Chapter Thirteen
After a good night’s sleep and a lazy morning, we are revived in time for the next afternoon’s challenge. The producers have pulled two benches from the Mess Hall into the field, and placed them across from one another, one for the girls and one for the guys.
I’m not sure how Truth or Dare can be considered a challenge, since there is technically no way to win it, but it’s a gorgeous sunny afternoon and the rosé is flowing, so I’m not asking questions.
Damian has just done a sexy striptease for his bunkmate, and that very lucky girl just happens to be me.
It’s an image I’ll hold until my dying day, Damian’s broad shirtless chest hovering over me as he rolled his hips in a very suggestive manner, one hand tangled in my hair, the other behind his head. Goddamn.
“Cleopatra Jones, you’re up!” cries Damian, trying out his new nickname for me. “Truth or dare?”
“Dare!” I say, with a wink.
Damian pulls an index card from the top of the pile. “Kiss the camper you’re most attracted to,” he says, giving me a wicked grin.
“Gladly,” I reply, pushing myself up from my seat on the bench. For a moment, I picture myself going to Kei…but no. That’s ridiculous! Isa is the one I’m most attracted to.
He’s already smiling when I kneel in front of him. It’s showtime.
I push myself between his knees so I can start by kissing his neck, making my way up.
I hear the cheers around me, and a fuzzy worry surfaces about leaning too heavily on our physical connection, but there has to be no doubt about our chemistry.
I kiss him deep and full on the mouth, forcing myself to not pull away when I feel his tongue examining my molars.
When the kiss has gone just long enough, I pull back, pressing my forehead into his.
Isa looks stunned. His eyes are slightly out of focus and his cheeks are flushed.
He gives his head a little shake, like he’s trying to come back to reality.
I push myself back up to my feet, and sway back to my place on the bench.
I can’t help but throw a smug smirk in Sue-Ellen’s direction.
“Isa, amigo, your turn!” Damian is clearly enjoying his role as game master, since Natasha couldn’t make it today. “Truth or dare?”
“Dare,” Isa says without hesitation. My lips are still warm from our kiss. I steel myself for a reprise.
“Kiss someone that you haven’t been bunkmates with yet.”
Isa rubs his hands together, which is a bit gratuitous, if you ask me.
He stands, and unsurprisingly, he goes straight for Sue-Ellen.
He holds his hands out to pull her up. There’s a moment of hesitation, but she lets him pull her in for a passionate kiss.
It goes on way too long, and they both seem to be enjoying it way too much, but I cheer along like a good sport.
When they’ve finally finished, Damian turns to Sue-Ellen. “Truth or dare?”
“Truth!” she says, fanning herself. “I can’t handle another dare like that!”
Damian reads the card to himself and chuckles. “Damn, this is ice cold. Sue-Ellen, name one camper that you aren’t attracted to.”
Sue-Ellen buries her face in her hands. “This guy is really sweet, and he’s really hot when he sings, but he’s just not my type.” We wait as she pulls an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Kei!”
“Shots fired!” yells Damian, but Kei laughs good-naturedly, waving off her apologies. “Letter K, my man, you’re up. Truth or dare?”
Kei pauses. “Dare,” he says, quietly.
“Oohh, this is a good one: kiss the camper that you have a secret crush on.”
We cheer as Kei stands up and takes a deep breath. He walks over to the bench where all the girls are sitting. And then suddenly, he’s right in front of me. He extends a hand. I glance sideways at Harmony, and she nods, nudging me to stand. I take his hand and let him pull me up.
I’ve never stood this close to him, never noticed how tall he actually is. I look up at him and find him staring at me with an intensity that takes me by surprise. I swallow.
“Is it okay?” he murmurs. I nod. He smells so good—I remember it from the plane.
Coconuts. He tilts my chin up and leans forward.
I close my eyes. The first thing I feel are his fingers grazing my jaw.
I shiver, despite the heat of the afternoon sun.
Then I feel his lips, warm and soft, gently pressing into mine.
But then he’s gone, far too soon. The absence of his mouth on mine is sharp, like disappointment.
He smiles at me shyly before turning away. I feel my cheeks reddening, heat flushing my whole body. I sink back down onto the bench. Harmony squeezes my arm.
“That was hot,” she whispers. She’s not wrong. There was a tenderness in that kiss, a longing that has me reeling. Thirty seconds ago, I had never thought of kissing Kei, but now I can think of nothing else.
The game carries on, getting rowdier and raunchier.
I do a lap dance for Giovanni, and share a three-way kiss with Valeria and Garrett, and any other time I’d probably find it all fun and sexy, but I barely register any of it.
All I can think of is Kei, the way he was looking at me with such intensity, the way his fingers warmed my face, the way his lips felt like they were built to fit mine.
The way it was so much better than any kiss I’d had with Isa.
Oh no. This is not good. I need to focus. I have been putting the work in with Isa, and I can’t let one hot kiss derail all my plans.
I’m grateful when Gabby declares the end of the challenge. We’ve got some free time, so I slip off for a swim. Maybe the cold water will jolt some sense into me.
The lake is a tonic. I dive under, slicing through the water, over and over again, testing how long I can hold my breath. I push myself to swim out further than I have yet.
Every day a little stronger.
I roll onto my back and stare at the sky.
The clouds roll lazily by. If I unfocus my eyes in a certain way, it feels for a second that they’re hanging directly over me, before they right themselves and the world is normal again.
I don’t know how long I’ve been playing with this trick of the eye when I hear a splash.
I pop up, scanning the water around me. Nothing. Then the surface of the water breaks. It’s Kei.
His curls have tightened up around his face and the sun glints off the droplets in his eyelashes. He swims toward me.
“You’ll never win with him,” he says, in a low voice.
“Excuse me?”
“Isaías. You won’t win with him.”
I shake my head. “I’m sorry, what?”
“He’s here for a good time. Sure, he likes you, but he also likes Sue-Ellen, and he’ll probably like the next blonde that arrives, too. He’s not here to win.” He’s perfectly calm, treading water with wide, languid strokes.
I glance across the water to the beach, the one I had told Garrett to look for as a touchstone of reality. It looks farther away than it ever has.
“Why do you think I care about winning?” I try to strike the balance between innocent and insulted.
Kei raises an eyebrow. “So you’re only here to find love?”
I make an incredulous face. “Aren’t you?”
“Come on, Cleo,” he says, gently. “Be real. No one can hear you. You’re not here for love, and neither am I.”
Of all the conversations I expected to have today, this is not one of them. “Then why are you here?”
He kicks his feet up and flexes his toes toward his face. “For the money.” He says it so matter-of-factly, and it’s so jarring coming from sweet, unassuming Kei. “I’m here to win. And I think I can. With you.”
“What?” I sputter. “Why?”
“Because I need the money. I need to move to LA and focus on my music.”
Then we’d both be in LA. “Okay. But why me?”
“Because I think you want it as badly as I do.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“But I see you,” he says, nodding. “I saw you at the bar that night.”
“What?”
“In Vegas, when I was there for a gig and crashed the bassist’s bachelor party. You made a lot of money off us that night. Do you remember?”
I scan my memory. I’d served—and scammed—countless bachelor parties. But then I can picture him, how he leaned across the bar, getting close enough that I could see the golden flecks in his eyes.
“But you had long hair.”
He laughs. “I did, but I cut it. Probably for the same reason you dyed yours blonde.”
My mouth drops open.
“And then in the airport, and on the plane, with your story about the funeral. Which I totally believed, by the way.”
“I’m sorry. That was a dick move.”
“It was. But I get it. And I see how you’re playing the game here, too.”
I’m uneasy about where this is heading. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do,” he says. “The thing is, I actually think we’re compatible. I bet that kiss looked amazing on camera. We’d have this odd couple vibe that people would go crazy for. I really think we can make this work.”
I feel a sense of cognitive dissonance as I try to connect his cool calculations with his kind, sweet demeanour. “I just don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?” There’s no hint of antagonism in his tone.
“I just thought, I don’t know, that you’re this good guy, and now you come at me with this big scheme, and it just doesn’t make sense.” I have to admit I’m intrigued. I didn’t take him for anything more than a Golden Retriever. Credit where credit’s due—he played the player.
“I can be a good person and also want to win. Those things don’t have to be mutually exclusive.”
“So we just—scam everyone?”
“Maybe,” he says. “But isn’t this whole thing a scam, and we’re all just running it in our own way?
” He gives me a searching look. “Everyone knows the truth here—no one thinks this is real. Not the other campers, not the producers, and certainly not the audience. In fact, we’d only be giving them exactly what they want. ”
“Which is?”
“The fantasy, on a silver platter. Cute, tender moments. Maybe a little bit of drama. A redemption arc, where we find our way back to one another, stronger than ever. And we win with the possibility of forever, which is the sweetest con of all.”
He’s got this whole thing figured out. “Hypothetically, if I were to go along with this, how would we do it?”
“Well, you’d have to let Sue-Ellen have Isa, for starters.”
That would be a relief. But it’s risky. “And then?”
“And then you choose me at the Couple-Up Ceremony. We could do a slow burn, maybe a bit of a ‘will they won’t they’ thing, and then—”
“Hey!” An angry voice yells from the shore. Tyler. Shit. “No talking without mics! Out of the water, now!”
Kei waves good-naturedly and starts swimming back to shore. “Sorry, Ty! Just came for a dip, didn’t realize she’d be here too!” He turns back to me. “Think about it,” he says with a kind smile, before launching into a powerful front crawl.
I follow behind him, struggling to keep his pace. Me and Kei? Maybe it’s not the worst idea. This time yesterday it would have been a hard ‘no,’ but then I’d seen him sing, and then, that kiss…
Was the kiss all part of his plan? Am I here playing checkers while he’s playing chess? Just when I’m starting to understand this world, who I have to be and what I have to do…
This changes everything.