The Patron Saint of Liars and Fakes
Rikki comes back well after three in the morning, and I almost cry. While she’s in the bathroom, getting ready for bed, I set the binder outside of the room, leaning it against the door. The next morning, it’s gone.
“We’re going to go up to Kendall’s room,” Charlotte says when she comes to our door a little after ten. Rikki and I had ordered a big breakfast from room service, and the debris is scattered by our door. “Bring your book,” Charlotte continues. Rikki goes to stand up from her bed. “Just Jac.”
Suspicion aroused (This has nothing to do with Henry, I tell myself), I do as I’m told and follow Charlotte to Kendall’s room. Instead of Kendall, Kady, Henry, crew, and a cameraman are the only other people in the room, all facing a sitting area with a plush red couch.
“What is this?” I ask.
“We want to give you two a chance to talk,” Charlotte says. “About your problems.”
Kady momentarily preens, flipping her hair over her shoulder. I sigh.
“Fine. If it’ll squash the drama.”
“Jac,” Henry says, and I think the last time he said that, his body was pressed against mine. “Just sit here on the couch, read your book, and we’ll have Kady tap you on the shoulder. Make it look more natural.” He pats the couch where he wants me to sit, and I snort.
“Natural. Right.”
But we do it, and it goes just like planned, the two of us like bad actors on a badly written TV show. The cunt, I think as I’m sitting there, feeling all their eyes on me. I’ll give them the cunt. “Can we chat for a minute?” Kady asks me, really hamming it up for the camera.
“Pull up a seat,” I say, indicating the empty space on the couch beside me as I fold over the corner of the page to hold my spot (of course jac disrespects books, some unhinged watcher posts online when it airs).
“I want to talk to you about what happened with Andi,” Kady says once she’s seated, her body turned to face me.
I narrow my eyes. “I wasn’t even there when Andi went home.”
“You know what I mean,” Kady snaps, quickly escalating the argument. “You told Marcus to send her home.”
“She told Marcus to send me home,” I fire back, and then immediately hate the words coming out of my mouth. I sound like a middle schooler.
“We’re just being honest with him about how you treat other people,” Kady says. She’s really been working on this speech for a long time, I can tell. “You’re manipulating him, and now you’re trying to manipulate me.”
“That is,” I say, “hilarious.”
“You really don’t give a shit about anyone but yourself, do you?”
I sigh, looking at Charlotte. “Do I have to do this?” I ask her.
“Look at me,” Kady demands.
I stand up. “No!” I can’t help it, my frustration spilling out. “I don’t have to look at you. This is utterly ridiculous. Marcus is a grown man. You are supposedly an adult, too. Andi came after me for no reason, and actions have consequences.”
Kady stands up, too. “It’s because you’re horrible! You won’t even apologize.”
“Grow up,” I say, picking up my book and looking desperately at Charlotte, at the room we’re trapped in. “I don’t care about you. I treat you like you’re beneath me because you act like a child. Let me leave,” I say to Charlotte.
“That wasn’t very productive,” Charlotte tells me. Kady has stormed off to the restroom.
“Was it meant to be?” I ask. Henry is smirking at me beside her. Asshole.
“We’re going to go grab some of the other girls for a chat. Stay here,” Charlotte says, and I have no choice but to collapse back onto the couch to wait there.
“Stop looking at me,” I say to Henry right before he leaves with Charlotte.
“Well,” Henry says, sly, “keep that up and you will absolutely make the final two if that’s your goal.”
“It is,” I answer petulantly, even though it isn’t. The deeper this thing with Henry gets, the clearer it is I need to get out soon before everything blows up in my face.
It’s another two hours before I finally get permission to go back to my room, which may seem like a prison, but is nothing compared to endless girl chats about Marcus.
I ask permission to go take a shower before afternoon filming (yes, really, like a prisoner of war). Henry walks me back to my room and closes the door behind himself, following me. “That was shit,” I say, pulling my shirt over my head. His fingers immediately press into the bruise on my shoulder from the night before.
“You were fine,” he says, taking off his own shirt as I slide off my heeled boots and start unbuttoning my pants.
“I forget how good I am at being a bitch,” I tell him. I step out of my colored jeans, and my fingers slide to the button of his jeans, working on them as he kisses me, his hand twining my hair into a knot that he tugs on gently.
“But I like you this way,” he whispers.
We run the shower as hot as we can stand, getting out after ten minutes because it’s all we figure we can allow. I wrap my hair up in a towel as he pulls the blow dryer free of its place under the counter. “Should I leave?” I ask him with us both naked except for our towels, reflecting in the mirror.
He briefly kills the blow dryer. “What?”
“The show,” I say. “Self-eliminate like Marcus did?”
“No,” he says simply, then meets my eyes in the mirror. “Not yet at least. If you’re going to self-eliminate, we need to do some damage control on your image first.”
With the matter apparently settled, he blow-dries his hair, blows away all evidence of our shower. There’s not time or silence to say more.
