Before He Was Gone: Starstruck Book 2

by Becky Wicks

  My eyes are still narrowed. Do I trust him?

  ‘Think about it. We’re the strongest here, dude. Mike’s out tomorrow, Shan lost the last challenge and you’ve seen Punk – he can’t even break into a fucking coconut. The girls know we’re stronger, they’re gonna try and get us out of the game eventually. We need to make sure it’s us in this to the finish.’

  My arms cross as I study all two hundred and fifty-five pounds of him. He’s right. I need to keep my shit together to beat Jaxx, too. I need to win; that’s all that matters. But his words about my lack of popularity sting suddenly. I know I’ve been distant at times… and yes, I could’ve kicked the shit out of Mike this afternoon. Do people think I’m a liability?

  ‘If it looks like I’m out I’ll use this, but if it looks like you’re heading out, I’ll volunteer it, on the condition that you keep it quiet. No one finds out. Just us,’ Jaxx says, dangling it in front of him from a finger. ‘Do we have a deal?’

  15

  Alyssa

  I drink from my beer and take in the full panorama in the moonlight. I can just make out the lights on another small island – it’s where we think the crew’s camp is. The stars are a blanket of twinkly polka dots and it all reminds me of Chloe’s photos from Bali. The island can’t be too far away from here, like Shan said. It’s the place she and Noah took their first romantic vacation.

  ‘I’ll take you there one day,’ Sebastian promised me when they got back, all tanned and more in love than any couple I’ve ever seen.

  He never did.

  A cough behind me in the silence. I turn my head in the darkness and my heart leaps against my ribcage when I see him. Joshua. He’s walking towards me along the shoreline. His bandana is tied around his head again; his silhouette is all man. I just went for a swim so I’m not even wearing my dumb bandana skirt. I clench the beer bottle to me. For some reason, since that stupid dream, I feel more naked around him than I should. I thought everyone else was sleeping.

  ‘Can’t stay away from the ocean, huh Pisces?’ he says, reaching me.

  ‘It’s kind of tough to here, but yeah, water’s a weakness,’ I reply, noting that he’s holding a coconut.

  ‘You should drink this now, instead of beer,’ he says, climbing effortlessly up and sitting beside me. ‘Nature’s very own rehydration elixir.’

  I arch an eyebrow as I take it from him. I can’t believe we share the same birthday – that’s kind of crazy, considering there are ten of us and we’ve been thrown together purely for our differences.

  ‘Thanks. You don’t drink?’ I say, putting the beer down behind me on the rock. It's been kind of nice, having a blurry brain for a while.

  ‘No ma’am.’

  ‘Ever?’

  ‘I like to keep my wits about me.’

  ‘So the animal never lets loose?’

  ‘I don’t need alcohol for that,’ he says.

  ‘I’m sure.’ I say it calmly, but his obvious flirtation makes my skin prickle and so does his entire ripped body now, glistening like some kind of sea god next to me. His biceps look bulkier in the low light as he leans back on his arms, dangling his feet in the water. Vogue shoot, I think again, almost smiling.

  I want to thank him for sticking up for me back there with Jaxx tonight, but for some reason I know he’d just shrug it off. I’ve noticed Joshua’s as spontaneous with his words and actions as I am; as passionate. Two emotional drifters on one island, Journey called us, like she was binding us together. I saw how he looked uncomfortable at that.

  ‘Greek restaurant,’ he says from out of nowhere. ‘Sounds good. How’s your baklava?’

  His words make my stomach jolt. Sebastian loved my baklava. ‘It’s OK,’ I say, eyes to the ocean.

  ‘You want to be a famous chef or something? You must have connections. You could have a TV show of your own after this – get Shan in an apron, getting you drunk while you do it. I can see that, already.’

  ‘What I knew of fame never did me any favors,’ I tell him, smiling. ‘I don’t want fame for fame's sake.’

  He’s quiet as he looks at me, then out at the moon. ‘I don’t blame you,’ he says.

  I turn to him. ‘I just want to make good food. This is a crowded planet – people craving fame just want other people to know who they are, right? Fame is an illusion ayway. It’s a bunch of projections.’

  ‘Projections?’ he repeats with intrigue as I swig from the coconut. I nod. ‘I think about that a lot here. What’s real, what isn’t? Don’t you?’

  ‘I do, actually,’ he says, glancing at the camera guy coming at us from the beach. ‘I think a lot about everything, here.’

  ‘I imagine if it was just me here,' I say, 'just me and the sea and the sand flies and the birds, and this coconut.’ I hold it up between us. ‘I imagine if none of the photographers or the stories about me and Sebastian ever affected me again. They could still talk about me, I guess, but if I didn’t know about it, would I still be a famous person? Or would I just be me again?’

  ‘What do you mean again? You’re already just you,’ he says. A line appears between his dark eyebrows as I turn to look at him. ‘Maybe through fame you’ve been defining yourself as something else without even realizing it.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I say into his eyes. He's seriously intoxicating. Or is it the beers?

  ‘You is all you can ever be.’ He takes the coconut back, swigs from it.

  ‘Well, yes,' I say. 'If you believe what other people say about you, good or bad, you project other people’s crap onto yourself and then you just go off-track, right? Spiritually, mentally, karmically…’

  ‘All of the above,’ he says. ‘So, why don’t you just forget about all that while you’re here?’

  ‘I’m trying to, trust me.’

  ‘They don’t even know the real you.’

  ‘And you do?’ I laugh suddenly.

  Joshua smiles, runs his finger round the rim of the coconut. ‘Some people are summer, and some people are winter,’ he says softly after a moment, but I’m just looking at the ocean now, trying not to fall. I know the beer is still in my bloodstream but the sheer intensity of him is making me want to do bad things. Looks aside, Joshua is probably the most insightful person I’ve held a conversation with in months.

  ‘You’re summer, Alyssa,’ he follows, but before I can say anything he’s throwing me a curveball: ‘Did you love him?’

  ‘Sebastian? Yes, of course.’

  I say it fast, on autopilot, but the sparks igniting invisibly between us make me stop. ‘I don’t know,’ I admit, looking at my bare feet on the rocks.

  ‘You don’t know?’

  I shrug. ‘It all seemed so great. But maybe love was just part of the illusion.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I glance at the camera and Joshua puts a hand to my back. His touch makes my heart skid. ‘Fuck, Alyssa, I’m sorry. That’s none of my business...’

  ‘He was never really there, even when he was,’ I say anyway. ‘He was always someplace else. Usually his music.’

  ‘His first love?’ he says, moving his hand and I nod slowly.

  ‘Maybe his only love. But I put up with it.’

  It's true. I did put up with it. I flash back over our entire relationship suddenly like a movie - from the first kiss, the first night to the last time; the conversations we used to have. Sebastian worshipped me and I reveled in his adoration when he was focused fully on me. But even in those moments, did he ever set my mind on fire? Did he ever really scratch lines across my soul?

  When he ditched me I didn't know whether I was broken-hearted or humiliated. Maybe I was a bit of both, but that's not how it's supposed to be, right? If Chloe lost Noah she'd die; she'd break to pieces and die, whereas I still don't know exactly how I feel. I'm just somewhere else now, processing it all, but the same stupid stuff is going round in my brain: what do people think of me? What are people saying? I never classed myself as shallow, but maybe I am.
/>   I squeeze my eyes shut. I shouldn’t have drunk all these beers. Chloe says they make me emotional.

  ‘What about you?’ I say, forcing the lump from my throat away and opening my eyes. ‘Any significant others?’

  Joshua studies my face. His eyes move to my lips. ‘There was a girl.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘English,’ he says, lowering his eyes. ‘She wanted more than I could give her.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you have given her more?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have been a good idea.’

  ‘Why?’

  A look I can’t read flashes across his features. He reaches out, runs a hot thumb over a coconut splash on my lips. ‘Forget him,’ he says without answering me. ‘He wasn’t the one.’

  What?

  I feel my eyes widen but he looks away, like he regrets what he just said and did. The urge to fill the silence is excruciating as I draw my legs up on the rocks. Wow. I was not expecting that. Joshua just said exactly what I've been trying not to think. ‘Maybe he just wasn’t ready for me,’ I manage after a moment, resting my chin on my crossed arms and letting out a sigh.

  'Wasn't ready for you?'

  ‘My friend Chloe leant me this book about souls. It said how sometimes a soul doesn’t recognize a mate at first because the fears from past lives kick into the subconscious and force you to push them away.’

  Joshua throws a pebble from the rock out to the flat shallows. Amusement crosses his face. ‘Soul mates?’

  The feel of his fingertips is still buzzing across my lips. ‘That’s her and Noah, at least,’ I carry on. ‘You should see them. In reality I mean. She saw this psychic in New York once who told her they’d had almost thirty lives together. Can you believe that?’

  He frowns. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘How do you know?’ I press. ‘How do you know we didn’t meet in a past life, horoscope twin?’

  Joshua grins as a crab scuttles past my feet. ‘You want to talk reincarnation now?’

  ‘These things happen when we don’t have smartphones.’

  He laughs. ‘I’ve never had a smartphone, but I like the way your mind works. A past life,’ he muses. ‘Do you think we fucked something up? Is that why we’re back here, Alyssa? Stranded with a bunch of strangers, drifting…’

  ‘Emotionally drifting, don’t forget,’ I follow and he rolls his eyes at Journey’s words.

  ‘And this island is just a… a what? A weird little microcosm of the bigger world?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe we’re just two souls, forced here to acknowledge what we would’ve otherwise missed,’ I say. ‘This is deep, Joshua.’

  He nods his head thoughtfully. ‘Deep, Double G. What do you think we’re missing?’

  ‘Maybe we’ll never know,’ I say.

  ‘Maybe we won’t.’

  He’s looking straight into my eyes. Every nerve-ending in my body is in flames as he holds my gaze and I hold my breath. For one crazy second I think he’s actually going to kiss me, right here under the stars in this weird new world we're creating by the second, but he turns away, back to the water.

  ‘Aren’t you just encouraging more attention, being here?’ he says after a moment. It feels like he just threw a concrete wall back up between us. What the hell?

  I compose myself internally. I’m noting every single touch now, every breath, every hair between us. I’ve lost the plot. ‘I don’t know, maybe,’ I sigh, leaning back on my elbows. ‘But if I am, it’s for being who I really am, now, and not who the media says I am.’

  He laughs softly, looking back at me in the moonlight. ‘Seriously? This is television. You know they’ll edit you into being exactly who they want you to be, no matter what you do.’

  ‘It’s a risk I’m taking,’ I say. ‘So what about you? Why are you here, Mr Zombie Killer?’

  ‘I like a challenge,’ he answers.

  ‘I figured that, so what do you want the prize money for?’ As I say it, something strikes me about what Joshua said before around the fire. ‘Is it a home?' I ask. 'You haven’t had one for two years, right? Is that why you broke things off with your girlfriend?’

  He shakes his head slowly, but falls silent.

  ‘What, you can’t tell me?’ I press. ‘What’s the big secret?’ But my head’s buzzing more now with a memory. The girl from the interviews in L.A, Lanie; she said they had the mysterious recluse covered. I only just remembered. Joshua is so it.

  ‘She wasn’t my girlfriend,’ he says, more to the moon than to me. ‘And why does it matter what I need the prize money for?’

  'It doesn't, I was just...'

  ‘Nothing matters in that world. That stuff is another projection; it’s not even real while we’re here. But you are, Alyssa. And this is.’

  He puts one strong arm around my shoulders, gestures around us both in a sweep that slices through the starlight. ‘Don't you think it's perfect, just the way it is?’

  16

  Joshua

  ‘I’m telling you, it has to be here, I’ve looked everywhere else,’ Shan huffs at Alyssa, sticking his hand into the tree hole and pulling out nothing but sand. He’s wearing just his G-A-Y-fronts. It’s still uncomfortable for everyone but him, especially when they’re wet, but he and the others who lost the last challenge still don’t have swimsuits so it’s not all his fault.

  ‘You can’t have looked everywhere,’ Alyssa says, flashing me a look of despair, ‘else you would’ve found it. Someone else must have it already.’

  I avert my eyes. I feel like a total dick watching them search, knowing Jaxx already has the immunity charm, but what can I do? I turn to the palm tree next to us, but as I’m about to climb I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn around. ‘Teach me?’ Alyssa says, eyes shining.

  ‘Don’t you dare climb that tree,’ Shan tells her, running his hand along another branch, feeling for the charm that won’t be there. ‘I don’t want to have to scrape your broken body up in pieces.’

  ‘You won’t have to,’ Alyssa says, still looking at me. ‘I’ll be OK. You can put me on your back like Edward Cullen if you like, call me Bella?’

  I laugh. I have no clue who Edward Cullen is, or Bella, but for a second I picture Harri in her place – that first day at the climbing center, all rosy cheeked and English. I didn’t need to teach her anything. She was pretending not to know how to climb. I acted like I didn’t know she was pretending.

  I bite my cheeks. Alyssa’s presence throws me off balance, even on solid ground. The more we talk, the more I know I have to start keeping away from her. I can hear Evan’s voice in my head, reminding me how much rests on me winning this. But for the past three nights now, we’ve sat out on those rocks watching sunset turn to night, just talking. Other people come and go, but at the end it’s always us. There’s always something else to say; some worldly issue we have to dissect and debate, some memory she jogs in me from things I thought I forgot and her eyes light up when I tell her my stories. Alyssa’s seen and done some equally crazy shit, though:

  ‘So you’re saying you never paid for a restaurant meal, the whole time you were with him?’ I asked her last night.

  ‘HotFlush picked up the check; whatever we did. Or, the hosts covered us. Those guys get free stuff just for being famous. One time, this hotel on an island in Dubai gave us a whole floor, and they set up a chocolate fountain. Oh, and they gave Chloe and I designer purses. We found out they were worth two thousand dollars each.’

  ‘Holy shit! Every girl’s dream.’

  ‘Not really, I sold mine on eBay. I’ve been saving for the culinary course. All designer purses look like fakes anyway; I got the same one from Chinatown for twenty bucks. No one ever knew.’

  ‘You’re from another planet, Double G,’ I told her.

  ‘Well so are you,’ she said, laughing. ‘I can score a free hotel suite in the Maldives just by name-dropping, but that won’t save me in the apocalypse. I’d still need you for that.’

  Damn. I loo
k at her now, eyes still begging me to teach her how to climb. ‘Please,’ she says again. She shoots me the look she says the magazines all think is from her best side, bats her long, dark eyelashes over-dramatically and I sigh at her.

  ‘OK. Fine. You win. You might scuff up your hands though,’

  ‘I’m a big girl.’

  I step behind her, so she’s facing the tree. ‘Oh, Christ,’ Shan says, ‘here we go!’

  ‘Shut up,’ she tells him.

  ‘Concentrate,’ I say. ‘OK, put one hand around the tree, chest level. The other goes at the same height but to the side.’

  ‘Like this?’ she says, and I reach around her, shifting her hands. My entire torso is up against her back and she falls silent, holding the tree. She’s hot, like I am. My face brushes her hair for a moment. Focus.

  ‘When you’re ready, jump up, put your feet each side of the tree and grip,’ I say. ‘Keep your knees perpendicular to your body. Don’t think too much, just do it.’

  ‘This is going to go wrong,’ Shan says.

  ‘Quiet,’ she tells him again. ‘OK, step back, both of you.’ She takes a deep breath as I move away an inch. Her shoulder blades tense as she grips on tighter.

  ‘Hop like a frog,’ I say. ‘Use your hands at the same time.’

  She leaps up in front of me. I watch her feet curl with every muscle around the bark and she hops, clinging to the tree again at the top of her jump. Her ass cheeks are showing beneath her tailor made hot pants and I watch as the camera guy with us runs in for the money shot.

  ‘You’ve got it,’ I yell, ‘keep going, up, up…’

  ‘Christ, Lord save her,’ Shan says, gripping my arm as she takes another leap, but Alyssa lets out a shriek and loses her grip with her feet. She starts to slide straight down the trunk and I dart forwards as Shan gasps. I catch her round the waist before she can twist and fall. She’s laughing in my arms, back flat against me, catching her breath and balling her fists.

  ‘Are your palms burning?’ I say, spinning her round and taking her hands. I hold them flat. They’re red but she’s OK. She didn’t fall far.