31. 31
Morning dawned bright and early; the blaring production lights shocking awake the communal bedroom.
It was Friday, or at least I thought it was.
Production didn’t allow clocks or calendars in the villa, and the only way to tell what day of the week it was would be to count how many days it had been since the last After Amore Live Show.
Even that proved tricky as all the days began to blend into one past a certain point.
I snuggled down into the mattress, bringing the duvet up over my head and trying to steal a few more minutes of sleep. It was working right up until a producer’s voice crackled out over the speakers.
“All Bellas, please get ready for a beach day. You have one hour to get dressed.”
I threw back the comforter and shot up straight.
We were getting out. We were all getting out!
I didn’t realize how badly I needed a change of scenery until the thought of it was right in front of me. The obstacle course game didn’t really count. Not when we had only taken a few steps outside to film it.
Cheers rang out across the room and soon enough everyone had sprung up onto their beds and were jumping up and down like little kids.
There was an aspect of being in the villa that made these moments feel very pure.
I could be silly and playful and, despite millions watching at home, not care who saw.
I was laughing so hard, caught up in the simple joy around me, that I bounced a bit too high and lost my footing, falling directly into the very defined, very bare chest of Callum. His arms went out to wrap around mine, saving me from careening off the bed.
“Careful there,” he said.
“Thanks,” I replied, looking up at him. We were close, separated by only a few inches, and yet neither of us moved to step away. Standing there, on top of the bed we had coldly shared for three weeks, I stared up at the man I had somehow made it this far with.
My first instinct was to say something, to fill the space around us with comments on the day ahead, but just as quickly as I opened my mouth, I closed it.
I talked to Callum and the girls and the other boys all day and all night long.
I suddenly felt done with talking, wanting this, whatever it was, to remain untainted by empty chatter.
So, I simply stood there, looking up at Callum, who was looking down at me, his arms still holding onto mine.
Our bubble was eventually burst by Jess and Chiara screaming at me to come along and get ready with them.
I blinked and looked away from Callum, breaking our eye contact. I felt my cheeks growing hot and knew that in a matter of seconds I’d be bright red.
“I’ll see you down there,” I said to him.
“Yeah, see you,” he replied, a small smile tugging at his lips.
I hopped off the bed and hurried to get dressed for the day.
If I had looked back before I walked out of the room, I would have seen that Callum had been watching me walk away.
***
The producers separated the boys and girls from each other for the rest of the morning, even after we were all dressed and ready to go.
Harry poked his head into the glam room to round up the girls. I hadn’t seen him much outside of confessionals during the week, so it was nice to have a moment to say hello.
“How are you?” I asked as we waited to head out to the driveway and to the van that would take us to the beach.
“Honestly, I’m great,” he said, beaming.
Something was different about him. There was a giddiness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
“Something’s happened, hasn’t it?” I said, squeezing his arm in excitement.
“Well, if you must know . . . ” He looked around, lowering his voice even though he had no real reason to. We had been told to leave our mic packs behind as we would be properly mic’d at the beach. It was apparently going to be quite the big shoot.
Still, Harry whispered to me so no one around us could pick up what he was saying.
“Ben and I kissed. Just last night,” he said, squeezing me back.
“Harry! I’m so happy for you. I knew you liked him from the moment you mentioned him on the ferry,” I said.
“I know, I know. It’s early days, but it’s just so fun having a bit of a ‘showmance,’ you know?”
I knew all about “showmances.” I’d had my fair share of flirtations on set when I was starting out in the TV industry. When you worked with the same group of people for essentially twenty-four hours a day, weeks at a time, it was hard for crushes not to develop.
Harry’s walkie-talkie squawked then, pulling us out of our conversation.
“Van’s ready for the girls,” someone on the other end said.
Harry picked it up and replied, “Copy that. Sending them out.”
He stepped back from me and called out to all of us. “Alright, ladies. You can head out and into the van. Remember, no talk of the boys until you are on that beach, mic’d up with a camera in your face.”
A month ago, that sentence would have shaken me to my core. Now, it was just another day in paradise.
What a trip.
***
One winding van ride later, I found myself on the small, private beach that sat below the villa.
I looked up at the rocky outcropping at the edge of the cliff above me, the same one I had stood on that first day of filming.
Thinking of the girl I was back then, the one who was so scared of change, I couldn’t help but smile.
I might have been on a glorified adult spring break, but I felt worlds away from the petrified person I had once been.
Maybe blowing up my life and coming on the show had been the right move after all.
As I stood on the beach, feeling rather sentimental at the thought of the past, I took in the scene around me.
We were still separated from the boys, who had not arrived yet, and the sound department was flittering between us girls.
A microphone had been threaded up my dress and was currently clipped to its neckline.
A flutter of anticipation and dread swept through my stomach.
There were two hand-held cameras set up on body mounts and ready to go, just as there had been when we filmed our arrivals.
A small video village had also been set up at the base of the stairs down to the beach.
Something big was happening, and after a week of relative peace in the villa, I found myself wishing it could all stop.
That we could press pause and live in the comfort of the bubble that had been the last few days.
“Poppy, over to your mark, please,” Harry called out from beside one of the cameramen.
Realizing I was the only one not lined up with the rest of the girls, I hurried over to where they were.
We were told that we needed to film an introduction to whatever this episode would be.
That primarily consisted of walking up and down the beach, playing in the water as it rolled in, and splashing each other in the low tide.
Real groundbreaking cinema over here, I thought.
We were eventually told we could relax as the boys had arrived, and it was their turn to shoot.
It gave me a pretty good laugh to watch them walk back and forth again and again, being yelled at by Harry and Ben behind camera to “flex more” but also “relax.” No one pointed out that those instructions were direct opposites.
The cameras eventually went down, the scene finished, and hair and makeup teams, who had arrived at the beach at some point in the previous hour, descended on us all, spraying down flyaway hairs and powdering noses.
It wasn’t full glam, but I was surprised that they were here at all.
We hadn’t been professionally made up since the first episode.
Once we were all primped to their liking, Harry and Ben directed us to walk farther down the beach, around a rocky bit of shoreline to a small cove. There, large, blanket-sized towels had been set up across the sand. Six towels for six couples. It looked like we were getting back to business.
I walked over to the towel that had Callum’s and my name embroidered on it and sat down. Callum followed suit a moment later.
“Okay, everyone,” Ben called out, “Just converse with your match as normal. The cameras will be moving around between you all. If anything needs to be repeated, we will let you know, but other than that, carry on as you would in the villa.”
Ben scurried away around the rocks and back to the main beach, and the two cameramen set out between us, winding through the matches and getting various shots.
When it was Callum’s and my turn to be filmed, one camera man hovered above us while the other kneeled in front of us, just at the edge of our towel, his camera jutting into the space, only a foot away from our faces.
I tried to ignore it and focus on Callum.
We both gave it our best, talking about the weather, our week in the villa and the beautiful beach in front of us until finally the cameras pulled away and moved on to the next pair.
It was a bit jarring to be filmed this way. I knew the thought was ridiculous, as I had been on television every night for three weeks, but something about being physically in front of a camera, seeing video village, and having producers present made it all feel a bit too real.
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” Callum asked, nodding at the camera guys. It was as though he had read my mind.
“It is. I know, in theory, that it’s been happening since we got here. But this makes it feel more . . . ”
“Invasive?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, there are worse places to be right now, I suppose,” he said as he leaned back on his elbows and looked out at the beach in front of us.
His biceps flexed with the movement, and something dipped in my stomach at the sight.
Ignoring it, I nodded. “It really is beautiful. I can’t believe this is all real.”
“It’s wild,” he said, and somehow, I knew we weren’t talking about the landscape anymore.
“Do you regret coming here?” I asked, lowering my voice even as I was aware of the microphone clipped to my dress.
We had been told from the beginning that we were not allowed to talk about the show, or cameras, or anything having to do with filming.
But sitting on this gorgeous beach, actually being outside of the villa, I found myself not caring about the rules so much.
Besides, the camera wasn’t pointing our way at the moment, so there wouldn’t be any real footage to use from our conversation anyway.
Callum paused, looking at the vast sea in front of us before turning his head toward me. We stared at each other for a beat before he finally replied. “At first, I didn’t realize exactly what I had gotten myself into. It was all quite overwhelming, to be honest.”
He paused again, as though he was trying to choose his words carefully.
“But now?” he asked. I held my breath, not daring to move a muscle as he found his way to an answer that suddenly felt very important.
“No, I don’t,” he said, his voice soft and raw.
He was looking at me so intently that it felt like maybe what he was really trying to say was that he didn’t regret me. Didn’t regret the insane plan we had become entangled in.
Or maybe that was just what I wanted to believe he meant.
“Me either,” I replied.
He smiled then, and in that moment, he seemed lighter than he had since we first met.
We’d gotten along well the past week and had stopped bickering long enough to have a real conversation.
Not to mention those kisses in the game—the very ones I was still trying to not replay in my mind obsessively.
But sitting here now, it felt like I was seeing a new side of him. Seeing him for the first time, all over again.
Our conversation flowed from there, skirting the edges of anything real and sticking to what was in front of us: the beautiful beach and our fellow contestants.
“You, Chiara, and Jess are really close,” he said.
“Yeah, it’s been one of the better surprises of this whole thing—to find great friends. I hadn’t expected it, but it’s been wonderful.”
He nodded. “Hugh really likes Chiara.”
“He does?” I was thrilled. Chiara was over the moon about Hugh but was unsure if he felt as strongly as she did.
“Don’t tell her I told you, but yes, he’s smitten.”
“Smitten?”
“Smitten.”
He smiled, and for a moment I was struck by how wonderful it would be if this were real life. If the cameras went away and it was just us on a beach, talking about our normal friends in the real world.
The thought was so outlandish that as soon as I realized where my mind had wandered, I had to look away from him. I peered out at the water as I tried to shake it off and swallow down the idea that this could ever be something like that.
We were pretending. Putting on a show for the entire United Kingdom to watch and, hopefully, fall for. Nothing about it was real. Of course it wasn’t.
I don’t even want it to be, I told myself.
Trying to keep the conversation going and lasso my mind back down to earth, I started to ask him for any other gossip about what the other boys thought about their matches.
A squeal from a few beach towels away interrupted me before I could get a word out.
“Oh my God!” Olivia shouted.
I followed her gaze to the rocky shoreline.
There, walking up the beach toward us, hair flowing in the wind and looking like she belonged on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit magazine, was Gemma Row.
The dread of earlier seeped back into my being as I looked over to Callum.
“This can’t be good,” he said softly to me.
No, it could not.