‘Two steps ahead of you, mate. I’ve put that on the schedule for tomorrow, after your single date with Jess D. The whole you-can’t-leave-even-when-you’re-eliminated thing is a real twist, so we wanted to shoot some stuff with you and the Convent women for Episode Two anyway.’
The expression on Romeo-Dylan’s face was pained. ‘I…’
You didn’t need to be as good at reading non-verbal signals as I was to understand what he was too polite to say.
‘You want to go now,’ I said.
‘I need to see for myself that she’s all right.’
The beautiful vision of a sandwich and some sleep shattered into a million pieces.
‘All right. We’ve got a couple of hours. We’ll make it work.’
It was unfair of me to be irritated with him. His mix of compliance and eloquence was all I could ever ask for in a Romeo. His need for reassurance was completely understandable, and it wasn’t his fault I no longer had a partner to split duties with.
I was still irritated, though.
I sent him off to wardrobe to get de-Darcy’d, rounded up some crew, and poured about eight litres of coffee downmy throat, before I headed down to the Convent to warn the eliminated Juliets that the Romeo was on his way.
Rani and Samantha were thrilled to hear that their reality TV careers weren’t quite over yet. ‘Is there any chance he might pick someone to bring back into the game?’ Samantha asked. ‘We’re still here, after all. It’d be silly not to give him that chance.’
‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ I replied.
It was a good idea, though. I made a mental note to circle back around to it once more Juliets had been eliminated.
‘Where’s Cece?’
‘Upstairs,’ Rani said. ‘She’s been sleeping all day.’
The level of jealousy that caused me was deeply unprofessional.
I had a vision for how I wanted the two scenes to play out. Once Romeo-Dylan arrived, I set him up with Rani and Samantha so he could explain to them, and thus the audience, what the new pandemic restrictions meant, and why the women in the Convent weren’t allowed to leave.
With Cece, I intended for him to have the breakup conversation I’d wanted to do the night before. Instead of information, I wanted this chat to carry emotion. ‘We want the audience to see that you eliminated her for the kindest possible reason,’ I coached Romeo-Dylan. ‘And we want them to see that you care about her wellbeing despite there being nothing romantic between you.’
‘Why wouldn’t I care about her wellbeing? She’s still a person.’
‘I’m going to shoot pickup ITMs for this tomorrow, and I want you to say exactly that.’
‘Is that really Prince Charming shit?’
How had this man reached the age of thirty-one and remained this naïve?
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘This is a broad-strokes medium. Here, men giving a shit about women they’re not intending to fuck is extremely Prince Charming shit. The bar is that low.’
That last sentence turned out to be a terrible mistake.
Maybe if I’d had five minutes of sleep in the last two days, I would have remembered that even though Dylan Jayasinghe Mellor was the kindest man on earth, he was also an Olympian, and thus had a huge competitive streak. You didn’t put a bar in front of a man like that and expect him to simply step over it when he could leap.
Cece struggled when they sat down, stammering her way through sentences, undone by the presence of the cameras. Romeo-Dylan suggested that he take her outside for a few moments, and I agreed. Lily had always been the one who pulled good cop duty in our partnership. Romeo-Dylan’s magnetic niceness had a better chance of calming Cece down than most of my methods.
I thought it had worked. When they came back in, they shot a near-perfect conversation.
But then, when we wrapped, they pitched an idea to me so utterly unhinged my brain nearly exploded.
‘You want to befake friends?’
‘It doesn’t need to be fake,’ Romeo-Dylan said. ‘I think we can be real friends.’
