Page 51 of Forever is the Sweetest Con
“Hook-ups.”
“Yes. Then, I don’t know, time just passed and stuff happened and then I was on a plane to Thunder Bay for this show.”
I stop, dropping my handle. “Stuff happened and then you were here? So you’re not actually broken up?”
“No, we definitely are. It’s been months since we last spoke, but there just was no defining moment when it ended, I guess.”
We stand there, staring at one another, a stalemate. I pick up my handle again and start walking.
“Cleo,” he says, following behind me. “I really like you, but…” He sighs.
“What?”
“I feel like I owe it to myself to take this opportunity to actually talk to Allie about it. Get some closure or something.”
We arrive at the dumpsters, which are ridiculously large. It takes almost all my strength to hoist the heavy bags up and over the edge. Kei offers to help—he tosses them in like they’re beach balls—but I refuse.
I have to ask the question, even though I fear the answer. “Do you still have feelings for her?”
He rubs his forehead, pressing into his eyebrows with his thumb and middle finger. “I don’t know. I need to figure that out.”
“You couldn’t have figured that out before now?”
“I should have. I thought I had. But now that she’s here, it’s complicated. There was a lot left unsaid.”
I wonder what’s being left unsaid right now.
“I’m sorry, Cleo, but I want to take her on the date.”
There it is.
“That’s cool,” I say, hoping my mic doesn’t pick up on the slight choke in my voice. “It’s fine. I mean, whatever. We’re not even together, it’s not that deep.”
My heart sinks when I see the hurt on Kei’s face. But then I remember he’s faking it. Just like I am. I’m only pretending to care, and so is he.
It’s just all so confusing.
Maybe it’s for the best. I’ve been getting too attached to him, anyway. The less I care, the better chance I have at winning. Or something like that. Whatever. As long as he still plans to end up at the finale with me, then none of this matters.
It’s for the best.
It really is.
This is exactly how I want it to go.
Chapter Twenty
Even though I’m totally one hundred percent satisfied with how things are going, my daily swim isn’t hitting the way it usually does. I’m thrashing through the water of the lake, desperately trying to work some of this angst out of my body. But it’s not until I stumble to shore on jelly legs and collapse onto the rocks that I start to feel my head clear a little bit.
I’m such a dumbass, letting myself develop this stupid crush.
But maybe it’s not the worst thing. Maybe the authenticity will work to my advantage. As long as I don’t let my feelings get any deeper. I just can’t ever lose sight of the fact that Kei is playing a game, and every sweet smile, every time he pulls me close, every time he gives me that look, the one where it feels like he’s peering into my soul—it’s all just a part of his strategy. As long as I keep that fact in mind, I can keep this contained as a harmless crush.
An hour later, back at the flagpole, Kei tells the world we’ve decided to go on the dates with our POPPs. I smile through the pang of jealousy and say that surviving this test will only make us stronger, exactly as I’m supposed to.
In true Camp Couple-Up style, the dates are a janky production designed to minimize costs and maximize drama. Instead of planning five separate dates for all the couples, we’re having simultaneous sunsetpicnics at the lake. Isa and his POPP, Phoebe, and Kei and Alessandra are set up on picnic blankets on the beach, while Sue-Ellen, Trina, me, and our POPPs are all having picnics in canoes, tethered about fifteen feet offshore. Teddy and two other cameramen dart between the couples, working their best creative camera angles to make it look like we’re all on separate dates.
My POPP, Jesse, is a body-building veterinarian from Massachusetts. He’s good-looking in an inoffensive, nondescript sort of way, with short, sandy blond hair and a deep divot in his chin. He pours me a generous glass of wine and offers me a chocolate-covered strawberry. Teddy appears, his pants rolled up his calves, to catch our toast.
