24. 24
Iwas nervous. My foot wouldn’t stop tapping as I stood in the hallway with the rest of the girls waiting to be let out into the garden for the cocktail party.
“You’re awfully jittery, Pop,” Jess commented.
“Am I?” I asked, trying to feign indifference.
The truth was that I had no idea what was in store for the evening.
What would happen when Callum and I had our one-on-one time?
I was petrified that it would be awkward.
That I wouldn’t know what to say, and the conversation would be unbearably strained.
Even more, I was worried that he would go back to being that rude, cold guy I first met on the ferry.
My old life in New York flashed through my mind as I remembered how many times I had brushed my ex’s bad behavior under the rug and chalked it up to anything that would avoid real accountability.
Callum and I might not be in anything close to a real relationship, but we were still linked together, and I refused to repeat that pattern of behavior for him.
My inner musings were interrupted by Chiara tapping my arm and motioning to follow her to the yard. We shuffled out across the lawn to the boys.
Someone gave a toast, but my head was in the clouds, wondering if I would have to pull Callum first or if he would ask to talk with me. I was so out of it I didn’t notice the group was breaking up until Chiara was looping her arm through mine, pulling me over to our normal spot at the fire pit.
We had made it a few steps when I heard Callum call out from behind me. “Poppy?”
I turned as Chiara paused next to me. We both looked at Callum.
“Fancy a chat?” he said, a small smirk on his face.
Could he tell I was nervous?
“Yeah, sure,” I said. Chiara squeezed my elbow before turning and continuing to the fire pit.
“Daybeds?” Callum asked, pointing to a spot on the farthest lounger that no one had taken yet.
“Sure,” I said.
I started across the grass, Callum following next to me. He rested his hand above my lower back, guiding me to the daybed. The touch was a good move, one that would look nice and intimate on TV.
If it also happened to give me a full body chill, then so be it. I would easily ignore it for the sake of the act we were putting on.
Shaking off the way his touch lit me up, I sat on the daybed next to him.
The loungers were about the size of a full mattress, with outdoor pillows arranged at the top and a blanket thrown across the bottom.
During the day, it was one of my favorite places to laze about as it was covered by an overhang and therefore made for the perfect shady nap spot.
At night, it had all the fixings to be rather romantic. I tried not to think about it too much as we leaned against the pillows and both looked out at the rest of the garden.
“So,” I said.
“So,” he said back.
He wasn’t exactly smiling, but there was a crease around his eyes that told me loud and clear he found my awkwardness amusing.
“Poppy,” he continued.
“Callum,” I said back.
He leaned in closer, and whispered, “Relax.”
It took everything in me not to roll my eyes at his command and how easily he had been able to read me. Instead, I let out a breath.
I could do this. I could pretend he was just a normal guy, and I was a normal girl, and there was no villa or cameras or producers or elaborate plan to cheat the system.
Ask him a question, I thought. That’s a good start.
“So, what’s your favorite color?”
He looked at me as though I couldn’t be serious.
“That’s what you’re going with?”
A frustrated sigh escaped my lips, and I let my head loll back on the pillow behind me. He was infuriatingly right. That was a lame question.
This was not going according to plan. I couldn’t imagine what the viewers at home would think of this thrilling conversation. I didn’t even know how the producers could cut this into something remotely entertaining.
“Tell me about your family,” he said, taking over.
Okay, that was an easy one. I could talk about my family for ages.
“I’m an only child. My parents are wonderful. They’ve been together forever—were high school sweethearts.”
“Sounds like something from the movies,” he replied.
“It kind of is.”
I thought about my mom and dad, an ocean away, and felt a pang of homesickness. I wondered if it showed on my face because Callum’s voice softened, as though he was trying to tread lightly.
“Do you miss them?” he asked.
“Yes. It’s been a while since I’ve been home. Even when I was living in the States, I was in New York, and they were in South Carolina, so I’d only get to see them a couple times a year.”
“Sounds hard,” he said.
“It was. My mom and I talk all the time, though, so that sort of made up for being so far away. What about you? Are you close with your family?”
He paused, his brow furrowing slightly as he looked away from me and out at the pool.
“With my two sisters, yes,” he said, eventually dragging his gaze back to mine. He fell silent then—no mention of parents, no further details about anything else.
His face was blank except for the slight frown that lingered between his eyes. What was going on in his head, whatever feelings had been triggered by talk of family, was clearly a sore subject.
Callum’s foot shook ever so slightly, and as we continued to look at each other, it suddenly felt wrong to probe for more information. Whatever it was, I could tell it ran deep, and asking him to elaborate on camera felt inherently wrong.
“Are they older or younger?” I said instead, trying to move the conversation along while keeping it surface level.
“Younger. And a pain in my ass, most of the time.”
“Protective older brother, I see.”
“Something like that,” he said. The way he smiled as he answered made me sure that he was.
We chatted for a while longer, discussing our favorite spots in London.
It helped that he lived in the one part of England I was at least somewhat familiar with.
Eventually, we lapsed into silence, and I leaned my head back on a pillow.
The stars were out in full force, blanketing the dark night sky in twinkling lights.
It was the kind of view I was hard-pressed to find in New York.
Staring at it, I felt worlds away from my life back home; for once, though, I didn’t mind it.
“This is nice,” I said.
Callum said nothing in reply, and when I looked over to him, I was surprised to find he was already looking at me.
It was then that I noticed how close we had gotten. At some point in the conversation, we shifted toward each other and were only inches apart. It seemed to be a running theme with us.
The moment felt weighted as we continued to look at each other. I wanted to say something to break up the silence but found that I couldn’t bring myself to speak; couldn’t come up with anything witty or lighthearted. I didn’t think I even had it in me to ask him about the weather.
It was the first time we weren’t snapping at each other. The first time I felt some semblance of comfort around him, and it suddenly felt too fragile, too real, to ruin with meaningless chatter.
It was nice.
I kind of liked it.
“Poppy!”
A voice called out across the pool, bursting our bubble and bringing me back down to Earth. I instinctually pulled away from Callum. We hadn’t even been doing anything, and yet it felt like we’d been caught.
He seemed to be alarmed as well, clearing his throat and inching away from me.
I turned to find Jess rushing across the lawn toward us in a frantic haze. The purple beads on her mini dress clacked together as she made her way over.
“Oh, I’m so sorry to interrupt,” she said, looking between me and Callum. “It’s just that Chiara had a conversation with Adam, and now she’s crying and ran inside to the glam room. I thought we should go check on her.”
“Yes, of course,” I said. I looked to where Callum had been, but he was already climbing off the daybed.
We locked eyes, and what I found in his gaze made my stomach sink. He wasn’t doing anything other than standing there, but I could see it, clear as day: that coldness he’d had when we first met had returned. I knew whatever wall had eased down during our chat had just been slammed back into place.
I didn’t have time to think about it any deeper as I turned away and followed Jess into the villa.
I tried to listen to Chiara as she cried, tried to give her advice about what to do with her conflicting feelings.
But the whole time, in the back of my mind, all I could think about was Callum.
And as Jess and I sat with Chiara well into the night, wiping her tears and rubbing her back, I realized exactly what had made my stomach drop in that last moment with him.
It was disappointment. That icy look came over him, and it took me back to our first meeting on the boat when he was so rude.
I was disappointed to see him that way again.
When I finally crawled into bed that night, I wanted to say something—to try and get us back to where we had been on the daybeds—easy and friendly.
But Callum simply mumbled a quick goodnight before rolling over and away from me. It felt like a slight, and I had no idea where it came from. If I had been thrown by his actions before, it was nothing compared to now.
I didn’t want to push it, though—didn’t have the energy to. So as the lights finally went out, I tried to forget about it.
It was no use.
Lying next to the man I had found myself hyper focused on, I couldn’t help but think that one day it’d be nice never to see the ice in his eyes again.