47. 47
So that was it. The show was done.
There wouldn’t be a final sunset or swim in the pool or chat by the fire pit. Not one more cocktail party or game of truth or dare. Just like that, it was over.
Ella grabbed my arm, pulling me into the glam room with her.
"It's fucked they didn't tell us sooner," she said. "Anyway, we're all going to that hotel we were held in before filming because they need to flip the villa for the live finale tomorrow."
I was struggling to keep up with her, both physically and mentally.
The glam room was a madhouse. Molly and Chiara were packing up their things, tossing away old bottles of makeup and self-tanner.
Crew members were coming in and out as well, striking lights and hidden cameras.
It was all happening around me, a hurricane of activity, and yet all I could do was stand there and stare out into space.
I still hadn't said anything, still didn't know what to say. Ella must have seen the distress written across my face because she stopped and turned to me.
"Pop, it's all okay. Just pack up your makeup and toiletries. The producers will get anything else we need."
"I need to talk to Callum."
"Can't," she said as she shoved things into her Louis Vuitton makeup cases. "They already left for the hotel. Boys and girls are to be separated until the start of the show tomorrow night."
My heart dropped, and I thought I was going to be sick then and there, all over the vanities.
"Honestly, where were you the last half hour?” Ella continued, looking at me like I had gone insane.
Maybe I had.
All I could do was blink at her. My mind was shutting down. I could feel it happening, the cold grip of disassociation washing over me.
Chiara chimed in from across the room where she was wrapping up her curling irons. “It’s so sad, I’m going to miss this place so much.”
They didn’t get it. They didn’t understand what had just happened. How everything was turned upside down.
“I need—”
Ella cut me off. “Callum. We know. You lovebirds are inseparable. But right now, you need to pack. We’re all staying at the same hotel anyway; you can always sneak out and see him later.”
Later. It felt impossible to let it wait until later, but I clearly didn’t have a choice. Maybe giving Callum time to cool off would help anyway.
I blindly packed my things, tossing whatever was near me into a bag, and then followed the rest of the girls out to the van that was idling in the driveway.
I paused before I got in, turning around to take in the villa one last time. Sure, we would be right back here tomorrow. But it wouldn’t be the same. Everything was different now.
As swiftly as it begun, Bella Amore had come to an end.
***
When we arrived at the hotel, I was overcome with a sickening sense of déjà vu.
This was where it all started, where I had been cooped up in the days before entering the villa, filled with doubts and fear of the unknown.
I had wanted to escape then, to find a way out of the decision I made as quickly as I could. Now, I was desperate for more time.
I also needed a way around the producers, who were holding tight to the insistence that the girls and boys remain separated until the start of filming the next day. “It heightens the experience,” Harry told me.
It was currently heightening my nerves.
The other girls thought it was romantic, how much I wanted to see Callum. “One night away and your head’s already spinning,” Chiara cooed at me, thinking it was the sweetest thing she’d ever seen.
I started to tell her that it was actually serious, that it wasn’t romantic at all, but then I stopped.
I had filled the girls in on what had happened during my “family visit” with Gavin, but I didn’t know how to explain the rest of it.
Didn’t want to, really. I knew saying it out loud would make it real in a way I wasn’t ready to deal with yet.
So I kept quiet. I made it through dinner and then room checks at the end of the night. I waited until it was dark, until I was sure more than an hour had passed and the producers had all gone to bed.
Taking a deep breath, I cracked open my hotel room door and peered out. I slipped down the hall, down the stairs, and out the lobby’s side entrance. It all went unnoticed, just as it had six weeks before when I was on the verge of a panic attack and needed to get out.
Crossing the outside terrace, I stopped at the same spot I had that night. It was where Callum and I had spoken for the first time. I was hoping he would also come back to it.
I stood there, the warm night air caressing my face.
But no one came.
At some point, I felt tears slide down my cheeks. But still, I stayed.
I stood in the spot where it all started until the sun rose. Until the birds started to chirp and I could hear production vans pull into the hotel’s front driveway, ready for the long day ahead.
Callum never came.
***
I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon in glam with the girls. I was exhausted, having gotten no sleep the night before, but my mind was too anxious to attempt any kind of nap.
I must have looked as ragged as I felt because when I walked into the hotel room that was serving as the glam room, Ella took one look at me and simply got up, walked to the room’s mini fridge, and pulled out an ice roller.
She handed it to me without a word, just a tiny pat on my shoulder. In Ella speak, she might as well have given me a big hug.
I spent the next hour icing my face, trying to undo the damage that standing in the night air while crying for hours on end had done.
“You alright?” Chiara asked as we sat in chairs next to each other, our hair both having been blown out and put up in rollers.
“Honestly? No,” I said.
“What happened?” she asked.
All I could do was shake my head. If I talked about it, I’d start crying again.
“Oh, Pop.”
She reached out and grabbed my hand. The simple gesture nearly had me bursting into tears. Instead, I focused on my breathing until the knot in my throat subsided.
I managed to get through the rest of the day unscathed and without falling apart.
I tried to let myself get caught up in the excitement of the moment, tried to let the girl’s chatter lift my spirits as we were herded into a van and driven back to the villa.
I was in the Bella Amore finale. Six weeks of ups and downs, of emotional highs and lows, had all led here, the cusp of the end.
Soon enough, we were pulling up to the front of the villa and getting out of the van. The driveway was teeming with production staff yet even the sight of their familiar faces did nothing to calm my nerves.
A producer led us into the house, but instead of turning right and heading down the hallway and out to the garden like we had every day for the last six weeks, we went left.
There was a door across from the Love Shack that had remained locked the entire season.
It wasn’t on our tour, and I never heard mention of it being used, so I had forgotten it even existed.
Walking into the mystery room, I was surprised to find that it was actually quite large.
It must have been a bedroom when the villa was used as intended.
Now, it was set up as a green room. Two couches were pushed together to form an L shape, with a coffee table in front of them and a spread of cookies and candy on top.
A few floor-length mirrors were leaning against one wall.
We were ushered into the room and told to wait until we were called to set.
I was hoping this would be the moment we would be reunited with the boys, that I would be able to see Callum before we walked out to the finale and we could at least have a few seconds to recalibrate and get on the same page.
But as time ticked by and the green room door remained closed, as we remained separated, it quickly became clear none of that would happen.
The panic that had been simmering in my veins threatened to overtake me as I realized I was stuck in pre-show purgatory.
I knew there was nothing I could do about it; there was nowhere to go and no one that could help me.
So instead, I resorted to pacing along the edges of the green room, trying to dissipate as much nervous energy as possible.
"Jeez, Pop, relax, would you. You're stressing me out," Ella called out from across the room.
But I couldn't stop, couldn't slow my body down now that I was so close and yet so far from Callum.
Finally, after what felt like eons, there was a knock on the door and Harry poked his head in.
"Okay, ladies. We're ready for you," he said, his smile wide.
This was it. The last twenty-four hours of stress and anxiety and being away from Callum had all led to this moment.
On some grander level, it felt like my whole life had led to this moment, really.
We filed down the hallway after Harry. The villa had grown even more chaotic since we walked in, with producers and PAs running around and the buzz of an impending live show palpable in the air.
We came to a stop at the end of the hall.
It was bittersweet standing here as I had every night before.
Six weeks of waiting in this very spot, and now here I was, one last time.
Part of me wanted to stay here forever, in this tiny hallway.
It was safe from the noise and chaos and complications that I knew waited for me on the other side of the door.
The sound team came to mic us, and just as the first night, a mic pack was strapped to my back at my bra line, and a tiny wire was laced up and under my dress and secured right at the edge of the neckline.
“Your mics are all hot,” one of the sound guys said before hurrying out into the garden, already focused on his next task.
“Yeah, so don’t say anything you’ll regret all of production hearing,” Chiara quipped.
More producers and crew members began filing down the hall and past us, out to the yard, and I knew we were only moments away from showtime.
Harry had been chatting away the whole time, flitting from exited encouragements to logistical notes and then back again.
“You’ll walk out live, so keep your eyes up and your shoulders back.
No bad posture here, ladies. Gosh, you all look bang on smashing.
Wardrobe’s done their big one, I’ll tell ya that. ”
On and on he went, his eyes dancing with excitement and his body vibrating in anticipation of the night ahead. When his gaze found mine, he gave me a wink.
And then he was opening the door to the garden, and everything around me slowed down.
I could feel the steady beat of my heart, pounding in my chest; could feel the blood flowing through my veins.
The world awaited on the other side of the door, and now that I was here, on the cusp of it, a strange sense of calmness washed over me.
Everything else fell away until it was just me and the ground below my feet and the air above my head.
Whatever happened next, I would get through it.
I would walk out that door with my head held high, with my shoulders back and, as Harry had told me long ago, my tits out, because I was here.
I made it to the other side of this whole experience.
My life had been upended; I took a path I would have never imagined for myself, and yet I was still standing.
The roar of a live audience could be heard from around the corner as the girls ahead of me began to file out.
I took one last deep breath and followed along.