“I don’t want to fight, Joey.” His voice has changed. He’s not angry, but sounds defeated, almost sad.
Did I do this to him? If so, it wasn’t my intention. The last thing I want to do is hurt him even though he’s hurting me. He’ll never know it, though. I’ll never be able to tell him how much it hurts knowing he’s walking away from me, from us, before we’re even given a chance.
I sit down on the edge of the bed, pulling my leg up under me. “I’m not looking for a fight either, but we need to talk about what you saw outside.”
He shakes his head and sighs. When he walks past me I think for a moment that he’s leaving me here, but he’s just shutting the door to give us some privacy from our housemates. I can’t take my eyes off him. He’s showing me a vulnerability that is often hidden behind the walls he keeps up.
Joshua sits next to me, keeping the standard “friend” space in between us. “I know I made a mistake last night by asking you to stay away from Bronx. I didn’t mean to piss you off.”
“You didn’t,” I say, slightly confused as to why he thinks he did. I try to reach out to him, but he shies away. Any progress I was making in bringing down his walls has evaporated.
“I must’ve because you didn’t come to bed last night—”
I hold up my hand, telling him to stop talking. But before I can finish, Linda instructs us to all go to the living room.
“Figures,” he says as he gets up. I expect him to wait for me, but he doesn’t. The door slides open fast, and he’s muttering something as he disappears down the hall. I follow behind and by the time I reach the living room, he’s already sitting on the love seat.
I take the seat next to him thinking he’ll lean into me like he usually does, but he’s still angry, even more so now that we were interrupted. As soon as everyone’s in the living room, Patrick Jonas appears on the screen. His smile is creepy and I’m starting to despise him.
“Newlyweds, how are we all doing?”
Bronx and Rebekah are the first to answer with a rambunctious ‘super’. I roll my eyes and try to focus on Josh. I can tell his teeth are grinding by the twitching in his jaw. His leg is bouncing up and down, and it’s obvious that he’s eager to get the hell out of here.
“We have a luxury competition for you tonight, a night out at the movies. Before you get too excited—this is a singles competition. One husband and one wife will win. You will not be competing as teams in this one. Everyone to the backyard, please.”
“What the … are they …” Josh grabs his hair in what I can only guess is frustration and lets out an awful sound. It’s a cross between a grunt and scream. I don’t know what to do to because aside from how ridiculous this game sounds, he wants to win, and that’s what we usually try to do together—as a team.
“Come on, let’s go win,” I say as I grab his hand and pull him outside. As soon as I see the setup, it’s clear that the producers have upgraded this par
ticular game to obnoxious levels and it’s complete and utter crap.
“This is so cool,” Gary yells out as he claps his hands.
“Do they really expect us to fight each other?” Millie asks, standing next to me.
“No, they expect Bronx and I to fight, and for the rest of you to pick sides.” Josh walks toward the ring that is set up in the middle of the yard. Hanging from eight different hooks in different colors are sumo suits. I’ve seen these in videos—they might look fun but it’s something I’ve never wanted to try.
“I’m going to ruin my nails.” I look at Amanda and shake my head. Millie and I walk toward the hooks with Amanda and Rebekah on our heels. We stand there, inspecting the awful plastic looking suits that they expect us to climb into.
“Oh God, I’m going to chafe.”
“You know, for once, I agree with you, Amanda.” I give her a wink. She’s right, we’re going to chafe, and it’s not going to be pretty.
“Well, you could always just lose,” Rebekah suggests as she takes her suit down from the hook.
“Oh the hell we will,” Millie replies as she grabs her suit.
“I’m not going to like this,” Amanda says, and for the second time today I agree with her. I’m going to hate this game, but there’s no way in hell I’m losing. Even though we aren’t competing with each other, Josh has to feel the same way. That’s been our goal from the beginning, to win. Win the competitions so we can win the fan votes. Sure, we’ve lost a few, but the effort has been there.
“Look on the bright side,” I say to Amanda as I pull my suit down.
“And the bright side would be that I can kick your ass and not get kicked off the show?” She smirks, which only fuels my desire to whack her upside her head.
“If you’re lucky, you may end up with a night at the movies with either Josh or Bronx,” I reply with a highly sarcastic tone as I lean into her. “But be careful, neither of them like women who pick their seat.”
Her hand moves forward, away from her butt check so fast I have to catch myself from laughing. Instead, I bat my eyelashes and step back to my spot. After I step into my suit, Josh is there to secure the back. It’s ridiculously big and uncomfortable, but I have a feeling, that despite my earlier reservations, I’m going to have a lot of fun.
“We did this on the force as a team building project. The trick is to knock your opponent off their feet and fall on top of them. Just try not to fall,” Millie tells us as she wobbles toward the ring.