Chapter 9

Krystin was supposed to leave the country for the first time with Delia. They had a plan, post-college graduation: to go to Europe and see all the things pictured in their Italian textbooks, to practice saying ciao and grazie, and then sit in dark pubs and talk to boys who thought their American accents were endearing. But then Krystin won the title of Rodeo Queen Montana, and couldn't leave the state.

They were disappointed, obviously. But Krystin was excited, and Delia was proud of her, which made up for any guilt Krystin felt for canceling their trip because Delia's approval was a precious resource and Krystin felt lucky for feeling its glow. Any time Krystin found herself thinking about tossing coins into Trevi Fountain, she remembered Delia's grin when Krystin rode Ringo around the ring, waving the Montana state flag. And Delia never said a word about it, just showed up at Krystin's events and told everyone she was her best friend.

And she was—up until she wasn't anymore. Actually, Krystin doesn't know what they are. Because friendship, at least the kind she had with Delia, doesn't just end. Not after thirteen years. Krystin still doesn't understand why Delia was so mad in the first place. She genuinely thought Delia would be happy for her; or, if not happy, then accepting of the situation. But it really wasn't about happiness at all. It was about Delia's respect, and Krystin had lost it, and she's afraid she'll never feel that glow of admiration ever again.

"Mind if I sit?"

Krystin looks away from the clouds she's been staring at through the plane window. Lauren stands in the aisle, a furry neck pillow cradling her head. Her hair is tucked into a silk sleep mask with Shh … embroidered across it. She should look silly, but she doesn't. She looks …

Krystin shakes her head and gestures for her to sit. "Didn't like your seatmate?" Krystin asks as Lauren slides her carry-on under the seat.

Lauren makes a sour face. "Some old guy that kept asking me probing questions like, why is a pretty girl like you traveling alone? And I was like, I am literally traveling with nine other women and a production crew." Then she sticks a water bottle, a pack of gum, a magazine, a book, and a gratitude journal in the seat-back pocket.

Lauren catches Krystin watching and explains. "Water because airplane air is incredibly dehydrating, gum for when my ears pop, a gossip rag for entertainment, a bestseller for when I get bored of celebrities, and a journal for personal growth."

"Wow," Krystin replies, surprised that Lauren spares even a minute trying to grow personally. "You're really prepared."

"Aren't you?" Then Lauren looks at Krystin's empty seat back. "Oh. Are you just a plane sleeper?"

"I don't really know," Krystin says. "The longest flight I've ever been on was from Bozeman to Denver, and that was only an hour and fifteen minutes."

"Wait, really?" Lauren looks like Krystin just told her she shoots and eats bunnies. "So, you've never been out of the country?"

Krystin shakes her head.

"Not even Mexico?"

"Nope."

"Huh. You're really living up to your reputation."

"What reputation?"

Lauren's expression says it's obvious. "Na?ve horse girl."

Krystin rolls her eyes. "Great." She looks back out the window. She can see mountains below, and the shadows painted like watercolor onto them by the clouds. "I was supposed to go to Europe with my best friend a couple of years ago, but then stuff came up, and we had to cancel."

"So? You can still do that."

"I don't know if I can." Krystin turns back to Lauren. "I don't even know if we're still friends."

Lauren twists the cap of her water bottle until it snaps. "Why?" she asks, already drinking.

Krystin tries to think of how to phrase it without offending Lauren, who is ultimately someone Delia would hate. In fact, she's everything Delia hates about Hopelessly Devoted. "She didn't want me to come on the show. She doesn't … like it."

It doesn't work. Lauren already looks suspicious, which is just one step away from her being annoyed. "Why?" This time the word is razored.

"You know, the usual reasons," Krystin hedges. "It's fake, anti-feminist, blah blah blah."

"So your friend thinks the show is anti-feminist, but doesn't think you not being able to have a boyfriend while being a rodeo queen or whatever is?"

"Huh? What are you even talking about?"

Lauren sighs, and speaks more slowly. "You said you can't have a boyfriend, right?"

"I was not allowed to have a boyfriend while holding the state title, yes."

"So your best friend was totally cool with that, even though it seems like a fucked-up old-timey rule that some might call anti-feminist."

Krystin is starting to glean her point. "Okay, sure, I see what you mean. But it was never about that. Rodeo's about our connection to the west, and the importance of agriculture, and, like, being a role model—" She stops herself before she gets too corny. "It's a whole culture."

"Based on not having a boyfriend so you can seem attractive and available."

Krystin bristles. "Why do you care?"

Lauren shrugs. "It just sounds like your best friend's a hypocrite."

Krystin is starting to regret letting Lauren take the seat next to her. "Yeah, well, you don't know her."

"Honestly," Lauren says, slipping her magazine out of the pocket and onto her lap, "it sounds like she just doesn't want you to have a boyfriend at all."

A muted ding from the speakers. "Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned on the fasten seat belt sign."

Krystin hears Sara give an excited yelp in front of her. Then Sara pops her head above the seat and looks back at them.

"Isn't this so exciting? I can't believe we're going to Buenos Aires!"

"Totally!" Lauren says, an octave higher than her normal voice. Krystin just nods.

Sara beams at them until a flight attendant tells her to sit down and fasten her seat belt.

Krystin looks outside as they enter a patch of clouds. Next to her, Lauren flips through her magazine, her face partially obscured by the fuzzy pillow that brushes against the skin of her cheeks. She looks warm. Krystin wonders what it would feel like to curl into her. The plane jostles slightly, and Krystin feels herself pushed into her seat.

Lauren reaches into the seat pocket and retrieves her gum, and Krystin watches as she pops a square out with her acrylics and places it gently on her tongue.

Krystin did, in fact, wish she had prepared for the flight like Lauren. She could only sleep in thirty-minute increments, and the time she really was sleeping, Lauren shook her awake for their connecting flight. Krystin's first instinct when she felt Lauren's hand had been to lean into it, but Lauren had pulled away.

By the time they land in Argentina, Krystin feels like a balloon is about to burst behind her eyes. Lauren, though, just pushes her sleep mask up into her hair and blinks.

"You look like hell," she tells Krystin, who ignores her.

Holland and Jim wrangle the women off the plane. Josh, who had been siphoned off from his Devotees in his first-class seat, is nowhere to be seen.

"He's getting a separate ride to the hotel," Holland says as they walk through the airport. "You'll all see him tomorrow for the date cards."

Sara pouts. "I can't believe we were so close to him for, like, sixteen hours and couldn't even talk to him. I would do literally anything to see him right now."

Lily turns to her. "You want him to see you like this?"

Sara shrugs. "It would be good practice for when we're waking up next to each other."

Kaydie laughs. Lily rolls her eyes.

When they arrive at the hotel, Holland and Jim stop in the middle of the lobby and motion for the women to gather around them.

"Okay, ladies, we have your room assignments," Jim says. "You're all gonna share a room with one person—"

"And don't come to me saying you need a single because of some middle school sleepover trauma," Holland interrupts, holding up a finger. "I will not believe you."

Jim waits for her to be finished. "As I was saying, you'll all have one roommate, which is an upgrade from the bunks, right? Right. Okay, so the rooms are: McKenzie and Lily, Kaydie and Madison, Hilarie and Sara M., and last but not least, Krystin and Lauren C."

"It's just Lauren now, Jim," Lauren says. "There's only one."

"Congratulations."

"Thank you."

Holland gives them their room keys and itinerary packets for the week. "Meet on the private pool deck at seven PM so we can get the shot of all of you shouting ‘Buenos Aires,' all right?"

They all nod in agreement and then head to the elevators.

Lauren walks next to Krystin, rolling her AWAY suitcase smoothly across the tile. "It's like one long sleepover," she says, stretching out the word long in her mouth.

They board the elevator, which spits them out on the top floor.

"See you guys soon!" Madison yells down the hall, skipping to keep up with Kaydie, who looks like she's one excited exclamation away from pushing Madison into the wall.

"Just the two of us now," Lauren sing-songs. Then she slides the keycard into the door, which unlocks with a click.

Krystin pushes into the room. "Just so we're clear, I don't all of a sudden trust you again just because you did the right thing, like, one time."

"Come on." Lauren sets her bag down on a chair. "Don't tell me you'd rather share a room with any of them."

Krystin thinks of Kaydie, who once told Krystin that Madison's shrieks made her want to be deaf. "No," she admits.

"Then we're on the same page."

They only have a few hours before their call time on the pool deck, so they pass the time unpacking their makeup bags and hanging their cocktail dresses in the closet. When she's finished, Krystin sits down on her bed, which is way nicer than the mattresses back at the chateau, even though it's still a twin. She wishes she could just sleep now, even though it's only 6:17 and—shit, it's already 6:17 and she hasn't even started styling her hair.

Lauren's sitting on the floor in front of the windows, hunched over a magnifying mirror. "Are you good?" she asks, her tweezers poised in the air. "You look—"

"Like hell," Krystin finishes. "I know."

"I was going to say ‘out of it,' but sure."

"I'm just so tired," Krystin says as she plugs her curling iron into the bathroom outlet. "Is it normal to be this tired?"

"You're asking me if it's normal to be tired after not sleeping during seventeen hours of travel?"

Krystin sighs, wrapping a chunk of hair around the hot iron. She doesn't know why she's expecting Lauren to say something comforting. They're barely even friends.

"I'm just not used to all of this," Krystin says. "That's all."

It's quiet, and Krystin starts to think they really aren't friends at all, until Lauren walks into the bathroom and places two Advil on the counter in front of her, followed by a plastic water bottle from the mini fridge.

"Here," Lauren says. "This will make us both feel better."

She says it like a dig, but the normal edge—the condescending one usually reserved for, well, everyone—is missing. Krystin turns away from the mirror, observing Lauren like one might a new species. Her typical glare has softened, her bottom lip pulled ever so slightly behind her teeth. Before Krystin can respond, she flips her already-perfect hair behind her shoulders and walks out of the bathroom.

"In any case, you'd better get used to it," Lauren calls from the other room. "It's week five. It's only going up."

Krystin wades through the rest of the evening in a hazy stupor. She can barely focus during filming, just keeps yelling "Buenos Aires" into the hot air while the women around her beam into the sunset.

"?Arriba!" Kaydie yells, shimmying her hips.

McKenzie rests her elbows on the balcony edge and smiles at the city. "This is it," she says. "This is it."

Madison is told she has the week's first date, and she better go get ready because they leave in an hour. Krystin dips out the second they cut the cameras, leaving the rest of the women to splash each other in the pool and guess what the dates will be that week. She feels Lauren watching her as she passes the producers without a glance, but doesn't look back.

When she reaches the room, she goes straight to the bathroom and locks the door behind her. Then she strips off her too-tight dress and leaves it in a sad tangle on the floor.

It might be the nicest shower she's ever stepped in, or it might just be that she's never wanted a shower so badly. She rakes shampoo across her scalp until her hair feels squeaky under her fingers; she rubs shower gel into her skin, and spends several minutes washing her face. Every time she looks at her hands, more mascara has flaked onto her fingertips.

She stays even after she's clean. The water glitters as it hits the shower tiles. No matter how much she turns the dial, she can't get the water hot enough. Eventually she just sits down, resting her toes on the curve of the tub. The water rains down onto her, pushing her hair in front of her face; she lets it hang there like a curtain in front of her eyes.

Then she cries. It's probably the jet lag, because she's so, so tired, and she doesn't even know why she's sad. But then she thinks of the time she and Delia went to get their passport photos taken before their trip was canceled, and remembers. She thinks about Delia eight years ago in Krystin's bedroom, on a hot summer night, somehow hotter than this, than Buenos Aires. And she remembers. Remembering feels like swimming through molasses.

Why is it so hard for her to be happy? She's in Buenos Aires with a guy she really likes, and who likes her back. For some reason, that thought only makes her cry harder. The steam fills up the bathroom until breathing feels thick and hot. Her back feels raw from where the water's been hitting her skin.

She waits for her breathing to steady, then reaches back to turn the shower off. She wraps a towel around her body and wipes a hand across the foggy mirror, which reveals a more-than-flushed Krystin staring back at her with puffy eyes.

"Fuck," she whispers, then puts on her moisturizer.

When she emerges from the bathroom, Lauren looks up at her from her bed. "Finally. I have to pee."

"Sorry," Krystin says, hoping she sounds normal. "I thought you were still at the pool."

"It's fine," she says, turning the TV off. "I've been watching Argentine telenovelas."

Krystin busies herself with rifling through her suitcase for a T-shirt. "Well, it's all yours now."

She hears Lauren bounce off the bed and close the bathroom door. Krystin changes into her Murdoch's shirt and Montana State sweats and then dries her hair with the towel. By the time Lauren's done, Krystin's managed to maintain a neutral face while combing out her waves. She's confident Lauren hasn't noticed anything different until she sniffles and has to blow her nose.

"Allergies," Krystin lies.

"Bullshit. You haven't had allergies this entire time."

Lauren looks at Krystin, who tries to hide behind her hair. "Hey," Lauren says, softer now. "Are you okay?"

Which makes Krystin start crying again.

Lauren looks confused, and kind of uncomfortable. "Is this because of when I called you a horse girl?"

"What?" Krystin says through tears. "No."

"Well …" Lauren pauses. Krystin doesn't expect her to finish, but finally she just asks, "What's wrong?"

"Delia," she blurts out, too exhausted to care.

"Who?"

"My best friend."

"Oh. You never told me her name."

Krystin reaches for another tissue. "I didn't? Well, there it is."

Lauren hasn't moved from her position on her bed. "If you're sad because she doesn't want to be your friend anymore, then fuck her."

"She's my best friend," Krystin chokes. "Don't you have a best friend?"

"Well, yes," Lauren replies. "But we're, like, different."

"Bully for you."

"That's not what I mean," Lauren says, and Krystin can hear that she's actually trying. "I don't know. We like a lot of the same things."

"I think she's ashamed of me," Krystin says suddenly.

"Did she tell you that?"

"No," Krystin says. "But she didn't have to." She decides to just tell Lauren the whole car story, because it's too much work to talk around it. She doesn't tell her the other stuff, the stuff that started to peel back in the shower before she frantically smoothed it back up again.

"What a bitch," Lauren says when she's done.

"She's not," Krystin insists. "She wants the best for me." She meets Lauren's eyes from her bed. "What if I really fucked up coming here? What if I made a horrible, awful mistake? And I can't even go back to rodeo—"

"Krystin," Lauren interrupts. "You—"

"She's not proud of me anymore," Krystin spits. "I ruined it."

Lauren looks at Krystin, her eyes dark with determination, a stern stitch in her brow. "You don't exist just for someone else to be proud of you. Who gives a fuck if some cunty hick doesn't approve of your choices? You can't live your life constantly afraid of disappointing people. And, like …"

She trails off, directing her gaze to the ground. Krystin's a little afraid of what she's going to say, because it looks like Lauren's steeling herself for something.

"I know my word doesn't, like, count for much, but …" Her eyes flick up to Krystin's and there's something in them that feels like fire. "I think you have a lot to be proud of. And if you need someone else to see it for you, I do."

Krystin feels like Lauren's hands are wrapped around her lungs, squeezing the air out bit by bit. She doesn't know what to say, so she just says, "Thanks."

Lauren straightens a little. "Yeah, well."

Krystin pulls her legs up to sit cross-legged on the bed. "She's not a cunt, you know. We've been friends since sixth grade."

"She sounds like a cunt."

"Okay."

They sit in silence for a while. Krystin blows her nose again.

"Hey," Lauren says, and Krystin turns to look back at her. "You're a rodeo queen."

"Are we just listing facts now?"

"You're a rodeo queen," she repeats. "That sounds like something to be proud of."

"Mm."

Lauren turns off the light without Krystin asking. Then she flicks on the TV to more telenovelas, and mutes the sound.

Krystin folds the duvet back and crawls underneath the blankets.

"You can turn the volume up," she says, and the words sound slurred to her own ears. "I don't mind."

"It's fine," Lauren says softly, and Krystin can barely hear her over the sound of her own steady breathing. "I can't understand it anyway."