For Real(60)

“Ooh, smart. Are you okay riding backward?”

“I trust you to keep me from falling,” I say.

We explain to our handler what we want to do, and he helps us up into the double saddle. I can’t put my feet in the stirrups in this position, but Will grips my legs tightly with his and holds onto the pommel behind me, and once I put my hands on his waist to steady myself, I feel pretty secure. When the horse starts walking, rocking us gently back and forth, I can feel Will’s muscles shifting under my hands as he works to balance us. His face is very close to mine, and he stares right into my eyes—if I leaned forward a few inches, I could close the gap between us. I have to work very hard not to look at his mouth.

“Ready when you are,” he says.

I lean forward and take my first bite of the dough necklace. It’s soft and sweet, and it melts in my mouth like a croissant. When I lick a drop of honey off Will’s neck, he draws in his breath sharply, and I feel intoxicatingly powerful. I can tell how hard his heart is beating, and mine speeds up in response.

“No, God, Samir! See how Claire’s doing it?” I hear my sister’s voice say behind us. “Why don’t you ever listen to me?” She sounds like she’s on the verge of tossing him off their horse and into the ocean, and for a second I feel bad for her. But that doesn’t dampen my excitement that she’s just held me up as an example on camera for the first time. The pastry in my mouth suddenly tastes even more delicious.

I make the challenge last as long as I reasonably can, but when I see Miranda and Samir getting off their horse, I hurry up and take my last few bites. When I finish and smile up at Will, he’s looking at me with wonder in his eyes. “That was hot, Dominique,” he whispers. But until he says it, my brave, sexy alter ego hadn’t even crossed my mind. I haven’t needed her today—it’s always been plain old Claire up on this horse. And Will Divine still thinks I’m hot.

Our handler helps us down and hands us our next envelope, and I rip it open as Will pulls his shirt and hat back on.

Make your way by train to Corinth. At the station, choose one of the marked Around the World cars and drive yourself to Acrocorinth, where you will find the ruins of the Temple of Aphrodite. Here, you must snip a small lock of your hair as a sacrifice to the goddess of love and fertility, then make a private romantic wish.

There’s a new buzz of intimacy between Will and me now, and I wonder if our crew guys can feel the electricity zinging through the air as we crush into a cab and head toward the train station. I know I’m probably getting a little ahead of myself, but as we board the train to Corinth, I can’t help daydreaming about the future. Will has one more year at NYU, but Braeburn’s only four hours from the city, and we could easily visit each other on weekends. And during the week, we could Skype and email and text. If we wanted to, we could make it work. Will sits with his thigh pressed against mine, and every time he smiles at me, heat rushes through my body. If it weren’t for the cameras, I’m pretty sure we’d be all over each other right now, regardless of all the Greek strangers around us.

The ride to Corinth is so beautiful the scenery doesn’t even look real. There’s a steep drop-off alongside the tracks that leads right down to the ocean, which is the same bright blue as Will’s eyes, and if I squint I can see a smattering of islands shimmering in the distance. At the station, we buy a road map and choose one of the cars waiting for us in the parking lot. Will slips behind the wheel, and I climb in back to navigate, wishing I could sit beside him and hold his hand. Not all the street signs have English transliterations, so we get lost a few times, but we eventually find the turn-off to Acrocorinth and creep up the steep hill toward the massive citadel perched on top.

It’s a good thing we choose to leave our packs in the trunk, because even the climb from the parking area to the first gate is shockingly steep. We pass through two more huge gates, and then we’re inside, zigzagging up through the crumbling ruins. The sandy stone walls and turrets look like they’re growing straight out of the rocky hillside, and flowers have taken root between the stones, adding bright, startling flashes of red and yellow and purple. Will and I are too out of breath to talk as we climb, but after everything that’s happened last night and this morning, I still feel like we’re connected even when we’re silent. The sun is warm and the breeze is perfect, and for a while, it’s easy to forget about the cameras and imagine that we’re out hiking together just for fun. When Martin and Zora pass us on the way back to their car and give us a friendly wave, I wonder if they can sense how things have changed between us.

The view from the summit is totally worth the effort—miles and miles of ocean and city and distant mountains are spread out before us like a patchwork quilt. A single pillar of the ancient temple stands at the peak of the hill, and a producer in a pink shirt has set up a makeshift studio at its base. Miranda is sitting across from her, making her wish, and Samir is waiting off to the side, meticulously picking tiny pieces of lint off his shirt. “You want to go first or should I?” I ask Will when the two of them start heading back down, ignoring both us and each other.

“You can go,” he says, so I climb the slope and snip a small piece of my hair into the wooden bowl at the base of the pillar. Then I sit down in the folding chair across from the producer, a woman with a million tiny dreads and lipstick so dark it’s almost black.