His hand brushed against mine. He twitched away like he’d been burned. It was hard not to take that as a very personal insult.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.
‘You don’t have to explain.’
‘It’s just… You could see what they were doing, right?’ I said. ‘That whole group date was all about making the other women jealous. And those questions! They’ve got all our conversations on film, so they know the kinds of things you told me. It was all designed so I’d win the one-on-one time and drive the Juliets crazy. Can you even think of how they’re going to frame this episode?’
He made a noise in the back of his throat that was in the grunt family.
‘This thing we’re doing is starting to be counterproductive,’ I went on. ‘We agreed that we wanted to tell a story about how men and women can be friends without it being romantic or sexual, right? The way they dressed me up today, there’s no way that’s the story they were trying to tell. If we’re not careful, they’re going to send out exactly the opposite of the message we wanted, and—’
‘Cece, you know this wasn’t about telling a story for me, right?’
The words exploded out of his mouth so suddenly it was almost violent. He broke away from me and took a few steps further down the hill, then turned to look back at me, wild-eyed. ‘This wasn’t fake for me!’ he said. ‘When we sat down together, I wasn’t pretending to like you just for the sake of a fucking story!’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Of course I know that.’
‘Is that all it was to you?’ he said. ‘Was I just your meal ticket? A stepping stone to Instagram fame? To being the next Juliet?’
‘Is that what you think of me?! Really?!’
He didn’t say anything.
‘If that’s all you were to me, would I have done what I did tonight?’ I said. ‘You’re the only reason I have any of that camera time in the first place!’
His nostrils flared as he breathed in and out.
‘I’m going to be miserable without you, Dylan,’ I said. ‘I’m going to miss you every single fucking second. But if we keep going, if we keep doing this—’
‘Then what, Cece?’
I shook my head.
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Then what?’
‘I’m not going to say it,’ I said. ‘If I say it, then it’s out there. It’s real.’
He swore under his breath and turned away.
‘I’m doing this for you, Dylan,’ I said. ‘So you can focus on the actual reason you’re here. Which is finding a girlfriend, not hanging out with me. I’m helping you be the best Romeo you can.’
His fists clenched at his sides.
‘I know you’ve been freaking out,’ I said. ‘I know whenever you actually see yourself with one of the women, you run the other way, but that’s what you’re here for, Dylan. I’m getting in the way of that. I’m… I’m like your security blanket.’
‘Cece—’
‘No,’ I said, holding a finger up. ‘You don’t need me any more. If this was any other season, I wouldn’t even be here. If it wasn’t for the pandemic, you would have already forgotten that I even existed. You’d watch the premiere when it comes out and you’d be like, “Oh, lol, I totally forgot that girl – she was such a weirdo on the driveway.”’
‘You’re so important to me,’ he said, his voice low, turning back around. ‘I can’t… Without you, I can’t—’
‘You need to do this without me,’ I said. ‘And we’ve reached the point where I need you to do this without me, because… because…’
‘Because why?’
‘Because if we just leave this here, then it might be salvageable,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a bad couple of weeks, sure, but I’ve had bad weeks before. I’ve had bad months before. Bad years! I’ll get past it.’
‘?“Salvageable”,’ he said. ‘That’s really the word you want to use? Salvageable?’
