Love Island

Chapter 47 - Talent Show

"Happy three weeks, everybody!" Charlie stood behind the bar, pouring drinks for everyone to celebrate the twenty-first day of living in the villa. "And a few extras for our original homies that got sent home. Michael, Katrina, Eli, Blake-"

"Amelia," Polly added.

Charlie immediately lifted the bottle and shimmied a cork into the neck. "Yeah, her, too." He placed the bottle back in the mini-fridge and turned to face me. His eye had bruised overnight, bearing a smokey blue shade, but the swelling was minimal.

Gray's face had suffered a worse fate. Dark bruises on either side of his nose hung beneath his eyes in deep shadows. Medical staff told him that he was lucky his nose wasn't broken, but it was still swollen high on the bridge. He held pain-relieving tablets in one hand and an alcoholic drink in the other.

"Don't do that," Peyton walked over quickly. "Do not wash down that medicine with alcohol." She laughed and nudged his water bottle toward him.

"Fine," Gray mumbled. He threw the pills to the back of his throat and lifted the neck of the water bottle to his mouth. He swallowed hard and pressed his lips together as he placed the bottle back on the countertop. "I'm still going to drink this, though." He grabbed the glass of alcohol and took a sip.

Peyton sighed and shook her head. "You know what? I tried, and that's all I can do." She sat down on the barstool beside him.

"I can't believe we've been here for three weeks," Peach shook her head, her eyes gazing out into space. "Doesn't it feel like only a few days?"

"It does... I'm a little scared to leave," Polly laughed nervously. "I mean... life's going to be different, you know?"

I looked over at Polly. Her brows were creased as she settled in deep thought. "What do you mean, Polly?"

"I'm not just gonna be a student, ya know? I'm going to be an ex-Love Island contestant. And I'm sure all of us have way more followers than we did before we came in here. We're going to be... public figures." Polly's bottom lip puffed out.

"I didn't think about it like that," Giselle said. "People are Googling us."

"And they're going to Google us in the future. In a few months, when all of this is over, and they think back to this season, someone out there will wonder, what happened to this person?" Gray removed a speck of sleep dust from his eye. "And if you were a jerk, I can only imagine what's gonna happen."

"I guess I knew when I signed up for the show that I was signing up to be in the public's eye... I never thought of the consequences of it," I said.

The rest of the group shared a collective silence as we all seemingly imagined our faults and flaws that America definitely saw. Our mistakes and misjudgments, situations that the viewers were aware of that the Islanders were blind to.

Our silence was interrupted by a text. We all checked our phones, but Sara was the lucky winner. "Islanders, today you'll be competing in a talent show! What hidden talents are you keeping behind closed doors? What hobby will you showcase? Text in any props you may need. #IWannaBeFamous #LoveIslandsGotTalent."

At the risk of disappointing my Tutu, I lifted my phone and requested a few items for hula kahiko, a traditional hula that existed before western colonization added coconut bras and string instruments. A few other Islanders began rapidly typing props into their phones while others sat lost in thought.

Giselle shook her head and ran a hand through her hair. "I'm a producer... what am I supposed to do, ask for an entire studio?"

"I'm sure you've got tons of other talents that you're not thinking of." Peach gave her a supportive nudge.