I knew I wasn’t her forever. But we got along real well in the house, same politics, same movies, spiritually compatible, and because we said we were a couple the show runners took us along on the group trip to Costa Rica. Fuckin a, she was fine in that bikini. She had those long legs but wasn’t really that tall, just perfectly proportioned, big tits but not too big, perfect ass, black hair in a bob. A few months younger than me. A good match. Sea turtles, starfish, blue water, all these beautiful fish. She pulled herself onto the floating dock and I stayed a while longer in the water so she wouldn’t see my boner.
         Back in town the producers asked: Concert, comedy show, mini-golf, or bowling? Bowling, she chose. I hadn’t been bowling since I was a kid. My uncle used to take me. We’d hang out with his friends and they’d eat wings and drink beer and the score was always wrong. She was a better bowler than me, but I did all right. This place was full of regulars, though, they were in leagues and all that, and they gave dirty looks to the cameras and talked shit about us loud enough that we could hear it. It didn’t bother her, at least she didn’t let it show. Poise.
         All along the producers were trying to get us drunk. Well, why not? It’d worked pretty well so far. So the next night when we were all together, Jacob and Madison, Alex and Piper, John and Ashley, Elijah and Destiny, Pearl and me, they kept pushing shots on us, Jägerbombs and Fireball. The music was loud so we couldn’t really talk. We danced until I felt sick. I threw up in the bathroom and Elijah was like, dude, dude. But I felt better afterward.
         Back at the hotel she came to my room. I didn’t even ask her to. And we did it, but I didn’t perform too well. The next day Madison took me aside and asked, What did you do to her?
         What the fuck?, I said. Nothing, I didn’t do anything. She’s acting so strange. But Madison’s a flake so I tried to blow it off.
         When Pearl and I hooked up for lunch I tried to read her expression and in some ways it was weird, like Madison said, kind of spacy, but in some ways she seemed more into me than ever. I never want to leave you, she said. It was kind of pathetic. Boy, I felt guilty.
         I was really starting to regret it then, doing it to her, but it’d taken forever even just to get hard that night and I knew she’d think I was a fag or something, so I sort of did it without thinking, relaxing the sphincter inside my scrotal microsac and spurting the spirochetes up into her, where they’d climbed around her womb for a while before insinuating the blood and spinal fluid, circling up into her brain, multiplying all the way, adjusting her biochemistry in my favor. It’s not something I like to do, I’m old-fashioned really, but I’d still been a little drunk and I was worried she might dump me, on camera even. But now it’s weird and she’s so clingy, and I notice the producers taking her aside all the time for private talks. I know I went too far.
         Tomorrow I’m supposed to meet her family (she won’t be meeting mine!) and the plan is we get married in a week and that’ll be broadcast about six months later. But I’ve got to get ahead of that. I can just imagine her in a wedding dress in tears, and all her fam there, flower girl and everybody, and me saying, I don’t? Fuck that noise, I have to save everybody’s feelings and do it today, before it gets harder. As it is I’m not even sure she’ll survive it, but I think she probably will. We’re still young, we have our whole lives ahead of us. She deserves better than me.
💀