Page 63 of Hot Summer

Freddie nodded and took another sip of his drink. “We were stuck in a hotel for about a week, but they’ve still been letting us watch.”

Cas hummed. She hadn’t heard anyone mention that they’d been allowed to do that in previous years, but that didn’t necessarily mean it didn’t happen. It seemed a strange choice, though, letting them watch the show after they’d been selected for Bombshell Week. They’d have a leg up on everyone else, a bird’s-eye view of the villa that wasn’t afforded to anyone on the actual show.

They were getting an edited version of reality, sure, but they were privy to private conversations—at least those that were aired—in a way that no one else here was.

Freddie, apparently unbothered by Cas’s lack of response, leaned forward, his forearms coming to rest on the table like he was trying to block out the couple, Rita and Reece, at the table to their right.

“I did want to ask you something, actually. Before I start getting my feelings involved, you know?” He was smiling, joking, but there was something tentative in his voice.

Cas swallowed. “Okay.”

“What’s the deal with you and Ada? Like, are you two actually getting to know each other or are you just really touchy friends?”

In any other circumstance, this direct honesty was something that would have immediately endeared him to her. But, situation being what it was, Cas was less than thrilled that they were starting their conversation with the very question she was still trying to answer for herself.

“Are you asking for you or because the producers asked you to ask me?”

If Freddie was taken aback by her blunt question, he didn’t show it. “Me. Though I’m sure they’re curious, too. They mentioned it to me a few times after I told them I was coming into the villa for you.”

Cas hummed again and raised her sangria to her lips.

On the one hand, this was her golden ticket to the next few weeks. Her chance to let someone sweep her off her feet, to transition from a heartwarming friendship couple to a heart-stopping romance. Freddie’d come in for her, had traveled all this way for her, and that would play remarkably well in any beach hut interviews she did. She could already hear the way she’d gush about it, knees tucked up into her chest, the picture of a giggling, lovestruck girl.

But even the thought of that made her skin crawl.

Coming into this, the idea that she would have to enter a fake relationship with someone at some point had been weird (especially when she thought about her boss, her colleagues, and her future professional contacts seeing her at it) but inevitable. Something she could tolerate if it meant she got what she wanted in the end. Now, though, the idea of twisting herself into someone she so obviously wasn’t just felt uncomfortable.

It wasn’t a matter of what would sell the audience on her anymore, it was a question of what Cas could live with. And she couldn’t keep lying to everyone. Couldn’t keep lying to herself.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Freddie said. “I just fancy you and think there could maybe be something here?” He laughed a little, swiped his hair off his forehead again. “I’ve not got an ulterior motive, I swear.”

Fucking hell.

Cas exhaled. “I... don’t know what to say because I honestly don’t know what’s going on with us. I mean Ada and me.”

She paused, but Freddie just looked at her. Waited.

“I do have feelings for her,” she admitted. She very nearly whispered it, but she swallowed down the urge at the last possible moment. Her microphone was going to capture her words no matter how she said them, so she might as well say them confidently. “But I haven’t decided what to do about it. I don’t know if she returns my feelings, so...”

“For what it’s worth,” Freddie said, leaning back in his chair, “I think she definitely does. Anyone watching the show can see it.”

“Really?”

“Mm-hmm. You should see the online threads about it. You two got a whole hashtag and everything.” He laughed and signals started lighting up in the back of Cas’s brain.

Threads?

She knew there was always a bubble of interest whenever there was a queer couple on the show in the past, but she couldn’t remember the last time it seemed to make it out of the smaller queer circles on the internet. Never entire threads, let alone a hashtag. And she would know. Even before agreeing to the show, she’d spent countless summers scrolling through the Hot Summer feeds.

She laughed awkwardly. “Oh god.”

“They’re supportive,” Freddie said. He was studying her, reading her reactions, and Cas suppressed the impulse to squirm under his gaze. “I’m supportive, too, if that’s what you want. But, cards on the table...”

He leaned in again, not so close that he was in her space, but close enough that he could be if she moved forward an inch.

“I am interested. If you want to be friends, I’m cool, but if you want something different...” He shrugged, his intention more than clear. “You know where to find me.”

It would have been so easy, in that moment, to let herself drift toward Freddie. To ignore everything she’d been feeling for Ada, all the complicated emotions that she needed to sort through. He’d been brought here with her in mind, after all, and the producers had really, for once, gotten it right.

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