Tamsyn didn’t respond right away. Not even after a minute.
If Isla hadn’t been tucked against her, feeling the weight of Tamsyn’s arm draped over her shoulders, she might’ve wondered if Tamsyn hadn’t snuck off into the dead of night.
Then, when the breeze died down to nothing, Isla sensed a shift.
Tamsyn sat up just a little straighter, and although it was scientifically impossible for Isla to feel Tamsyn’s heartbeat, she did, and it was picking up speed. “We should probably talk...”
She hadn’t even gotten the words out before Isla had already guessed what she was going to say. And it wasn’t going to be about some hypothetical date like the last time they were together on this rock. It was going to be about real life. Their life. Did Isla want to hear it? Yes. But also... no. Because hearing about it, talking about their future after this game,meant they would be popping this bubble. They had been living in this perfect bubble where they stole glances across the fire like teenagers, where their fingers brushed accidentally on the way to the creek, and where they snuck off to the clearing once everyone was asleep. In this moment, the fact that they lived on opposite sides of the country didn’t really mean anything because everything outside of this game felt inconsequential.
What if real-life Isla and Tamsyn weren’t as incandescent or electric? What if all of it unraveled the second the cameras left, and the ordinary world pressed back in? What if they were never meant to be anything more than what they were in this game? And what if these feelings Isla was having weren’t real at all but just a heady illusion manufactured byOutlast Her?
Before Tamsyn could even think to finish her sentence, Isla tilted her head up and leaned in for a kiss.
Futures couldn’t be discussed when lips were busy.
Chapter Twenty
It was Tamsyn’s turn to clean the rice pot. Last night Dominique had burnt the rice to an absolute crisp, which meant the bottom was lacquered in a thick black crust that would require extreme effort. But Tamsyn wasn’t complaining. It gave her something to do with her hands while her thoughts ran wild. She kept replaying last night, adjusting each moment as if it were editable footage. If Tamsyn had been brave enough, she would’ve asked the only question that mattered: Do you want to be my girlfriend?
She wedged the pot between her boots and dragged the edge of a flat stone across the bottom. The metallic scraping sound nearly split her ears in half.
Scenario one involved Isla saying yes immediately. No hesitation. Just yes, and then maybe she would’ve laughed a little, like it had been obvious all along. Because, of course, they were always going to end up as girlfriends. Tamsyn had no idea if people even used that term anymore because she hadn’t had an official girlfriend in ages. In her make-believe scenario, they would have kissed again. A kiss that would feel like the beginning of something bright and glorious.
Tamsyn adjusted her grip around the stone and dragged it slowly until the brittle strip of char curled up like a ribbon.
Scenario two wasn’t as pretty. Isla would’ve blinked, not unkindly or cruelly. Just surprised. Then she would’ve tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear to buy time and said something carefully like, “I really like what this is.” Which was basically just another way of saying let’s not ruin it by naming it.
Tamsyn scraped again, harder. Way harder.
Because scenario three made her stomach twist into a pretzel. In this version, Isla would’ve kissed her exactly the same way she had last night, and then she would have gently redirected. “Let’s not define it. Let’s just see where things go,” she would have said. Which was just a romantic stall to keep things suspended in the glittering unreality ofOutlast Her, where nothing could possibly survive real life.
A thick shard of black crust finally flaked free.
Tamsyn tipped the pot toward the light. Ugh, it wasn’t even close to clean!
“Do you need help?” A voice suddenly asked.
Tamsyn tilted her head up to see Barra standing with her hands on her hips. She was dressed in a black sports bra and matching cycling tights. Her Hawaiian shirt hung open and fluttered in the soft breeze. “Yes,” Tamsyn said, nodding, though she wasn’t sure scrubbing the rice pot was a two-person job.
Barra didn’t seem to think so either because she plopped down onto a rock jutting out of the ground at an angle and proceeded to pick up a stick, which she cracked in half. She took one half and stuck it between her teeth like those old-time gunslingers in a western.
“Did I ever tell you the story about when I fell in love in Venice?” Barra asked, glancing at Isla over her long eyelashes. Out of everyone at camp, Barra had the longest, thickest eyelashes. “I think I’ve told it to a couple of people by now, but I can never keep track.”
Tamsyn shook her head. Her one-on-one conversations with Barra had covered TikTok mukbang influencers, the best series in the world,Deadloch, and one heated political debate that had sent them both to cool off in the creek. She would have remembered a story about Barra falling in love in Venice. Itsounded like the title of a romance novel she’d bought at the airport bookstore but never got to read.
“Well, I was twenty-two and on exchange in Italy. My grad school had one of those semester swap programs,” Barra said, settling more comfortably onto the rock.
“Grad school?” Tamsyn blurted out before she could stop herself. For some reason, Tamsyn had it in her head that Barra was a river-rafting instructor or a wilderness guide. Something rugged and outdoorsy.
“Architecture. I’m an architect. I do public builds mostly. Museums. Civic centers. Big cultural projects. I was part of the design team for the Hudson Point Contemporary in New York.”
There was a brief but disorienting reshuffling happening in Tamsyn’s brain. Barra designed museums. What the hell? It felt so wrong, but at the same time, she couldn’t unsee Barra stooped over blueprints with a pencil tucked behind her pierced ear.
“Anyway,” she said, waving off Tamsyn’s shock. “I met her in a library. Gabriella Berlusconi. She was a local studying restoration. Mostly old buildings and churches. She corrected my pronunciation of Tintoretto without even looking up from her book.”
Tamsyn was clearly frowning because the next second Barra was saying, “Tintoretto was a sixteenth-century Italian painter who was known for these enormous dramatic paintings of biblical scenes. The figures were always falling or reaching.”
“Oh,” Tamsyn said, nodding though she didn’t give a flying fuck who Tintoretto was. Barra needed to get back to the story, to where she fell in love in Venice.
