34. 34
Iwoke up the next morning and immediately sensed a change in the air. Jess’ loud voice yelling out “good morning” to the room was missing and, in its place, an eerie silence hung in the air.
Rolling over toward Callum, I found that he was already awake, laying on his back and looking up at the ceiling.
“Hi,” I said, my voice soft with sleep.
He turned his head towards me and smiled.
“Hey, how’d you sleep?” he asked.
“Good, better than expected.”
“Good,” he said.
“Are you ready for today?” I whispered, keeping my voice low. We weren’t wearing our mic packs yet, but Harry had let it slip about a week ago that production had microphones hidden in every bed’s headboard. It was a piece of information I was glad to know so Callum and I didn’t blow our cover.
Callum grinned, as though the game we were playing had finally become fun.
“It’s showtime, baby.”
I laughed and rolled onto my back, trying my best to ignore the flutter in my stomach that broke out at his use of the word “baby.”
Starting today, I needed to get my head on straight and ignore the warm, fuzzy feelings that had started to pop up now and again around Callum.
We had come dangerously close to being sent home.
I needed to remember that he was my ticket to a longer stay in the villa.
I couldn’t let a few nice moments mess with my head and interfere with our goal.
I sat up and looked down at Callum, still laying on his back and looking up at me.
“Game on,” I said.
***
For the next three days, Callum and I were disgustingly, over the top, all over each other.
It was PDA on steroids. Hand holding, cuddling on the daybeds, hanging on each other in the pool.
If it was a form of physical touch, we were doing it.
The public vote had been a shock to us both and, as a result, we dove right into being the perfect couple England wanted to see.
If anyone thought it was suspicious that we went from being passingly nice to each other to being entangled at every possible moment, they didn’t say.
Things moved quickly in the villa anyway, and it helped that everyone, at all times, was really just thinking about themselves.
No one batted an eye at Callum and me suddenly sticking together like glue.
The producers were certainly loving it.
“Ben told me we’re back in the public’s good graces, at least from the blogs he’s read online,” Callum filled me in one afternoon as we lounged on a daybed, our legs entwined and bodies pressed up against one another.
He had been playing with my hair, and I had been resolutely ignoring the chills shooting down my spine as a result.
At his words I sat up, surprised he was speaking so freely about what Ben said.
Callum merely grinned and motioned down to our mic packs. Looking at them, I realized they were both clicked to ‘OFF’. I must have been enjoying his touch so much that I didn’t notice he had turned them off.
“He said that?” I asked, eager to take advantage of our unguarded conversation while it lasted.
“Practically sang it from the rooftops,” Callum said, laughing.
I smiled down at him, thrilled that even just a few days of PDA was paying off. “Well that’s a relief,” I said.
Callum simply nodded and then dragged his hand down my side to where my mic pack sat at my waist, flicking the switch back to “ON” and ending our cone of silence before we could get in trouble for it.
But he left his hand there, wrapped around my side. My heart pounded at the touch; it felt like his palm was searing my skin from the inside out.
Not for the first time this week, I had the overwhelming urge to lean in and kiss him.
But I didn’t, and instead, I simply smiled and lay back down, returning to where I had been just a moment ago.
Kissing had been, despite all our efforts to portray the image of a happy couple, the one thing that we still didn’t do.
We hadn’t kissed, hadn’t had a proper smooch, since the obstacle course game.
An inexplicable, unspoken agreement had come to pass between us that kissing on our own accord was the line we couldn’t cross.
Even with Harry’s previous comment about our lack of physicality echoing around in the back of my head, and knowing firsthand just how good of kisser Callum was, I couldn’t bring myself to force that next step.
Callum would peck me on the forehead, or I’d kiss him on the cheek, but the moment a situation called for anything more than that, we both pulled away.
The last person I kissed before coming on the show was my ex.
After we broke up, I had been too heartbroken, and then too busy with work, to bother with a new relationship of any kind, physical or otherwise.
With Callum, we had come so far and had been on such a long, bumpy road with one another, that the thought of willfully jumping to that kind of physical touch made my stomach tighten and my heart race.
Our kiss in the game had been so good and felt so right, that I knew if we were to start making out whenever we liked, there would be no turning back; it would open me up to a world of emotion I wasn’t ready for.
So I shoved it all down, any possible want or need, and tried to play the part of a devoted partner while remaining unnoticeably aloof.
It was working, too, and as the days progressed, so did our friendship.
Where I had originally found Callum to be cocky and egotistical, I now saw he was just self-assured and confident.
Once I realized that, it was like I couldn’t look away.
Like I was some kind of delusional moth drawn to one very large, sparkling flame.
The biggest surprise, perhaps only to myself, was that I actually liked being around him. He made me laugh. He spoke nicely of our castmates. He was kind to the producers. I was finding it hard to remember why I disliked him so much in the beginning.
There was also an intoxicating relief that came in knowing he wasn’t going to leave me. That we were in this together. That I could, at the end of each and every day, completely rely on him.
I was beginning to realize that type of security had been severely lacking in my past relationship.
Despite the years we spent together, my ex had never been there for me, not really.
Only once I had stepped out of my regular life did I have the clarity to see the writing on the wall: I had accepted the bare minimum for far too long.
Now, I wanted more. More respect, more adventure, more everything. Not just in my romantic relationships, either, but in every aspect of life.
It was quite thrilling to realize that the change I had once been so terrified of had been the very thing to set me free.
No matter where the future would take me when Bella Amore eventually came to an end, I knew that I would no longer be afraid to go after what I wanted, no matter how crazy or different or off course it might be.
It felt refreshingly wild to realize just how far I had come over the past few weeks.
I was not the same girl I was when I entered the villa.
Thank goodness for that.
***
I was contemplating just how much everything had changed, both within myself and with Callum and me, as we sat on the daybeds with Chiara and Hugh.
It was Thursday night, and we had been in the villa for four weeks.
Ever since Jess had left, the Bellas banded together.
We’d had two new Showstoppers, Samantha and Billy, come into the villa, but in a surprising twist, they ended up liking each other and, instead of splitting up any of the existing matches, they matched with each other.
At the same time, Olivia and James had decided they were better off as friends.
It was a simple conversation, no tears or yelling, and they were both happy to look ahead to who might come into the villa next.
Overall, there was peace in the air—a nice, relaxing mood that lifted everyone’s spirits.
Sitting at the cocktail party, I found myself at ease in a way I hadn’t been since the show started.
Callum and Hugh were extolling the virtues of a good, English Sunday roast to me after I had made the mistake of asking what one was twenty minutes ago, when they were interrupted by a voice over the speakers.
“Hugh, please report to the Love Shack,” said the producer.
“Duty calls,” he said, giving Chiara a kiss and then popping up off the daybed and making his way toward the villa.
“Poppy,” Callum carried on, not missing a beat, “a Sunday roast is a quintessential part of being British, and the best ones are done at the local pubs. When we’re home, I’m bringing you to one, no excuses.”
Something fluttered in my chest at his casual mention of life post-Bella Amore.
Would Callum really want to see me after all of this? I knew we had gotten closer, but would he actually want to hang out—not because we had to or because we were playing the part of a couple—because he wanted to?
And did I want that? To see each other after all of this, with no cameras or mics or producers? Why did the thought of sitting in some cozy pub with him, having a Sunday roast, sound so appealing?
I simply nodded at Callum, trying to keep my spiraling thoughts about him and us and what else we could do when we left the villa tamped down.
I was mercifully saved from having to voice any kind of real thought on the matter by the voice of another producer coming over the speaker.
“Callum to the Love Shack, please,” it said.
Callum got up from the daybed, kissed me on the forehead, and walked off to film his confessional.
I immediately tried to stifle the chill that snaked down my spine at his little goodbye kiss. Resolute on ignoring my body’s reaction, I let my gaze travel around the garden, hoping for a distraction.
Ella and Olivia sat around the fire pit, chatting away. Samantha was in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil.
It took a moment for my brain to catch up with what I was seeing.
All the boys were gone. It was only us girls in the garden.
Before I could open my mouth to point this out to Chiara, the speaker crackled on again.
“All girls, please report to the living room,” it said.
Something was going on. We had only shot in the living room once, when we entered the villa on that first day. Since then, everything had been in the garden except for the obstacle course game and the beach day, which had literally ended in tears.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” I said to Chiara as we followed the other girls inside and down the hallway to the living room.
We rounded the corner and found that not only had the living room been professionally lit as it was on the first day, but two cameramen were standing in the corners of the room, cameras up and, I was assuming, rolling.
To top it all off, sitting in the middle of the room, relaxed against the large white couch, was Gemma Row.
I was coming to resent the sight of her.
It always led to emotional duress and someone leaving the villa.
I had hoped that after the drama of the beach day, she wouldn’t be back for a while.
Being that this was Bella Amore and twists and turns were the entire point of the show, it came as no surprise to be wrong.
“Ladies!” Gemma called out. “Come sit!”
We all shuffled into the room, heels clacking on the marble floors. Sitting on both sides of Gemma, everyone was quiet, a sense of dread permeating the air.
“I’m sorry to interrupt the cocktail party tonight,” she said, looking around at all of us, appearing very much not sorry.
“It seems that half of the group is missing,” she carried on, wiggling her eyebrows.
“Oh no,” Chiara whispered under her breath next to me. I looked over and her eyes were wide and frenzied; it was clear she had already pieced together what was about to happen.
“Girls, the boys have left the villa,” Gemma said.
I blinked. Then blinked again. The silence around me was heavy as we all exchanged nervous glances.
The boys had left.
“I’d now like to welcome you all to . . . ”
Hours of binge-watching Bella Amore before coming on the show flashed through my mind on instant replay, ticking through all possible explanations for what was happening until finally settling on one plot point, one staple of the entire franchise that I had somehow forgotten about until now.
“Chateau Desire.”
Chiara was right.
Oh no, indeed.