quite detect what I’m hearing in his voice. Well, I can, but it’s weird.
“Why do you sound like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’ve been holding your breath for hours? Are you okay? Did something happen on the show?”
“I’m good, nothing happened, but I did get a call from Camila Gonzales from your phone. And I’ve been worrying something happened to you.”
I sit back down on the bed. “Oh.” Man, the way he said my name, he sounded so distressed. Or like he had been distressed, and now he could breathe again. “Why were you so worried? I just left it at the bar.”
“I’m not exactly sure. I probably overreacted. But with the online bullying you’ve had in the past, and with it being Camila of all people who had your phone, I started to think something might have happened to you. Besides, you didn’t answer the first time I called your room.”
“Oh, I was in the shower. I just got out.”
There’s music and voices in the background on his end and I’m about to ask where he is, but he asks me a very distracting question. “So, are you still in a towel?” It’s not so much the question, but the way his voice drops an octave.
“Yeah, I am actually. I had just realized I didn’t have my phone and was trying to decide whether to get in my pajamas and find it tomorrow or get dressed to go back to the bar to retrieve it.”
“Stay here for now and talk to me. Maybe someone can bring it by your room later. Camila said most of them are staying at the same hotel, that’s how I found you.”
I lie back in bed, happy with this plan. “It’s only you I want to talk to anyway. Yes it’d be cool to have my friends here, but it’s you I’m really missing.”
“I wish I was there with you right now. How did today go?”
I tell him about the competition so far, how everyone went out to eat and then to a bar. “I didn’t have to feel too out of place either and got to order a drink. The drinking age is only nineteen in Canada.”
“Camila hasn’t been giving you a hard time?”
“No, actually she’s been pretty friendly. But not in a weird way, I don’t think? We ended up sitting across from each other at dinner, and she kind of opened up about why she was here instead of at Apexx like she originally planned.”
“Oh yeah? What’d she tell you?”
“It was sad actually. She said everyone on the Shred Live cast, except you of course, would be there, and that she was worried they’d gang up on her.”
“Gang up on her?” He sounds skeptical.
“She said Donnie Guzman has been overly friendly with her and she made the mistake of going to some public events with him, like the Brazen opening. She didn’t feel like she could say no, but they were never dating. Anyway, she knows everyone thinks she got special treatment with the judging on the show because of him, but claims that if she did, it wasn’t intentional on her part.”
“Huh. That’s not what she told me.”
“What she told you? When?”
“Just now, when I talked to her from your phone. I asked why she wasn’t at Apexx and she said she figured dropping out at the last minute would piss off Donnie. She claims she can’t shake him off and he won’t leave her alone.”
“Maybe both stories are true. But I don’t really care about Camila. Not anymore. I mean, there was some hype after the season finale when everyone thought you two had some secret affair, but it died off pretty quickly. As long as she’s not giving me a hard time, her trying so hard to get in your pants on Shred Live is water under the bridge.”
“You forgive easily, Jordan.”
“It’s not worth my energy.” I let my towel drop, since I’m not wet anymore. “But now I’m thinking about your pants and getting inside them.” I love knowing that’s only for me, even if I don’t currently have access to it.
Beck’s voice is strained when he responds. “You can’t say things like that, Jordan. Not right now.”
“Why not? Where are you, anyway?”
“I’m hiding on a patio chair at the hotel pool.”
“You could go up to your room?” I’ve actually got no idea what I’m proposing but my skin is suddenly very hot.
“I could, but currently I’m watching Naomi and Summer float around together in string bikinis, while a