“Endeavor?”
“The working title. I suggested alternates. I like naming things.”
“Hope you didn’t come up with ‘Tribulations and Trials,’” Imogen muttered, right as two wiry, freckled hands landed on Arjun’s shoulders.
“Plotting already?”
Arjun’s face briefly soured at the new voice. “Barnes, I hadn’t heard you were coming.”
“I got the call yesterday. Somebody dropped, and I was the alternate. Lucky me, huh?” The newcomer chuckled, his scrawny frame drowning in an oversized neon tank top and hideous pink boardshorts. He brushed his shaggy sandy bangs aside to eye me like a prize steer. “And what do we have here?” He extended a hand, ignoring Imogen, whonoticed. “Barnes Appleby.”
“Luke Griffin. This is Imogen—”
“Wait, you’re the gay football player!” he interrupted. “Who’s never done reality TV.”
“Liberty Todayis on the network. It counts,” Arjun replied on my behalf, for the first time, hardly the last. Clearly my imposter status wouldn’t be excused by everybody.
“I guess they need some muscle on the show. Besides, I won’t complainabout another homo in the house,” Barnes said with a conspiratorial wink. So theyhadcast two gay guys. Still, no matter how unsure I was about my type, I was positive it wasn’t the goblin boy currently leering at me. “You’re going to win someone a lot of money this summer.”
My stomach flipped at the attention. “Or I’ll royally suck.”
“You won’t,” Barnes and Arjun both answered, but Imogen stayed quiet. I smiled nervously at her, unsure if she was evaluating me or them.
“What show are you from?” I asked Barnes, desperate to change the subject.
“Lobby Boys. Lots of guys in suits screaming. Good practice for this bloodbath.”
“You think the game will be that competitive?”
Barnes blinked, amused. “Isn’t everything?”
Boarding soon commenced for Grand Cayman, but Arjun guided me and Imogen out of line once Barnes was on the plane. “That douchebag goes the first chance we get.”
Imogen’s feet shifted. “We don’t even know ifwe’reon the same team.”
“Listen, I’ve known everyone else who’s been cast for years,” Arjun insisted. “The only people I want to work with are you two, and I have a lot on the line here.”
“Really? You clearly don’t need the money,” Imogen fired back.
“I don’t want to make a fool of myself on national television either.” Arjun burrowed those magnetic eyes into me. “We have to trust each other, okay?”
Did I know then? That the summer of 2003 would be ours, the cameras framing our blossoming friendship so America would adore us as much as we adored each other? I didn’t. I didn’t knowEndeavorwould become such a hit that the star players would return season after season. I didn’t know I’d film three editions of the show before I fled, totally in love and completely notorious. I never thought there would be consequences to the decisions I’d make on a game show with people I’d just met. All Iknew, even then, was I already trusted Arjun.
I probably shouldn’t have.
3
2015
SEASON 19, EPISODE 8:
“Your Rent Is Due!”
When you throw your husband out, there’s supposed to be endless yelling, smashed dishware, and a hastily packed suitcase flung across a yard. Instead we died quietly in the kitchen. I stood silent against the marble island, mesmerized by the shapes in the stone, all of which seemed to suddenly have teeth.
I eyed the kid I’d fallen in love with in the Caribbean over a decade prior, four years older than me and five inches shorter. No one ever believed he was older, not with that trademark mischievous glint in his eye. His neatly groomed hair was disheveled, a far cry from the ideal candidate, the photogenic father, the devoted husband, the man who was never flustered.
“Luke, these men meant nothing. It was a mistake. One I made more than once, yes, but it was still the same mistake, the same impulse. It was purelymechanics, never my heart or my mind, and I hate that you found out like this… but I will tell you whatever you want to know,” he continued, voice trembling in a way I’d never heard. “All that matters is you and the kids.”
