‘Yep. Yep. Yep.’
‘Rolling!’ Steve called. ‘In three, two…’
I could feel the Romeo’s calluses against my skin as he led me back to his mark. He must work with his hands. Maybe he was a TV gardener like Chris Gregory. Maybe they had competing shows.
Shit. What show was he on? Why hadn’t I studied TV gardening shows? I’d just had two weeks in hotel quarantine! Why hadn’t I made better use of my time?
‘It’s so lovely to meet you,’ the Romeo said. ‘I’m Dylan.’
‘Oh! Hi!’ I said. ‘You’re the other Dylan!’
He looked at me blankly.
‘One of the, uh, other women in my limo was called Dylan! Dylan G!’
Words. Words! I was most of the way through a postgraduate degree! How was I so bad at words?!
‘I know.’ He smiled again. Such a killer smile. ‘She came in just before you. We had a laugh about it.’
‘You’ll be “Dylan Squared”,’ I babbled. ‘Like “Taylor Squared”.’
‘Like who, sorry?’
‘Taylor Squared. Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner? When they were dating? They were Taylor and Taylor, so Taylor squared?’
What was I talking about? What the fuck was I talking about?
‘I must have missed that,’ Dylan said.
Behind his head, one of the crew held up a giant piece of cardboard with the wordsWRAP IT UP.
‘Well, uh, you won’t have to worry about that if you date me instead!’ I said. ‘Bye!’
I ran away so fast one of the camera crew fell over as they tried to chase after me.
Okay. Okay. It wasn’t that bad.
Maybe they wouldn’t even show my entry on the show. Maybe I’d be part of a montage, and they’d just show the nice/slightly condescending bit where he helped me walk like I was a toddler. They could probably edit that to look vaguely normal.
They wouldn’t, though. I was going to get the haunted carnival music they always gave to the absolute weirdo contestant who got eliminated after, like, three episodes.
How long could I pay the rent for on three episodes’ worth of money? I was in no mental condition to do the maths, but it couldn’t be long. I had to fix this.
How, though? I’d forgotten to even tell him my name.If he can’t remember your name, he’s probably going to cut you.
Surely he’d remember me, though, even without my name. There was no way that anyone else on the face of the Earth had ever done such a bad job of introducing themselves. I was probably going to be inThe Guinness Book of World Records.
… DoesThe Guinness Book of World Recordspay?
‘Hey,’ Dylan (the other Dylan, the one whose name I had managed to repeat to Romeo Dylan like forty times) said as I walked into the Villa. ‘How did it go?’
‘Oh, it was great!’ I said, channelling the version of myself that had worked in retail and hospitality since I was fourteen. ‘Do you know where the bar is?’
I barely tasted the first glass of champagne as it went down my throat. ‘Take your time on that one,’ the bartender warned me, as he handed me a second glass. ‘We’re only allowed to serve you two drinks an hour.’
I nodded. My appalling performance on the driveway was probably already making me a contender for the first-night-drunk edit, even though I’d been stone cold sober. The last thing I needed to do was play into it. The haunted-carnival-music girl might manage to score a few bits and pieces here and there, but no one was going to hire a drunk to do sponcon.
Our limo was the first one to arrive, but slowly, the room began to fill up. I had to move from my spot near the bar because it was a high-traffic area for both contestants and crew, so I ended up perched awkwardly on the very edge of a couch, looking out towards the pool. It felt like being dragged to a party where you only know one person, but then they disappear, so you end up just sort of lurking because it turns out you never actually worked out how to make friends as an adult.
