For Real (25 page)

We return to the beach just in time to see the sky brighten into a mural of pastel colors over the ocean. As the rest of the teams begin to pack up their sleeping bags, I lean against the wooden gate next to Will and stare out at the waves, happier than I’ve ever been. Though I know it’s a cliché to watch the sun rise over the ocean with someone you’ve just kissed, that doesn’t make it any less romantic. I wish he’d kiss me again now, but I understand why he’d be more hesitant in front of the cameras and the other teams. So I press my shoulder against his, knowing I’m starting my day right where I should be, and wait for that first perfect sliver of sun to slip over the horizon and bathe us in gold.

But it doesn’t come. The sky is pretty light now, and I finally say, “So … where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“The sun.”

Will stares at me. “Seriously? We’re facing west, genius.”

So much for romance. I try to think of a snappy comeback so he’ll think I was kidding, but before I can, a Greek man with a droopy mustache arrives along with two producers.
I’m grateful for the distraction, and we move away from the gate so he can unlock it. When he pulls a stack of pink envelopes out of his back pocket, all twelve of us pour out onto the sand and surround him like puppies eager for our breakfast. Miranda’s standing near me, and I try to catch her eye, but she avoids my gaze like I’m not even here.

Well, fine. If that’s how today is going to be, I’ll ignore her right back. If she wants self-sufficient Claire, that’s what she’ll get. I turn my back to her as I rip open our instructions, just to make a point.

Before a Greek wedding, it is traditional for a bride to pull a teenage boy into her lap and bite a biscuit ring hanging around his neck. In this challenge, the male competitor must wear a pastry ring around his neck, and the female competitor must eat it off of him without using her hands. You must complete this challenge while riding double on a horse. Proceed five hundred meters north along the beach, where you will find your pastries and mounts
.

For a second, I stand there considering the summer I was supposed to have, serving soy chai lattes to the yuppies of Braeburn. In my wildest, weirdest dreams, I could never have imagined that I’d end up on horseback on television, licking pastry crumbs off Will Divine. I so wish I could press pause and call Natalie.

“Do you think these bizarre wedding traditions are even real, or is the network just inventing stuff to make us look stupid?” Will asks as we head up the beach.

I automatically reach for my phone so I can look it up before I realize it’s in New York, not in my back pocket. “I miss the Internet,” I say.

“In any case, this is totally unfair. How come I don’t get any pastry? I’m starving.”

“They must know you’re watching your girlish figure,” I say, and he sticks out his tongue at me. It’s amazing how relaxed I feel right now—four days ago, I would have been dying of embarrassment at the thought of this challenge. Maybe I still would be if I were paired with someone else. But things are different with Will, who has welcomed my closeness even off camera. Now that he’s shown how much he genuinely likes me, this doesn’t seem scary at all.

Will and I choose a brown horse with a white star on its nose, and he stays with its handler while I retrieve our pastry ring. I’m not sure what to expect, but they turn out to look like necklaces sculpted from glazed pretzel dough. There’s some confusion as the producers distribute them—apparently, Tawny needs a special gluten-free ring—but I finally return to Will with the pastry. It’s still warm and dripping with honey, and it smells amazing. “So, I guess I should just … put this on you,” I say. “You might want to take your hat off.”

Will tucks the lucky hat into his pocket, then pokes at the dough to test its consistency. “Oh God, this is really sticky.”

I’m not sure what comes over me, but I suddenly want to see how far I can push things between us. “Maybe you should take your shirt off, too,” I say.

If Will is surprised by my boldness, he doesn’t show it.
He just smiles and says, “You’re in charge,” then peels off his shirt and tosses it onto his pack. The other day at the pool, I was careful to look away before he caught me staring. But this time, I unabashedly drink in the sight of his bare torso, which glows in the early-morning sun. He’s so gorgeous I can barely stand it. I slip the ring over his head and settle it against his collarbones, letting my hands linger against his skin a little longer than necessary.

A couple other teams are already up on their horses, the girls behind the guys. Janine’s having no trouble taking bites out of Steve’s pastry necklace, since she’s eighty feet tall, but Zora is much shorter than Martin, and she can’t even reach his neck unless he leans way back in the saddle. They barely seem to be staying on their horse as their handler leads them down the beach at a slow walk. “I think I should go in front and face you,” I say.

“Ooh, smart. Are you okay riding backward?”

“I trust you to keep me from falling,” I say.

We explain to our handler what we want to do, and he helps us up into the double saddle. I can’t put my feet in the stirrups in this position, but Will grips my legs tightly with his and holds onto the pommel behind me, and once I put my hands on his waist to steady myself, I feel pretty secure. When the horse starts walking, rocking us gently back and forth, I can feel Will’s muscles shifting under my hands as he works to balance us. His face is very close to mine, and he stares right into my eyes—if I leaned forward a few inches, I could close the gap between us. I have to work very hard not to look at his mouth.

“Ready when you are,” he says.

I lean forward and take my first bite of the dough necklace. It’s soft and sweet, and it melts in my mouth like a croissant. When I lick a drop of honey off Will’s neck, he draws in his breath sharply, and I feel intoxicatingly powerful. I can tell how hard his heart is beating, and mine speeds up in response.

“No, God, Samir! See how Claire’s doing it?” I hear my sister’s voice say behind us. “Why don’t you ever listen to me?” She sounds like she’s on the verge of tossing him off their horse and into the ocean, and for a second I feel bad for her. But that doesn’t dampen my excitement that she’s just held me up as an example on camera for the first time. The pastry in my mouth suddenly tastes even more delicious.

I make the challenge last as long as I reasonably can, but when I see Miranda and Samir getting off their horse, I hurry up and take my last few bites. When I finish and smile up at Will, he’s looking at me with wonder in his eyes. “That was
hot
, Dominique,” he whispers. But until he says it, my brave, sexy alter ego hadn’t even crossed my mind. I haven’t needed her today—it’s always been plain old Claire up on this horse. And Will Divine
still
thinks I’m hot.

Our handler helps us down and hands us our next envelope, and I rip it open as Will pulls his shirt and hat back on.

Make your way by train to Corinth. At the station, choose one of the marked Around the World cars and drive yourself to Acrocorinth, where you will find the ruins of the Temple of Aphrodite. Here, you must snip a small lock of your hair as a sacrifice to the goddess of love and fertility, then make a private romantic wish
.

There’s a new buzz of intimacy between Will and me now, and I wonder if our crew guys can feel the electricity zinging through the air as we crush into a cab and head toward the train station. I know I’m probably getting a little ahead of myself, but as we board the train to Corinth, I can’t help daydreaming about the future. Will has one more year at NYU, but Braeburn’s only four hours from the city, and we could easily visit each other on weekends. And during the week, we could Skype and email and text. If we wanted to, we could make it work. Will sits with his thigh pressed against mine, and every time he smiles at me, heat rushes through my body. If it weren’t for the cameras, I’m pretty sure we’d be all over each other right now, regardless of all the Greek strangers around us.

The ride to Corinth is so beautiful the scenery doesn’t even look real. There’s a steep drop-off alongside the tracks that leads right down to the ocean, which is the same bright blue as Will’s eyes, and if I squint I can see a smattering of islands shimmering in the distance. At the station, we buy a road map and choose one of the cars waiting for us in the parking lot. Will slips behind the wheel, and I climb in back to navigate, wishing I could sit beside him and hold his hand. Not all the street signs have English transliterations, so we get lost a few times, but we eventually find the turn-off to Acrocorinth and creep up the steep hill toward the massive citadel perched on top.

It’s a good thing we choose to leave our packs in the trunk, because even the climb from the parking area to the first gate is shockingly steep. We pass through two more huge gates, and then we’re inside, zigzagging up through the crumbling ruins. The sandy stone walls and turrets look like they’re growing straight out of the rocky hillside, and flowers have taken root between the stones, adding bright, startling flashes of red and yellow and purple. Will and I are too out of breath to talk as we climb, but after everything that’s happened last night and this morning, I still feel like we’re connected even when we’re silent. The sun is warm and the breeze is perfect, and for a while, it’s easy to forget about the cameras and imagine that we’re out hiking together just for fun. When Martin and Zora pass us on the way back to their car and give us a friendly wave, I wonder if they can sense how things have changed between us.

The view from the summit is totally worth the effort—miles and miles of ocean and city and distant mountains are spread out before us like a patchwork quilt. A single pillar of the ancient temple stands at the peak of the hill, and a producer in a pink shirt has set up a makeshift studio at its base. Miranda is sitting across from her, making her wish, and Samir is waiting off to the side, meticulously picking tiny pieces of lint off his shirt. “You want to go first or should I?” I ask Will when the two of them start heading back down, ignoring both us and each other.

“You can go,” he says, so I climb the slope and snip a small piece of my hair into the wooden bowl at the base of the pillar. Then I sit down in the folding chair across from the
producer, a woman with a million tiny dreads and lipstick so dark it’s almost black.

“Hi, Claire,” she says. “What I need from you is a wish that has to do with love or romance. It can be anything you want, but the more specific you are, the more exciting it’ll be for our viewers. For example, if there’s another racer you’re interested in, now would be a great time to mention it. Do you need a minute to think about it?”

“No,” I tell her. “I know what I want to say.”

“Great. The camera’s rolling, so go ahead whenever you’re ready.”

I look straight into the lens. “I wish that Will Divine and I can be a real couple once this race is over,” I say, loud and clear. “He’s the most amazing guy I’ve ever met, and he seems to like me, too. I want him to be my boyfriend.” It’s the first time I’ve voiced that thought out loud, and it feels terrifying and wonderful in equal measures.

The producer beams at me. “That’s perfect, Claire. You’re all set. Go ahead and send Will up.”

Will’s gone for a lot longer than I was. He and the producer seem to be having a heated discussion, but even when I edge closer, I can’t hear what they’re saying. Finally, the producer hands him a pink envelope, and he climbs back down. “What took you so long?” I ask.

“Oh, nothing. She just wasn’t happy with how I phrased my wish at first.”

He tears open our instructions, but I’m not quite ready to be done with this topic yet, even though I can see Tawny and
Troy making their way up the hill. “What did you wish for?” I push, hoping it was about me.

He gives me a mysterious smile. “If I told you, it wouldn’t come true.”

“I don’t think that rule applies when you’ve already said it out loud.”

“If you’re so sure, why don’t you tell me what
you
wished for?”

“Fine,” I say. “I wished for the power to turn anything I wanted into cheese.”

He laughs. “That was your wish about love and romance?”

“Maybe. Cheese is very romantic.”

“I’ll tell you my wish when you tell me your real one.”

I’m right on the brink of doing it, but I’m suddenly not sure if I should—I don’t want to say too much too fast and risk scaring him away. Our new dynamic feels fragile as an eggshell, and I’m worried I might break it if I squeeze too hard. So I just shrug and say, “I’ll tell you later.”

“Same goes for me, then.” Will pulls out our next instructions, and I’m a little disappointed that he didn’t try harder to weasel my wish out of me.

Drive yourselves to the Ancient Stadium in Corinth, where you will run a relay race using golden apples, one of the symbols of Aphrodite. You must travel up and down the field four times, passing off your golden apple each time. The first team member will begin with the apple under his or her chin. After the first lap, the apple must be passed to the second team member’s chin. For the third lap, the first team member must hold the apple between his or her knees, and for the final lap, the apple must be passed to the second team member’s knees. You may not touch the apple with your hands at any time. If you drop your apple, you will incur a three-minute penalty, during which you must sit down and remain silent
.

“Now they really
are
just trying to make us look stupid,” Will says as we start our descent.

“I don’t know, I think it sounds kind of fun,” I say. Then again, I’m so giggly and buoyant right now that picking dead flies out of a kiddie pool with tweezers would probably sound fun.

I expect the stadium to be a structure with walls, like a football stadium, but it turns out to be a wide, flat field surrounded by scrubby trees. In the middle of the grass, Miranda and Zora are doing hilarious ducklike waddles with golden apples clenched between their knees as a crowd of locals cheers them on. At the stadium gate, a man who’s about as wide as he is tall hands us our “golden apple,” which is made of plastic and is lighter and more slippery than a real apple. He also hands me another pink envelope, but instead of the regular logo that’s usually printed on the front, this heart-map is circled in red and slashed through with a line. Inside are two hot pink cards and an explanation.