I’m one of the front-runners this year, which means I get my own suite.

This wasn’t always the case.

When I started on the teen circuit in junior high, I wasn’t even given a free bowl of cold cereal the mornings of the pageants. My parents had to pay for everything out of their own pockets, not that they minded. They had enough - they still have enough - as my dad’s a big-shot corporate lawyer and my mom, though she has a master’s in education and was previously an adjunct instructor at a community college, was a stay-at-home mom and got me into teen pageants around the time I started junior high as a way for her to pass the time.

I think she liked it because it gave her something interesting to do. For me, it was never something I was passionate about. I was always somewhat of a tomboy, my popularity determined by the fact that I could pretty seamlessly travel between cliques in high school. I listened to music with the emo kids, kicked a ball around among the girls with the cleats on the soccer team, and was on math team with all the boys. The fact that I was a little beauty queen on weekends - princess at the time, I guess - gave my mom something to fill up the days while I was at school, planning everything out for me. And for me, on the weekends, it was primping and posture.

Lots of exercises in posture.

But right now, I don’t have to worry about posture at all. I’ll leave that for when I’m in public.

I study my reflection in the mirror. At twenty-three, I should be getting on with my life - and if not doing something else entirely, then at least preparing to make a change. It’s not that I don’t like where I am. I most certainly do like it. I love it, in fact. I get to travel and meet people and rally behind causes that are important to me. This season, it’s the ASPCA. Next season, it will be adult literacy, I think, though I haven’t really nailed it down yet. I would have chosen adult literacy this season, but it was already taken. The ASPCA was my second choice. Nothing against the animals, though. It’s just that none of the contestants can have the same cause in one season.

It’s been five years since I graduated high school. Two years since I completed my undergrad degree in American History, cramming everything into an accelerated schedule. And during the summers and breaks in school, and now for the past two years between taking random temporary office gigs, I’ve been on the pageant circuit because it’s the only thing I feel that I really know how to do.

It’s fun. It’s kind of like being on one of those reality dating shows. I get to visit exotic places and meet so many kind, interesting and cool people. And I don’t have to have the pressure of falling in love or being accused of being here “for the wrong reasons.”

It can get a little lonely, though. As one of the bigger names in the pageant this year, I should be happy to have my own suite. I should be happy I don’t have to be on all the time and don’t have to worry about my posture for one night.

I get up from the small dressing table where I’ve been sitting and basically staring at myself for twenty minutes and go over to the big, floor-to-ceiling window across the room. The view is breathtaking - like a mini Las Vegas, except here we aren’t landlocked. I don’t know what’s better - the view of the little skyscape with the brilliantly glimmering buildings housing the casinos and hotels, or the view of the ocean, rumbling along slowly and silently like a boulder being pushed up an infinite hill, always moving and always going but never really getting anywhere or making any progress.

I go back over to the dressing table and take a seat, regarding my reflection in the mirror again. All of the boxes are checked off, that’s for sure. I have long blonde hair that’s thick and wavy, and after a lot of practice I’ve been able to make it look like that without making it seem like I’ve put a ton of effort into it. My eyebrows are thick and full, and a couple of shades darker than my hair, which is the new trend in eyebrows, or so I’m told by one of my beauty consultants. My skin is clear of most traces of acne, which is ironic because when you’re a kid you think of acne is something that afflicts teens, not adults.

My neck is long and thin, what I’ve been told makes me have the ballerina “look.” I’m not thin, and I have boobs and an ass and hips that make me just a little self-conscious during the swimsuit competition. None of the other frontrunners this year have hips that flare out like mine do, but I actually do really love my body. I think I’m sexy. Unfortunately I don’t have the luxury of not caring what other people think, though. It’s kind of my job to make sure people think I’m attractive on the outside. Oh, I need to make sure they think I’m attractive on the inside too, but I’d be lying to myself if I thought a beauty queen’s job was to be beautiful on the inside.

But as my eyes scan over my features in the mirror in a detached, distant way, I let my mind go to the one place I know it shouldn’t. The one place that always makes me feel dreadful about myself. The thing that transcends the fact that all of the boxes are checked off.

It’s the fact that this is not me. It’s the fact that as I look in the mirror, I can see that there is no sparkle behind my eyes. It’s the fact that I am just not really here. Not in spirit, at least.

I’m good at this stuff, but it’s not my first choice. But that’s not the problem. The problem is I don’t know what my first choice would be.

All I know is that I’m good at this.

I get up and go over to the small kitchenette tucked into the corner near the door. I have a mini-bottle of my favorite vodka chilling in the freezer. Now all I need is some ice, so I grab the bucket from the counter and make sure it has the clear plastic lining inside, pull the belt tighter around my complimentary pageant-branded fluffy white robe, and make my way over to the door of my room.

I lean against the door and push it open, but it hits something. It’s probably one of the maids’ supply carts. I guess it is kind of late, so they’re probably doing rounds for the folks who are out partying or gambling.

“Watch where you’re going,” I hear a man’s voice grumbling from outside my door.

“Oh my god,” I say, pulling the door closed slightly and peering around it, “I am so sorry!”

And that’s when I stop dead in my tracks. Because the person I just carelessly opened my door onto is Jason Anderson.

It’s the Jason Anderson, big and hard and taking up the whole hallway.

It’s the Jason Anderson, larger than life and slightly wounded by a door slamming into him.

He rubs his shoulder and looks down at me with devilish eyes and an even more dangerous smile. I swallow hard, look up at him, and slam the door behind me, making him disappear as though my talent for the pageant were magic.

My heart is flying around in my chest like a pigeon that somehow flew down into the subway and is trying to get out. I don’t know what Jason is doing here.

Jason Anderson is the kind of guy you have to mentally prepare yourself for seeing. You don’t simply walk into a room where Jason Anderson is and go about your business as if nothing strange is going on. Jason Anderson’s presence is an event.

“Cassie?” he says through the door.

That’s him. He’s still outside. The magic didn’t work. I didn’t actually make him disappear.

I can’t very well ignore him now. He’s seen me. He knows I’m here. He knows I’m standing right behind this door.

I turn around, take in a big breath of cold, air-conditioner-pumped air, and open the door slowly.

“Hey, Cassie,” Jason says.

“Jason?” I say as though there’s a possibility he might believe I didn’t realize it was him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He looks down at me, and I feel like he’s looking at me with his lips instead of just his eyes. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth ever-so-slightly and tips his chin up.

“Happened to be in the neighborhood,” he replies, clearly lying, that infuriating hint of teasing and sarcasm hitting my brain like I’m hearing a tongue-twister that he knows I won’t be able to repeat back to him. “What are you doing here?”

“I am participating in this pageant thing,” I say, drawing my shoulders back and standing up straight by instinct. It’s the thing you do when you announce you’re on the pageant circuit to an outsider, as a way for them to take you seriously.

But Jason has never taken much of anything seriously, least of all his best friend’s kid sister.

“Pageant thing?” Jason crosses one leg in front of the other, digging his toe into the beige carpet of the dim hallway, leaning into the doorframe with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

Why am I infatuated with the way this man leans?

“Yeah,” I repeat, “pageant thing.”

He clears his throat, laughs, looks down, and then looks into my eyes with enough heat to melt my panties.

“Don’t be modest. The last I heard, you were a finalist in the 2018 Miss Long Walk on the Beach Beauty Pageant Extravaganza.”

“That’s not what I said?” I challenge, narrowing my eyes at him, feeling a smile smile pull at the corner of my lips.

“Alright,” he says, “get dressed, come with me to put my shit in my room, then I’m buying Miss 2018 Long Walk on the Beach a drink.”