Chapter Twenty-Three
Where’s a tsunami when you need one?” I mutter to Madison.
Shantae motions for the contestants to follow her toward the obstacle course. Scott tries to get my attention, but I ignore him. I don’t know if he wants to apologize for the way things went down or if he wants me to apologize for his broken nose. Either way, I have no interest in engaging.
“Let me walk you through the erotic challenges!” Shantae singsongs and the sand beneath my feet turns into wet cement.
I groan and catch Andrew’s eye. I mouth, Erotic challenges? and give him a look that says, Is this for real? He has to turn away to hide his laughter. I reluctantly catch up to the group, glad the Advil is finally kicking in.
Shantae stands at the starting line, marked off by orange cones, and points to two buckets fifty feet away.
“First, you’ll have to run to the buckets and dump water all over yourself—which we’ll obviously play in slow motion.
” She faces the next section. “Then you’ll go down the sand dune on the slip-and-slide and cross the balance beam. ”
She walks to the next part of the course, and we follow her to see that they’ve set up monkey bars in the sand, with a window hanging from them.
“Good news, you don’t have to cross the monkey bars.
” Blue hands her a canister of shaving cream, which she sprays all over the window.
“But you do have to wipe the shaving cream off the glass with your booties!”
This is met with laughs by everyone except me.
And Andrew. When I sneak a peek at him, he’s scowling and writing something down on a notepad.
I wonder if he’s preparing a warning about the overly salacious nature of this challenge.
Whereas I’m picturing the room where the writers and producers are coming up with this crap and dropping a mental hydrogen bomb on it.
“Next you’ll grab a balloon and sit on it until it pops,” Shantae continues. “I gotta warn you—trying to pop a balloon in the sand, while covered in shaving cream, is harder than it looks.
“And finally,” Shantae announces, “you’ll have to jump over the hurdles until you get to my favorite part, which I call, ‘Pass the Banana.’”
I shake my head. I’m starting to think reality shows don’t appreciate subtlety.
Shantae holds up a banana. “Ladies, you have to pick up the banana and put it in your cleavage. Then rush back to the next person in line who will have to accept it with their mouth.”
“Oh yeah!” says Cowboy Bill. Normally, I’d think he was being immature, but now I wonder if he’s just playing it up for the cameras because he felt discarded by Beth Anne.
Shantae ignores Bill and continues. “Gentlemen, same thing, but you’ll have to tuck the banana into your shorts.
” When the camera pans away from her to catch our reactions, I see Shantae cringe.
At least she has the decency to look like she’s questioning her life choices.
Blue told me that both her parents are doctors.
I bet med school is looking pretty damn good right about now.
Shantae then divides us into two teams. And because the producers love drama, guess who’s conveniently on my team?
Javier, Bill, and . . . Beth Anne. She gives me a smug smile.
But I take Madison’s advice and pretend like nothing bothers me.
Besides, aren’t you supposed to keep your friends close and your competition closer?
“Ready?” Javier says as he loops his arm through mine and drags me over to our team’s side. I shake off thoughts of Beth Anne and Scott and what they did on this very beach and instead try to mentally prepare for the shit show my lack of coordination and stamina will inevitably cause.
“I should probably go first,” Beth Anne tells our team. “I’m a gymnast and a cheerleader.”
I raise an eyebrow at her. “I thought you worked in marketing?”
“Yeah, now,” she huffs.
“So you’re a retired gymnast and an old cheerleader?” Javier says, shooting me a grin.
Beth Anne gives us a dirty look and starts stretching like she’s about to compete in some sort of banana-based Olympics.
Madison lines up in front of her team, and Beth Anne struts to the front of ours.
“Are you ready?” Shantae asks them. “On your marks, get sexy, go!”
The whistle blows, and as I watch Beth Anne drenching herself seductively and gyrating her hips to clean off the shaving cream, I can’t help but think back to Alec’s fundraising ideas.
Suddenly dressing up like a giant frog sounds a hell of a lot classier than it did back then.
But I gotta hand it to Beth Anne—for an old cheerleader, she’s making good time.
When Beth Anne runs up to Bill with a banana in her cleavage, he grabs it with his mouth, spits it out, and then sprints to the refilled bucket.
I look over at the other team. We seem to be neck and neck: Scott has dumped their bucket over his head, and water is cascading down his chiseled bare chest. Despite the fact that I’ve seen Scott’s true colors and am no longer drooling over him, I have to admit that I get what the producers are going for. No subtlety needed.
I’m startled back to the present by Beth Anne and Bill yelling, “Go, Grace!! Go!!!”
I look up to see Bill thrusting a banana at me.
It’s stuffed into the front of his bathing suit and dangling out provocatively.
I shake my head with disgust and shout, “I’m a scientist!
” before I lean forward and grab the banana with my teeth.
I quickly spit it out and jog toward the first obstacle.
“Go faster, Grace!!!” Beth Anne yells, jumping up and down.
“What about me makes you think I would be fast?” I yell back.
I dump the bucket over my head, wishing I could waterboard myself instead. I have to shake the water off my glasses before I sit down at the top of the slip-and-slide and give myself a gentle nudge forward. I’m not throwing my body down it like I’ve seen the others do. I bruise easily.
When I look up, I see Ciara is already way ahead of me, trying to pop the balloon. I try to hurry up and climb up onto the balance beam . . . only to immediately fall off. Yeah, there’s no way I’m crossing this thing upright. So I end up slowly crawling across like the least nimble cat in history.
“Come on, Grace!! Hurry up!” Bill yells. I try to flip him off but wobble and almost tumble off again.
I finally make it to the shaving cream window. I think I’m making up time, wiping the cream off with my butt, until I see TC flinging himself down the slip-and-slide on the other team’s side. Shit, where did he come from?
When I get to the balloon-popping obstacle, it takes me three attempts until I finally use what can only be described as a mother penguin technique. I hold the balloon between my feet and drop dramatically on top of it. It’s honestly a miracle the balloon is the only thing that pops.
I’m already out of breath when I make it to the hurdles. Instead of running and leaping over them gracefully like Madison the gazelle, I scramble over them like a clumsy panda cub.
I’m putting the banana in my cleavage and praying that all the cameras run out of batteries when TC rushes past me and their team bursts into cheers.
And then, just when I think things couldn’t get any more humiliating, I hear a cracking sound and my ankle gives out, sending me pitching forward face first into the sand. The banana doesn’t break my fall.
Ten minutes later, I’m still sitting in the same spot on the beach.
Luckily it wasn’t anything too serious. The on-set medics said it’s only a sprain and were kind enough to point out that my “underused leg muscles” were to blame.
Then Beth Anne helpfully suggested that if I weren’t so out of shape I wouldn’t have gotten lapped and lost it for the team.
Madison and Ciara shooed them off and now hover over me like mother hens while Blue asks, “Would the hilarious meme of it cheer you up?”
“You better be making that up.”
“It seems like you want me to say ‘yes’ so . . . yes?” Blue cringes.
Ciara laughs as I bury my face in my hands. Madison cheerily says, “Hey, you haven’t made it until your banana-related accident is turned into a gif.”
I smile at them. “Thank you, guys, for your concern but—” I start, but suddenly they’re all getting up and making awkward excuses about places they have to be. I turn and see why. Andrew is walking toward me, carrying ice.
He doesn’t seem fazed by their sudden departure; he’s probably used to it by now. He just plops down next to me in the sand and says, “You honestly did better than I expected.” I laugh and he hands me the bag of ice. “Is this going to be our thing?”
“Ice?” I ask, and he nods with a grin that makes me forget about my injury.
Until he looks down at my ankle, currently the size of a grapefruit, and winces. “That looks like it hurts.” Then he takes my leg, puts it over his lap, and carefully wraps a towel around my ankle to ice it like I did for his hand.
I shiver at his touch but quickly recover and shrug. “My ankle may be swollen, but my ego will be forever bruised.”
“Did you tell the EMTs you have two PhDs, though?” he teases with that damn glint in his eyes.
I playfully nudge his shoulder. And then because he feels so sturdy, I continue leaning against him. I am injured after all. “It’s not my fault I’m horrible at obstacle courses.”
He raises his eyebrows. “It kind of is.”
“I blame my brother for getting all the athletic DNA.”
“Aren’t you the oldest?” He laughs, and I’m too aware that he still has his hand on my leg and is absentmindedly rubbing it. I feel flickers of electricity everywhere his fingers graze.
I snap out of the daze of his touch and ask, “Wait, how’d you know that? Please tell me you don’t follow Matt on TikTok.”
“I’m not on social media,” Andrew says, slipping back into serious lawyer mode. “I only go on it when I have to do background checks for the show.”