When nobody spoke I raised my head, and the guys' frozen faces made me wonder who was more upset about it, me or them?
On the heels of my emotion over Sam, the humor of the whole thing hit me even harder, and I burst out laughing. Once I started, I couldn't stop, and I laughed and laughed, even as the guys looked at me like I'd sprouted a second head.
"Come on, it's funny," I said through my fresh tears, gasping for breath. "Of all the times... had to be here... with you..."
"Well, at least she's not crying any more," Greg said, and his bewildered tone made me laugh even more. When I started snorting, it set the guys off, and we laughed for so long that my sides were aching when we finally stopped.
I leaned back on my rock, exhausted. "Oh, I needed that."
"I think we all did," Aaron said.
"So we're a team now, right? Working together?"
"After how you took down Peter, I don't think you need us," Jim said. "You were a beast. Poor guy didn't stand a chance."
"Did you want to eat monkey brains right then?"
"Can't say I ever want to eat monkey brains," Jim said.
"I bet they taste like chicken." I started to giggle again.
"Everything tastes like chicken," Greg agreed. "Or so they say."
"I wonder what chicken brains taste like," Aaron said.
Michael answered him deadpan. "Tuna."
We burst out laughing again. When we calmed, I said, "Okay, stand up. Make a circle." I put my hand out, and they all piled theirs on top. "We are going to win this thing. We're going to work together, and we are going to kick ass!"
*****
Despite Sam's absence, that afternoon was the best time I'd had on the island so far. I'd gotten rid of Phillip and his negative attitude, we'd finally bonded as a team, and even my 'girl trouble' hadn't been too embarrassing.
The others seemed to share my mood, and we bantered throughout the afternoon, friendly and relaxed. With one exception. Dean. He was even more distant than usual, barely responding when spoken to and not joining in any of our foolishness.
As we lounged after dinner, Greg said, "Okay, Dean, out with it. What's your problem?"
"I don't have a problem."
"Come on, buddy, it's obvious something's bothering you."
Jim's 'buddy' sounded sincere, and I smiled at him. They'd all wanted Dean gone, but since he was still here, they'd be kind. They were decent guys. Just not for me.
Dean shook his head. "It's nothing."
An obvious lie. Afraid he'd shoot me down but feeling the need to offer, I said, "Do you want to talk in private?"
"With you?"
Not so much scorn as shock. I started to say he could talk to the guys instead, but he cut me off. "I didn't mean to say it like that. But it's about you so that wouldn't help."
Michael leaned forward. "Want to go get water with me?"
Dean considered this then said, "Thanks, but no. You guys already know most of it anyhow."
He took a deep breath then blurted out, "Okay, fine. I feel like an idiot." He turned to me. "For years, I've been sure you cheated on me. Every woman I've been interested in since, I've been afraid she'd cheat too. But now I don't know. If you didn't, and we broke up because of it..." He trailed off, looking miserable.
"First off, we didn't break up because of that," I said, wishing he'd taken me up on the private conversation. "You made me choose between you and Craig. Which I did."
"Yeah," he said, ignoring Jim's muttered, "Dude!". "That's what convinced me you'd cheated. Why would you pick him if you didn't want Craig more than me?"
"Your friend, what was his name, Tom, right?"
Dean nodded warily.
"If I'd told you to choose between him and me, would you have picked me? After we'd been together for three months and you guys had been friends since high school?"
He started to speak then stopped. Started again, and stopped again. His eyes met mine. "No." He sounded surprised. "Of course not."
I waited for him to connect the dots.
"But it's different. You and Craig could have dated."
"It is possible for men and women to be friends, you know."
"I don't believe that," Aaron said. I gave him a 'shut up' look, but to no avail. "Oh, I don't think you and Craig had anything going on, but that's because you're not each other's type. I've never had a female friend, and I don't think I ever will."
Dean forgotten for the moment, I said, "You've honestly never been friends with a girl?"
Aaron shook his head. "I have girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, and women I'd like to see become girlfriends and ex-girlfriends. That's it."
"That's tragic," I said. "What about the rest of you? Capable of friendship or emotionally stunted like Aaron?"
Aaron laughed, not seeming offended, and the other guys admitted to having female friends. But with a caveat.
"There's always that spark," Michael said. "That little bit of 'there could be something here, if we decided we wanted there to be something'." He smiled at me, then looked away.
"That's actually what I like about women as friends," Greg said. "So different from my guy buddies."
I'd never felt a spark with Craig, but then until recently I'd been less than impressed with his irresponsibility and refusal to admit he'd become an adult, at least chronologically. Watching him step up to care for Colin had been wonderful, but still hadn't made me see him as more than a friend.
My eyes met Aaron's. He winked. I dropped my eyes as a smile curved my mouth involuntarily.
"There, see that?" Aaron said. "We aren't just friends if I can make you go all googly."
"Googly?" I forced away my goofy smile. "I am so not googly. Get over yourself."
He winked again, but I stuck my tongue out at him. He'd made his point, though.
"Okay, guy-girl friendships are different from same sex ones," I said, "but they can still be friendships." I turned back to Dean. "And that's all I've ever had with Craig."
"I want to believe that, I do." He shook his head. "I was so positive."
What could I say to convince him? Nothing.
Aaron, amazingly, could. "D-Man, have you ever caught MC lying about anything else?"
Looking startled at his newly acquired nickname, Dean shook his head.
"And if she had cheated on you, there'd be no reason not to tell you now, right?"
"It'd make her look bad to admit it."
Aaron waved that off. "It's been ages. It wouldn't matter to anyone but you. So she wouldn't mind telling you."
If I had cheated on him, I most certainly would have minded admitting it, especially in front of the other guys and the cameras, but Dean was nodding and looking like he agreed so I kept my mouth shut and nodded too.
"So, ask her one more time. And then believe her. Life's too short to hold a grudge."
As if a dam had burst, tears filled my eyes. I rubbed at them, pretending the smoke from the fire had inflamed them so the guys wouldn't realize. I didn't know what had brought the rush of emotion, except that Aaron was being so unusually sweet.
Dean turned to me. In a formal tone, he said, "Did you cheat on me?"
The importance of the moment calmed me. "No."
He sat silent for several seconds then began nodding slowly. "I believe you."
I gave him a tentative smile, which he returned.
"Okay," Aaron said, "since that's settled, let's go get water so Miss Googly here can wash the rice pot."
I chased the laughing Dean and Aaron in mock fury as far as the path to the water hole, threatening them with my cooking spoon, then let them escape.
Aaron and Dean. Friends. Hard to believe.
Although no harder to believe than Kent reaching out to me at the contest.
I owed him an apology. He'd only been trying to support me. Like--
My fingers went tingly as the realization sucked the air from my lungs. All I'd ever wanted from Kent was support, and then I'd rebuffed it wh
en he'd offered.
Of course, what he'd done at the contest had been easy for him, easy and painless and without repercussions. Standing up for me against his family had apparently been impossible.
I made myself breathe again, and for the trillionth time I asked myself why I'd let him talk me into making love at his parents' house. We'd controlled ourselves there on all our other visits, and we'd have been back at our own apartment in two days. But he'd been so persuasive, and I had so badly wanted to be persuaded.
We'd tried to stay quiet, and had pretty much succeeded until the final moments. Even then I hadn't thought we'd been loud, only a few stifled gasps or moans. But it had been enough.
Enough for Ron, who loved nothing more than teasing his younger brother Kent, to hear.
Chapter Ten
The next night, I staggered to the shelter and fell onto my bed, the guys' raucous laughter making my head ring even louder. "Shut up, I wanna sleep!"
Aaron appeared. "Hey, drunk baby. Want me to take advantage of you?"
"I'll punch you if you try."
"Fine, be that way." He leaned in and said, with the kind of seriousness that only comes with excessive alcohol consumption, "I have to admit, I might not even be able to. That was a lot of beer. You know? A lot."
"I know. Too much." Twenty-four bottles of beer as a contest prize for six people who hadn't eaten a full meal in days.
I'd been drunk after my first one. The guys had insisted I had to do my fair share, but I'd had maybe two sips of the third before flatly refusing to drink any more. Aaron had finished it, and he and Michael had split my unwanted fourth.
A loud thump made me sit up much too quickly. When the world stopped spinning like an off-center top I saw Dean on the ground, giggling, with Michael and Greg standing over him. "I fell down," he said, blinking up at me.
"Was it Aaron's fault?"
Aaron slapped my leg, and I kicked out at him, fortunately missing since I hadn't been holding back.
"Yeah, big time," Dean said, then turned instantly serious. "No, it was Kent's fault."
"Kent's? What, the rat?" The poor rodent had made a brief appearance during the first round of beers but bolted when Greg made a grab for it.
Aaron scrambled away to look for his buddy, but Dean said, "No, the real one. If he'd won, we wouldn't be drunk."
"But Peter made that the prize."
Aaron gave up the hunt. "I blame Peter too. How dare he give us beer?"
"Actually, it's Michael and Dean's fault," Jim's disembodied voice said. "If they hadn't--"
Greg looked around. "Dude, where are you?"
"Over here."
After a good minute of highly inefficient searching, Jim was located, flat on his back behind the shelter.
"Why are you down there?" I peered out at him.
"It feels like the place to be. Anyhow, if Michael and Dean had been worse swimmers, we wouldn't have won and we wouldn't be drunk."
The logic was irrefutable, at least in our altered state of mind, and we pummeled Dean and Michael with pillows until we collapsed in the shelter, exhausted.
After a few minutes, my head spinning again, I said, "We're gonna feel bad tomorrow," but snores were their only response.
The next thing I knew, I was wide awake, so thirsty the sides of my throat felt stuck together, and desperate for the latrine. I sat up, waited until I was sure I wouldn't throw up, then walked past the camera men and up to the latrine. My night navigation skills had improved so much. Not exactly something to put on my resume, but still neat.
Back in camp and sitting on my rock, I sipped from a canteen, determined to drink half its contents before going back to bed, and stared out over the ocean. The water's ripples sparkled in the light of the moon, a silver crescent somehow fresher and cleaner than the one I saw at home. Everything here seemed more pure and elemental.
Including my thoughts.
I'd left Michael because I hadn't seen how good he was, and then I'd been too embarrassed to admit I'd been wrong. Aaron had thought I wanted to marry him and I'd never bothered to contact him to let him know otherwise. He'd stopped calling and I'd just let him go. Greg hadn't known that his desperate search for permanency had turned me off, because I hadn't told him.
Jim and my resentment of being set aside in favor of his buddies, Phillip and how his need for debate drove me crazy, even Dean and his distrust of my feelings for Craig... if I'd been more open and honest, my relationships would have been better. Maybe none of these guys had been my prince, but maybe one had been and I'd never let him in enough to find out.
I'd let Kent in, though. Bit by bit, he'd learned more about me than anyone else. He was the only person I'd ever told how I'd felt sitting on the back steps of my childhood home waiting for my mom and brother the day they'd died, and how sure I'd become that they'd moved away to leave me behind. At the age of six, it had made perfect sense; they'd always been there when I'd come off the school bus before, and they only wouldn't be there if they didn't want me.
The tears in Kent's eyes when I'd told him I'd actually been relieved for a second when Dad told me they'd been killed, because it meant they hadn't left me on purpose, had been the sweetest thing I'd ever seen.
Losing Kent had meant losing the only person who really understood me.
After I'd left him, I hadn't told anyone why, not even Craig and Liv. They'd hounded me for weeks, stunned by the sudden breakup when Kent and I had been great together. When they'd finally threatened to get the story from Kent I'd had to tell them the truth. And then they'd been even more determined to straighten me out.
Liv's voice echoed in my mind. "So Ron heard you guys in bed, big deal. I know, for you it is a big deal, but it's not Kent's fault, right?"
No, it wasn't. Ron had teased Kent and me at breakfast the next morning about the strange sounds coming from our room, and I'd forced a smile so he wouldn't know he was bothering me. Kent's parents, mellow former hippies, had laughed and told him that unless we made the neighbors jealous they didn't care what we did.
Liv and Craig had told me so many times that I couldn't end my relationship with Kent over his family's teasing. And they were right. I hadn't.
I'd ended it because I'd asked him to make Ron stop, and he'd promised, and then had done nothing when Ron informed their sister Holly and her fiancé, who'd just arrived, that he hoped they'd brought their ear plugs because he'd heard a ghost moaning in the night. "Funny, though, it sounded like Kent. And it had a little friend too, and guess who she sounded like?"
I'd broken up with Kent that night. He'd been devastated, and so had I but I'd done everything I could not to show it. I couldn't trust him, so I had to go.
We'd spent one last agonizing night together, talking in whispers as he apologized again and again and tried to convince me to stay with him and I closed my ears to his pleas, and then we left before breakfast, hurrying past his confused parents. I made him drop me off at Liv's, and she helped me get my stuff when I was sure Kent would be at work.
The memory flooded me, how awful it had been to take my things from the apartment I'd loved so much, knowing I wouldn't see Kent again. I sighed, took a long drink of water, and admitted something I'd never let myself recognize before.
I'd done the wrong thing.
Yes, I'd been hideously embarrassed, and I'd been right to tell Kent how disappointed I was that he didn't stand up for me. But breaking up over it? Especially since I'd realized a day later that he couldn't have stopped Ron anyhow, that asking a teaser to quit has never in recorded history had the desired effect.
But by that point my impulsive action seemed too big to take back. I couldn't go to his parents' place and say, "Oh, sorry I broke up with your son and humiliated him and upset all of you. Pass the peas, please."
Not to mention facing Kent himself and begging him to take me back. Every time I picked up and put down the phone instead of actually calling him and apologizing, it seemed more impossible, and even
tually I'd stopped even considering it.
I'd told myself that I'd made the decision and it was final, but it had been final only because I was too embarrassed to admit that I'd overreacted and ask for forgiveness.
So instead my pride had won, and I'd lost Kent, the only one who'd known me well enough to understand everything I kept hidden.
I wanted to be known like that again. It wouldn't be Kent: knowing Summer made it clear he wanted something completely different now. No point in looking back. What's done is done.
But there was someone out there who could know me like that. If I let him.
I'd have to find him and learn how to let him in.
Chapter Eleven
The motion of the ocean on the way to the contest didn't do my guys any favors: Dean and Jim both threw up over the side of their boat and Aaron wasn't far off. Michael took long deep breaths and stared at his hands, and Greg pulled his t-shirt over his head and muttered, "If it doesn't kill me, it makes me stronger" over and over. The water I'd drunk in the middle of the night had helped me, but I didn't exactly feel contest-ready either.
"Princess, Courtiers, I hope you enjoyed your prize," Peter said once we were assembled in the clearing, strangely without microphones.
"The prize was fine," I said, "yesterday. Today? Not so good."
"Peter, please kill me. I'd do it for you. In fact, if you don't do it, I will do it for you."
Kent and his exes laughed, I smiled, and Peter said, "Sorry, Aaron, not in my contract. Well, I hope you'll be okay for today's activity."
Maybe, if it didn't involve moving or thinking. Or eating or drinking or sitting upright.
"Princess, I need two numbers between one and five."
"Two and four, I guess."
Aaron groaned. "Twenty-four is officially my least favorite number."
Peter laughed. "Sorry to hear that. Now, a lot of you thought this was a dating show so we decided to make it one for a while. You'll be paired up in order of when you dated our Royals. Jim and Kayla, you're first."
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