The Theory of Second Best (Cake #2)

by J. Bengtsson

  Although Summer was a little annoying, with her whole Zen movement and healthy eating snippets, I couldn’t argue with the obvious results of her obsession with clean living, nutritious foods, and fitness.

  Nor could Gene. His eyes followed her everywhere, watching her shimmy by with a mesmerized grin. Although Summer was essentially doing no hard labor, or really anything with any significance in camp, her effervescence and killer body were enough to carry her through and earn a spot on Gene’s dream team. Bobby, the muscle obsessed actor and Aisha, the long-legged beauty queen, rounded out the quintet. Certainly their superior looks and rock-hard bodies would deem them winners in Gene’s eyes.

  And just like that, I was on the outside of a five-four split: me, Shaggy, nerdy computer geek, Dale, and Marsha, the pigtail lady who wished me dead. Not a great start. It might have seemed a little early in the game to be forming this group within the group, but on Marooned, it was a strategy that worked. When it came time to vote out members of our tribe, a solid five could pick off the others one by one with ease.

  I knew I needed to jump in head first as I’d wasted so much precious time. Taking a deep breath of courage, I bee-lined it straight to the top. Gene saw me coming and backed away.

  “If you’re sick, little lady, stay back,” he said putting his hands in front of him as if to ward off evil.

  “No, I’m not sick. I just have a weak stomach when it comes to boats, or any motion rides, really. And that whole thing on the beach, that was just a little dehydration, but I’m…” I stopped babbling since Gene had already grown tired of my thirty-word sentence and had focused his attention elsewhere.

  Undeterred, I made my way around the other side. Gene looked up at me and startled. Really, dude? We were just talking. How could you be surprised that I’d still be here? I tried to bury my annoyance.

  “Hi again,” I smiled and, like a dork, even waved at him. “What I was saying was I’m fine now and ready to work. What would you like me to do?”

  Gene eyed me with distaste and pointed at the water buckets.

  “We’ll need water once the fire is started. Take that kid over there.”

  My eyes followed the coach’s and landed right on Shaggy. Instantly my face flushed. No. Not him. Anyone but him!

  “The one you vomited on,” Gene clarified.

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  “You said you wanted a job. Now you’ve got one,” Gene said gruffly, and turned away from me for the second time in only a minute. I wanted to argue but realized how pointless it would be. Gene had already pegged me as one of the undesirables. My opinion carried no weight with him.

  Reluctantly I picked up the buckets and made my way over to where Shaggy was standing by himself, holding a bamboo stalk as those around him built the shelter. Gene’s five were already a cohesive group and seemed to have forgotten about him.

  “Surprise,” I said, making my eyes as big and crazy as possible, which wasn’t a huge stretch for me after the day I’d had. I figured going the carefree, fun route would seem less intimidating to my hapless victim. Clutching two water cans in my hands, I lifted them up for him to see. “I’m sure I’m the last person you want to be alone with, but Gene wants us to go get water.”

  Shaggy squinted his eyes as he focused in on me. He seemed to be considering his options as he took his time slowly scanning me from top to bottom. After what I assumed was a thorough inspection, the left side of his mouth curled up in a smirk, and he said, “Nice to see you survived.”

  There was a playful tone to his voice, which immediately eased my anxiety.

  “Yeah, it was touch and go there for a while.”

  “I could see that,” he nodded. “You were looking like one of those ‘after’ photos of a meth addict.”

  “Ahh, thank you.” I laughed for probably the first time all day. “So what do you say, Shaggy? Are you coming?”

  Oh, crap. The nickname just slipped out. I hoped he didn’t think I was being disrespectful. But there was clear amusement in his eyes. Something told me very little fazed this guy.

  Shaggy crossed his arms in front of him, and a second eye scan commenced. I waited patiently, as I had no leverage in this conversation. “I will go with you on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “No more spewing nasty shit in my direction.”

  “You don’t need to worry. I assure you, I have nothing left to spew.”

  Shaggy laughed at that, and then dropped his bamboo and grabbed both buckets from my hands. “Let’s go, then.”

  On our way out of camp, we passed by Dale and Marsha, who were bent over the fire trying to get something started. The two had been chosen as the fire-makers presumably because they were the only ones who wore glasses – a most useful tool for magnifying the sun’s rays.

  Shaggy shook his head playfully and gestured in the direction of the unlikely bespectacled duo. “What are the chances we’ll have fire today?”

  “I think it will be a cold, dark night.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” he said, swinging the buckets. How did he find the energy? “But on the plus side, camp will be totally feng shui!”

  I grinned. “Well, there’s that.”

  As we walked, a cameraman and sound guy scrambled to stay in front of us. Having people filming our every move would take some getting used to on my part. Normally I hated when people aimed a camera at me. I assumed that particular aversion stemmed from the embarrassing videos my brothers were always taking of me and then sharing with their friends in order, in seemed, just to laugh at me. I glanced over at Shaggy, who appeared blissfully unaware of the crew clambering about. The fact that he seemed exceedingly comfortable with the attention made me wonder about him. Who was this guy?

  “How’s your arm?” I asked, rubbing my own in the spot his was bandaged. The guilt was eating me up inside. I needed to get the apology out of the way before I could move on with him.

  “It’s fine,” he replied nonchalantly, as if he’d totally forgotten about the injury.

  “Are you in pain?”

  “Nah, it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I mean, if you wanted to slap me or something, I’d totally be okay with that.”

  To his credit, Shaggy shook his head, smiling. “It’s all good.”

  I was surprised and impressed by the ease with which he was willing to forgive. I’m not sure I would have been so generous.

  Meeting his merciful eyes with my own remorseful ones, I said, “For what it’s worth, I really am sorry.”

  He actually paused a moment before replying, “I know.”

  I nodded, broke the eye contact, and we continued quietly on our trek. Feeling more at ease, I passed him a sideways glance and joked, “And I promise to share half of my worm stew with you for the rest of the show.”

  His eyes lit up with mock excitement. “Pinky promise?”

  My tense shoulders relaxed, and the feeling of dread I’d been carrying around since the boat fiasco began to fade. If this guy could accept me after our rocky beginning, maybe I wasn’t totally doomed with the others.

  “So, Shaggy from Scooby Doo, I’m assuming?” he asked, with a crooked grin.

  “Oh, yeah, sorry. I had to make up something since I didn’t exactly have time to introduce myself.”

  Shaggy nodded. “No, I get it. You were preoccupied. I actually have a nickname for you too.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you do.”

  He grinned, sparing me the embarrassment of actually verbalizing it. We arrived at the well, and he set the buckets down.

  “I’m Kyle, by the way.”

  “Kenzie Williams,” I said, surprised at how easy he was to talk to. “So where are you from, Kyle?”

  “California.”

  “Me too. Which part?”

  “The southern part.”

  “I’m from the northern part.”

  “Oh,” Kyle winced. “I’m sorry.”

&
nbsp; I couldn’t help but smile at his diss. The rivalry between Northern and Southern California had been going for years, although I suspected we northerners made a bigger deal of it than Kyle’s people did. Perhaps we had a little inferiority complex going on up north. Sometimes it was hard being the forgotten little sibling to the larger-than-life Hollywood movie star.

  Of course, I had no intention of letting Kyle’s slight go unanswered – no self-respecting Northern Californian would. “Well, if it weren’t for us northerners exporting all our water to you spoiled Southern Californians, you’d have nothing to fill your swimming pools with.”

  Cringing, he dramatically replied, “No swimming pools? How would we live?”

  “Exactly. And not only that, but without our water putting out your daily forest fires, all your princely mansions would be lying in big piles of ash.”

  He eyed me in amusement. “Damn, Kenzie, let me flick that gigantic chip off your shoulder.”

  Yeah, maybe I was a little defensive, but it was hard not to be bitter when we were the ones producing the most water and they were the ones consuming it all. I took in Kyle’s sun-kissed skin. Yep, I bet his pool was filled full of our damn water.

  “So where exactly are you from?” he asked. “The Bay Area?”

  “Why do you people think the state ends in San Francisco?”

  “Oh, wait.” He snickered. “It doesn’t?”

  “No,” I laughed. “Our state is hella long. It actually goes up a few hundred more miles, and that’s where I live. Have you ever heard of Humboldt County?”

  Kyle gasped as his eyes ignited with wonder. “The pot capital of the world?”

  “That would be the place,” I nodded in affirmation.

  “Very cool,” Kyle nodded, impressed. “Is April 20th a holiday up there for you?” 4-20 being the unofficial day that potheads the world over came out to rejoice.

  “Oh, yeah. The government buildings close and everything.”

  I took in Kyle’s smug expression. Typical So-Cal boy. “Let me guess – you’re a beach bum, surfer dude?”

  “Something like that,” he grinned. “And I’m assuming you’re a Bigfoot enthusiast?”

  I stopped in my tracks, coughing out a laugh. I was thoroughly impressed with his comeback. “I like him just fine.”

  “Hey, so I gotta ask – is it true what they say about mythical creatures with big feet?”

  I think I might have snorted in response. Okay, it was official. Kyle was funny.

  “Honestly, last time I saw him, I wasn’t that impressed.”

  Kyle laughed at my retort. “You’re not one of those psychos that has given an eyewitness account of his existence, are you?”

  I crossed my arms over my body. “Are you implying that Bigfoot isn’t real?”

  “God no. Just because no actual, sane human being has ever seen him doesn’t mean he hasn’t been clomping through the woods for the past four hundred years.”

  “He has a museum, Kyle,” I replied, my voice high-pitched and condemning.

  “Oh, I’m sure he does.” His eyes twinkled in delight. “So, Kenzie, be honest – how many times a day do you say ‘hella’?”

  “Oh, I’d say at least a third less than you say ‘like’,” I replied, flinging his insult right back at him.

  We stared each other down. This was a stand-off I didn’t intend to lose.

  “Actually, Kyle, you really impress me.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yeah. I can’t believe a So Cal boy like yourself can survive an entire month without Starbucks. It’s very brave of you.”

  “Thank you. It’s been a rough couple days so far, but I’m enduring. And actually I was thinking the same thing about a nice Nor-Cal girl like yourself and surviving a month away from pot.”

  I laughed despite myself, wracking my brain for some snappy one-liner, but I had nothing. Kyle was just too quick, and I had a bad feeling that he had an arsenal of comebacks at his disposal. There would be no way to compete with him.

  I threw my hands up in defeat. “You win.”

  “Thank you,” he said, grinning and wiping his hands like he’d completed his task.

  And just like that, I had the beginnings of a starry-eyed crush on one very cute and very entertaining Southern California beach boy. Before I’m judged too harshly for my insta-infatuation, it might be worth repeating that I’ve lived in a small town all my life. That, in and of itself, wasn’t notable, but the even smaller percentage of qualified men who lived there sure was. And when I said qualified I didn’t mean rich, handsome, or successful men. I just meant living, breathing ones. At this point, even guys with a spotty dental history weren’t off the table.

  In fact, the most noteworthy guy I’d been on a date with in the past year had to remove the pizza sign off the roof of his mom’s car before coming to pick me up. His idea of a fun date was the .99 Taco Tuesday at Mario’s Taco Shack followed by a stimulating game of Mortal Kombat, where I got to marvel at how well my date beheaded and slaughtered his innocent victims.

  It seemed all the men in my rather broad ‘eighteen to dead’ age range had already gotten married or had beaten their hasty retreat out of town years ago. Quality males in my neck of the woods were as much an endangered species as Bigfoot. So I was to be forgiven for my instalove approach towards Kyle. In my world, he was the shiniest of new toys, and I wanted to play.

  It wasn’t just the fact that he was breathing and had a full set of teeth that drew me to him. If possible, there was an even more superficial reason for my infatuation. Simply put, Kyle was easy on my pining eyes. The entire way to the watering hole, I stole glances at the man walking beside me. If I had to be honest, it wasn’t the first time today he’d caught my eye, and that didn’t include the unfortunate incident on the boat, of which I’d decided to never speak of again. In fact, the minute Kyle had come on board the vessel earlier in the day, my interest was piqued. He wasn’t over-the-top gorgeous, like Bobby, but he wasn’t cocky and off-putting either. Kyle was handsome but not overly polished, edgy but not dangerously so, and sexy in a dorky kind of way. Add his vibrant, forgiving personality into the mix, and you had the ingredients for my ideal man.

  Making a real effort not to act like the male-deprived female I was, I kept my budding libido under wraps. This was certainly not the ideal reality show for a love connection. In a matter of days, I would deteriorate into a foul-smelling, stubbly, emotional beatnik. And what made it worse, I just knew the other women had come onto the show prepared for any scenario. I could only imagine the procedures they’d had done to remain attractive for the entirety of the filming. Laser hair removal, waxing, whitening, cosmetic tattooing – you name it, I was sure most of these ladies had done it. I would have too, had my hometown beauty shop offered more than just lip wax services, but as it was, the ‘ladies from the eighties’ who worked there hadn’t even heard of laser hair removal or teeth bleaching. Hell, I’d have even settled for a Brazilian wax and Crest Teeth Whitening Strips, but those appeared to be foreign concepts as well. I sighed. It was time to face the facts: any chance I’d had at impressing Kyle with my homegrown, ‘Pot Capital of the World’ beauty had surely already passed.

  It’s not that I considered myself ugly; in fact, people often told me I had a pretty face, although I wasn’t sure if that was code for ‘That’s the only thing you’ve got going for you.’ And it didn’t help my cause that my eyes were larger than seemed necessary. They weren’t bulging out of my skull or anything, but they were big and expressive, so that I often resembled a deer in the headlights.

  On the short side at five foot four, with a solid sporty body, I certainly wasn’t the delicate-looking waif that most guys tended to favor. I was a runner and kept myself in good shape, despite the fact that my boobs occasionally got in the way of a good workout. I was fairly busty for a girl my height. In the bra-size arena, I considered myself a respectable 32C; however, on a recent visit to Victoria Secret in a neighboring to
wn, a well-meaning yet highly suspect salesgirl tried to convince me, in her itty bitty little voice, that I was actually a 34D. The memory still pissed me off. And every time I shoved my ample boobs into my little bra, I cursed the gall of that woman.

  I wondered what type of girl Kyle liked. Selfishly, I hoped it was sweet, homemade girls like myself whose thighs enthusiastically high-fived one another as they met, but something told me that wasn’t Kyle. He seemed the type of guy who had his pick of the litter and never chose runts. Still, a girl could dream big, delusional dreams. And with that in mind, I hastily ran my fingers through my mousy brown, shoulder length ‘The Rachel’ haircut. Where I came from, being fifteen years behind the trends was actually considered stylish. The moment my hand touched my tresses, I knew I was in trouble. Humidity had taken its nasty toll. My normally straight layers had skipped over the frizzy stage and gone directly for the helmet of fuzz. I let out an audible squeak of alarm.

  Luckily Kyle was otherwise occupied with some lively story about Pop Tarts and didn’t seem to pick up on my obvious distress. Frantically, I attempted to smooth out my wooly mammoth ‘do. Maybe he hadn’t noticed. But when my fingers took a swipe under my eyes for smeared mascara, I was even more horrified to discover black smudges coating my fingertips. Oh, yeah, he noticed. How long had I been walking around looking like a furry, wide-eyed raccoon? And why had I thought mascara would be a good idea when I was getting ready this morning? I was going to an island, not a rave.

  I’d learned some tricks over the years to diminish the appearance of my honking big blue eyes – left alone, they made me look perpetually flabbergasted. Make-up was a beautiful thing, until it was running down your face in hundred-degree weather.

  I continued wiping under my lashes until my fingers came out clean. I didn’t know why I even bothered trying to freshen myself up. After all, he’d already seen, and conversed with, my alter ego. The damage had already been done. Regardless, vanity kept me trying to improve my overall appearance just in case the hot guy in question might want to take a second look.