Season 3, Episode 10 The Book of Luke
“The Book of Luke”
You went too far on the tram today.”
Barnes’ elbow grazed my sweaty chest as he rolled over, the last hour of stifled bunkbed sex having yielded little pleasure for either of us.
Now that he had his room to himself, Barnes had tucked sheets around the bunk to block the cameras affixed in the corners, and they billowed as he repositioned.
“So I’m getting bitched out? Not the girl who exploited you and the guy who treated you like crap?
I’m the bad guy?” he asked skeptically. “Did you forget cozying up to them was entirely your idea?”
“I guess I didn’t know it would feel like this.”
He snorted ruefully. “Well, I didn’t know I’d come here to watch you moon over Arjun Bhaduri every day, but maybe I should have learned starfucking is your thing by now.”
I parted the makeshift sheet curtain so forcefully it sailed to the ground.
I snatched my sweatpants and ratty Dartmouth Football tank, no clue where I was heading.
He leapt after me, but I twisted to grab the doorknob.
He hugged his pale torso in the light seeping through the cracked door, both of us suspended there like wrestlers before a match.
“You know, I look at you the same way he does. The difference is I’m not hiding it,” he finally said. “Go if you’re going.”
I should have stayed. I should have crawled back into bed and taken him in my arms. How uncomplicated would the world be if the rest of that night never happened, if Barnes and I had simply won the season, two reality TV villains beating a hasty exit with Imogen and Arjun both there shaking their fists?
Maybe we would have lost the election. Maybe I’d have gone to grad school after all.
Maybe Barnes wouldn’t have cheated. Maybe there’s some timeline where our fifteen minutes would have simply expired, the clock running out and real life waiting ahead.
Barnes would never be worse than a smirking suburban dad who got snarky after his third cocktail.
Imogen would never freeze in the ice of a world she’d long outgrown.
I would never forget how to speak, exiled in a doll house I thought protected me.
And Arjun would at last become the person I’d prayed to glimpse beyond passing glances and stolen moments.
Instead I barreled outside, not pausing until I reached the dormant hot tub, collapsing onto its cover, the cloudy sky above. He arrived as if I’d called him, hands in the pockets of his hoodie. “How are you not cold?”
“It’s summer, isn’t it?” I sat up.
Arjun draped his hoodie around my bare arms, and somehow this minor gesture felt more adulterous than anything else we’d done. It smelled like him, lavender and sweat.
“Why are you up?”
“I haven’t slept through the night once here.” He reached over, examining my hand. “It looks better this way.”
I didn’t follow, but then I noticed my engagement ring was gone.
I gasped, my mind racing, but Arjun reached into his pocket.
“It was by the sink in the bathroom. You must have pulled it off before you showered and forgot.” I took it from him but didn’t slip it on, my palm swallowing it.
“So it’s that easy?” he asked. “You give someone a ring, and it’s a done deal? ”
“That’s the rumor.”
We stared into the trees, the bark and needles of the Alaskan pines collaging into shadow.
“Luke, I’m not happy.”
“It’s the end of the season,” I replied. “No one ever is.”
“It’s not the show. No matter where I am these days, I’m not happy,” he said. “The last time I was happy was in the Caymans.”
I was quiet. He sniffed, something catching in his throat. “Do you ever wonder about the two of us? What it would be like if things were different?”
I turned to him, blinking, losing my ability to keep up any act. “Arjun, you admitted it yourself weeks ago. I was never first for you. I never will be.”
“That’s not true.”
The night of the car crash with my dad, I understood the truck was about to hit us, the white-hot headlights soaring smoothly toward me like swans gliding into a lake.
In the seconds before impact, I remember saying aloud, matter-of-factly: “Oh no.” This moment, the look in Arjun’s eyes, it felt like that.
The powerless breath before propulsive force and glass shards.
The last moment before a new era is born.
“Luke, I was probably in love with you before I ever met you,” he said quietly.
“And I was such a coward, pushing you away, lashing out. I’ve spent months wondering how to make it up to you.
At first, I thought having you in my life even a little bit would make me feel better, but it’s worse.
Every day just confirms what I’m about to lose,” he finished, a spark dancing in his eyes.
“I can’t hide this anymore. The only person I want to be with is you. ”
I couldn’t speak, my voice slicing my dry throat. “No, you don’t mean this, not now, not after everything, you’ll never—”
“Do you want me to call my parents on camera right now? That’s how serious I am.” He gripped my shoulders as if fearing I’d somehow blow away. “Watching Barnes today, how he humiliated you… I will not stand by and let you ruin your life.”
“He’s never hurt me like you—”
“I have done awful things to you, but it’s nowhere near what that man will eventually put you through. Whatever you think he’ll give you, I can do more—”
“I… I don’t want your money!” I stammered, mortified, hyperventilating, panic taking hold.
“Luke, I’d never think that. I mean love. I mean respect and trust. You’re more than some trophy to me. Can he say the same?”
“Let me go, someone will see…” My voice cracked, fear churning through my veins. It was like some part of me knew what was coming.
His forehead pressed into mine, his hands running from my skull to my spine as if calming a horse. “You don’t have to choose me. I won’t even ask you to not choose him, but I am begging you to choose yourself… because right now you aren’t.”
My world had ended more times than I could count.
I’d learned apocalypse from my first memories.
My mother, my father, football, him… I couldn’t risk it all again, not for him, not when I was so close to something that felt whole, these crumbs I’d cobbled into a life.
I refused to lose again. And how dare he taunt me with this future, the fantasy I’d fought to forget?
He’d never experienced his entire existence shattering to pieces, not like me.
“Say something, Luke.”
I did. I screamed Barnes’ name. And I ran.
I remember Arjun’s terrified reflection in the sliding glass door as he pursued me, exhausted crew members still loitering when I burst into the living room.
Barnes and Imogen emerged from opposite doors, and Barnes rushed to catch me, genuinely stunned.
“I can’t do it,” I gasped, reeling. “I won’t keep covering for him. He won’t stop…”
There in my future husband’s arms, I faced the first man I’d ever loved.
“You think you can do anything, put your hands on me whenever you want… You’re gay, Arjun.
” I stated it baldly, from the pit of my gut.
“Deny it all you want, but I’m done lying for you.
I don’t love you anymore. I am engaged, and we are over.
All I want is for you to finally leave me alone. ”
I would never hear Arjun say another word in my presence.
His shoulders only sank as he inhaled raggedly, his dry eyes drifting away.
As quickly as my leg had once been snapped, as swiftly as my heart had once been broken, Arjun Bhaduri irrevocably became a gay man.
When he left the room, Imogen came to me, no anger, just grief staining her face.
“I’ve got him,” Barnes said firmly. As his voice resonated against my skin, I knew I’d never tell Barnes what had just transpired, the confirmation Arjun claimed to love me as much as he’d always feared.
Helena Malloy subtly guided the revived camera teams, swooping in for the close-ups that would supplement the units mounted in the corners.
I didn’t see Arjun when he quit the show moments later, but I heard the clatter of his suitcase wheels as he walked out, like the pop of the cheap fireworks my dad would cross the state line to buy in South Carolina when I was young.
Mitch would instruct each player to light one before the season began, and he’d say, “Celebrate right now, because you are a winner. Say it: I will win, I will, I will… That’s how you do… ”
And that’s how I did. I won so badly I lost everything.
“I can’t hear you. Speak up.”
“He chose me,” I said again. “He said he’d come out, so we could be together.”
Erika stared at me, her face agonizingly blank. “Why didn’t you?”
“I was certain I was in love with someone else.” My voice trembled. “And I was too scared to throw that away.”
“So, when you told Barnes, he made you—”
“I didn’t tell Barnes anything. After all the flirtation, he assumed Arjun finally went too far and I broke down. I’ve never told anyone until you right now.”
“Okay.” She stood, scrutinizing me, every muscle locking tight. “Well, there’s no way around it then, is there? My brother did kill himself because of you.”
I heard a gasp from the PA with the boom, but Zara stood still, the camera unflinching.
“You took the hardest thing he’d ever do and threw it in his face,” Erika said. “You didn’t just bastardize it, you made it worthless. And I’m done making excuses for you.”
“I’ll leave tonight. You’ll never see me again.”
“No.” She grabbed me by the jaw, steering my haggard face into the opaque black circle trained on us.
“Look in that camera. Look at my parents, look at your children, and say you will compete to the best of your ability in that final, so I know when I win that I truly beat you. You will not rob me of that. If you want to actually take responsibility for destroying my brother’s life, to say nothing of the past decade of bigotry you allowed the so-called ‘love of your life’ to inflict? Then stay and compete.”
I coughed, summoning the words. “I’ll compete.”
“Good.” Her fingers retracted, throbbing like wasps in the air. “You fucking coward.”
With that, she marched to the house, Zara and the PA trailing like a caravan.
I was merely wreckage in her wake, but Erika knew the truth now.
Her brother hadn’t given up. She knew that he’d tried, swimming against the current to the surface, grazing it for a gasp of air before I shoved him back under.
I couldn’t face Imogen yet, hunching over as an encore of rain pattered across my windbreaker.
I flinched when a hand grazed my back, Barnes’ metallic cologne blending with the fresh scent of the lawn.
One glance at his face told me he’d heard everything.
I braced myself for anger, for judgment, for all the feelings it was now his turn to wield.
He instead silently sat beside me, his hand never leaving me as I crumbled into his lap.
His forehead nestled into the matted mess of my hair, his breath shallow and warm against my neck.
If a camera captured us, it never made the broadcast edit. I can’t imagine it fit the story anyone wanted to tell, the moment when all my husband wanted was to hold me, the moment when I let him.