Stay With Me 1

by Jessica Aniston

  He doesn’t for a while, though. She is already under the sheets, drowsy and half-asleep when he slips in.

  “Sorry, got carried away with the guys,” he whispers and crosses the room looking for his stuff.

  “I put everything in the closet,” she tells him perfunctorily. “Through the bathroom, sleep shirts are at the far wall, middle drawer."

  He comes back ten minutes later in a grey shirt on top of his boxers and walks up to the bed. But he waits at the foot of it, eying her.

  “Do you want me to take the pull-out couch?” He asks her.

  “Don’t be silly,” she tells him. “If anybody comes snooping by our rooms and sees you sleep there, we’ll be made immediately.”

  “Alright,” he says, but still takes his sweet time settling in next to her.

  Once he is lying down, he rolls to his side to face her. She turns off the light because the sight of him on the pillow beside her head is something, she isn’t quite prepared for after all and she’d like all the shelter from the dark that she can get. She’d rather he not see how shallow her breath is suddenly, just from the thought of him under the covers and next to her.

  “I’m sorry about earlier,” he whispers, once the lack of light has settled onto them, letting their privacy seep back in and his voice loses the edge she hadn’t noticed before had been there the whole day. “It’s just a little strange, isn’t it?”

  “All the kissing?” She asks, turning to her side too, propped up on her elbow and unsure how to feel about what is happening - unsure if it’s a bad thing or just a normal thing they’ll need to keep doing, talk through the process of their scheming and how it makes them feel.

  “Among other things,” he says and she decides it’s probably a bad thing. “It’s not bad,” Declan says, as if he’s reading her mind where he probably just read her face in the shadows. “I mean, you’re a good kisser.” He blinks, eyes flitting to her lips and then hurriedly back to hers. “Very good. It’s nice.” A moment passes. Karin stops breathing. “But it’s still strange, isn’t it?”

  Karin breathes again.

  Yes, he’s still not into her. Nothing’s changed, Rinny.

  “We knew it was going to be,” she says, the momentary promising tension dispersed into worrying once more. “Do you regret coming here?”

  “No,” Declan shoots. “I just have to get used to you; you know?”

  “Not really, no,” she says because she doesn’t. Get used to having to be close to her? Is it really disturbing him so much? And why? Does she have bad breath or look ugly up closely? Is she really so unappealing to him?

  “I mean, you’re so affectionate,” he shrugs, making the bed quiver around them. “And giggly.”

  “I’m supposed to be your girlfriend,” she reminds him, sounding prissier than she means to be. What else does he expect her to do?

  “I know,” he says. “I just didn’t think you’d be so-”

  “So?” She cuts in challengingly.

  “Cute?” He tries and she half-laughs, half-scoffs.

  “Well, I was going for sexy and irresistible,” she says, sincerely aiming for some levity because this is ridiculous.

  Declan groans and buries his head in the pillow for a moment, his hand clenching into a fist into the sheet that’s covering him from the waist down. She’s glad he’s not making gagging sounds.

  “Alright, time for bed,” he announces. She looks at him when he shows his head again and tries a thing, tries to really look sexy and irresistible, maybe for the first time in her life, just to see if she can coax a reaction out of him, any reaction, just to spite him.

  When he sees what she’s doing, because of course he sees it, Declan puffs out a deep breath.

  “Karin,” he chides and squints. Does that mean he finds her repulsive?

  “What?” She asks him, feigning innocence.

  “Stop it,” he says. “I mean it, cut it out. Don’t look at me like that, not in here.” He shifts where he lies and then trains his eyes on the ceiling. “Let’s just go to sleep, alright?”

  “Shouldn’t we practice for the Newlywed Game tomorrow?” Karin asks, not really because she thinks they should but because she needs a moment to try and analyze what he means by ‘not in here’. She comes up blank. That could mean absolutely anything. Whatever it is, it wouldn’t change a thing, probably. Whether or not he finds her disgusting or might be into her physically after all - which he might be, yes, because he’s a man - it still doesn’t change that he doesn’t want to be with her.

  Or the past years would have looked a lot different. No matter how many moments they share, no matter how many times she has wondered and hoped, for him, none of it has ever been enough. Not enough to tip the scale in her favor, at least. Besides, they have a mission and she have her own. This is not what she came here for. She came here to win a million dollars working with her best friend, so maybe she should just stop trying to figure out anything else while they’re here. That’s probably best.

  Eyes on the prize, Hanson, she tells herself.

  “I’m not worried about that game,” Declan tells the ceiling confidently, disturbing her inner monologue. “We know everything about each other.”

  Not everything, she thinks, almost bitterly. But they don’t need to get into that now, so she flops to her back too, tells him goodnight and goes to sleep like he asked. Eventually.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Karin starts off the first full day in Georgetown on the Cayman isles with an hour-long jog. It helps her feel a bit more awake after the little sleep she’s gotten, worrying and wondering about Declan and what half the things he does and says mean. She’s running circles in her mind while her feet run her back to the villa. She’s tired of her own idiocy, so she uses the privacy of the shower after to give herself a harsh talking to, the party line being: Get it together, Karin. They’re just friends, that’s the reality. With all the pretending they have to do - she’ll take what she can get from that, still hoping to quench that unfortunate craving for him like she’d planned from the start. Nothing’s changed. She hums that mantra in her head over salad for lunch, watching and chatting with the other couples while Declan is out playing beach volleyball with Kaidan, Kaelan, and Rickard. Nothing changed last night, either. He hasn’t changed. Not in all the years they’ve known each other. Besides, he won’t change now just because they’re suddenly forced to kiss each other sometimes.

  Today there is no making out happening anyway, mostly because the camera crew doesn’t get in until seven in the evening. That’s when Marietta and Brody waltz in and bring the show host Tag Blackman, a somewhat known heart-throb television actor, and introduce him with the words, “He’s here to make your significant others look bad.”

  Everybody laughs heartily, Grace and Mimi loudest of all. Declan looks peeved, which is the funniest thing ever to Karin and she pokes him in the side to let him know as much.

  “Jealous?” She teases and nods her head in Tag’s direction.

  “He looks like he’s photoshopped,” her best friend complains dramatically. “I’ll look like an idiot next to him. Let a guy live, maybe?”

  “You look just fine,” Karin reassures him lightly, taking his hand as Marietta leads them to the garden gazebo where the team is setting up for filming the first challenge.

  Their producer keeps a tight ship, announcing that within the hour to sundown, every couple has ten “Newlywed” questions to get through, as well as Tag’s intro and outro for the challenge. Since there will be no retakes because they need the sunset-light, they better all think long and hard about what they’ll say on camera before they open their mouths. Karin can see the appropriate nerves on their competitors’ faces as they go into the game, one by one. Courtney and Bobby are first and do fine, getting seven out of ten right, Kaidan and Kaelan come after, acing six, the same as Grace and Mimi. Aileen and Rickard are right behind them, and get five and a half, which Karin guesses is fair seeing as Aileen had
said Rickard’s favorite movie was ‘Back to The Future’ when it really was ‘Back To The Future Two’. Then it’s up to Karin and Declan.

  “Ready?” Declan mouths at her as they take their seats at the edge of the gazebo as the sun sets at their backs, their competition on bar stools opposite of them, and with Tag on the side, flash cards in his hands and a bright grin on his face.

  “Born ready,” Karin whispers to her fake boyfriend and plucks the little whiteboard from the stool designated for her, uncapping the marker clipped to the side to spring into action like a firefighter as soon as the first question is uttered.

  Since Tag had explained the rules at the start of the game - they are asked a question and have to write their answers on their individual boards and then reveal the answers at the same moment - as well as the fact that they are pressed for time with the sun setting, their host goes in quick, with no false polite introduction and tosses them right into the shallow end of the quiz. He’s always started simple so far.

  “When’s Declan’s birthday?” Tag asks and Karin almost rolls her eyes. That’s laughably easy and when she reveals her answer, she’s obviously correct.

  “Which one of you is more likely to get into trouble with the law?” Tag asks and Karin chuckles, knowing before it happens that upon turning, both her and Declan’s boards will spell his name. Declan just accepts his fate with a shrug.

  “It’s true,” he says easily.

  The next four questions are hardly a challenge either: What is Declan afraid of? Mascots, for no real reason but all the worse for it. What is Karin’s favorite music? Oldies, obviously. Who of them is more likely to sleep in and get to work late? Karin, since Declan is a morning person. Then: ‘What is Karin’s favorite baby name?’ It makes Karin panic for a second but when they turn around their boards, he has scribbled ‘Noelle’ on his, which is what she’s put on hers. “But I vetoed that and always will,” he adds. Karin exhales on her laugh about that, relieved that they got it right and very surprised that he remembered the talk ages ago when she had told him about liking the name. If they have gotten this right, they’re probably untouchable.

  They’re not.

  “What is Karin’s favorite food?” Tag asks, and there is their first mistake.

  “Poached eggs,” is what Karin wrote. “Chocolate,” it says on Declan’s.

  “What does that say?” Karin leans forward, trying to decipher is squiggly handwriting. “Oh, chocolate. Yes, definitely. I put poached eggs because I was thinking real meal.”

  “That’s hilarious, isn’t it?” Declan scoffs bemusedly and turns to the others. “Yes, Rinny. chocolate is ridiculous but if you want to sit down for a real romantic meal with me”

  “It’s poached eggs,” Karin finishes his sentence. “It’s about the only thing I can make, so. But yes, chocolate is probably right.”

  “I do know you better than you know yourself,” Declan notes and Karin can’t help but shrug a ‘yes’.

  Tag moves on quickly, after logging in the false answer. “Karin, what’s the greatest gift Declan has ever given you?”

  This one is simple. They only take a bit longer to answer because it’s three words they have to put down and reveal to the cameras: ‘A pound of gummy bears.’

  “Oh, it sounds like there’s a story there?” Tag notes and gives Karin an encouraging nod to tell it.

  “Well, when it was pretty clear that I was not going to be able to have a career as a dancer, I was quite down in the dumps for a while,” she says. “And Declan wanted to cheer me up.”

  Karin looks up to see Brody waving his hands at her from behind the cameras. Hurry, he’s communicating. We’re losing the sunset light. Karin picks up the pace. “And so I was really quite depressed about my life and then one day there’s a knock on my door and there’s no one there but this big bag of gummies and a note from Declan that just said ‘Cheer up, Rinny Bear’ and it was just the sweetest thing ever.”

  “Very sweet,” Tag comments. “But we’ve got no time to linger. Declan, what would Karin say is the last thing you had a big fight about?”

  Karin ponders this for a second and then waits with bated breath to see if they match when she shows them their answer and they haven’t worded it the same but it’s apparent they mean the same thing.

  ‘Noodles,’ reads Declan’s answer while Karin’s is: ‘pre-cooking penne’.

  “Yes, we were fighting about pre-cooking noodles for a casserole,” she explains, to make sure everybody knows they deserve that point.

  “But that was like four months ago,” Declan notes. “We don’t really fight.”

  “No, we don’t,” Karin affirms.

  “Usually we do agree, don’t we?” Declan reiterates and she just keeps nodding along.

  “Last question,” Tag announces. “Karin, is Declan a boxers or briefs guy?”

  That’s easy, Karin thinks and in already celebrating nine out of ten points in her head when she shows her ‘briefs’ to their host but then Declan reveals his answer and it’s ‘boxers’. No, that’s wrong, she thinks.

  “Well, no I meant boxer briefs,” she hurries to say. “Is that a thing?”

  “Yes, that’s a thing,” Declan concedes, making a face. “I wear those to work, so five days out of six she’s actually right.”

  “Boxers are for the weekend,” Karin says, feeling smart and quick on her feet for thinking of saying that.

  “Boxers or nothing,” Declan one-ups her and winks for good-measure.

  “Mostly nothing,” she decides, winking back and she thinks they’re good after all.

  “Well, everyone, that’s it,” Tag announces. “You got, let’s make it eight and a half out of ten there, that currently puts you in the lead - and remember, the winners of this challenge get an exclusive, luxurious diving tour to explore the coral reef and swim with the sharks. Let’s see if Savannah and Iver can top your score!”

  They can’t. Heaven and hell, they can’t at all.

  The other couple does so badly that after the third question, Karin sort of starts to wonder if there is secretly more than one fake couple amongst them, because Iver really has no clue about his girlfriend at all. Out of the five questions asked about her life and preferences, he gets five wrong, including the name of the High School she graduated from, her favorite color, the last thing she’s cooked for him, and the day of their anniversary. He gets argumentative about that even, Marietta making a cut-throat gesture at him from where she stands on the sidelines because they don’t have time for that. “We never really agreed on a date,” he argues and Karin feels bad for him. He looks like he’s completely unraveling.

  At the end of it, Savannah and Iver finish dead-last with two right answers out of ten and there is an uneasy silence when they return to their bar stools among their peers as the camera crew flurries about them as fast as they can to get Tag’s outro before the light is fully gone.

  “Couples, you now have ten minutes now to discuss the game amongst yourselves,” Tag announces, “Then each couple has to cast a vote on who the fake lovers among you are. The couple that has raised the most doubt, will be eliminated from the competition. If you and your partner have a difference of opinion – well, too bad, you’re going to have to haggle it out amongst yourself and reach a unanimous vote. Your review time starts now.”

  The review time really starts twenty minutes later. Enough time for the three camera guys to go have a smoke and the lighting tech to set up the extra lights and flares to have the gazebo lit sufficiently for the murkier light now that the sun has gone, which he’ll be able to adjust as it gets darker and darker yet. It feels much later anyway, when they sit down again and talk through the challenge. At first, every couple just reviews themselves and they all agree it was stressful. But then the conversation focuses on Savannah and Iver and the feeling shifts considerably. Karin can tell that nobody suspects Declan and her of being the fakes, because it’s obvious from the uneasy tension in the air, th
at it’s Savannah and Iver, who don’t seem particularly together.

  “I swear we’re a couple,” Savannah says, an edge of desperation in her voice. “We just had a blackout.”

  “Yes, absolutely, I know all that stuff,” Iver almost whines. “I just got nervous.”

  “I don’t know,” Kaidan says, his forehead in deep wrinkles as his eyebrows skeptically hike up to his sandy blonde, perfectly coiffed hairline. “That was kind of sad. I mean how do you explain that you didn’t know where she went to school?”

  “I just blacked out,” Iver says helplessly, raising his palms to the sky, begging for leniency. “I didn’t know her then.”

  “Exactly,” Savannah agrees vehemently, her voice tumbling into shrillness as she gets defensive and starts pointing fingers: “And Karin didn’t know about Declan’s underwear, what about that? Who doesn’t know that about their partner?”

  “She did know, though,” Declan mutters and Karin could kiss him for how unbothered and unimpressed it sounds. Like he’s not feeling called out at all. Good, Declan, slay her, she thinks.

  “Yes, I’m not really sure you can compare how we did to how you did,” she says, matching his nonchalance, taking the slight bitchy tinge to her voice in stride.

  “I agree,” Courtney chimes in.