After dinner, Mary Peach brought us to the presidential stateroom, complete with its own private bowling alley. The sound guy retrieved our mics, but then Mary gasped, suddenly stricken. “Oh no… We figured Luke would win but assumed Barnes would be coming, so I apologize for what’s through those doors. The cruise line wanted to sellromance…”
Arjun cracked the curtained French doors to the bedroom, where rosepetals had been strewn across the mammoth king bed. “Unoriginal but not ineffective,” he remarked. “We’ll be fine, Mary. Oh, are there any…?” He indicated the ceilings, checking for cameras.
“Lord, no. You think they’d let us mount anything to these walls?”
Arjun smiled mischievously as the door closed behind her. “I just realized we’ve never actually fucked in a bed. It was always patio furniture or towels at the beach.”
“Well, we only had sex twelve times total that summer. I mean, the actual act.”
“Were you cutting notches on the palm trees?” He collapsed on the bed, the petals briefly sent airborne before fluttering back to the mattress. “So does the esteemed candidate actually get seasick, or was he just too scared to leave his mob unattended?”
I shrugged uncomfortably in response. “Gotta pee.”
He followed to the open door while I pissed, catching me off guard with the intimacy of the gesture. “You know there’s a whole world of men who would fall over their feet to date you. You don’t have to settle for him,” he eventually said as I washed my hands.
“I don’t want todatesomeone. I want to marry someone.” I managed to keep my voice even, no matter how insulted I was by his patronizing. “And I am.”
“Then why are you here with me?”
Because my boyfriend told me to. Because I’ll always love you. “Because this will never happen again,” I answered, not even lying. “And we both know that.”
He flinched, as if my words stung him somehow, and for the first time I sensed the boat gently rocking beneath us. After a moment, he took my hand, and I caught my reflection staring back in the expansive mirror, floating above his shoulder. My only witness.
Arjun was inches from me now. “Take off the ring.”
Years later, I’d wonder if Barnes did the same when he was with those men. Even though I only did it once, I’m still fairly certain I did it first.
The next morning, Arjun mussed the sheets in the suite’s second bedroom, flinging damp towels next to its shower as if staging a crime scene. It comforted me that we were both giving some type of performance. When we returned to set, Barnes only asked once what I’d done on the cruise ship. “Nothing you wouldn’t have,” I replied. I do still think that’s true.
The table shuddered in protest as I sharply yanked down on the handles, trying to launch the ball through the gate of tigers—except all I did was lodge it firmly in the opening. “Shit!” I rushed to extract the stuck ball, but as I roughly pulled it out, the serrated wood of the tigers caught the cheap plastic, slicing it wide open. It would never roll now.
“I need a replacement!” I shouted manically, except all eyes were on Greta’s map, right as her own ball tipped off the side.
“I need a new ball!” I screamed again, all too aware Barnes was approaching his own tigers, brow taut with concentration.
“Imogen, don’t let him send you home!” I called, but she ignored me, focused on her table. Without a ball, I had only one tactic to buy her time. “Barnes, you’re going to lose!”
His shoulders visibly tightened.
“Do you hear me? No one wants you here!”
He was listening. I knew it. Screw the edit.
“I actually wish you’d been here at the beginning of the season. If those people despised me, they would have crucified you… That’s probably the biggest relief of divorcing you: I can stop apologizing to thewhole worldfor marrying you in the first place.”
With a flick of his wrists, Barnes’ ball shot briskly through the tigers.
“And now you’ll end up alone, because all you’ll ever be is someone’s second choice,” I spat. “God knows you were mine!”
He refused to acknowledge me as his ball cruised past the markers of Cortona, Shanghai, and Queenstown, irrevocably toward Imogen’s name…
“You promised me she’d be safe, you son of a bitch!” I cried, finally breaking. All I could do was watch the girl I’d met a lifetime ago in an airport as she stared blankly at Barnes’ map. She was supposed to beat him. By any standard of justice, she was always supposed to beat him.
I sank to the ground, burying my face in my knees as the horn blared through the hollow Arena. Despite the pounding in my head, I heard Ecklund heavily exhale. “With that, we lose one of the game’s best, a legend since our very first episode…”
How had I failed her all over again? And not just her. Arjun, Erika, myself…
“Greta.”
