28. 28 #2
I had so many questions, but it all had to wait. The Matching Ceremony was still going on.
Focusing back on the girls standing in front of me, I realized it was down to Olivia, Jess and Sara, with only James left to pick.
Please pick Jess, I begged in my head. But I already knew what James would do. Besides me, he had only shown interest in one other girl in the villa.
“Olivia,” James said. Olivia crossed the deck toward him, pecked him on the cheek, and sat next to him on the bench.
For the second time that night, I felt queasy with anxiety as Jess and Sara remained standing by themselves.
Would they both go home?
I didn’t know if I could handle Jess not being in the villa. We had quickly grown to be close friends, and the thought of her not being here anymore was too much to bear.
“Well, we have two single girls left,” Gemma said, looking at the rest of us. “Bellas, their fates are now up to you. Each pair will vote for who they want to keep in the villa, Sara or Jess. Whoever has the least number of votes will be dumped and must leave the villa immediately.”
A matching and a dumping in one night. I knew it happened on the show, and rather frequently, but to be an active participant in it felt like a whole other story. The weight of our choice felt heavy and important.
What a problem to have, I thought to myself.
It was all trivial, in the grand scheme of life. We were participants on a reality television show, not solving the climate crisis or taking on world hunger. None of it really mattered, and yet it felt like the most important thing in the world. Like it was consequential.
I looked at Callum and again had the urge to dive into everything with him; knowing that we had a decision to make, I instead tried to keep us on course.
“You already know what my vote is,” I said to him.
He nodded. “Yeah, I’m good with that. I like Jess. I think she deserves a shot at finding someone.”
“Okay,” I said, suddenly feeling a bit awkward. The weight of words left unsaid permeated the air around us, and I looked away, not able to deal with choosing to send someone home and my issues with Callum at the same time.
I was saved from having to say anything else to him as Gemma called out, “Okay, Bellas. Now it’s time to vote. If you’d like Jess to stay in the villa, please raise your hands.”
Mine and Callum’s hands went up, along with Chiara and Hugh, and Ella and Liam.
I was surprised that Olivia and James didn’t vote for Jess, as Olivia had been here with Jess from the start.
“Well, it looks like that is the majority. So Jess, you will be staying in the villa. Sara, I’m sorry but this is the end of your Bella Amore journey.” Gemma moved to give Sara a hug, and soon enough everyone else followed suit in bidding her goodbye.
I, for one, was happy to see her go and even happier that Jess had been saved.
I wanted to pull Callum away then, but we were interrupted by a producer calling for boys and girls to separate and debrief.
After that, we all had to film confessionals, and by the time I had finished mine, all I could think about was the exhaustion coursing through my body.
Crawling into bed, however, I found sleep hard to come by.
Callum wasn’t back from his interview yet, and the empty space on his side of the bed felt like it was taunting me, keeping me awake.
My mind swam with thoughts of the night’s events as I stared up at the darkened ceiling until, finally, Callum slipped into bed next to me.
I wondered if he would roll away, onto his side and away from me, but he didn’t. Instead, he also lay flat on his back, looking up.
I looked over at him, and he must have felt me staring or heard my head move, because he soon turned his own and returned my look.
“Hi,” I whispered.
“Hi,” he whispered back.
“I—” I started, but a giggle sounding from a few beds away interrupted. I was suddenly very aware that we were not alone or out of earshot of the rest of the group.
Callum must have been thinking the same because he looked around and, with a hint of a smile on his face, tugged the duvet cover up and over his head.
He looked ridiculous, fully covered by the giant throw, and I had to stifle a laugh.
Following his lead, I also pulled the duvet over my head. Underneath, it was surprisingly cozy and, with the hall light left on for the rest of the group still doing their confessionals, light enough that I could see Callum’s face. He had rolled over on his side to face me, so I did the same.
We lay like that, facing each other under the duvet, for a long moment until he finally broke the silence.
“I’m sorry,” he said, whispering so no one would hear us. “I know this whole thing was my idea, and then I was the one to be standoffish. You were just trying to make this work, and I was acting like a total knobhead.”
I was a bit stunned, both by his apology and the substance of his words. He was much more self-aware than I had thought him to be.
“I’m sorry, too,” I replied. His candor opened a door, and I felt the need to walk through it with my own. “I should have just talked to you from the beginning about Sara and what was going on.”
He might have been the one to shut me out first, but I hadn’t acted much better in response. I had let my own anxiety about being left behind run wild; I assumed he was going to ditch me without even talking to him about it and then punished him based on that worry.
“I didn’t think you were going to pick me,” I continued.
“Honestly?” he said, almost asking for permission to say what he was going to next. I nodded at him, understanding that he needed me to be okay with whatever it was, good or bad.
“I almost didn’t.”
I let his words wash over me, only they didn’t sting quite so badly.
I understood where he was coming from. If the roles had been reversed, I’m not sure if I would have picked him or James.
It was all too much, the game we were playing both on the show and privately between us.
There were no rules, no guidebook on how to navigate any of it.
What was supposed to be a simple deal had somehow become a tangled mess.
“Why did you?” It was barely a whisper, but I had to know.
He was quiet for a few moments as he found his way to an answer.
“I think we could be good together. As a team, I mean. I think if we stick together, we really can make it to the end.”
I nodded in agreement. I did believe we could get far if we just got out of our own way.
We lapsed into a comfortable silence then, having finally come to a truce, but I found that I couldn’t quite relax. The relief at being on the same page as Callum was tinged with a hint of something else. Something I would have rather ignored.
Feelings.
I knew this arrangement between us was just a deal, a mutually beneficial alliance, and yet the last few days had stirred up a whirlwind of emotions—big, living emotions—so intense that part of me forgot what it was all for. That we weren’t actually together. That we were only pretending.
It was too much for my stress-addled brain to process, the feelings that had become entwined in all of it.
So instead, I focused on the facts at hand. Callum was right: we could make it to the end if we got our act together. If he needed to be on the show for as long as possible like I did, then we really were each other’s best bet to make that happen.
“I won’t talk to James anymore,” I promised.
“I won’t date any of the new girls that come in,” he replied.
“We’re going to have to spend more time together. Actually hang out, act like we like each other if we want this to work,” I said.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
We had both been at fault the past few days, but this felt like a fresh start. Like we were deciding to move forward together, for real.
Pulling back the duvet, I rolled over and tried to settle in for the night, but sleep was still hard to come by.
It felt like I lived a thousand lives since starting the show, and we were only just wrapping up the second week.
I couldn’t imagine what would happen in the next four.