Sienna broke eye contact just as Vivian said, “And the two lucky contestants are Lucille and Imani.”
Chapter Seven
Vivian leaned her elbows on the railing of the main lodge deck. The boards were damp. Her hair too. But she didn’t care. The air had finally cooled to a more manageable temperature, and she wasn’t sweating from every pore. That had to count for something.
She stared ahead. The valley looked scrubbed clean after the storm. The acacia leaves glistened as if they’d been polished, puddles mirrored the now blue sky, and the air had that sweet, heavy scent that came after rain.
It reminded her of summers in Florida when she visited her grandmother as a kid every Sunday. They’d stand outside, collect rainwater in two old buckets that her grandmother then used to flush the toilet. Whatever was left, they would use to water the army of houseplants scattered throughout her modest three-room house. For as long as Vivian could remember, her grandmother hadn’t had much money. But as it turned out, when she had died, she actually had plenty. And all of it had been left to Vivian. Which was how she’d managed to move to Los Angeles and rent a little one-bedroom apartment off Franklin Avenue with a view of the Hollywood sign. Well, she could see it when she craned her neck from the balcony. She had stood staring at that sign as she’d promised herself she’d become a star.
Hosting a sapphic dating show wasn’t exactly what she had in mind. But then again, just because you had a dream to walk out of the ocean in a bikini like Halle Berry—Halle was Vivian’s first girl crush—with all those cameras fawning over her inDie Another Daydidn’t mean it was going to happen. She had learned that the hard way.
“Girls are off at the spa,” Elise said, sidling up beside her. She gathered her curls in a bun but then gave up halfway and just ended up shaking her head until they fell freely onto her shoulders. “Everyone else is in their tents winding down before tonight’s ceremony. Sara wanted to do some shots of them at the pool, but I shut that down. This show isn’t some frat boy’s Instagram feed.”
Vivian nodded. She agreed.The Sapphic Matchwas supposed to be glamorous. It was supposed to empower women—though often times she wondered how making women compete for love counted as empowerment. And it was supposed to remind every lonely woman out there that love was possible if you just took one gigantic leap.
Elise sighed and flopped against the railing. She draped her arms over the wood like a kid who wasn’t tall enough to see the view on the other side. Which she wasn’t. Elise barely scraped five feet three inches.
“What’s going on with you?” Vivian asked, frowning.
They didn’t usually chit-chat like this. On a good day, Elise was bossing Vivian around, and Vivian was either rolling her eyes or cursing her behind her back. Something was going on. But what?
“Nothing,” Elise said so fast she snapped upright. “I’m perfectly fine. Everything is going just as expected. Tonight we’re doing the first rose ceremony. You know how it is. You hope the right girls stay and the sparks keep sparkling and Sienna doesn’t send home the fan favorite on night one.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes,” Elise said, nodding. “What else is there?”
Vivian didn’t believe her. But she couldn’t prove it either, or push for details, because suddenly Maurine came charging through the open doors onto the deck. She was squat and stocky, with salt and pepper hair she liked to keep short. Shewas dressed in faded blue jeans folded at the hem, a plain white T-shirt, and bright red Converse All-Stars on her feet. Over her shoulder hung a battered brown medical bag with a small rainbow flag sticker in the bottom right-hand corner that was beginning to peel.
“Where’s the spa?” she barked, scanning the deck as if she hoped it would materialize right in front of her. “This place is a fricken maze.”
Vivian leaned back against the railing and didn’t mind the wood poking into her spine. “What happened?” she asked, feeling just the tiniest pang of worry deep in her stomach. Maurine was the show’s resident doctor, and since she only ever came out of hiding when there was trouble, someone was either hurt, sick, or dead. There was never an in-between.
“Hot stone accident, apparently,” Maurine said, walking toward them. She exhaled loudly and squinted against the sun that somehow seemed brighter than ever.
“Who?” Vivian asked, and then suddenly she was imagining Sienna lying face down on the massage table, naked, with four neat little smoking holes scorched into her back. She shuddered. Then she told herself it could be any of the other contestants.Accidents happen to everyone, not just to clumsy people.
But then Maurine said, “The bachelorette.”
Vivian swallowed down a groan. “You’re joking, right? First the head thing and now this. What’s next fo—”
“How did it happen?” Elise interrupted. She was all business now, her producer voice kicking in. Which made sense. The last thing they needed was a lawsuit. Or an ambulance pulling up in front of the lodge. Although Vivian had a feeling the only way to an emergency room was to be airlifted there. At the rate Sienna was going, they might as well ready the choppers.
Maurine ran a hand across the back of her neck. She pressed her already thin lips even thinner. “Apparently, she accidentally bumped the temperature dial on the stone heater. Turned it all the way up. The therapist didn’t notice until she started setting the coals on her back.”
“Were the cameras rolling?” Elise asked.
“What does that matter?” Vivian asked before she could catch herself.
Elise ignored her, which Vivian found deeply aggravating, especially coming from someone short enough that she could easily rest an elbow on. “I just need to know how bad this is,” she said tightly. “Because if we have the footage—”
“You’re not going to use the footage, are you?” Vivian interrupted.
“Of course not,” Elise snapped, but the look on her face said otherwise, and Vivian, frankly, wasn’t convinced Elise wouldn’t use the footage. Which was why she very nearly launched into a speech about basic human decency and the exploitation of a woman’s suffering for ratings, because come on, Elise, nothing ever justified turning someone’s first-degree burns into prime-time content.
But then Maurine cut in. “Can someone please tell me where the hell I need to go. Where’s the spa? And don’t say it’s back in there,” she jabbed a thumb toward the main lodge doors. “Because I just came from in there.”
“I know where it is. I’ll show you,” Vivian said before she could think of any reason not to. Although once the words were out, she could think of several reasons she shouldn’t follow Maurine to the spa, and one of them was the way Elise was suddenly looking at her, like she was wondering why.
