The fifth day in the villa was the hottest we'd encountered. Because it was winter for the southern hemisphere, the temperature was usually somewhere in the high seventies to low eighties. But today, without a single cloud or breeze, the temperature had neared ninety. The humidity and sweat mixing together created a unanimous consensus: pool day. The inflatable rafts were at last pumped plump and drifted into the water. Peach and I paddled lazily on our inflatable heart, Lucas and Giselle drifted along on a giant piece of pizza, and Charlie and Eli were desperately trying to keep their balance on the smallest inflatable in the villa: a bright green alligator.
"Stop leaning forward!" Charlie laughed from the back, clinging desperately to Eli. The vinyl torso of the alligator was submerged beneath the boys' weight, and the reptile's head and tail rose vertically out of the water.
"I don't think this was made for us," Eli grinned.
Giselle lifted her sunglasses to her forehead. "Oh lord, that thing could probably only hold Polly."
Polly had been sitting on the edge of the pool and immediately jumped into the water. "Let me try!" She called as she waded closer to the two struggling boys. In one quick motion, Eli tipped forward, sending Charlie flying over his back. Charlie let out a sharp scream that was squelched beneath the water. Polly righted the inflatable alligator and kicked herself up until her stomach laid perpendicular on the reptile's back. With one strong kick, she sent herself headfirst into the water. The floaty bobbed erratically above her.
"Come here, Polly." Eli walked over to where Polly had breached. She held onto the handles as he grabbed her hips, lifted her out of the water, and onto the alligator.
"Yay!" Polly shouted and began bucking back and forth on the inflatable.
"That looks so fun!" Amelia said. She was sitting along the edge of the pool beside Noah. "My friend from Jersey has one that looks like a chocolate chip cookie."
"Oh, now I'm hungry," Lucas rubbed his white tummy.
Giselle looked over at him with a bright smile. "Laying on a giant pizza doesn't already make you hungry?"
Lucas shook his head. "No, I'm a chocolate man."
"You wish," Eli joked. Giselle threw her head back in laughter.
"When's lunch?" Lucas leaned back on the inflatable. In the kitchen, we could hear plates and glasses clinking together.
"Sounds like it's very soon," Katrina commented.
With a soft grunt, Amelia got to her feet and reached her hand out to Noah. "C'mon, let's go chat before we eat."
"Actually, I'd like to chat with Maddie if that's all right," Noah said, looking over at me.
"Totally fine! Only if she wants to. Maddie looks pretty comfortable." Amelia's hands pressed firmly into her hips.
Before I could respond, Peach grabbed my hip and shoulder and pushed me off of the floaty, sending me splashing into the pool. "She's on her way!"
"Thanks, Peach," I sarcastically said as I surfaced and slicked my hair back. I swam to the edge of the pool and lifted myself out.
Noah offered me a hand and pulled me to my feet. He led me away from the pool and over to the loungers with eleven pairs of eyes watching. I kept my distance since I was still dripping from my unexpected swim.
"I'm really glad I get to talk to you again," Noah smiled over at me.
With the past few days on my mind, I slid my heart further into my sleeve and tucked it away, protected meticulously with barbed wire. Noah wasn't mine to defend; he sat in perfect neutrality on the line of Amelia and I's interest. I felt myself begin to wonder if my fear of competition was the only thing keeping me from being Noah's. "How are you?"
Although unintentional, Noah immediately sensed the frigid cold in my voice. I could see his brain begin to scramble. "I just thought we should talk about our future, and if we have one," he explained. I was pleased with the directness. "The end of our date the other day felt solid, and we were on the same page. But yesterday just felt like we weren't. We were on pages of two completely different books."
"That would be an accurate way to describe it, yeah." I nodded and propped an elbow on the back of the neighboring lounger cushion, resting my cheek against the palm as I leaned closer. I could feel Amelia's gaze burning into my side profile.
"Well, can you give me some sort of incite as to why?" Noah asked.
I sighed and tightened the barbed wire around my heart. "Amelia likes you, obviously. And I do too, but I'm not competitive." I looked down at my hand tapping against the fabric of the couch. "Or maybe I'm just scared of losing to her because I might not be good enough. Basically, I'm tired of competing with her, and because of that, I guess I started giving up."
"But I'm not a competition. I'm a person, not something to be won. And I'm certainly not going to have two women duel over me. The night of our date, I picked you. The next day, Amelia took me on a date, and we had a blast. She's definitely one of the funniest people I've ever met. And she told me about some relationships of yours that I didn't know about. That they definitely didn't show on the telly." Noah leaned back and away from me.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, your relationship with Eli for starters. Amelia told me of your history, and that you two were pretty solid. It made me upset that you didn't tell me that on our date. Whether you liked me better or not, it felt odd to me that you didn't make that clear," Noah explained.
My head quickly turned to the pool to find Amelia. As I looked over, Amelia turned away to feign innocence. "I can't believe she did that. Noah, there's nothing going on with Eli and me. That is strictly platonic. I did a small part in helping him couple up with Giselle, and we're friendly. That's the extent of it."
Noah looked down as if he couldn't even look me in the eye. "The kiss during the challenge looked pretty incriminating. I saw the way he smiled when he turned back to the briefcase."
"That kiss couldn't have had less chemistry. You can ask Eli for yourself; Giselle is the only girl he's been interested in since the start." I paused as I began to fumble my words. "I'm telling the truth."
He was quiet for a moment, then finally looked up at me. "I'm sorry. I should've come to talk to you sooner instead of believing everything she whispered in my ear. I should've asked you."
"It's fine. You're here now. And before she starts something else, I don't have anything going on with any of the boys here. I probably talk to Eli, Lucas, and Charlie the most but they're all friends. They couldn't be more platonic," I promised.
Noah nodded. "Good to know. So, just to be clear you..."
"I like you, Noah. A lot. You're still my first choice."
His lips slowly stretched into a wide smile. "Look at that, we're back on the same page. I'm really looking forward to chatting with you."
I carefully snipped the barbed wire and let my heart slide back down my arm. A chef stepped out of the villa and announced lunch across the garden. "Shall we spend some time together at lunch?" I asked.
Noah stood to his feet and offered me a hand. "I'll meet you inside. I'm going to set the record straight with Amelia."
"Sounds good," I said. Noah crossed the yard, and Amelia rushed to hug him. Peach caught up with me as I entered the villa.
"So?" Peach asked as we walked through the bedroom toward the hallway.
"He's going to break it off with Amelia right now. Turns out she told him that Eli and I had something going on," I explained.
Peach giggled. "Oh, no. That's so crazy that she would lie like that!"
"I know, right? Like, how long did she think she could get away with that?" We stepped into the kitchen and grabbed our plates, enjoying the air conditioning blasting through the vents. "Where do you wanna sit?" I asked Peach.
"Balcony?" She offered. I agreed, and she turned to Eli, who had followed us in. "Could you tell Noah and Charlie that we're going to be on the balcony?"
"For sure," Eli said, grabbing a plate for Giselle and himself.
Peach and I trotted up the stairs, careful not to tip our full plates. We walked through the dressing room and sat down on the couches.
"It's so hot out," Peach said right before she took a big bite of salad. "When we were on the floaty, I couldn't tell what was sweat and what was water from the pool."
"I know, I thought it was going to melt beneath us," I joked and took a bite of my veggie burrito. "This isn't bad, actually."
Peach nodded in agreement as she swallowed her bite. "I thought it was going to be really gross, but I don't hate it." She went in for another large bite.
"Are you guys talking about the burritos?" Charlie asked, walking over with his plate of food. "It was a special request from Blake; he wanted more vegetarian options."
"Makes sense," I commented. I heard shouting and looked over the balcony railing to see Noah and Amelia still talking on the grass, boom mics and cameras capturing every angle. Or, it was less Noah and Amelia talking and more Amelia jabbing her finger into Noah's chest.
"I didn't lie!" Amelia yelled, her face beginning to match her ruby hair.
I turned back around and slumped down in my seat. "Whoops."
Charlie leaned forward to talk to me. "So the talk worked?"
"Yeah. Basically, I didn't talk to him because I was being a wuss and he didn't talk to me because Amelia spread lies about me. Miscommunication, but I think we're back," I informed him briefly. "He said he was going to clear things up with Amelia before lunch." I paused as Amelia shouted something I couldn't decipher. "It's going well."
"Sounds like it," Charlie replied sarcastically and began tucking into his food.
When our plates were half empty and the shouting on the grass had died down, Amelia walked into the dressing room and stood in front of the balcony doors. She made eye contact with me as she twisted the bolt, locking us out of the villa.
"Amelia, seriously?" I yelled as she stood on the other side of the glass. She turned and walked out of sight.
"At least she did that instead of spraying you with ketchup or something," Peach said. "Someone's bound to come up here, and if not, we've got our phones to text for help." She took her phone out of her mic belt and placed it on the glass coffee table in front of the couch.
"Here comes somebody," Charlie said as a figure appeared in the doorway of the girls' dressing room and approached the door.
Noah unlatched the lock and pulled the glass doors open. "I'm really sorry," he said, closing the door with his right hand while his left held his lunch. "She didn't take it well."
"I figured," I said, patting the cushion beside me. Noah walked over and sat down. "I kinda feel bad for her."
"Why?" Peach questioned, her mouth packed full of veggies.
"It must be hard for her, ya know? Maybe she'd be nicer if she didn't feel like she could go home at any time," I explained.
Peach shook her head, swallowed hard, and put a hand on my shoulder. "I like your optimism, but you're being too kind to someone who repeatedly has tried to screw you over. You're allowed to be mad at her." She returned to her burrito.
I shrugged and leaned back on the couch. The direct sunlight had nearly dried my swimsuit, but my hair continued to drip. "I'll consider it."
After lunch, we returned to the pool with our mic packs and phones in a pile beneath a towel to keep them from overheating. With the sun directly overhead, it was too hot to lay on the inflatable toys. Instead, we swam around in the cool water, periodically dunking our faces when our cheeks started to feel hot.
"Oh, Lucas," Giselle cooed, swimming up behind him. She gently poked his shoulder, leaving a white circle that disappeared in a few seconds. "Did that hurt?"
"No, am I pink?" Lucas asked. He turned around for the rest of us to see.
"Very," Noah said. He wrapped his arm around my waist underwater.
Lucas reached around and felt his shoulder himself. "Can you help me put on sunscreen?"
"Let's go." Giselle nodded and lifted herself onto the edge of the pool. Lucas followed her over to the lounge, and she began applying the white cream to his upper back.
"Did you guys like the veggie burritos?" Blake asked. "They were my idea."
"I absolutely loved them!" Katrina smiled. "I was so glad that there was something I could eat that wasn't salad or nuts. They've actually been pretty accommodating."
Peach nodded enthusiastically. "I love meat, but that was one of the best burritos I've ever had. Maddie can attest: I wolfed it down in like, thirty seconds."
"It was impressive," I confirmed.
Beneath the towel, one of the phones emitted a muffled ring. Katrina leaned back from her perch along the pool's edge, lifted the towel, and then sifted through the phones. "It's Amelia's."
Amelia swam up to the edge and carefully took the phone. "Amelia, say goodbye to the single life. You may now choose one boy to couple up with. If you choose a boy in a couple, their partner will now be single. #allthesingleladies #mytimetoshine." She looked up from her phone with a proud smile.
Noah squeezed my hand underwater and whispered in my ear. His voice was masked beneath the excited commentary of the other islanders. "I made it clear I wasn't interested, I don't think I'm her first pick anymore."
Slowly, we slid out of the pool with dripping hair and soggy swimsuits. Noah came up behind me as I fastened my mic pack in place and wrapped a towel around my shoulders. I picked up my phone and followed everyone to the firepit. As directed by producers, we sat in our official couples: Michael and Katrina, Charlie and Peach, Eli and Giselle, Lucas and Polly, and Blake and I. Noah and Peyton sat beside us as a default couple.
Amelia stood in front of us on the other side of the firepit. "My time in the villa hasn't been easy at all. I came in as the only single girl, tasked to break up a couple. I suppose that makes me a villain, but I came here to find love, too! You see it as me breaking people up, I see it as finding my life partner. That's why I was so thrilled when I laid eyes on this guy for the first time. From his hair, to his height, he's my dream guy." My heart began to sink. Peach reached out and held my hand for support. "Although we may not have been each other's first pick, I think if anything, this is a sign that we should give it a shot. The guy I'd like to couple up with is..."
I closed my eyes, wishing she'd stick with Blake.
"Noah." Amelia glanced at me, then locked eyes with Noah. He reluctantly stood to his feet and walked across the firepit, offering her a polite hug. She reached up and wrapped her arms around him, planting a perfect red lip print on his cheek.
There, standing in front of us, was the newest Love Island couple.