If the Shoe Fits (Meant To Be #1) by Julie Murphy

“How was your big date?” I ask, even though I know I shouldn’t.

He groans.

“That bad or that off-limits?”

“You know it’s just part of being here, right? This isn’t real.”

“It’s not?” I ask, and I know it’s too big of a question for either of us to answer, so I quickly change course. “Olives too,” I tell him. “Can’t stand ’em.”

“Okay, well, you’ve left me with no choice. I choose Zeke.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure someone’s already called dibs on Zeke.” I clap my hand over my mouth, then remember that he saw them in the pool that night.

“Yeah, he and Anna make a pretty cute pairing. Neither of them is very good at sneaking around, though.”

If he only knew. I open my mouth to tell him about all the times Erica caught Anna sneaking out but quickly stop myself.

“Anyone who hooks up in a pool behind a house full of women isn’t keeping any secrets,” he says.

I don’t know how to talk to him about Anna without also telling him that she’s my sister, so I return to a proven tactic. “It’s not that I don’t like olives and cherries. But they have to be fresh. Like, with the pits in them. None of that canned or jarred stuff. Though, on my twenty-first birthday, I ate twenty-one moonshine cherries.”

He coughs, choking on his drink a little. “Did you say moonshine cherries? Are you from some kind of Appalachian dynasty? Is that what you’re not telling me?”

I fight back a chill as my bath begins to cool. “No Appalachian blood. Just happened to meet some guy from Queens who brewed moonshine in his bathtub.” My twenty-first birthday was epic, thanks to Sierra. She has this belief that seminal birthdays should be a quest, so we went on a multiborough hunt for the best baklava money could buy and ended up in some guy’s bathroom eating moonshine-soaked cherries.

“I…have so many questions, but first: How did he shower?”

“Huh. I hadn’t thought of that…and I think I don’t really want to.”

His laugh fades into the quiet darkness, and for a moment it’s just the sounds of bugs and breathing.

“Henry?” I ask.

“Cindy.”

“Do you regret coming on this show?”

He’s quiet at first. “I think…I think going back to real life and constantly wondering if people actually take me seriously or if I’ll just always be that guy who went on a reality TV show and then let his mother’s company flop…And when I was on my way here, I thought I was already regretting this whole thing. But now, no matter what happens, I don’t think I’ll ever regret this. That flight. You being here. I wonder if maybe it’s all fate.”

“You don’t actually believe in fate, do you?”

“I don’t know. I think I just might. What else do you call being on the same flight and then the same television show?”

“Coincidence,” I offer.

“Oh, come on,” he says.

“It’s…hard for me to believe that something is orchestrating all of these specific moments so that our lives end up just as they were always meant to. I can’t help but think that if the universe is playing by the rules of fate, my parents died for a reason. And ovarian cancer…a car accident. There’s no sense in things like that.” I pause, thinking about what he said. “But…I don’t know. Something about this whole experience does sort of feel…meant to be. Then again I don’t even know what we are, so maybe this was all just for nothing.” There. I said it. The impossible thing. The one thing I don’t know.

“Cindy—”

“I have to tell you something,” I say. “I need you to know.”

“Cindy, whatever it is, it’s okay. I want to be the person you need me to be, but I just—I can’t promise you anything. Not right now. I know that’s not fair, and I wish—”

“I’m here for the money,” I blurt. “Or I was here for the money. And the exposure for my career. I mean, I won’t lie. Winning the money would still be nice, but I—I didn’t come here looking for this. I didn’t come here expecting to find you.”

“I guess we both surprised each other, then, didn’t we?”

“And you hate surprises,” I remind him.

“This one wasn’t all bad. Cindy—”

“Shoot,” I whisper under my breath.

“What?” he asks, just a hint of worry in his voice.

“It’s nothing. I just left my towel on my bed.”

“I can get it,” he answers quickly.

I can already hear him standing. “Oh—okay.”

“No peeking,” he promises.

I nod, even though he can’t see me. “Okay.”

As I listen to him walk around to the front of my villa, I sink down even lower into the tub so that my chin is dipping below the water.

The glass door slides open. “Eyes closed, I swear. What I was trying to say is—” He steps forward and immediately trips on the lip of the door.

“Oh, be careful,” I tell him.

Tonight, he wears dark navy shorts with a fitted, purposefully rumpled–looking white Oxford with the sleeves rolled up and brown leather sandals. His eyes squeeze shut as he swallows a curse.