That ex is on his mind as he stands back, watching the current future ex in his life examine an old roller-coaster track. It climbs until it disappears into the trees, an ivy-choked outline of what it had once been.
All Jaden wants is one, just one, woman in his life who is loyal. Who is beautiful and funny and lives for him. Who doesn’t let him down. Doesn’t laugh at him. Looks at him and makes him feel as special as he wants to be. Even his own mother barely waited for him to graduate high school before declaring herself retired from parenthood and moving to Florida. He once decided to see how long it would take her to call him if he didn’t call her once a month. After seven months, on the verge of tears, he broke down and called her. She honestly had no idea how long it had been. She didn’t miss him at all, didn’t think of him when he wasn’t there.
Object permanence doesn’t exist where Jaden is concerned. Out of sight, out of mind.
It’s been the same with every girlfriend, every woman in his life. They always hit a certain point and then can’t wait to get rid of him. So now he gets rid of them first.
“We could follow the track up,” Ava suggests. She doesn’t want to try to find the others. We should win on our own merit, she had said earlier, as if sabotaging others hadn’t been her idea, floated to impress Jaden and make him invest in her. And as if they could both still win. As if they don’t know there’s only going to be one winner.
What was she talking about with the freaks? Were they mocking him? Plotting? Did she talk him out of trying to find the other group as part of a larger play? They all know he’s the biggest threat. He’s going to win. No matter what they do, he’s going to win.
He looks at the track. He could climb it, no problem. He’s in the best shape of his life. When he was fourteen, chubby, depressed, mocked at school and ignored at home, he had discovered obstacle-course competitions. He loved watching them, but more than that, he loved the interviews. All these people who had sad lives like him, who had been unloved and lost, had turned that in on themselves and crafted perfect machines of bodies. Machines that could do incredible things. Machines that functioned so well they couldn’t be sad or hurt or lonely anymore.
He tried getting on the show seven seasons in a row, and never made it past the walk-on line. What did that say, then, that he had spent so many years doing exactly what they did, exactly what they told him to, overcoming everything in his life, practicing his backstory in front of the mirror so that he would come across as not a bad guy, not a bad guy at all, and they had never let him on?
He flexed reflexively. He’d made it into this competition, and he’ll win. And after?
A reunion with his mother. She’ll be so proud of him, so sorry for all the years she wasted not being proud of him.
A reunion with that girlfriend, who’ll finally know he’s worth putting in a frame. A gift of socks for her bitch friend.
A reunion with that fucking competition, a celebrity guest spot, or maybe he’ll turn them down. He’ll be busy with his own gym, a dedicated group of worshippers coming to his church of the body, begging him to show them the path forward, to save them from themselves the same way he saved himself. They’ll all look to him, and he won’t give up on them, won’t get tired of them, won’t abandon them.
Ava’s not part of that future.
“Doesn’t seem stable,” he says. “I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
Ava releases some of the tension in her shoulders, and as she turns, he can see her smile. See her relief at this evidence of how much he cares. He remembers how she stood back and let Iraq Barbie hit him. Imagines what she must have been saying to that pack of freaks later, imagines the way they were laughing at him.
“Come on,” he says, slinging an arm around her shoulder. “I have an idea.”
* * *
—
Ava’s relieved.
Jaden wanted to try to find the others to sabotage them. And actually, Ava is pretty sure she knows exactly where they are. The second morning of the competition, she had seen Brandon go into the weird love tunnel building. Few other places to hide that many people in one spot. She’d bet money that’s where they are. In a way, she is betting money—$50,000 worth—but betting against herself by not betraying them. Still. She regrets ever giving Jaden the idea of getting other people out.
Besides, the others offered to let her come, offered to let her into the group even after she chose someone else, and so she steered Jaden away from them.