events and she’s always there hosting

@ronanflynn:wtf that’s... so weird?????

@moonlighthiker:wait...

@averyart:there’s actually no reason to be lying about this... v sus