| |
vivianna
I can’t lie, I didn’t have “wanting to kiss my fake-boyfriend” on my Lovebound bingo card.
And the realization has me waking up a flustered mess the next morning. How exactly do you deal with sharing a bed with someone you want to kiss but can’t? How do you go on without making the fact obvious?
Griff showers in our bathroom, completely oblivious to my dilemma. When I woke up, I hadn’t been sure how or if I was going to broach the topic with him. We’d planned our relationship so it wouldn’t be complicated. It was a deal that was supposed to be mutually beneficial. We’d split the money and walk back to our regular lives. But wanting to kiss Griffin does screw that plan up, somewhat.
And bringing it up is going to be awkward at best. Since yesterday’s awkwardness, we’ve gotten back to our normal. I don’t need to stir the pot. Plus, upon further reflection, I’m pretty sure I can chalk me wanting to kiss Griff to the fact that he’s simply a guy I’ve been pushed into a romantic circumstance with, who treats me well enough—or at least, better than my ex did— and just so happens to be devastatingly attractive.
I need to snap out of this. There’s a reason he didn’t full-on kiss me yesterday. He knows we’re a bad idea, even if he doesn’t say it, or ignores the fact. Or maybe it has something to do with Imogen, a far more negative part of my brain adds. Is he really over her? Hell, am I really over Zander? Maybe I’m getting so attached to Griff because I’m still struggling with Zander’s absence from my life. Maybe —
“You going to shower?”
Griffin comes out, towel wrapped loosely around his waist. His hair’s wet and he’s damp all over and his tattoos are still dark and pronounced as ever all over his chest and I should definitely bring my eyes back up to his before my Griffin thing gets any worse.
I blink, pushing myself off my bed. “Right, right.” I keep my eyes on the ground. Don’t look up, Viv. Don’t look up.
And that mantra proves great until I’ve run into him on my way to our bathroom. Griff’s got a smirk on his lips, devious and taunting. He’s half-blocking the doorway. If I want to get past him, I have to physically touch him or talk to him—two things I’ve been trying to avoid as much as I can with the type of unholy thoughts I’ve been having about the man.
I swallow, forcing my eyes on his and not on his tattooed chest and certainly not on the water droplets sliding down his toned torso. I jut my chin up, eyes sharp. “Move.”
“Love to see those eyes,” Griff says. I swear he’s about to laugh. Am I even worse at hiding all of this than I thought?
“Shut up,” I reply. He can’t keep getting away with whatever this is— this teasing, this outrageous flirting.
He’s still blocking the doorway. I could curse.
“Dude, what do you want?”
He laughs. Like this is funny. I’m sure it would be, if you’re not the anxious, severely attracted one.
I shake my head, generating false confidence to push him aside, right against the doorway, my hand lingering on his chest several seconds after he’s out of my way. Griffin’s not quick enough to wipe away his surprise and his lips part, a rosy color rising to his face.
Now it’s my turn to laugh, albeit nervously. God, what is he doing to me? I walk into the bathroom, shutting the door behind me once he’s stepped back. Then, I press my back against the closed door and exhale a shaky breath.
If this competition does ruin me, Griffin Andrews is definitely going to be my undoing.
***.
Today comes with a new challenge.
In the Villa’s foyer, the Amadors announce that today, there’ll be a baking competition. However, there’s a wrinkle. Because not only are couples forced to cook together, but we’ll have to “budget shop” at the closest shopping center for our ingredients.
“A taste of life as a couple in the real world,” as Philip says. Which I suppose is true, but most Lovebound couples don’t make it in the real world—go figure— and Griffin and I have no plans of even interacting once this competition is over, so it’s not like it’ll be particularly helpful to us.
Regardless, each couple has to come up with a budget-appropriate list before purchasing all of the ingredients. I can already tell this is about to piss people off. Everyone’s got their own way of spending money, and most folks have been single for at least a few months before going onto this show. Having to compromise and negotiate and be wise about the money we’re given is going to be a task, for sure.
Each couple is soon given our budget — 150 dollars in cash which is actually crazy in this economy.
Griff snorts from next to me. “Great, so we can buy a tray of eggs and maybe a slice of bread if we’re lucky.”
I swat his arm, maintaining a straight face.
Everyone takes our rides to the sprawling shopping center. It’s massive, people in and out, their arms weighed down by grocery bags.
We’re soon dropped off, our producers right behind us. Griff and I have decided to come up with our recipe first. The Amadors told us we’d have to come up with a dessert, and we’ve decided on a simple chocolate cake, which means we need flour, sugar, oil, eggs, baking powder, baking soda, milk and vanilla extract— at the very least. So, we make two copies of the list and split up.
I’m after half of the ingredients, Griff’s after the other half. We end up running around the store in our respective sections like headless chickens. We’re on a damn mission. And according to the Amadors, we’ve got to buy all of our shit and have it paid for in an hour.
I don’t have too hard a time finding the ingredients. I wait behind slow people with carts and bounce from foot to foot, accumulating more and more groceries in my arms as the time passes instead of just getting a basket like a normal adult.
Luckily, I manage to get most of what we need, and in half an hour, meet Griffin in the dairy section, where we grab our milk. He’s gotten everything for his half too, all items on our list crossed out so far, but I’m hit with this odd feeling as though something is missing.
Which is when I realize that we haven’t considered frosting. It’s a chocolate cake; we need chocolate frosting.
“Shit,” I say, loud enough for anyone in our aisle to hear.
“What?” Griff’s eyebrows are raised.
“Frosting. We need frosting,” I explain. “Or else the cake is, like, naked.”
“No problem,” Griff says, leaning against the cart, biceps flexing underneath his shirt. His easy smile eases my nerves. “We have time.”
“I’ll get it.” I’m jogging out of the dairy section to the baking ingredients aisle before the words have even left my lips. There’s already quite a few other couples in said aisle. And unfortunately for me, there’s one can of frosting left, with a couple already standing in front of it.
“Hey, can I just squeeze past you and grab that frosting?” I ask, hoping the two don’t actually want the frosting, but when said couple turns around and I’m face to face with Zander Howard and Imogen Morgan, I figure it doesn’t actually matter. One look at Imogen’s smirk and Zander’s blank expression and I know they’re taking that damn frosting, whether they need it or not.
“Oh, we actually needed this,” Imogen coos, grabbing the frosting.
“Of course you did.” I try to say so as lightly as possible but I’m no Imogen and couldn’t be diplomatic about this if you begged me to.
“Sorry about that,” Zander adds, half-assing the apology like he does pretty much everything, except competing, clearly.
“Right,” I say instead of cursing them out, then turn on my heel and make my way back to Griffin who’s leaning against the cart in a separate aisle, scrolling through his phone. He looks up once I arrive, eyebrows rising when I show him that I’m empty-handed.
“No more frosting?” He asks.
“It’s clearly a very popular item today,” I let out a sigh. “I’m so stupid. We should’ve gotten it first. Obviously everyone’s buying frosting; it’s a literal baking competition.”
Griff slips his phone into his back pocket, shaking his head. “You’re not stupid,” he says. “We’re stupid. And it’s whatever. We’ll figure something out. Do chocolate cakes really need frosting?”
“Yes,” I apologize, saying more quietly, “yes. I told you, the cake is naked without it.”
“So, they’re all gone?”
“There was one container left, but Imogen and Zander got to it first.” I don’t add the fact that they probably didn’t need it and just bought the damn frosting because we clearly needed it, but I’m sure it shows in my bitter tone.
Assholes, Griff mouths.
“Hard agree,” I fold my arms. “Well, what now?” There’s about forty minutes left, and within that time, we still have to calculate our grocery cost, ensure it’s within our budget and then pay for it all.
Griff knits his eyebrows together, biting on his bottom lip. “Make it? Have you ever made frosting before?”
“Nope,” I sigh. “But it doesn’t look like we have any other option.”
With that, we roll our cart around the store to get the ingredients Google claims we need for chocolate buttercream frosting: butter and cocoa powder. We’ve already got milk and sugar, so we’re good in that regard. Butter isn’t too hard to find and neither is cocoa powder, and by the time we’ve got everything together, we have just under half an hour left.
When we calculate, our ingredients just land under our budget, at about 110 dollars. We bought good portions of each ingredient for the Amadors, alongside baking sheets, gloves and trays, so it all adds up. But we haven’t done bad, and we milk it for what it’s worth, throwing in soda, some chocolate bars and gum, making our grand total 125 at the cash register.
We’re going to be baking at the back of the bakery adjacent to the supermarket, so Griff and I roll our cart into said bakery, where we’re soon ushered toward the back filled with clean tables, ovens, microwaves and a large fridge.
We work like a real couple, like two people who could do ordinary human things together like laundry or errands. This fact is almost as daunting, if not just as daunting as the warmth that bathes me all over as I watch Griffin’s shirt ride up as he starts to unload our groceries.
Faster than us are Everleigh and Wyatt, who are already set up and greet us briefly before returning to their conversation, Everleigh on her tippy toes as Wyatt smiles down at her. They’re perfect in that consistent way, like that high school couple that never broke up, despite the odds, and ended up married with three kids. That’s them, and they definitely don’t have to bullshit the audience to convince them of the fact.
I don’t get long to dwell on it, because as Griff and I are unloading our last groceries, Imogen and Zander come wheeling in, then Ramona and Marco, then Esme and Brody. And just as the ninety minutes have rolled to an end, Fernanda rolls into the room with her cart, Aiden trailing behind her, his hands in his pockets.
Griff is already looking at me when I choose to send him a sidelong glance. Aiden and Fernanda have already lost one challenge, and even though said challenge was “low risk”, people will be watching. It’d be one thing if the two arrived last side-by-side, but marching into the bakery single file already suggests trouble for them. And don’t get me wrong, the two were never overly smitten, but they got along well enough, had fun chemistry and that was their strength. If they don’t have that, what do they have?
No one gets to examine that scene any further, because we’re given the next few hours to whip up our desserts. The Amadors will observe us from across the room, but the two are so far away that it’ll be easy to forget their presence. At the end of our time, the Amadors will come up to examine our dishes, and we better damn well work with our partner, because if we don’t, it’ll definitely show in the final cut.
The producers sleuth about the space, asking each couple how well we felt we handled the budget and the time, and how well we think we’re going to perform when it comes to creating the final dessert together.
Griffin and I are determined, following a basic recipe step by step. I’m whipping up the ingredients for the cake as Griffin does the chocolate buttercream frosting. Of course I’m bouncing around the whole damn space, triple checking our recipe and making sure I have the oven preheated so we’re done in time.
We bump into each other more often than not. Our table isn’t particularly big, and it’s not as though either of us are used to sharing a kitchen with someone else. Or at least, haven’t shared a kitchen with another person in a hot minute.
It’s pretty easy to forget how much smaller a space becomes when there are more people in it. No matter how I try to weave around Griff, I still end up brushing past him one way or another. There’s a lot of waiting and half-smiles and “excuse me”s, and we try to reel in any impatience all at once.
There’s a mission, and if there’s anything I’ve figured out about us, it’s that we develop some sort of tunnel vision whenever we have a shared task. Being on a show like this means we’re in a state of constant convincing. Convincing our audience that we’re real, convincing our audience that we’re worth supporting, convincing our audience that we make sense together.
“Here,” I say, coming up behind Griff. He’s still stirring the frosting. I already have the cake batter in the oven. The frosting is looking a little dry, and I can tell he’s hesitant. I reach over to his right and grab the milk, adding a few more tablespoons to make it moist again. And throughout all of this, Griff is still, watching as I work my magic.
“When’d you learn how to bake?” He asks.
I shrug from behind him, finally registering our proximity and shifting so that I’m by his side instead. “Sometimes, when I’m in a shitty mood, my friend Reese will come over and we’ll bake something. She’s got this huge recipe book from her grandma, and we just work through each one. It’s nice. I don’t know.”
“That’s strangely endearing,” Griff snorts. “I’d like to meet her.”
I’m smiling and saying “definitely” until I realize that if everything goes according to plan, he never will. It’s not like Griff and I decided we would completely block and forget each other once the competition was over, but we sure as hell had no plans involving each other post-Lovebound. It was just a matter-of-fact. We’d get our money, stay low, and people would probably speculate that we broke up, and that’d be that. There’s been no talk of meeting friends or family or whatever it is that real couples do after a show like this.
And I think Griffin has realized where he’s screwed up too, because his smile falters and he backpedals. “Anyway, I’m going to check on the cake.” He glides past me, and manages to avoid touching me even in this small space, and I try not to take it personally, because if I were to be upset, it would mean I care, and I can’t afford to care.
***
All things considered, our cake turns out pretty damn good.
Granted, it does look like something two amateurs whipped up in a couple of hours, but it looks edible and even—dare I say—presentable.
“It’s clear you two know how to get along and that clearly translates to the cake.” That’s what the Amadors tell us, and the validation is music to my ears. Fact is, contestants aren’t mainly assessed on how good the cake is, we’re assessed on how well we worked together as a couple to make it happen. And in my opinion, we worked together like a well-oiled machine. The Amadors would know, they were present for a good amount of the baking period, and we were recorded anyway. In the footage, I imagine I’ll see Griff and I’s laughter, brief moments of contact, the yells over egg beater noises to clarify our recipe.
We did well this round, I think, brushing the back of my hand against Griff’s, pulling him out of his strict focus on the Amadors as they move to the next couple.
The Amadors have got feedback for everyone, positive and negative. While the two find close to zero flaws with Everleigh and Wyatt’s baking of their apple pie, and how they took the challenge “head-on” with “complete positivity” and “charm”, they’ve got a lot to say about what they observed of Fernanda and Aiden when the two were whipping up their shortcake. Apparently they started over twice because they’d accidentally screwed up the batter, Aiden took “a breather” for about a half hour when things were getting tense and the clock was running down, and the shortcake was underbaked because they’d rushed through the end process.
I hadn’t even known all that shit was going down while Griff and I were baking. But now more than ever, it’s clear Fernanda and Aiden are out. It’s something of a Lovebound curse. You can’t lose more than two challenges in a row before you and your partner are out. You don’t exactly get a losing streak in Lovebound, because as soon as a couple has seriously screwed up a task once, they suddenly have a “pattern”, and no one wants to get behind a team with a cold streak.
Even though this whole show is sold as a vacation, the real vacation takes place only within the first few days, when you relax in a top-tier hotel, date around and then ultimately decide on your partner. Once the challenges come into the conversation, couples fall out, or flourish.
So, when the Amadors announce rank Everleigh and Wyatt first in this challenge and eliminate Fernanda and Aiden, I’m no longer as surprised. Once you get into the rhythm of this game, it’s easier to predict who’s in and who’s out. Another couple is out of Lovebound, this time over a mediocre cake and worsening chemistry.
“Shit’s getting real,” Esme says on behalf of everyone, long after the two are dismissed.