“You think?”
“But let me explain.”
Bianca looked ready to say no, but Birdie decided to steamroll ahead anyway. “Alexis and I met way before this, back in Portland, months ago. We met at a club and ended up in a hotel room nearby, and then she ghosted me. I never thought I would see her again, let alone here in Provence. I know she’s wanted to send me home several times, too many not to be offended. But then we kind of just… I don’t know, we just connected, and it just kept growing from there.” She wasn’tgoing to mention that first kiss in the kitchen and how it had been the catalyst for everything. “I know it’s not an excuse. And I know we should never have snuck behind everyone’s back.”
Bianca’s jaw dropped and dropped until she was staring mouth wide open at Birdie.
“Alexis was going to tell everyone today,” Birdie went on quickly. She felt it was her duty to defend Alexis. Last season, Alexis had made a colossal mistake, and she’d been punished for it. But did she deserve to be dragged to the stake again? Should she be torched by the public’s opinion simply because she actually did fall in love? If she did, then Birdie would happily burn right alongside her. “She’s been so wracked with guilt about it,” she said, softer now, almost fondly. “I know she feels bad. Really bad.”
There was an agonizingly long pause, and then Bianca grabbed the seafoam green cushion with the ruffles lying at the end of Birdie’s unmade bed and pressed it to her chest.
“Well fuck. I didn’t know you were in love,” she muttered. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told Vivian about the two of you.”
Birdie’s world tilted so fast she nearly fell. “You what?”
“I was just so angry,” Bianca said. She couldn’t get the rest of her thoughts out fast enough because suddenly there was a shout from the hallway. “Meeting in the living room!” And then three knocks accompanied Louise’s voice. “Vivian’s here! She says that we need to have a meeting.”
“Shit,” Birdie muttered under her breath.
“Damn,” Bianca said guiltily. “I’m sorry. I wish you had talked with me, Birdie. If I had actually known you were falling in love, I would have understood and supported you. I could actually see the love—the way you looked at each other when you thought nobody was watching. I second-guessed myself and just told myself it was for the cameras.”
There was no getting around this. What was that saying again? She had to face the music. And the music was an impeccably tall woman with cropped white hair and the voice of a viper. Birdie got the chills just thinking about what was potentially coming her way.
A minute later, she walked into the living room with Bianca trailing behind. She hoped Alexis would be there; just seeing her face would make all of this feel better, but she wasn’t.
It was just Vivian. And Vivian looked pissed.
“Sit,” Vivian instructed. It wasn’t so much a suggestion as it was a decree. “All three of you, please.”
Birdie chose the plush cream-colored armchair she’d sat in several times. It was cushy and used and looked like it belonged in a home by the ocean in the Hamptons. The cushions rose up around her and swallowed her in their buttery upholstery, but unlike every other day when she’d cozied up in it, today the chair gave no comfort. How could it with Vivian towering over her, looking like Miranda Priestley?
Vivian rounded the coffee table. “It has come to my attention that Alexis and one of the contestants have been sneaking around like some silly love-struck teenagers.”
“What?” Louise asked, frowning deeply. She was in matching pink Lululemon yoga attire that somehow washed out her skin even more than it already was. She looked at Birdie. Then at Bianca. “Who?” she asked.
Birdie shrank further into the armchair and wished the cushions would swallow her whole. But she couldn’t hide. The words of Louisa May Alcott zoomed into her head:I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship. And although Birdie’s ship was at risk of slamming headfirst into a coral reef, she still had a chance to steer herself to calmer water.
“Me,” she said, leaning forward.
It took so long for Louise to process it that Birdie wondered if she was surprised it was her and not Bianca. Then she leaped up and planted her hands firmly on her hips. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“I’m sorry,” Birdie said. And she was sorry. Not for doing what she did, not for all those stolen moments, quick kisses, long kisses, and everything in between, but because they had kept it a secret. Nothing good ever came from a secret.
But Louise didn’t get a chance to go at her because Vivian pivoted on her dagger-thin heels. “Let me make something very clear,” she said icily. “The producers are pissed. Elise is busy putting fires out as we speak. And if this season wasn’t a live show, we would’ve canceled the entire thing.”
Surely it wasn’t that bad. Didn’t Greg Murrie on last season ofThe Bacheloradmit to sleeping with not one but five of the contestants in the Fantasy Suite? How was this worse than that? But Birdie wasn’t going to ask, and she wasn’t going to point out that when women were involved, it seemed to turn into some moral outrage.
Instead, Birdie asked. “So, what are you going to do?” She also wanted to ask where Alexis was and why she wasn’t here. But she thought better of it. Vivian was rubbing two fingers against her forehead. She did it fervently and excessively, as if she were polishing out a wrinkle. She didn’t look at Birdie when she spoke. Her gaze was fixed onParisian by Designsitting on the coffee table. “We’re going to finish the show as planned.”
Both Louise and Bianca looked aghast. Which was completely understandable and entirely fair. No one would want to continue competing in a show knowing the bachelorette had already made her choice. It was like starting a race when the winner had already sailed through the finish line.
“We’re offering both of you an all-inclusive, week-long stay at the Riviera Hotel in Nice if you agree to go through withthe show.” Vivian said. “Five-star amenities, spa treatments, private beach access. Flights included.”
She didn’t even have to say Birdie; you get nothing, because it wouldn’t be true. She was getting Alexis and, in Birdie’s opinion, that was better than an expensive holiday anywhere.
“So technically, you’re bribing us?” Bianca said.
“Yes, technically you could use that term,” Vivian said without missing a beat. “Technically, we’re incentivizing you to stay and finish the show.”
