Chapter 6

As far as Lauren can tell, Josh seems to have three states of being: flattered, excited, and distressed. Occasionally, he looks amused or slightly turned on—during that mud wrestling date, he was a bit of both—but Lauren would probably classify those moods as slight variations on "excited," anyway.

Right now, he looks extremely distressed. His brows furrow and he sucks in a breath as he rests a large, warm hand on her thigh. "You have no idea how happy I am to see you."

"Really, I'm fine." Lauren covers his hand with her own, but can't bring herself to weave their fingers together. "I just have low iron, so I have to be careful. It's the anemia." Did she tell Josh about being anemic, or just the other women? She can't remember. Get it together, she tells herself. It hasn't even been three weeks. You can't let some cowgirl from the middle of nowhere totally unravel you.

"I'm just glad you made it back here," he says. "We were all really worried."

"We?" Lauren echoes. Krystin wasn't actually worried she hurt her, was she? Something flips in Lauren's stomach, and if she didn't know herself any better, she'd think it was guilt.

Well, fine. Maybe she does feel just a tiny bit guilty, only because throwing Krystin under the bus wasn't a part of her master plan. It was a survival instinct: She was rolling around in the mud with a pretty blonde, their legs locked together, and all the emergency alert systems in her brain told her to shut it down, shut it down.

"Okay, okay, you got me," Josh says, sounding sheepish, and Lauren remembers where she is. "I was worried. Between this and the fashion show date, you've had a rough go of it."

"I've been pushed out of my comfort zone, that's for sure. But it's all worth it." Lauren moves a quarter of an inch closer to him. She can smell his woodsy, husky cologne. It's way too strong, and makes her feel even more light-headed than all those thoughts about Krystin and mud wrestling. She soldiers on, though. "Whenever I see you, everything else, like, disappears."

Instead of answering, Josh just gives her this puppy dog look and kisses her, soft and sweet and quick. Lauren uses her sling as an excuse not to lean in any closer.

"What happened out there, anyway?" he asks. "It was like, one second you two were going at it and having fun, and the next …"

"Oh, you know. It was an accident," Lauren says. She feels pained at the idea of rehashing everything. "It wasn't, like, her fault."

"Krystin's fault," Josh clarifies.

"Right. I mean, she couldn't have known about my iron deficiency. And I think Krystin just got really into the competition component, which isn't a bad thing," Lauren adds. "I don't know her that well, of course, but she's clearly an athlete. And she's one of those people who's just so … focused. She's kind of a fighter, right?"

Josh doesn't answer right away. His lips quirk into a small, thoughtful smile, and Lauren wonders if he's remembering their paintball one-on-one from last week. She wonders how easily Krystin beat him—because obviously Krystin beat him, even though Lauren knows nothing about how paintball works or how you win. She wonders if he just let her kick his ass or made her work for it, if they kissed during or after their match, if Krystin's hazel eyes go molten and dark and determined every time she really, really wants to win …

Before she can stop it, Lauren has a flash memory of Krystin's body under hers: her tanned skin streaked with mud, her hands clawing at Lauren's arms. Their thighs slotting together and Krystin's soft but strong grip on her wrist. The way her whole fucking body seemed to react to Krystin's warm breath, her too-close mouth. She might have used the word focused to describe Krystin, but for a moment in the ring, it was Lauren who couldn't hear or feel anything besides her opponent's unsteady, fevered breathing.

Suddenly, Lauren's whole body feels hot, and Josh's hand is way, way too high up on her thigh. She gently squeezes and moves it.

"Let's not talk about the other women here," he says, and even though Josh has no way of knowing what Lauren was thinking, her heart rate ratchets up. "I want to know about you. Tell me something about your family."

It's a sharp conversational pivot, but a welcome one. "Well, my dad works in sales. My mom's a real estate agent. We're all really close," Lauren says. "And then my sister, she goes to my alma mater. She's, like, one of my best friends."

Growing up, Lauren and Rachel were close. There was this game they used to play: They'd round up every chair in the house, except their dad's heavy armchair, and bring them outside, all while chanting the words "Garden Wedding Special" over and over again. Rachel would fill every seat with a doll or stuffed animal, and Lauren would sneak into their parents' bedroom and steal her mom's makeup—Rachel tried to do this once, but she got caught—and they'd switch off, with one as the bride and the other as the maid of honor. The bride had to wear all white, the maid of honor had to do her makeup and take photos, and after that, the game was over. Despite the name and all the setup, there was never an actual wedding. It was all about the preparation. (And their mom inevitably lecturing them for moving so much furniture to the backyard, or getting lipstick on their white dresses.)

One time in sixth grade, Lauren had some friends over. Damian, of course, and this girl Alisha, who lived down a couple blocks over and had the prettiest, silkiest, longest black hair. Rachel, who was still just six or seven years old, walked in on the three of them watching some paranormal teen show on the CW. "Laur, Laur, I have an idea," she said, her face all lit up. "Let's do Garden Wedding Special. We can do it for real this time! Damian can be the groom. Alisha can be a bridesmaid!"

Before Damian or Alisha could say anything, Lauren rolled her eyes. "Rach, I'm way too old for Garden Wedding Special. Go away."

Rachel looked confused, probably because they'd played the game just a few weeks before. She walked up to Lauren and lowered her voice to what she clearly thought was a whisper. "Are you scared to kiss Damian?"

"No," Lauren snapped. She could hear Alisha giggling. "It's just a stupid game for kids, and I'm almost a teenager. Leave me alone."

Later, Damian left for dinner, and Alisha spent the night. She borrowed a pink pajama set and tied her thick hair back into two loose braids, and they crawled into side-by-side sleeping bags on Lauren's bedroom floor. "That wedding thing sounded so dumb, but you should've done it, just to kiss Damian," Alisha said. "I mean, I would have. He's so cute."

Lauren's chest seized, and she suddenly worried she might throw up. She felt ridiculously, uncontrollably jealous—which was weird, because she'd never seen Damian that way. But Alisha was snoring steadily within minutes, and Lauren stayed up for another hour, thinking of Damian and Alisha cuddling up on bus rides to field trips and holding hands at the end-of-year dance and hanging out without her. She stared at Alisha's sleeping body, her chest rising and falling with each snore, and imagined the way her feisty, cocky smile might turn soft and serious in the seconds before someone kissed her—in the seconds before Damian kissed her. The thought made something fall in Lauren's stomach, and she suddenly wanted to cry. Maybe she did like Damian, after all.

You just don't want to be left out, she told herself, and the conclusion was convincing enough that she was finally able to fall asleep.

The next day, she found Rachel reading a chapter book in her room. "We can play Garden Wedding Special now," Lauren said. "You can even use my new strawberry lip gloss. I only said it was stupid because you were embarrassing me in front of my friends."

"It's fine," Rachel said. "You were right. That game's for babies."

Lauren isn't about to tell Josh Rosen about Garden Wedding Special, and she isn't about to tell him that, dramatic as it sounds, she thinks her relationship with Rachel was never the same after that. That some sort of chasm opened up between them as teenagers and then adults, and even though they borrowed each other's shoes and commented on each other's Instagram posts, they never actually talked about anything substantial, or knew anything about each other's lives. Even their weekly Hopelessly Devoted watch parties came to a temporary, then permanent halt once Rachel left for college.

Alisha, on the other hand, stayed friends with Lauren for another three months, until Lauren kissed a boy Alisha liked at Sammy Giordano's birthday pool party. Shortly after, for hopefully unrelated reasons, Alisha's family moved to Atlanta. Lauren never saw her again.

"You have a brother, right?" Lauren asks Josh. "What's that relationship like? Did you have any traditions or anything, like, growing up?"

Josh smiles and shakes his head. "We used to get in so much trouble together. Jeremiah was always pranking our parents—moving things around the house, putting sugar in the salt shaker, stuff like that. His signature move was hiding under the couch and reaching out to grab someone's leg whenever they sat down."

"Let me guess. You were always the well-intentioned bystander who got roped in?"

Lauren gives him a look, and he laughs. "The worst was this one time, he dared me to jump out at my mom from behind the kitchen door. It was Passover, and she was bringing all this food out, and—well. We thought she'd drop it, and it would be funny."

"You're literally evil." Lauren elbows him with her good arm. On some level, she knows that they're flirting, even though this is possibly the least sexy conversation she's ever had in her life. But if Lauren learned anything from her sorority sisters, it's that flirting with men is as easy as getting them to tell a long-winded story, then somehow touching and insulting them in tandem. The formula never fails.

"It gets worse." Josh winces. "My grandfather walked out instead, and we scared him so much that he had to go sit down for a while. Thankfully, he took it in stride, but I was grounded for weeks. Anyway, I learned my lesson."

"So you won't be jumping out at any of us, will you?" she asks. "Because I can really only sustain one injury at a time."

"For real. I'm glad you're okay," he responds, his voice low.

Lauren's still deciding what to say next when she gets a pungent, sudden whiff of Daisy by Marc Jacobs. "Mind if I cut in?" asks Ashley.

"All yours." Lauren smiles sweetly, then smooths a wrinkle in her rose gold dress. "Thanks again, Josh. Seriously."

Josh's earnest, beaming face is the last thing she sees before turning and walking back to the lounge.

Because no one was crowned the Mud Queen, no one gets the group date ribbon, either. It doesn't go over well.

"We really bonded today," Lily laments as she takes her contacts out. Although the contestants are divided with three or four to a room, they all have to share one bathroom, which only has three sinks, two stalls, and four showers. It isn't ideal for a group of sixteen twenty-something women, each with her own Sephora haul and personalized skincare routine. "I told him about my parents' divorce, which is something I never share with guys. And we, um, kissed for the first time."

Hilarie, all while actively brushing her teeth, whips her head toward Lily. A speck of Colgate MaxFresh lands on the mirror. "You kissed? How was it?"

Lily chews her bottom lip, then erupts into giggles. "It was perfect. The whole night was perfect. Or at least it would've been, if there'd been a group date ribbon."

"You're not going home, girl. If he kisses you, you're safe," Kaydie adds. "I'm going to bed. Today was long as fuck." She gives Lauren a weird look, tosses a cleansing wipe into the trash can, and walks out.

Lily and Hilarie follow her soon after, and for the first time in weeks, Lauren is completely alone—no cameras, no contestants, no producers, no Josh.

At that moment, of course, Krystin walks in. She's in sweats and an old T-shirt, her hair piled up into a messy bun, but she's still wearing a full face of mascara, lip gloss, and blush. She smiles tightly at Lauren and then pulls out a purple makeup bag.

"Hey," Lauren says. Even to her own ears, her voice sounds bored, but she feels the need to fill the silence.

"Hi." Either Krystin doesn't want to look Lauren in the eye, or she's just really, really laser-focused on washing her face. Before Lauren can reply, she adds, "Glad to see your arm's feeling better."

Lauren glances down. She'd taken off the sling to pull her hair back into a ponytail. "Like I said, it was mostly a precaution," she says. "I'm not upset or anything."

Krystin's face contorts in frustration, and she starts scrubbing at her cheeks just a little more vigorously. "Good. I'm glad."

What Lauren should really do is nod and move on, if not leave the bathroom altogether. But she isn't done with her nighttime routine yet, and she doesn't know what to do with this nagging sense that Krystin's icing her out. Obviously, Lauren isn't sad about it or anything, but it's like a hangnail or a split end—an annoying inconvenience that she'd really rather just rip off and then forget about forever.

"Look, it was an accident. No one's mad at you," Lauren reiterates. "I mean, I'm not mad at you. Josh isn't mad at you. Everything's fine."

"You're sure about that?" Krystin stops what she's doing and turns to face Lauren. Her skin is now almost makeup-free, but there's a small mascara smudge on her left cheek. "Because I'm pretty sure everyone thinks I'm some kind of vindictive, hyper-aggressive monster who ruined the group date and caused someone personal injury. And who knows how they'll edit this on-screen. It could hurt my rodeo career."

For the second time tonight, Lauren feels a pang of guilt. After all, if the roles had been reversed, she'd be pissed if someone messed with her image and burgeoning influencing career. In fact, she'd probably find a way to fight back, but Krystin seems too noble to pull any kind of revenge stunt—which only makes Lauren feel worse. Still, she can't bring herself to apologize.

"Josh doesn't think you ruined anything," Lauren tries. "That's what matters, right?" She's not sure if she's trying to convince Krystin it's okay, or herself.

"I don't know what you're trying to do here, but this isn't a game to me," Krystin says. She sounds haughty, but looks exhausted. "This could be my future husband."

"This isn't a game to me, either," Lauren lies, keeping her eyes level with Krystin's. It's both easy and impossible to stare this girl down, because as much as she hates to admit it to herself, Krystin's pretty. And genuine, too, in a way that keeps catching Lauren off guard. For a second, neither moves, and it's like they're back in the mud pit: Lauren can feel almost every nerve in her body. She isn't sure if Krystin's about to burst into tears or curse her out.

There's still a mascara smear on her cheek. A fucked-up, almost imperceptibly small part of Lauren wonders whether Krystin's eyes would flicker shut if she leaned in and smudged it away. Shut it down, shut it down.

"Right," Krystin says finally, tearing her gaze from Lauren's. "Just … stay away from me, and don't interfere with my relationship, okay?"

She leaves the bathroom before Lauren can think of a response.