39. 39
Hours later, we were still in the garden, going round and round rehashing the events of the evening. The fallout from Chateau Desire was far from being wrapped up anytime soon.
Billy, single once Samantha matched with Louis, decided that he no longer wanted to stay in the villa, packed his bag and left, leaving Samantha in a heap of guilty tears. Ella, Olivia, and I took turns rotating between sitting with her and Chiara for most of the cocktail party.
Chiara, at least, was taking Hugh’s rejection in stride. She had cried for about an hour straight, but after copious amounts of girl talk and dissecting everything he’d done over the past four weeks, she’d come to realize that maybe she had pinned too much on him.
“I think it was why I was such a mess these last few days,” she said to me as we sat, just us two, on the pool loungers.
“I think I knew, deep down, that our connection wasn’t as strong as I wanted it to be.
That I was trying to convince myself it was more so it would fit the perfect love story I wanted so badly. ”
“Just don’t discredit your feelings because of what’s happened,” I replied. “You two had a real connection. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be the kind of love that you want. Or deserve.”
We sat in silence for a while longer, both exhausted from the night until Chiara was called away to film her confessional.
I looked around as she went, wondering where Callum was. Instead, I found a very giddy Ella tip-toeing my way.
“Come sit by the pool with me,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows and not stopping to give me a chance to object. The producers would have chirped at me over the speakers to move on to another conversation about the night anyway. Sitting with Ella would be better than anyone else.
By the time I reached her, Ella had already sat down along the edge of the pool, her feet submerged in the water below.
Her wine glass from earlier in the night was clutched in her hands.
I sat down next to her, taking my shoes off and dipping my own feet into the pool.
The cool water felt heavenly after a night in heels.
“Here,” she said, offering me a sip from her glass.
“I have mine,” I said, gesturing to where I had placed my own glass next to me.
“No, really, have some,” she said. There was a glint in her eye that stopped me from objecting again. I reached out and took the goblet from her. Putting it to my lips, I took a sip.
And almost spit it back out.
It was tequila. Straight tequila, filled right up to the rim of the glass.
“Where did you get this?” I exclaimed in a whisper.
Ella laughed, her head tipping back in pure joy.
She looked around, making sure there wasn’t anyone nearby, and then grabbed my mic and hers, wrapping one hand around each of them to mute what she was about to say.
“Ben gave it to me. I guess there’s a tradition that the night of the Chateau Desire matching, the senior producers throw a big party for junior producers in the Hut.”
“No way,” I said, shocked that there was a rager happening at that very moment, just at the end of the driveway.
“Swear it. He was a bit drunk doing my confessional and told me all about it. Even ran out and snuck this back in for me. You have to share it with me, though. After weeks of sticking to one wine a night, I fear a whole glass of this will knock me out.”
As if in confirmation, she let out a perfectly timed hiccup as she dropped our mics, done sharing her confidential information.
“Oh no, I think it already has,” she giggled.
I couldn’t help the laugh that burst out of me. And then Ella was laughing even harder, and we were falling all over ourselves, both at the absurdity of the whole evening and the contraband liquor.
We sat there for a while longer, giggling and sipping from the goblet of tequila.
The producers really must have been partying because no one called us out to move along to another conversation or do any more confessionals.
In fact, the entire villa had been left pretty much uninterrupted for a while.
Ella and I were laughing, again, about something stupid when a throat cleared behind us.
I turned to find Callum. He was standing there with his hands in his pockets, fighting a smile.
“Ladies,” he said, greeting both of us yet keeping his eyes focused only on me. I stared back, unable to look anywhere but directly at him.
Ella’s head swiveled from Callum to me and back again before she pulled her legs out of the pool and stood up. Considering that the goblet of tequila was now empty, I gave her credit for not immediately tipping over into the water.
Instead, with that built-in grace that had once annoyed me to no end, she simply threw her shoulders back and walked away without a word.
Callum smirked and stepped toward me.
“Having fun?” he asked.
“Quite a bit, actually,” I replied.
He laughed and then bent down to sit next to me on the pool’s edge. He settled himself so close that our arms touched, the warmth of his skin melting into mine.
I suddenly felt rather shy and looked away from him and down at the pool.
“How’s Chi?” he asked.
“Doing her best. She was going to sneak up to bed after her confessional, try to sleep it all away.”
“That’s always a good approach.”
I looked back over at him then, and all thoughts of Chiara and the drama that occurred earlier slid out of my brain. There was only one thing occupying my mind.
“I’m really glad you didn’t match with anyone else,” I confessed.
Maybe it was the tequila, maybe it was what happened to Chiara. Whatever the case, I felt like I needed to be honest with him. The game we were playing could wait for the morning.
“I am too,” he said back.
We stared at each other, lapsing into a comfortable silence.
We didn’t need to say anything else; the big conversation that had felt so important for us to have only hours ago now seemed inconsequential.
In this moment, on this night, it was enough that we didn’t choose other people.
Enough that we stuck together, once again.
Callum looked away first, staring out at the dark sea beyond.
I looked down at the pool and the ripples skirting its surface.
I felt lighter than I had in weeks, lighter even than before I had come on the show.
Perhaps it was that lightness, or the boldness I felt by not being alone, by having someone I could truly rely on, but something came over me and I couldn’t help it.
I kicked out my foot and splashed Callum. Just a tiny bit; a few droplets, really.
He slowly turned and looked at me, a grin taking over his face.
“Did you just splash me?”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Moi?”
“Oui.”
“Nope. Must have been the wind.”
“Oh, okay.”
The air around us stilled, and I felt my skin vibrating, waiting for what Callum would do in response.
We were still staring at each other when he cupped his hands, reached into the pool and directed a wave of water my way, thoroughly soaking me.
“Oh. My. God.”
“It is quite windy, isn't it?”
I splashed him again, stronger than before.
And then we were both splashing each other, and before I knew it, we were in the pool, sending sprays of water toward one another.
“Okay, okay,” I said after getting water up my nose for the third time. “Truce.”
“Truce,” he agreed.
But we didn’t get out of the pool. We stayed in, fully clothed, circling one another in the deep end.
Every stroke of my arms and beat of my legs against the water floated me closer to him. Closer and closer, until finally we were right in front of each other, mere inches between us, face to face.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I said back.
I’m not sure who moved first. Maybe we moved at the same time.
One second, we were treading water, and the next, we were kissing, wrapped around each other with no room for anything but our breath and the warm night air.
Kissing Callum was like being shocked with a live wire; like I could feel every nerve ending in my body, all lit up.
The time spent apart, coupled with the stress of thinking about him nonstop, had created the perfect storm of want and need.
To be able to kiss him, not because we were playing a game or trying to put on a show for the cameras, unlocked some long-buried desire in me, and I couldn’t get enough; no matter how close I pressed myself against him, how deeply my lips moved against his, I still needed more.
We kissed as we floated into the shallow end, as my back pressed against the pool wall and my legs wrapped around his waist. The whole time, Callum held me in place, his strong arms never moving from where they were wrapped around me. I felt safe and secure and impossibly turned on.
The whole villa could have caught on fire and I wouldn’t have noticed; I was so wrapped up in Callum.
We kissed and kissed and kissed, and when we finally pulled away from each other, when we eventually got out of the pool and headed into the villa, whatever line there was between fact and fiction was gone.
In its place was just us, moving forward.
Together.