Chapter Nineteen
My worst nightmare appears at the beach path. She’s tall, fit, and devastatingly beautiful. And she’s looking at Kei like she wants to eat him for dinner.
“You know her?” I say, not really wanting to know the answer.
“She’s my ex.”
Kei’s perfect-on-paper person is his ex?
The one he’s still in love with? Oh wonderful, amazing, just fucking great.
And it gets worse as she gets closer. Clear, glowing, tanned skin.
Long, tousled brown hair, kissed by the sun.
Piercing green eyes. The long legs and curves of an absolute bombshell.
Which is exactly what she is. Here to blow up everything we’ve built.
She approaches Kei and kisses him on both cheeks. “Meu amor, I have missed you.” She stands on the other side of him, not even acknowledging my existence. Kei stands rigid between us.
It feels like there’s a drone between my ears, a faint but persistent buzzing that cancels out all other sounds around me.
At one point, a muscly, clean-cut guy with blindingly white teeth and a paw print tattoo on his bicep appears before me.
He gives me a hopeful smile as he leans in to kiss my cheek.
Is this my perfect-on-paper person? He’s standing so close to me, like he’s staking his claim, but I can barely register him. Alessandra’s presence on Kei’s other arm looms so large that I find it impossible to focus on anything else.
I glance around. Everyone looks miserable. The POPPs seem like they’re trying to keep a brave face, but the animosity toward them is palpable. The only people who are happy are Tyler and Gabby. They’re fucking delighted to watch it all burn down.
Once everyone has been matched with their POPP, Natasha continues her spiel.
“This afternoon, you’ll do your rostered chores with your bunkmate, as per usual, but then, in lieu of a challenge, you have a choice: go on a romantic date with your POPP or spend some quality time with your bunkmate.
” There are several audible groans. Natasha looks gleeful while the rest of us are despondent.
“We’ll ring the bell when it’s time to decide if you’re going on the date or not. So, off you go! Have fun!”
Kei doesn’t look at me as we walk to the Chore Board. We’re on waste management, which means dealing with the garbage and the compost, the most reviled chore at camp.
We go around to the back of the Mess Hall where the garbage bins are located. We silently start pulling out bags and tossing them onto a wagon, which we’ll have to wheel to the perimeter of the camp for pick-up.
“Are we going to talk about this?” I ask, annoyed that he seems willing to pretend nothing is happening.
“Sure,” he replies, without making eye contact.
“Okay, I’ll start. I guess I just feel, let’s say, perplexed by the fact that you literally named your ex-girlfriend as your perfect person.
Like, if she’s so perfect for you, then why did you break up?
Why bother coming here, if she’s all you really want?
” I’m confused by the hurt in my voice. Sure, it will be convincing for the viewers, but I was going for annoyed, not wounded.
Kei sighs heavily. “Look, when I filled out that questionnaire, I was in a bad place. Me and Allie had only just gone bad, and I was pretty torn up. And the thing is, at the time, I really did think she was perfect for me.”
“Is this supposed to be making me feel better?”
“Perfect on paper and perfect in reality are two very different things. On paper, at least in a one-page questionnaire, she is everything I’m looking for.
But the reality of her, or the reality of us, at least, is that we’re terrible together.
” He looks so anguished, I want to give him a hug, pull him in and tell him it’s okay.
“She cheated,” he says. “And it made me crazy. I stayed with her, but I couldn’t trust her. I turned into a different person—jealous, suspicious—and it ate away at my confidence.”
I shift uncomfortably. I remember how devastated my mom was when she found out my dad was cheating. How it was like the light in her just went out. I should have learned then to never trust anyone with my heart like that.
Kei picks up one of the handles of the wagon and gestures for me to grab the other. We head toward the dumpsters.
“So, things ended pretty badly?”
“That’s the thing.”
“What?”
“We didn’t really break up. It just sort of fizzled out. I needed some time, and she gave that to me. We got together a few times, you know—”
“Booty calls,” I say, never one to parse words.
“I guess.” He pauses. “More like giving in to an addiction.”
Great, Kei was addicted to having sex with Alessandra. That’s wonderful.
“And then it just went longer and longer between—”
“Hook-ups.”
“Yes. Then, I don’t know, time just passed and stuff happened and then I was on a plane to Thunder Bay for this show.”
I stop, dropping my handle. “Stuff happened and then you were here? So you’re not actually broken up?”
“No, we definitely are. It’s been months since we last spoke, but there just was no defining moment when it ended, I guess.”
We stand there, staring at one another, a stalemate. I pick up my handle again and start walking.
“Cleo,” he says, following behind me. “I really like you, but…” He sighs.
“What?”
“I feel like I owe it to myself to take this opportunity to actually talk to Allie about it. Get some closure or something.”
We arrive at the dumpsters, which are ridiculously large. It takes almost all my strength to hoist the heavy bags up and over the edge. Kei offers to help—he tosses them in like they’re beach balls—but I refuse.
I have to ask the question, even though I fear the answer. “Do you still have feelings for her?”
He rubs his forehead, pressing into his eyebrows with his thumb and middle finger. “I don’t know. I need to figure that out.”
“You couldn’t have figured that out before now?”
“I should have. I thought I had. But now that she’s here, it’s complicated. There was a lot left unsaid.”
I wonder what’s being left unsaid right now.
“I’m sorry, Cleo, but I want to take her on the date.”
There it is.
“That’s cool,” I say, hoping my mic doesn’t pick up on the slight choke in my voice. “It’s fine. I mean, whatever. We’re not even together, it’s not that deep.”
My heart sinks when I see the hurt on Kei’s face. But then I remember he’s faking it. Just like I am. I’m only pretending to care, and so is he.
It’s just all so confusing.
Maybe it’s for the best. I’ve been getting too attached to him, anyway. The less I care, the better chance I have at winning. Or something like that. Whatever. As long as he still plans to end up at the finale with me, then none of this matters.
It’s for the best.
It really is.
This is exactly how I want it to go.