Page 40 of Heart to Heart
“No. I will not be using my veto tonight.”
My eyes flew open, stunned. Around me, the others who’d made it through began celebrating in their own way. High-fiving, hugging, dancing in place in their sliver of space on the risers. Not celebrating were the five ladies going home: Melinda, Fiona, Hadley, Jennifer T., and Sofia, who were all dabbing at their eyes as though they’d just lost the love of their life in a man they’d only known for a matter of days. Well, all of them except Hadley, that is. Hadley looked like she’d just lost a game of Monopoly.
“Ladies, your journey ends here tonight. Take a moment to say your goodbyes,” Kamila ordered.
One by one, the women hugged those in the house they’d gotten to know. At the same time, the rest of us tried to mask our enthusiasm over having been chosen with empathetic frownsand polite waves as they descended the risers, hugging Tristan before they made their way back inside the house, where their things would be brought down to them, and they would be whisked away.
“And that concludes tonight’s elimination after what was one of the more memorable episodes inHeart to Hearthistory. These women have made quite the impression on Tristan. Will your favorite capture his heart, or will they be sent home heartbroken? Be sure to set your DVRs so you don’t miss a single episode of what I’m sure will be one of our most dynamic seasons ever. Good night.” With that, the camera cut off and Kamila let out a sigh of relief, kicking off their shoes and walking barefoot back into the mansion with their discarded shoes slung over their shoulders as they motioned for Tristan to join them.
“Post-production meeting,” Tristan said as though he owed any of us an explanation. “I’ll see you ladies tomorrow.” By that time, we’d all descended the risers, with several of the ladies eyeing Tristan as though he were water in a desert. “Good night.” With a shy smile at our collective group, he moved to follow Kamila, his legs catching up to them in just a few short strides while a chorus of “Goodnight, Tristans” carried him away.
“Now what?” Eleanor asked after we’d been standing around in the wake of what had been an adrenaline-fueled evening, each of us coming down from a high we’d never experienced before.
“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Courtney spoke up, “but my feet are killing me, and it’s so hot out here that I have sweat dripping between my boobs. As far as I’m concerned, last one to the pool gets voted off next episode!”
Two hours later,I was huddled in the shallow end of a swimming pool in my underwear, nursing my third frozen margarita with Sasha, Taylor, Brittney Q.,andBrittney L. because lord knows I couldn’t remember which Brittney was which sober. It only made sense that they both would be sitting next to each other now that I was a little south of that. It also didn’t help that neither of the two had been wearing any underwear when the decision was made surreptitiously by Courtney to haul balls to the pool. And so, as we ran to it, full of adrenaline from the night, peeling our gowns off in haste, our underwear, or lack thereof, wasn’t taken into consideration.
Thus, that’s the story of how I found myself getting to know more than I ever wanted to learn about two-thirds of the Brittneys in the house. I just thanked all the gods. I’d chosen my best underwear that wasn’t white.
At the other end of the pool, perched on patio chairs, were Bianca, Kennedy, Juliette, and Amelia—or, as Sasha dubbed them, the discount Mean Girls, Bianca being Regina George.
“Don’t worry about them,” Sasha said, sipping on her she’d-lost-count-a-handful-ago margarita. If I was in peril of becoming three sheets to the wind, she was the whole damn sail. Out of my peripheral, I noticed Bianca and her cronies giggling as they peered over at us. I didn’t need to be told who they were talking about. “Bianca is so damn jealous of you right now.”
“Yeah, right,” I scoffed, which came out as more of a snort. “I really don’t think that woman has ever been jealous of anyone in her entire life.”
“Oh, no,” Brittney Q. said, “she’s rattled. She’s never been anything other than number one at anything. If she wasn’t bothered by it, she wouldn’t feel the need to talk about you. You’ve threatened her and, quite frankly, I’m here for it.” She stood up, and before I could react, I wasn’t looking into her eyes anymore.
Had the audience gotten to see the uncensored wardrobe malfunction that had befallen Brittney Q., she would have been number one instead of me.
“Rumor has it, we’re going on a field trip somewhere in the Santa Monica Mountains,” Taylor said, sipping on her water, making her probably the most responsible one of us here, aside from those ladies who went to bed already.
“That’s what I heard, too.” Felicity sat down poolside, dipping her legs into the water. “I overheard Kamila telling one of the drivers to be ready by ten tomorrow morning.”
“That fits,” Sasha agreed, nodding. “They want us downstairs and ready by then in–what did they say? Biking attire?”
“I heard it was hiking,” Brittney Q. chimed in.
“Neither one of those sounds very pleasant to me,” Brittney L. sighed, making it the first and probably last time I would agree with her.
“No matter what it is, we’re all going to have to bring our A-game,” Felicity added, “Bianca is on the warpath to get that first one-on-one date with Tristan after being bested by Avery here.”
“See,” Sasha said, elbowing me, “I told you she was jealous.
“Oh, yes,” Felicity nodded, her expression, ironically, reminding me a little of Amanda Seyfried’s character Karen fromMean Girls. “I mean, maybe not jealous. She just thinks you staged the whole tripping thing.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, incredulously. “Because utter humiliation was just the angle I was going for.”
Felicity shrugged. “She thinks it was more from a sympathy angle.”
“Like Avery just so happened to cut her own heel and Brittney Q.’s dress. Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense,” Sasha scoffed.
“It was probably Bianca who sabotaged them,” Taylor suggested, and by the look on Felicity’s face, I knew that was going to get back to the clearance Mean Girls by the end of the night.
However as I glanced up at Bianca, meeting her scowling face, a part of me was beginning to think that wasn’t true at all, and maybe there was someone else in the house who was the real deal Regina George, after all.
CHAPTER 22
AVERY
