Then Things Went Dark, page 6
[Araminta: Because…you know full well why. Look at you.]
[Kalpana: You think I haven’t copped a root because no one has shown interest? [laughter] Please. I just haven’t met anyone remotely interesting.]
[Araminta: Bullshit. You just called me fascinating.]
[Kalpana: Yes, yes I did.]
[Araminta: Oh.]
And then the only sound is static.
Araminta: If what we had could be considered a friendship, I’m worried I just ruined it.
Two figures lie in a bed, the camera in stark black and white, the footage grainy.
White sheets are tangled around their naked forms, both asleep. Slowly, Isko stirs. He blinks wearily at the man next to him, and a lazy grin, the sort he’d never wear if fully awake, flits across his lips.
He falls back onto the bed, arm falling across Rhys, and closes his eyes.
Once again, Araminta rises first. And once again, Rhys finds her in the kitchen.
“So you really just look this good in the mornings?” he asks, dragging his eyes down her body purposefully, bright lines of her bikini, red this time, visible through her sheer wrap.
“Wouldn’t you love to know,” she says, pouring her smoothie into a water bottle.
“Is that a trick question? Because you know I would.”
Araminta arches an eyebrow. “How’s Isko?”
“I imagine rather sated.” He stretches his arms above his head, T-shirt riding up and flashing those taut muscles of his, somehow more alluring for this snapshot than the generosity of a bare chest.
“I wouldn’t want to wake without you,” she says before catching herself. “If I were him, that is.”
“Noted.”
Araminta blushes and returns to her smoothie, attempting to distract herself by slipping the straw in her mouth. Rhys’s eyes follow her hungrily, and it’s unclear whether he is truly attracted to her—probable, as she is gorgeous, but who on the island isn’t—or simply sees her as another prize to be won.
“Have you spoken to Theo?” she asks, changing the topic before he can make another comment—a comment Araminta would mark as creepy in another life but here, on this rock in the middle of nowhere, she suddenly finds enticing.
“It wasn’t the first thing on my list for the day, no.”
“I don’t imagine he’s happy.”
“No, but how do you feel about it?” he asks, and the way he looks at her makes her feel like he genuinely fears her disapproval.
She weighs her options. The truth is that she doesn’t much care. She’s glad it wasn’t her, and if she could see some strategic purpose for it, she might have done the same. But she won the popular vote last night and doubts the voting public will be quite as forgiving. “I think it was disgraceful. We have no reason to trust each other but we offered up such fragile parts of ourselves—parts we thought would be hidden when we wrote them. What you did was a violation. The competition might allow it, but I’m not sure my morality does.”
“Hmm,” he says, considering her. “A very valid point. In which case you’ll also think it awful that I don’t particularly care what Newman thinks about what happened. But your opinion I do care for—and I’m far more interested in making it up to you.”
But before he can expand on how he plans to do that, Kalpana breezes into the room.
“Morning,” she says, grabbing a glass and filling it with, of all things, tap water. In a show like this, firsts are always noteworthy.
“Well, I’d best be off,” Rhys says, pouring a second cup of coffee and adding it to the tray.
“You’re going back?” Araminta doesn’t even realize she’s spoken.
Rhys plasters the most innocent of grins across his face. “Of course. Whatever did you imagine?”
“I—”
“Besides, round two,” he says with a shrug, disappearing before Araminta can mumble a response.
Kalpana shakes her head. “I’m not sure who made the worse choice there, Rhys or Isko.”
Araminta hums her agreement, and she’s not sure how a hum can sound disingenuous but it does.
“How are you feeling?” Kalpana asks.
“Tired,” Araminta replies quickly, like she’d prepared for this conversation, which she has—something indirect, something that says she’s fine and doesn’t want to talk about it but also doesn’t mind talking about it if Kalpana asks, because she doesn’t care.
“Well, luckily you’re on an island with literally nothing to do for the entire day. Nap times abound,” Kalpana says, grabbing a banana. “I’m going to eat this in the sun. See you later.”
Kalpana: Look, I just wanted to feel something in this paradise. And Araminta would do. There’s nothing more to it than I wanted her—but only in a very certain past tense.
Araminta watches her leave, realizing that maybe she did want to talk about it. That maybe she had wanted it to mean something after all.
Isko leans against the doorway, white shirt unbuttoned, bronzed muscles glistening with sweat that can’t be from the heat. His stance, the sunglasses pushed through his hair, the very way he glances at Rhys is nonchalant. Too much so.
“You want everyone on the island, yes?” Isko asks.
Rhys pauses doing up the buttons of his shirt as he contemplates the question. “Jerome strikes me as the gay panic sort.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Are you asking me if we’re exclusive, Isko? Pretty hypocritical given your current relationship status.”
Isko is already losing interest, staring at Rhys with the cold light of day. Rhys must catch his disappointment, because he straightens up and gives Isko his full attention.
“How do I fall into the game?” Isko asks.
“You’re not a game.”
“Of course I am. We’re all games here. So tell me how I fit into yours.”
“I didn’t come here for that.”
“You took a card from the wall, Rhys; you’re this game incarnate.”
“I took the card because I wanted to. Because I was curious and bored and thought it would be fun. I came here to be real, to be a part of something you can’t find on any other channel or even in any other walk of life. I had sex with you because I wanted to, not because I think it will help me win this thing. In fact, I’m pretty certain the voting public will take as kindly to a casual sexual liaison between two men as they will to me hurting Theo Newman like I did. So if I were playing a game, you wouldn’t be part of it.”
Isko shakes his head softly, as he realizes Rhys is telling the truth. “I expected more from you.”
Theo skulks through the house, trying to work out his next move. How long should he be upset for? How should he try to rectify it? This whole thing is a precision pointed plan but he wasn’t expecting those cards to be available for anyone to read. He’d known it was a chance, obviously. You had to be a fool to suspect they wouldn’t have a way of exposing it. He might have expected a camera hovering over his shoulder rather than a wall of secrets but he’d expected it all the same.
He just wasn’t expecting it so quickly, and he wasn’t expecting it like this.
It’s out and he doubts the rest is yet—so what should he do?
He tries to avoid the others until he works it out, dodging Jerome around the pool to slip to the beach once more.
If he really had said that unintentionally, with no plans of breaking away from the band as he wants everyone to suspect—he’d try to rectify it, wouldn’t he? But he doesn’t want to appear too attached or it would defeat the purpose of distancing himself altogether.
He needs the world to know he hates them, that he is different from them, that no, he was never really associated with them, and one day this will all be part of a trivia game: Theo Newman started in a band—ten points to anyone who can name it!
He grabs a cushion from an armchair and screams into it, hurling it back with furious vigor that does not dispel his rage. He wants to kick and fight and never stop screaming. Has he not already raised his hands high and let himself land at the mercy of others? Is that not what got him on this show in the first place, a team of publicists saying, “This might sound ludicrous, but we have an idea.”
And here he is at the mercy of it all again. How many times must he lose control before the universe aligns itself once more to his whims?
He does not need everyone thinking he tore RiotParade apart. He could tank his solo career before he’s even launched it.
He has to stand by it. He can’t be too angry at Rhys. He must be resigned and own up to the fact that Rhys exposing his feelings isn’t the issue so much as what’s driving the band apart.
He’s going to have to publicly forgive Rhys.
The very thought leaves a foul taste in his mouth, but he washes it away with a particularly hoppy beer and returns to the pool. Isko and Rhys lie on separate lounge chairs. Araminta clings to the poolside, her head resting on her arms, her body the blur of her red bikini beneath the water. Jerome sits beside her, legs over the side, shirt unbuttoned over faint muscles.
“Maybe I should give up,” Araminta laughs, not stopping their conversation as Theo joins. “Maybe the lesson I take from this isn’t that I can be more but that I have no reason to be disappointed with what I am. Better a content creator than a spoiled heiress, right?”
“At least you’re a good one,” Isko says, eyes shut beneath his sunglasses like he’s only half paying attention. “Why be an awful sculptor when you can be an excellent influencer?”
“My sculptures are excellent, I’ll have you know.”
“They should have challenged you with home rejuvenation,” Theo says with a sheepish smile. “You could have fixed the energy in this place that, for some reason I’m struggling to recall, seems to have deteriorated.”
Rhys sits up, swinging his legs over the side of the chair to stand and clap him on the back. “I think that one’s on me to fix.”
Theo nods, and it seems the closest they might get to some sort of reconciliation.
Theo: I don’t want things to be strained between Rhys and I. It’s a new day, and while I’m not happy he did what he did, the real issue is what I wrote. And I can’t blame him for the way I feel about RiotParade. It’s like I said: I am more than the drama.
But he’s not. And even as he smiles, he feels rage scalding his insides. His secrets, but not on his terms; his career, subject to the whims of this man’s boredom. “Anyone want a drink?” Rhys offers.
“Nah, I’m not drinking today; my body needs a break,” Araminta says. Theo takes Rhys’s spot as he leaves, feet dangling in the cool pool.
“I’m surprised you’re not doing a full detox,” Isko says. “You seem the type.”
“Detox,” she scoffs. “Is that still where we’re at? You’re from LA, right? Did you bring an IV drip to the island?”
“I’m from the Philippines—I live in LA. And not by choice, either. I trained in Paris and would have stayed there if I could. But my fiancé got a job he couldn’t refuse and—”
“Wait, you have a fiancé?” Jerome interrupts. “But I thought you and Rhys…”
Isko rolls his eyes. “Rhys and I what? For Christ’s sake, Jerome, I’m not fifty. Who does monogamy anymore?”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” Jerome says hastily.
“It’s an open relationship.”
Araminta arches a barely visible eyebrow. “Open in what manner?”
“Legs, mostly.”
“I meant, is your engagement one relationship of many or is it only open sexually?”
Isko wants a cigarette or a drink, something to do with his hands right now, something to split his attention. He’s not a fan of this interrogation but can’t think of a redirect.
“The latter—no emotional relationships outside of ours, just sexual,” he says, rolling his eyes again. He’s so deeply tired of them already.
He always wondered how people watched reality shows where the conversation was the kind of boring drivel that made him think he could actually feel his brain rotting. Now he’s stuck in one. He’d thought the people on those shows impossibly dull, that Iconic would be different, that they would be different. But it turns out, without any form of entertainment, they are all mundane.
“What does he do?” Jerome asks, an upturn to his voice that makes his politeness seem forced.
“He’s an accountant.”
Araminta snorts. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I just wasn’t expecting that.”
Isko: Oh really? This is how it’s going to go? You have something to say about my fiancé? Spit it out then.
“Wait, like an accountant as in…you know, OnlyFans, or as in someone with a calculator?” Jerome asks.
“He had to pass an awful lot of exams, you know.”
“An actual accountant. Christ.” Araminta shakes her head.
“Why is that such a surprise?” Isko’s glaring over the ass of his sunglasses.
Theo laughs, not snidely but in a genuinely delighted way. “Because we’re a bunch of people so pretentious we were picked to be on a TV show about pretentious arseholes. And being an accountant is such a normal thing to be.”
“Please tell me he’s called Tom or Harry or something,” Araminta says.
“His name is Alex.”
She cackles. “Perfect.”
Isko points. “You three are assholes.”
Theo frowns. “Is that not what I just said?” He and Araminta shriek in their laughter, and even Jerome has a grin on his face.
Isko shakes his head and stands up.
“Oh, come on man, we’re just joking,” Theo says.
Isko doesn’t even reply, just storms off as they fight past their amusement to beg him to stay.
“I suppose it’s nice, isn’t it?” Araminta offers. “I either pick someone I can’t stand for long or never manage to choose someone who can stand me. I can’t imagine a relationship lasting longer than a few months, let alone through a whole TV show.”
Jerome shakes a truly disappointed head. “I should have known you’re one of those girls that never picks a nice guy.”
Araminta: Urgh. I give him two days max before he’s begging Kalpana or I to let him into our pants and then calling us a bitch when we refuse.
She leaps to her feet. “You know what, maybe I do want a drink after all.”
As evening falls, Araminta finds Isko outside, catching the last of the day’s warmth.
She taps her finger on the glass, the soft clinking audible on the microphones. She is nervous. Or rather, she would like to appear nervous. “I wanted to apologize for earlier. I didn’t mean to be cruel about Alex, I think it’s great you have someone in your life who means so much to you, and I am certainly not knocking accountants. Could you imagine how unbearable the world would be if everyone was like us? All awfully wrapped up in our own visions of ourselves?”
Isko hums in agreement, which is the closest to accepting her apology that he will come. He makes no further efforts to continue the conversation.
“So you don’t remember me, do you?” she says, and it’s clear this is her real reason for joining him.
He turns to her sharply. “What? No. We’ve met?”
“I used to date Dean Rodríguez.”
“Ah,” he says slowly. “So you…”
“Yeah, I spent a week on that yacht in St. Kitts. You joined us sometimes, remember? I think I spent about a month afterward dreaming of your lobster benedict.”
Isko nods. He doesn’t really remember Araminta, but there were plenty of rich blonds—especially on Dean’s arm. And Dean had been friends with Juliet for so long it was easier to recall the moments he wasn’t with them—on a yacht or at a party or at one of her homes. No wonder Araminta reminded him of Juliet—subconsciously, he must have recalled the two together.
“Well, I just wanted to say how sorry I am about what happened to Juliet,” she says. “That must have been so horrible for you.”
“It was worse for her,” Isko answers grimly.
Isko: [sigh] I don’t particularly want to give this more attention, but yes, for the last few years I was a private chef to the pop star Juliet Moncrieff. I do, distinctly, believe she had no idea she was committing any sort of crime and was led astray by management that should have protected her better. But no, I never had any awareness or involvement in the financial fraud. Juliet was very kind, a friend as much as an employer, and when she’s free, I’ll be the first in line to cater the party.
“But still—you know, losing the life you had with her.”
He meets her eyes, a distinctly fresh shade of green that makes him think of kale smoothies and the accompanying nausea. But he sees the intensity in her gaze, the bold indication that yes, she means everything he thinks she is implying.
Because Juliet wasn’t just a friend to Isko, she was a gateway, and if Araminta was there, then she knows that—knows the way Isko was part of it all: the glitz and the glamour, A-list celebrities and all their perks, enjoying a limelight that vanished the moment Juliet was arrested. And this is what Araminta is saying: I know why you’re here. You want it all back, and you think this is how you’ll get it.
She’s not wrong. About any of it.
“What do you want?” Isko asks. Being so abrupt isn’t particularly out of character, but he’s thrown enough by being exposed that he forgets to at least time it appropriately.
Thankfully, Araminta laughs. “Friendship? We got along fairly well two years ago.”
“Not well enough for me to remember it.”
For the slightest of moments Araminta seems startled, but then she’s back to that particular blend of excitement and joy that is uniquely her. “A valid point. I shall endeavor to be more memorable this time.”
“Why?” he asks again. “Do you actually care for my friendship, or is obtaining it simply good for your image? I’m the only thing ruining your cherubic reputation so you’re attempting to get me on your side?”
Araminta’s laugh is a cackle and a more genuine sound than any she has made so far, possibly more than anything else on the island yet. “I’m sorry my what reputation? No. I want us to be friends because I’m a lot. It’s pretty much my defining characteristic.”
