A little piece of her dies all the same because it sounds like they’re making fun of it, and really that scenario is not that far away from practically any daydream she’d had over the years of him pulling his head out of his ass eventually. Alas, it’s not supposed to be, and honestly, if she thinks about it, that's not how it should've gone down either. Mostly because it wouldn't have it: because he wouldn't really have meant a word he'd have said if it had happened. Because he doesn't see her that way and just breaking up with Tina wouldn't have done the trick because it hadn't the last three times. No, for Declan to realize that he might've always belonged with her, he’ll probably would have needed some freezing over. It would take a miracle, probably. Miracles aren't real.
“So, that villa,” she says after a moment, because she was just doing so good and she doesn’t want to go back into the dark place. “It’s very nice.”
“Rinny,” Declan nods. “It doesn’t even look real. Straight access to the ocean? That’s unbelievable. We’re going to have so much fun. They might even let us swim with the sharks!”
He looks like a little boy in a candy store and she laughs, resolving on the spot to find out if they actually would let him do that. Just to see the exact level of excitement and fear the real thing would instill in him.
“I really can’t wait,” he tells her, sounding bubbly and Karin thinks maybe she can find something to look forward there too. Surely a giant beach villa with a pool and a sauna and crystal blue water - as well as the pay they’re getting for taking part on the show, which at least pays for her credit card debt - is a reason to look forward to it.
Everything else - the threat of heartbreak looming or potentially the dismantling of her and Declan’s relationship is not a given outcome. It might all turn out great. It likely will, and this is a whole new world of looking at things, a brave, new, colorful world she would very much like to step into right about now.
Once she and Declan pretend to be together, she’ll see what it would be like and live that lie for a while and then get over it. Then she can go back to being his friend for the rest of her life. It will absolutely cure her of her stupid obsession with him. Yes, she thinks excitedly, looking out of the car window as she goes through her catharsis. This is the perfect opportunity. This angle of looking at it makes it all so much better instantly. She’ll know once and for all what it would be like to be his girlfriend and he’ll probably be annoying and disgusting and rude and the whole concept will lose its allure and then she’ll be finally able to move on for real.
“I can’t wait either,” She tells him in earnest, whipping her head around and grins from ear to ear, her heart getting lighter by the second. The start of their big adventure honestly can’t come soon enough.
Who needs love anyway when you can have freedom? Who needs a swooping romance or that sweet but very naive, old-fashioned notion that you need to find your other half somewhere in the world when you can be self-reliant and happy all by yourself? And be a whole person who can survive just fine alone? Who needs the trials and the tribulations and the worrying and the over thinking? Not her. She’s had enough of that for a lifetime. If getting under him for a pretend kiss by the pool in front of three rolling TV cameras is what it takes to at long last get over him, that’s just what she will do.
It’s genius. The universe can do as it likes, Karin is ready.
CHAPTER THREE
The lights are too bright and they’re shining right into her face. Karin tries her hardest not to flinch and squint, knowing that if she does, she will look like a strange goblin in their home-story’s talking heads segment. So, she forces her eyes open and grins brightly, listening to Declan relay the fake story about the night when he told her he loved her to the fancy TV camera once again. She smiles every time he looks at her and so as to not miss those moments, she just watches him the whole time. He tells the story with so much fondness and wonder in his voice, she ponders that maybe he should have been an actor instead of a dance coach and whenever their eyes meet, his are dazzling and affectionate, like everything truly happened the way he said it did.
“I don’t remember much after the big speech, actually,” he says. “I just remember hugging her so tight and her hugging so tight back. Well, I actually do remember that I thought ‘Don’t hurt her, maybe that’s a bit too much’ but I was just so happy.”
“You had electricity running through your body,” Karin says on a whim and he nods.
“Yes, yes,” he agrees. “It was like I had been waiting for that moment for so long, for us to finally get our timing right, and it only took us, what? Thirteen years?”
The rest of the interview is more of the same, talking about their childhood friendship, how he was there for her in her darkest moments and the end of her dance career. Karin tells them about the day she quit ballet and realizes in horror the moment that her voice breaks and her eyes water, that she has just given a piece of herself away that she will never get back. Meanwhile the producers and camera crew pull her into the full frame to catch any tear she might shed and eventually look like they’re coming in their pants simultaneously when she does start to cry.
“Sorry,” she says and stares at the floor, not even close to processing how she could let this happen, when then Declan gets in there, holds her hand, waves with the other in the direction of the lense and says: “Can we cut, please? Stop filming. Please!”
They do, thankfully, and give her a minute to calm down, but there are no retakes. She knows instantly that this will get milked for all it’s worth, some pathetic atmospheric track playing under it as she sobs about the worst thing that’s ever happened to her like it’s some scripted lie, a tear-jerker back story. Like it’s the centerpiece of who she will be for the rest of her life: the sad, broken girl that had to give up on her dreams
Down the line, she’ll see the clip on social media and will cross out of it before it even gets to the point where they show Declan, clamoring for her fingers, concern and pain etched on his face as he barks at the people behind the lens to cut, sounding a lot harsher than she’ll ever remember it being.
Declan steps up as best as he can, telling some jokes and funny anecdotes, making up an entire story about their spin the bottle kiss that tells Karin he actually doesn’t remember half of how it really happened. But because he’s making such a valiant effort, she can’t really blame him. The rest of the day, he hovers around her like a hawk. He checks in with her every five minutes, as they walk and talk around Tennessee and then change locations to dance around the floor what little basic routine, they can whip up in the five minutes they allow them to prepare. They’ll be framing it as if that’s the great gift Declan is making her, getting her to dance for fun even if she can’t dance professionally anymore. The truth is that she still takes hip hop classes and dances however long her legs allow. It’s just that she’ll just never be a ballerina again, never a professional dancer.
After six hours of shooting, the crew is happy and the unit PA shakes their hands, promising that with what they have, they’ll be able to cut an excellent introductory piece on them for the first episode of the show. He also congratulates them enthusiastically on already doing “so great pretending” to be in love with each other. He’s glad that they’re so instinctively good at selling their chemistry as something that it’s not. It makes their whole friendship sound a little cheap when Karin thinks about it at the end of the day. It’s when they’re sitting at a cafe together after, bent over milkshakes and she’s lost in her head about it. That’s when Declan breaks the silence he’s fallen into since he announced he didn’t want to go home yet and puts words to what she’s thinking.
“I feel dirty,” he says abruptly and she thinks that’s just the phrase she’s been looking for. “Talking about us like that, like it’s all a lie.”
“I know,” she nods, stabbing her straw against the bottom of her shake, watching where it congeals against the plastic. “But it’s what we agreed to
.”
“Yes, but still,” Declan insists. “It’s not all a lie. We do love each other. It’s just not the way they think. For them to act like we’re putting on this great fake show is just unfair.”
“Well, what do you expect? They chose us because of how we are, because…” she starts and finds that she can’t finish the sentence without saying something strange, so she just lets it trail off.
It’s because we don’t have to pretend. Or better, because I don’t have to pretend to feel something when I look at you.
“I just want this to be clear between us,” Declan says emphatically and puts his hand over hers where it clutches her cup, making her look up at him. “You’re my best friend. No matter what, I’m proud of you. No matter what, I love you. Alright?”
“Alright,” she says and manages a smile.
“That’s real,” he goes on, dead serious. “That’s not for show or to sell something. You’re the most important person in the world to me.”
“You too,” she says and holds his gaze for as long as she dares. It’s really about time they started the fake dating so she can get all those unbidden, ancient but persistent butterflies out of her system. Can it be July yet? Or could she maybe get a grip in the meantime? She should really do something about the tension there. So, she does.
“Despite the fact that your fake love story for us i terrible,” she chuckles, taking a sharp exit to teasing-town, and like she thought he might, he drops his hand from hers to catch it with his own and rubs them together.
“What?” He asks, his voice level. “I thought it was cute.”
“It’s cute alright,” Karin agrees and then goes on ranting at her shake, thinking it’ll be a funny kind of rant, completely missing that halfway through, Declan looks like she’s punched him in the gut- even though he reins in his expression quickly, but she doesn’t see that either. “Very cute, but completely unrealistic. In the real world - not this fake version - if you’d have come to me half an hour after breaking up with Tina, that would have been so wrong.” She laughs, almost huffs.
“If you’d really said those things to me, I’d have known you didn’t mean it,” she says, still shaking her head all amused, because the thought is frankly preposterous, she can’t even picture the scenario, not even after hearing it twice now. “I’d have known you were just there for validation, or a distraction, or whatever, and that would have been - I don’t know, Declan, that would have been pretty terrible, wouldn’t it? Especially when I would have had every reason to believe that two weeks later. You’d have gone right back to her. I’m not an idiot. You could have slapped ‘second choice’ right there on my forehead - or “rebound”. Or even both. What would that have said about our friendship?”
She looks up then and sees him frozen while his milkshake has turned to a watery vanilla concoction. Then suddenly she hears herself, and how that might’ve come out very judgmental and even a bit unfair. It may have been a bit too heavy for six in the evening and being stone cold sober. Potentially, going from his look, she has bypassed teasing-town after all and has raced straight into foot-in-mouth-city. Quick, she thinks, scrambling. Humor, now. Be funny, Rinny. Make sure he knows you’re not mad at him so he doesn’t get mad at you.
“Either way, I’m way out of your league now.” She winks at him and then taps her nose twice. Surely making fun of her nose job which he very openly never approved of and never understood will get him to loosen up again? “Like Gray said, I’m prettier than you these days.”
“You’ve always been. Always been way out of my league, too, Rinny,” he says, no inflection there, no movement on his face at all, still.
“Haha,” she mock-laughs, because that’s bullshit too, but she goes along with it anyway. “Damn right, I was.”
She chances another look at him and he still has her fixed there. It seems like he’s weighing some options she can’t even begin to anticipate - which is a thing she doesn’t like at all - but then decides that cracking a lopsided smile at her, is the way forward. Thank God.
“But see, this is how I am actually doing some good on that show,” he quips. “I’ll be giving all my fellow Quasimodo out there hope that they can get an Esmeralda, too. If I can ‘do it’, they can do it, too.” He puts the first ‘do it’ into air quotes, because he’s not really doing it, as if he needs to remind her.
“Oh, you’re so full of it,” she sighs, he knows damn well that he’s a damn catch, even if he’s annoying sometimes. “Quasimodo is a bit extreme; don’t you think?”
“Well, you name it,” he offers. “I’ll take what you give me. Aladdin to your Jasmine? The Beast to your Beauty?”
She studies him then, tilting her head and going through her inner rolodex of characters for one that fits, ever so glad to have changed the subject.
“Stitch to my Lilo,” she finally decides and that’s when he cracks up. Thank god, they’re back. They’re fine, it’s fine, she didn’t ruin it. No need to worry.
“I like that,” he chuckles. “We’ll go with that. That’s such an underrated movie, too!”
For the rest of their shakes they debate underappreciated Disney movies and bemoan the end of the 2D cartoons and if it takes two hours to feel like Karin and Declan again instead of “Karin and Declan from Heart Roulette”, then they take that time and it’s the right thing to do.
The next couple of weeks are filled with making preparations for their journey, getting shots and visas and in Karin’s case, pushing two term papers into her following semester, all while still studying and eventually passing her end of semester exams. Declan haggles with his mother about being gone during a paperwork-heavy month in the off-season. He will need to cram to finish all his bureaucratic things as well as his students’ individual evaluations - which they usually work on over the summer and present at the start of the new season - into the time before the plane takes off to the Caymans. But it’s still a long while out, so long that in mid-June, Karin has actually half forgotten that it’s coming.
Mia touches upon it, about their only being two weeks left until they head out, at their weekly Friday get together and Karin almost spits out her red wine.
“Oh, you’re right,” she says, a rare curse leaving her lips before she dabs them off with the back of her hand. “I pushed that so far off for studying.”
“I’m so jealous,” Luna says wistfully. “A month in the Caymans and you’re getting paid for it, too!”
“It might not be a month,” Karin tells her friend. “We might get voted off the first week because we can’t sell our story.”
“Yes, right,” Mia says. “Exactly how many times in your life have people thought the only way you’re not together is because one of you is gay? You’ll do just fine. You’ve got more chemistry than most married couples I know.”
“Well, then at least that’ll be good for one thing at last,” Karin jokes but the others don’t seem to find it all that funny.
“Can I say something?” Luna asks after a moment, sounding grave.
“No,” Karin says decidedly. “I know what it is, but it’s not necessary. See, I figured it all out.” Then she explains her theory to them, about how fake-dating him will cure her of her misguided desire to actually date him and she does such a great job of it that by the end, she has reduced her friends to casual shrugs.
“So, now we can talk about something else,” Karin closes. “I’ll have more Declan next month than I’ll know what to do with, so let’s just move on, alright?”
“Fine,” Mia agrees. “What are you going to wear?”
Karin groans at the overplayed vapidity of the question but then winds up telling them about the outfits she plans to pack anyway.
The last two weeks dribble by a lot slower than the previous ones have. Both Karin and Declan use the time to meet up with their friends, separate and together, and are tan and beach-ready - courtesy of the shared gym time they put in - by the time the first of July rolls around and they�
�re finally on their way to the Scanlon airport. In the wee hours of the morning, they’re all crammed together in his parents’ minivan. Declan and Karin sitting in the back, her in the middle like she’s twelve, boxed in by her Mother and Declan, who is definitely too large for the back seat and complains in regular intervals about the time of day, the heat, and the stuffiness in the car. It’s a hot summer that year and even in the morning, it’s already gearing up to be an uncomfortably hot day. Arriving at the air-conditioned airport is a true blessing and their families take their sweet time saying their goodbyes, especially since they’re waiting for Kimberly to join the group to see Karin and Declan off on their adventure.
Once Karin’s sister has arrived, they march their little congregation to one of the fast food joints in the arrival’s hall for breakfast, surrounded by all sorts of summer vacationers, and talk about the Caymans and blue skies and crystal-clear seas. Karin has a bowl of cereal with yoghurt but keeps snagging bites from Declan’s bagel anyway and he attempts to slap her hand away every time but she is faster and sticks her tongue out to him.
“Aren’t you two adorable,” Darla says. “You do that and people will wonder if you’re brother and sister after all.”
“Mother,” Karin hisses.
“I’m just saying,” Darla shrugs. “You need a little sizzle there.”
“There’ll be plenty of sizzling, won’t there?” Declan jokes and then pulls Karin into a headlock, messing up her hair. “Just as soon as we touch down. Or do you want a preview now?” He moves on to dip his own head down, mouth comically wide open as if he’s going to swallow her whole. Suffice it to say that what Karin can see of it, trapped in his grip, is hardly sexy.
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