Discover that the laundry is one of the few places in the house that isn’t filled with other people twenty-four seven. Start spending your days sitting on top of the washing machine, reading and re-reading whichever of the three tattered paperbacks that make up the Convent’s library you manage to get your hands on that day.
It reminded me of the weeks after the start of the pandemic. The first little while when Flick and Ayo and I had been confined to the house had been stressful, but also fun, in a strange kind of way. We made sourdough, and did Jenifer’s Yoga, and promised ourselves that when all this was over, we’d do something fun but practical together, like taking a sewing class.
Then the weeks had dragged on, and the virus numbers got higher, and our incomes got lower, and that burst of nervous sourdough energy dissipated. We couldn’t go anywhere. We couldn’t do anything. We couldn’t escape each other, and slowly, the bone-deep exhaustion began to set in.
Although at least when we got sick of each other, we could just go back to our own rooms. This was much more like a group home, where you had to fight for every little scrap of privacy and protect the few things that belonged to you with your life and God help you if you showed even a scrap of vulnerability.
If I was smart, I’d be out there in the living room, front and centre on Convent Cam, telling anyone who’d listen about how Dylan broke my heart. The trajectory from there toWherefore Art Thou Romeo?would be easy. I could already see the promos in my mind.She was down, but never count Cece out! Your favourite Juliet is back, and she’s ready for love.
There’d been a while where I could picture it. Standing on the driveway where Dylan had stood. Miraculously not being a disaster on camera. Greeting man after handsome man. Dating them. Kissing them. Telling one of them that his heart was the other half of mine.
I couldn’t now, though. All I could see was Dylan. All I could feel were his hands on me. The feel of his body as my legs wrapped around his waist. The way his lips had felt on mine.
But he was up there at the Juliet Villa, dating six women who weren’t me, and he hadn’t come back for me.
Soon it would be five women. ‘Cece?’ Marija said, knocking on the jamb of the laundry door and sticking her head in. ‘You have to come to the living room. We’re waiting for the new arrival.’
I nodded. ‘Sure. Be there in a minute.’
Whichever producer or PA had summoned us to gather had already left by the time I got there. I sank into my friend-zone armchair (one of the few spots left, with nine of us here – the Convent really was quite crowded now) and drew my knees up to my chin.
‘So who do you think it’ll be this time?’ Rani asked.
‘Parisa for sure,’ Belinda said. ‘They just don’t have any chemistry.’
‘No way,’ Kanda said. ‘It’s got to be Jess D.’
‘Bitch, you got eliminated in episode two. You have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Jess K said. ‘It’s going to be Lily Fireball. Guaranteed. He’s only keeping her around because she makes him laugh.’
Right answer, wrong reason,I could have said. It was episode eight, the appointed hour for Lily’s elimination.
I didn’t say it, though. I felt tired, down to my bones.
‘What do you think, Cece?’ Naya asked me. ‘You spent all that time with him. You must know who his frontrunners are.’
There were so many things I knew. So many things he’d told me. So many things he’d shared with me about the women he was dating, and how wonderful they were, and how the conversation just flowed with some of them, and how beautiful they were.
‘I think by this stage he’s got feelings for everyone,’ I managed.
‘Come on, you must know more than that,’ Naya said. ‘You won that trivia game. You know the guy. Who’s he really into?’
‘If he’s picked a winner,’ I forced myself to say, ‘he hasn’t told me.’
Perhaps there were a lot of things Dylan hadn’t told me, because he was apparently having a hell of a time deciding which one of his six girlfriends he was going to cut. The time stretched on and on and on as we sat there waiting.
‘How long can a Necklace Ceremony take?’ Samantha wondered.
‘Maybe whoever he eliminated had a meltdown,’ Marija suggested.
‘It’s definitely Lily Fireball, then,’ Jess K said.
‘I guess that’ll make her his new best friend,’ Heather muttered.
Naya stretched and stood up. ‘Fuck this,’ she said. ‘I don’t care enough to stay awake for this. I’m going to bed.’
‘Me too,’ Jess K said. ‘I can’t handle Lily’s energy at this hour of the night, anyway.’
I considered following suit, but Naya and Jess K both slept in the same room as me, and I didn’t especially want to listen to whatever they were going to gossip about. I thought about going back to the laundry and curling up on top of the washing machine, but the fire in the hearth had warmed the living room up, and the cosy heat made my whole body feel heavy.
