Page 115 of Swept Away

I have no idea how the hell I’m going to handle all this. But at least I know where to find him.

Zeke

“You sure aboutthis?” Jeremy says.

Weirdly, he’s the one person I wanted with me today. There’s just something so solid about Jeremy. Solid and reliably irritating: he spent the entire journey here telling me what I had better not say on camera, all of which will now definitely end up coming out of my mouth.

“Sure about seeing Lexi, you mean, or going on TV?” I ask, adjusting my hair in the greenroom mirror.

We’ve been given a few minutes on our own. I was desperate for the hovering makeup artists and production assistants to leave. But now there’s no distraction from the pit in my stomach.

“Actually, I meant the outfit,” Jeremy says, clapping a hand on my shoulder.

“Did you just make a joke, Jeremy?” I ask, meeting his eyes in the mirror.

He smiles. I smile back. This is all new and kind of nice.

“The outfit is very trendy, I’m sure,” Jeremy says. He’s only thirty-two. The way he talks, you’d think he was sixty.

I do like the outfit. It’s a fairly traditional suit, in navy blue, butoversized, the trousers too long. I’m wearing three silver necklaces over a white tee underneath the jacket, the three necklaces I wore on the night Lexi and I met. The ones that came with us on the houseboat.

“Five minutes!” someone says, poking their head around the door.

People keep doing this—leaning around things to talk to me, as if they can’t afford the time to come all the way over. This whole place makes me edgy. I’m waiting to be caught out saying something stupid. I can’t even believe I’ve agreed to this. It’s like the opposite of our time alone at sea: here, the whole world will be watching me. I’ve never felt less comfortable.

“So I don’t get to see her first?” I say to the head that’s already trying to disappear behind the door again.

“Sorry, no!” she says with a sympathetic grimace. “No time!”

“Hmm,” Jeremy says, unimpressed, as she ducks away.

“You smell bullshit?”

“You could put it like that, yes.”

I do, too. I glance toward the clock.

“I’m going to see if I can find her,” I say, heading for the door and out into the maze of corridors beyond.

“Oh, excuse me, Zeke!” someone calls immediately.

I sidestep down a different route. There’re just endless white doors. It reminds me of the rig. Dread rises in my chest.

“Zeke, hi,” someone else says, touching my elbow. “We just need you to step back into the greenroom while we wait for go-time? It won’t be long now.”

“I just need a minute,” I say, still walking, leaving their trailing hand behind.

More doors, all closed, all unmarked.

“Where’s Lexi’s dressing room?” I ask the person tailing me.

“Oh, sorry, I can’t—”

“If you don’t tell me, I’m going to start opening random doors,” I say, taking a left. Am I going in a circle here?

“She’s not in her dressing room anymore,” the person says. “She’s…”

I see her. I’ve stepped into the edge of the studio—I can see the hosts sitting on their strange fake sofa with their cups of tea and their cozy rug, and I can see the shadowy audience curving away from me, and I can see Lexi. The rest fades instantly.

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