Page 84 of The Summer Show
Until he stopped. Not cold turkey. More like frozen turkey. Turkey abandoned in Antarctica. Turkey sunbathing on an iceberg.
Mom sashayed into my head, holding a lighter and a Mary Kay catalog. She was incandescent with audacity and smirking like an internet troll who had just thought up another “females” joke. Oops, she said. He just realized he made a mistake. What did I tell you, Kathleen? You’re unlovable.
Self-doubt slammed me. Was it my breath? My personality? Me, in general? Would I kiss me if I was a man?
Nick had no idea what was going on in my head.
“Just so we’re clear, I didn’t stop because I didn’t want to keep kissing you,” he said.
“Oh.”
“I stopped because I wanted to keep going, and the dirt wasn’t the place for that.” He took my hands and pulled me up onto my feet. “Want to talk about why you were in the dirt?”
Funny. Coming to Greece to be on a television show was never on my to-do list. When offered the opportunity to be a contestant, my first, second, and third instincts were to decline. But once I was in it, filming the episodes was fun. Difficult and physically challenging, but a rocking good time. With the director confessing that this season was now rigged, the fun had evaporated. What was the point of continuing if Nick and I knew we would be facing each other on the final night? One of us was going to win, and that was great. But … the lack of fairness was galling. Sakis would get the axe tomorrow night because the producers and director decided they wanted to sell a story that wasn’t theirs to sell or tell. How was this fair to him?
I didn’t know what to do with these emotions—emotions I didn’t have names for yet. Grief, I suppose. Grief-lite? All along I had known that reality shows weren’t real, but the competition, I’d believed, was genuine, even if the sets, the accessories, the antagonists were fake. I honestly thought we were putting on a respectable forty-five minutes of entertainment.
My heart hurt for the contestants who had been lost along the way. I could pound Tylenol all day long and the ache would remain.
With Nick waiting on my answer with the patience of several saints, we walked in silence until we reached the point where Ana’s road connected to this one.
While the toe of my shoe drew patterns in the dirt and my eyes watched my footwear work because I didn’t know what else to do after the kissing, I dumped all my feelings about Mairi and her confession that the show was rigged this season. Then I told Nick the big plan I’d cobbled together ten seconds ago with very little thought and a whole lot of conviction.
“I’m bowing out. I just won’t show up tomorrow night. You and Sakis will move forward. It’ll be fair that way.”
Nick shook his head. “You have to. I don’t want to be there without you. You’re what’s making the show fun.”
“It’ll still be fun. You’ll be on TV and now you know you’re going to win. You’ve got an excellent plan for the prize money. I can already do so much with what I’ve earned.”
“I’m not going to give Sakis a piggyback if they throw cockroaches at us again.”
“I don’t think they’ll do roaches again. Spiders, maybe. But you’ll go and you’ll win. You’re the stronger contestant. You can handle anything they throw at you.”
“Here’s the thing about you,” Nick said. “You’re everything—”
“Everything covers a lot of territory, including roaches, taxes, and that maggot cheese from Sardinia.”
“A lot of people love those things.”
“Who loves taxes?”
“Accountants.”
He had me there. “As you were saying?”
“I’ve never met anyone quite like you. You’re beautiful, smart, tenacious, and funny. I know you don’t see it, but other people do—I do. The show? It’s better because you’re there. When it’s a success this season, it will be because of you. When they gave you geese, you juggled. When everyone else was standing around during Capture the Flag, you went for it. You’re a main character, Kathleen Hart. The director can say it’s rigged, but you’ve earned that spot on the final shows, and everyone will see that, same as I do every single night.”
His words speared me through the chest wall, piercing my heart and infusing me with light.
“I don’t want to compete against you.”
“You have to,” he said with complete conviction. “You need to get in that arena and give it all you’ve got, even if it means kicking my ass.”
I nodded, but I’d already made up my mind. For me, Greece’s Top Hoplite was over. Nick or Sakis would be the next winner.
Naturally, I was Team Nick.
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