Chapter Fifteen
Olivia
The days were dragging by endlessly now. I was almost getting sick of the salty air and sea breezes greeting me every morning when I woke up, but nothing beat the view from the resort room Dec and I had to share for as long as we were on the show. It might take a while before I finally got tired of that. Seeing Dec shirtless and sleeping soundly on the couch each morning when I woke up wasn’t exactly the worst view in the world, either…
The show had kept us busy with all sorts of ridiculously contrived situations—group dates, challenges, games nights, dinner parties. It was all designed to simultaneously pit the couples against each other and build drama, and hell…it was working. There’d been more than a few punch-ups and catfights between contestants in the last couple of episodes.
Two more couples had been eliminated now. I was surprised that Dec and I were still on the show—our only real job was to get kicked off as soon as possible—but at the same time, I guess it made sense. Our popularity since the bridge rescue incident still hadn’t waned, and it seemed the viewers wanted us to stick around. Mom had told me that we were always close to the top of the online polls, along with Andrew/Yvonne and Shayla/Paul. Surprisingly enough, Isobel and her husband Mark were also quite popular. Apparently viewers liked Isobel’s domineering personality clashing with Mark’s meek mildness. They thought it was cute.
When I spoke to Mom about the situation, she didn’t seem to care too much that Dec and I hadn’t been voted off the island yet. We were getting her good ratings, which was by far the most important thing for her, so as long as we didn’t stick around till the finale, it was okay for us to stay a while longer.
I didn’t tell her about my feelings towards Dec. I couldn’t. Hell, I couldn’t even tell him. I knew he had an idea of how I felt, but he also knew I wouldn’t say or do anything about it. Not while we were in such a messy situation.
Maybe one day. But not now.
At the moment, I was hugging a cardigan tightly around myself as we all waited on the docks. This week’s challenge was a doozy—all eight remaining couples had to spend three nights on a luxury mega-yacht. From what we’d been told about the yacht, there was a Jacuzzi on the top deck, swimming pool on the dive deck, and even a cinema down below. There was also an open bar inside the middle deck, massive buffet available at all times…and plenty of potential drama at the nightly dinner parties. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to spending three days out on the ocean seeing as I wasn’t the biggest fan of open water, but as long as I kept myself busy and distracted, I knew things would be fine.
“You okay with this?” Dec hoisted up one of my bags as we prepared to board the yacht, quizzical expression on his face.
“Yeah. Just make sure I don’t go overboard, and we’ll be golden.”
He pretended to think about that for a second. “Hm…I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try to placate the urges to throw you over.”
I poked him. “Very funny. If you don’t stop with your silly jokes, I’ll have to start with my own.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
I leaned closer and whispered. “Well, you’re seventeen years older than me and married to my mother. Maybe I’ll start calling you stepdaddy. Or just daddy. Make you feel old.”
He grinned. “That wouldn’t make me feel old. In fact, it seems like the latest fashion is girls calling their boyfriends ‘daddy’. So it would actually make me young and hip.”
“No one says ‘hip’ anymore.”
“Any more of that cheek, and daddy will bend you over his knee and give you a spanking.”
I laughed as the show producers urged us to begin boarding the boat. I was glad Dec and I could still joke and play around with each other, despite the palpable tension between us over the last couple of weeks. It made things a hell of a lot easier.
Once we’d put our bags down in our cramped rooms on the yacht, the showrunners told us all to gather in the main dining hall on the middle deck. They wanted the dinner party to begin filming right away, even though it was only three in the afternoon. That made sense, because even though it was supposedly reality TV, we were often forced to reshoot ‘scenes’ over and over if they didn’t have enough tension and drama in them.
Reality TV was about as realistic as world peace.
I was seated next to Dec, with Isobel on the other side of me. Yay. Shayla and Paul were sitting across from us, and Shayla kept sticking her tongue out and jokingly rolling her eyes whenever the cameras weren’t on us to try and make me feel better about being stuck next to the evil ice queen. It wasn’t too bad, though. Isobel didn’t even speak to me. She spent the entire entrée course arguing about politics with Andrew, who fancied himself a bit of an expert on the matter despite clearly knowing as much about politics as a lemur.
I didn’t know who I disliked more now.
One of the Snob Brigade who was still remaining—Hayley—started a fight with another one of her clique ‘friends’ midway through the main course when it came out that the friend had allegedly sabotaged her during one of last week’s group challenges.
“I know you didn’t just trip and fall into me!” she shouted, drunkenly waving her champagne glass. “You shoved me. And you managed to rip out one of my extensions, so you can damn well pay for that!”
“I didn’t shove you!” replied the friend, a blonde named Emily. “I told you, I fell.”
“Yvonne told me she saw you. You did it on purpose. It’s your fault Simon and I lost the challenge that day! Slut!”
The challenge they were speaking of had been to build little enclosures on the beach on one of the smaller deserted islands. We were told we had to sleep in them for the night (we didn’t really, it was all for the cameras) and we were led to a cornucopia of supplies on the sand. We were told to make a run for it, all at the same time, and grab whatever we could. The fastest of us ended up with useful things like tarpaulins for the enclosure, portable stoves and canned food, while the slowest were left with crappy items like mini flashlights.
Hayley had infamously lost the challenge for herself and her husband Simon when she went storming off after Emily accidentally tripped and fell forward during the mad dash, knocking her over and tearing out her hair extensions. Mom told me that the viewers had responded to Hayley’s tantrum by creating hilarious memes and GIFs of her screaming and storming off, and the only reason the viewers hadn’t voted them off after that behavior was because another couple happened to be boring enough to lose on the polls that week.
While the cameras captured the two women going at each other across the dinner table, Shayla caught my eye and winked, shaking with silent laughter. I smiled and nodded back, glad that some other people on the show realized how stupid and trashy it all was. It wasn’t just me and Dec.
Suddenly a strange twinge in my stomach made the smile slide right off my face, and Shayla leaned over. “Hey, you okay?” she whispered.
Dec turned his attention to me as well, concern flashing in his eyes.
I nodded. “Yeah, I just feel a little…” Stabbing pain bit at my insides, and I abruptly stood up as nausea suddenly washed over me. “I think I ate something bad.”
I missed the rest of the dinner party and all its drama, because I ended up crouched in the bathroom for the next two hours instead, vomiting and clutching at my stomach. Shayla and Dec took care of me, alternating between rubbing my back and bringing me glass after glass of water, and when I felt like I was finally done throwing up, I looked weakly up at the two of them. “Thank you,” I said, accepting some chewing gum from Shayla to mask the awful acrid taste in my mouth. “I think it was the salmon.”
“Shit. Glad I didn’t have any.” Shayla shuddered. “I think you should go outside and get some fresh air. Might make you feel better. I’ll go tell the producers where you are.”
“And I’ll go grab some more water,” Dec added, rubbing my back. His touch alone made fireworks explode inside me, despite how ill I still felt. “I’ll meet you on the deck.”
I headed up the stairs and onto the main deck, dragging my feet as I went. God, I hadn’t felt this sick in ages. Not since I had a horrible stomach flu on a vacation to Bali when I was about thirteen.
It was dark outside now, and the moon was high in the sky. The inky black water surrounding the yacht shimmered beautifully from the light, and as I leaned over the deck railing and took several deep breaths, I didn’t feel afraid of the ocean at all. I still felt too damn nauseated to worry about anything else.
“How you feelin’, Livvy?”
I turned around with a shudder at the grating sound of Andrew’s voice behind me. I thought he’d decided to leave me alone over the last couple of weeks, but it seemed he was back.
“Not now, Andrew. Go scheme with someone else,” I managed to get out before suddenly retching over the edge. Apparently I wasn’t quite done throwing up.
“I’d rather scheme with you,” he replied. “You and your hubby are still pretty popular. I told ya, we could help each other out.”
“I’m not forming some winner’s alliance with you, okay? I thought I made that clear.”
He stepped closer. “And I thought I made it clear that I won’t take no for an answer. You should’ve taken that seriously. Maybe then I wouldn’t have had to teach you a lesson.”
He motioned toward my stomach with his hand. I widened my eyes. “You…you did this?” I spluttered. “You made me sick?”
“Wasn’t hard to slip a little something in your food when they were bringing all the orders out. Maybe now you’ll take me seriously.”
I shrank back, suddenly all too aware of the deep, dark ocean only feet away from me. I was afraid again. I was so close to the railing, and Andrew had already pushed me into a railing once when he confronted me a couple of weeks ago. How far would he go to make his point of bullying me into submission? If he was willing to poison my food, then he was likely capable of far worse.
He took a step closer, a nasty glint in his eyes.
It looked like I was about to find out just how far he’d go to make me do as he said.