Page 72 of Playing With Matches
“Ding ding ding! We have a winner!” Rory points at Jackson. “But also - this date is a win for me. I’m good to go with this footage. The editor will be happy; he has plenty to work with.”
“What about Owen and Paula?” Jackson asks hopefully.
“I hope they had fun. We had the hardest time coming up with their date,” I admit.
“Because she’s blind?” Rory asks.
“No, I mean, yes… that was part of it. But I just had a hard time picturing them doing an activity that they might bond over.”
“So where did you send them?” Jackson asks.
“Nowhere,” I say. “They stayed here at the resort. We finally settled on a sand-sculpting lesson. They were going to create sculptures of one another, and then they were supposed to share some homemade ice cream on the beach. How’d it go?”
“Meh.Superawkward. Although it did get a little interesting towards the end,” Rory smirks.
“The ice cream?” I ask, hopefully.
“No, turns out Paula is lactose intolerant, so we had to cancel that.”
Rory pulls up the footage of Owen patting sand onto a stiff and uncomfortable Paula.
“Yiiiiikes,” Jackson says. “She doesnotlook happy.”
She fast forwards to an equally cringeworthy peek of Paula fumbling and accidentally putting sand on Owen’s face.
“Most of it was like this. They were both stressed about touching each other, like, at all.”
“Oof,” Jackson says. “That is not good.”
“It’s not ideal, but cringe has its place on reality TV, too,” Rory says. “Some would say it’s almost as good as the mushy stuff. Cringe is a lot of people’s kink,” she pauses to consider this for a moment before continuing more animatedly. “Anyways, right before they finished,thisrandomly happened.”
Rory fast-forwards and rewinds till she gets to the precise clip she wants to show us. Paula is still sitting on the beach, alone this time, and Marco comes to sit next to her. The two of them talk for a bit.
“She talked to Marco?” Jackson says. “Big deal.”
“No, hang on,” Rory goes forward about twenty seconds, and we see Paula feeling Marco’s face, in slow, elaborate, painful detail. She runs her fingers over his left eyebrow, then his right, then both, as if comparing. Eyes, nose, lips, cheek, jaw, teeth.
“He just sat there for all that?” Jackson is incredulous. “Why?”
“Marco is a sweet guy,” I defend him. “I think you got the wrong impression of him.”
“She said she was ‘memorizing his face,’“ Rory says. “And then she did this – I’ll just show you the picture, it’s easier.” Rory pulls out her phone and shows us Paula sitting next to a beautifully detailed sand sculpture - of Marco’s face. It’s a perfect likeness.
“Holy shit, Paula made that?” Jackson’s jaw drops.
“Yeah,” Rory laughs. “Imagine how pissed off the resort’s ‘expert’ was to discover the student was better than the teacher.”
“Wow,” I marvel at the likeness. “That is amazing.”
“Hang on a minute? Where was Owen while all that stuff was going on?” Jackson asks Rory.
“I think he went to get something to drink. He said he was starting to feel a little lightheaded from the heat, and he took off as soon as their lesson was done. Anyways, I don’t think Paula minded.”
Rory turns the TV monitor off. “All in all, I think it was a good day. I don’t know about long-term commitments but I think we got plenty of footage for the show.”
“Well,” I say to Rory. “That’s great news.” I turn to Jackson. “Isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Jackson says. He stands to go.
