For Real (24 page)

He’s quiet for a minute, and then he says, “It’s kind of embarrassing.”

“I’m, like, the queen of embarrassing. I can handle it.”

“I know you can
handle
it, but—”

I cut him off. “When we were on the plane to Java, you made me tell you a secret, and you never told me one back, so now you owe me. It’s only fair.”

He sighs. “Fine. But you can’t judge me.”

“I’d never judge you.”

“Okay. So, one of my friends is a PA for this show, and when she started working on it back in the winter, she told me all about it. And I mean
all
about it.”

It takes me a second to figure out what he’s saying, but then my mouth drops open. “You
knew
this was a dating show?” No wonder he didn’t look surprised when Isis revealed the twist at the starting line.

“Yeah. Please don’t tell anyone. They’d probably fire my friend.”

“I won’t. But … I’m sorry, you seriously came here to meet
girls
?”

“I knew you’d laugh at me.” He looks down at his shoes.

“No! No, it’s just … you couldn’t meet girls at home? You’re in college. In New York City. There are literally four million women there. And you’re”—I make a vague gesture up and down his body—“
you
. You can’t possibly have trouble meeting girls.” This is more than I intended to say, and I’m blushing like crazy, but I’m pretty sure he can’t tell in the dark.

“Well, I also wanted a free trip around the world, but it didn’t hurt to know that I’d get to meet some extremely kick-ass women. I mean, sure, there are a lot of
attractive
girls at school, but it’s hard to find someone who’s interesting past the surface, you know? I wanted to find someone deep and adventurous and brave, who’s willing to step out of her comfort zone and try new things, even if it scares her.” He looks right into my eyes. “And I have.”

I’m totally speechless. Nobody has ever called me a kick-ass woman before. Nobody has ever called me deep or adventurous or brave, either. Is that really what Will sees when he looks at me? Is that what millions of viewers will see when they watch the show? Even if I don’t feel like that girl, is it possible I’ve started to become her without even noticing?

After a few seconds, when I still haven’t said anything, Will drops his eyes again. “I told you it was embarrassing.”

“
No
. It’s not. Not at all.” I reach out and touch his arm.
I want to thank him for the compliment, but you can’t really say
Thanks for noticing how awesome I am
. So I settle for “I’m glad you, um, found what you were looking for.”

“Me too.” He smiles. “Ready to keep walking?”

He links his arm through mine, like he’s more comfortable touching me now that he’s told me how he feels, and he leads us to the left. We haven’t seen any other people up until this point, but on the corner of the next block, we spot a restaurant that’s still open. It looks exactly like a restaurant in Greece should look—the outside is painted bright white, and the plaster walls are crumbling slightly at the corners to reveal the bricks underneath. The planters out front overflow with red flowers that are blooming so enthusiastically it’s almost indecent. Even though it’s the middle of the night, the place is jam-packed, full of flickering candlelight and music and laughter. I tiptoe closer and peer through the window.

There’s some sort of party going on; most of the tables have been removed, and couples are dancing in the middle of the parquet floor. Many of the women look a little unsteady in their heels, and waiters in black circulate through the crowd with bottles of wine, compounding the problem. Best of all, everyone is wearing masks sparkling with sequins and adorned with ribbons and feather plumes the colors of tropical birds. It’s a real, live masquerade party, straight out of a movie. This place looks like my heart feels right now—glittery and bright and whimsical.

“That looks like so much fun,” I whisper to Will.

“We should go in.”

“I’m sure it’s someone’s private party. They’d realize they don’t know us right away and throw us out.”

“Maybe not if we were wearing these.” He holds up two masks.

I gape at him. “Where did you get those?” Tonight feels so magical that it seems possible he’s conjured them out of the air.

“They were in the planter. Someone must have left them when they went home.”

One of the masks is small, covered in plain black sequins, like a really shiny bandit mask. The other is shaped like a butterfly and decorated with iridescent blue and green feathers. Three gorgeous peacock plumes swoop up from beside each eye hole, and I trace their softness with my finger.

Will holds it out to me. “Here, try it on.”

I slip the elastic band around the back of my head. It takes a minute to get the mask settled over my glasses, but when it’s in place, I feel more like the kick-ass woman Will was describing earlier. “How do I look?”

“Dazzling.” He puts on the bandit mask. “And me?”

“Kind of like … a bank robber from a Broadway musical.”

“In a good way, I assume.”

“How could that possibly be bad?”

He smiles and holds out an arm to me. “So, shall we?”

I thought we were just playing, but I realize now that he’s serious about crashing this party. “Will, we can’t
actually
go in. I’m wearing yoga pants. You have a Batman logo on your shirt. This is, like, a fancy-rich-people party. We don’t belong here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The mysterious Lady Dominique belongs anywhere she damn well pleases.” He takes my hand, does an exaggerated bow over it, and presses his lips to my knuckles. I feel it through my whole body, and I giggle.

“Okay, seriously, though. We’re just going to waltz through the front door? Someone’s going to notice. See that big guy with the clipboard? He might be a bouncer.”

Will shrugs. “Then I guess we better find the back door.”

Before I can protest, he grabs my arm and leads me around the back of the building, where there’s a parking lot full of cars and catering vans. “That probably leads to the kitchen,” he says, pointing at an unmarked metal door in the corner. “Follow me.” Tiptoeing like he really is a bank robber, he slinks through the shadows toward the door and tugs on it. It’s locked, of course.

“Let’s just wait here for a few minutes and see if anyone comes out,” he whispers. “I used to work for a catering company, and we were always forgetting stuff in the van.” He crouches down against the restaurant’s back wall and gestures for me to sit beside him.

“We really don’t have to do this,” I say. “We could get in trouble. What if the network finds out and sends us home?”

“How could that happen? Nobody here knows who we are. They don’t know we’re from the race. If they catch us, they’ll toss us out, and we’ll be right back where we are now, only with a good story. What do we have to lose?”

He’s right. I love that he’s not content with pretending and playing it safe and looking in on adventures from the outside. It’s frightening to be with someone who’s always testing the
limits and pushing things to the next level, but it’s also totally thrilling. I want more than anything to be worthy of this, to be that brave girl Will thinks I am. So I crouch down next to him, close enough that our shoulders are touching, and we wait for our opportunity to slip into the unknown.

Will’s hat must really be lucky, because barely five minutes have passed before a frazzled-looking guy in an apron emerges and jogs toward one of the vans. Will’s on his feet in a flash, and he manages to catch the kitchen door. Before I have time to make a conscious choice, I’m slipping inside behind him.

The kitchen is at least fifteen degrees warmer than the outside air, and it’s swarming with a chaotic mob of caterers opening bottles and plating appetizers. Will leads me behind a rolling rack of silver trays and pulls me back down into a crouch. “Can you see the door to the dining room?” he whispers.

I peek around the edge of the rack and see a server pushing through a set of double doors on the other side of the room. “I think so,” I whisper back. “But there are, like, twenty people between here and there. We can’t exactly make a run for it.”

The doors slam open, and a red-faced man storms in and starts shouting in Greek. I don’t understand a word he’s saying, but it’s obvious none of it is friendly. I grip Will’s arm and squeeze farther behind the rack. “That guy is going to eat us,” I whisper.

A slow smile spreads across Will’s face. “Don’t worry, everything’s fine.”

The voice is getting closer now, and a few feet from us
a metal tray crashes to the floor so hard it must have been thrown. “Will, I
really
think we should go.”

He shakes his head. “No need. It’s time for Plan B.”

Before I can ask what Plan B is, Will grabs my shoulders, pulls me out from behind the rack, and presses me up against a refrigerator in full view of the entire catering staff. And then his arms are around me, and his mouth is on mine.

Will Divine is kissing me
.

My brain’s first reaction is to panic—I’m so completely unprepared for this—but my body has other ideas. Before I’ve even processed what’s happening, I’m pulling him closer and kissing him back, just like I did in my dream last night. His hand slides up my spine and cradles the back of my neck, and I fear I might melt into a Claire-shaped puddle on the floor. His mouth is soft and urgent, teasing my lips apart, and he tastes like peppermint. Nerve endings I didn’t even know I had ignite like matches as my fingers slip under his hat and tangle in his hair. I never, ever want this to stop.

Not nearly enough time has passed before I hear the angry Greek voice again, and a pair of rough hands separates us. My mask has been knocked askew, but out of half an eyehole, I see Angry Catering Guy, flecks of spit flying from his mouth as he bellows at us in Greek. I look around frantically, unsure which way to run.

But Will seems totally calm, even as Angry Catering Guy grips him by the front of his T-shirt with fingers thick as salamis.
“Miláte angliká?”
Will asks innocently. It means “Do you speak English?”—it’s the one Greek phrase we got our cabdriver to teach us on the way from the airport to
the beach. I have no idea how Will was able to remember it under pressure.

Angry Catering Guy looks confused for a second, and then his face turns the color of a boiled beet. “Stupid kid!” he sputters. “No! No kiss here!
Out!
”

He shoves us toward the dining room. Will grabs my arm, and we stumble across the kitchen, through the doors, and straight into the party.

“Yes!” Will whisper-screams. He pumps the air with his fist, then picks me up and spins me around. “That was brilliant!
You
were brilliant! Well played, Claire.”

I wasn’t playing
, I want to say as he sets me back on my feet, and for a second, I worry that the kiss was just a ploy, not a romantic gesture. Maybe he would’ve kissed anyone with that same passionate intensity if it meant getting into the party. Then again, I’m not sure it’s possible to fake those kinds of feelings. Maybe he’d been wanting to kiss me since we started off on our walk, and he was just waiting for the perfect dramatic moment. The way he’s looking at me now, his eyes full of excitement and tenderness, makes me believe it was real.

I hope my mask covers enough of my face that he can’t see how flustered I am. “Good Plan B,” I say, still a little out of breath.

Will reaches out and unwinds a strand of my hair from the peacock plumes on my mask. “Sorry, I tangled you up a little.”

He certainly did. “That’s okay,” I breathe.

His lucky hat is slightly askew where I pushed my fingers under it. I think about fixing it for him, but I like being able
to see the evidence of our kiss on his body, so I leave it as it is. A word pops into my head to describe how I feel as I gaze at him:
smitten
. It’s hardly my fault. Whole religions have been founded around divine beings smiting things.

Will smiles as he looks around the room. “This party looks even better from the inside, huh?”

I’ve been so focused on him that I haven’t even bothered to look around. But it
is
pretty amazing. There’s a live band in the corner, a guitarist and a drummer and a guy playing what might be a mandolin, all of them singing in warm, caramel-rich voices. There are about a billion candles on the bar and the small tables lining the edges of the room, and the orange glow makes everyone look young and beautiful. The smells of meat and fried cheese and alcohol waft through the air and vie for my attention.

Quietly, Will slips his hand into mine and holds it tightly. Before this moment, he’s only ever held my hand to quell a panic attack, but it feels natural to do it just for the sheer pleasure of pressing our palms together. It feels like something we do every day.

Someday, I hope it will be.

A waiter glides by, lithe as a shadow, and puts a glass of red wine into my hand like I’m just another guest. I don’t really like wine, but I hold on to the crystal goblet anyway—it makes me feel more sophisticated, more like I’m part of things. I know I’m an impostor here, among all these elegant Greek women and laughing men in expensive suits. But at this moment, with the candlelight dancing on my face and my fingers twined with Will’s, I feel like I could belong anywhere.