Page 105 of Hot Summer

“Well, if you’re having some.” A cup of tea would actually be nice right now. Would give her something to do with her hands.

Ada returned a few minutes later, perfectly prepared cups of tea in hand. She passed one to Cas before taking a seat, her own mug cradled in her lap.

“Thanks,” Cas said, wrapping her hands around the mug. The tea was warm against her palms, and the first sip soothed the nerves jangling about in her chest.

Neither of them said anything for a few long moments. Cas kept her gaze trained on the coffee table, keen to avoid staring at Ada, but all the time, she could feel Ada’s gaze on her.

After a long minute, Ada cleared her throat. “So that was a surprise.”

Cas exhaled a laugh, another huge chunk of tension falling off her shoulders.

“They weren’t going to let me come to the reunion at first,” she said. She took another sip of tea before setting it on her knee, the heat against her skin a reminder to stay focused.

“I can’t imagine they were keen to have you there given what you said tonight,” Ada said. She let that sit there for a second before she added, “I’m glad you were there, though.”

The relief in Cas’s chest was immediate. Overwhelming. Like she’d just come to the surface after a long time underwater and was taking her first deep breath.

“I hated that I couldn’t tell you,” Cas said. “There were so many times that it was on the tip of my tongue and I had to stop myself at the last second.”

“Would you have told me if we weren’t on camera all the time?”

“I thought about telling you in the retreat,” Cas admitted. “But I’d signed an NDA. I didn’t even know what I was allowed to say at that point.”

Ada hummed, didn’t say anything. Took a sip of her tea.

“In a way,” Cas said, turning the mug around in her hands, “it was for the best that the news broke online. That I wasn’t the one to reveal it. I spent a lot of time rereading that agreement when I got home—since it became public knowledge at no fault of my own, it’s really freed up how much I can talk about.”

“So what exactly was the goal, then? I haven’t been reading any of it online.”

“Some of this is still technically covered by the NDA,” Cas said, “so I can tell you, but—”

“If it’ll get you into trouble, I don’t want you to feel like you have to tell me,” Ada said, but Cas was already shaking her head.

“No, I want to be completely honest with you,” she said. “I just wanted you to know that not everything is public knowledge, so it just has to stay between us.”

Ada nodded, and Cas took a deep breath.

Where to begin?

She took Ada back to the very beginning—her first meeting with Robert, the division Friday was planning on opening, her tragic years spent in pub basements getting sweated on by strangers.

“I’d been applying to every single internal opportunity that came up for the last, like, four years, but every single time I was passed up for someone with less experience because Robert ‘couldn’t bear’ to lose me in events. When this opportunity dropped into my lap, I think I would’ve done just about anything to make it a reality.”

“I can see that,” Ada said, and then her cheeks went pink. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that in, like, a shitty way. I just meant that I can imagine. I probably would’ve, too.”

“I was so obsessed with how I appeared that first week,” Cas said. “I was constantly thinking about how they were filming shots, what I was saying, what I was doing... It was overwhelming. And then we got the rankings and I was in last place, and it was like someone had punched me right in the chest.”

“Everything you’d done hadn’t worked. People didn’t like you.”

“Exactly,” Cas said. “But then you came to find me that night and you told me that it didn’t matter what they thought. That you all, well, loved me anyway.” The word was heavy on Cas’s tongue, weighted with all the potential they’d probably lost. “And, I don’t know. I still wanted the job and to make it to the finale to get it, but over time, I cared more about you guys. I wanted my friends in the villa to actually like me for me. To care about me because of who I was, rather than some social strategy.”

“It wasn’t about the job anymore.”

Cas nodded. “Sometimes, I genuinely forgot why I was on the show. And it wasn’t until the rankings after our night together that I realized what I’d gotten myself into,” Cas said. “When I got third, I panicked. I knew we’d have to talk about Friday and the partnership eventually, and I was certain you’d think I was just using you to get ahead. My feelings were never anything but genuine, but I don’t know...” She pressed her palms into her mug, let the heat sear into her skin. “I thought I’d at least be able to tell you on my own terms. I was terrified of what you might think.”

Neither of them needed to say what happened next. All of Cas’s worst nightmares had come true. Her relationship with Ada looked like nothing more than a game play. And Ada believed it.

Cas had opened up to someone for the first time in years and the entire thing blew up in her face.

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