Page 108 of Unscripted

“What happened?” she asked.

All I could do was shake my head. If I talked about it, I’d start crying again.

“Oh, Pop.”

She reached out and grabbed my hand. The simple gesture nearly had me bursting into tears. Instead, I focused on my breathing until the knot in my throat subsided.

I managed to get through the rest of the day unscathed and without falling apart. I tried to let myself get caught up in the excitement of the moment, tried to let the girl’s chatter lift my spirits as we were herded into a van and driven back to the villa. I was in the Bella Amore finale. Six weeks of ups and downs, of emotional highs and lows, had all led here, the cusp of the end.

Soon enough, we were pulling up to the front of the villa and getting out of the van. The driveway was teeming with production staff yet even the sight of their familiar faces did nothing to calm my nerves.

A producer led us into the house, but instead of turning right and heading down the hallway and out to the garden like we had every day for the last six weeks, we went left. There was a door across from the Love Shack that had remained locked the entire season. It wasn’t on our tour, and I never heard mention of it being used, so I had forgotten it even existed.

Walking into the mystery room, I was surprised to find that it was actually quite large. It must have been a bedroom when the villa was used as intended. Now, it was set up as a green room. Two couches were pushed together to form an L shape, with a coffee table in front of them and a spread of cookies and candy on top. A few floor-length mirrors were leaning against one wall.

We were ushered into the room and told to wait until we were called to set.

I was hoping this would be the moment we would be reunited with the boys, that I would be able to see Callum before we walked out to the finale and we could at least have a few seconds to recalibrate and get on the same page. But as time ticked by and the green room door remained closed, as we remained separated, it quickly became clear none of that would happen.

The panic that had been simmering in my veins threatened to overtake me as I realized I was stuck in pre-show purgatory. I knew there was nothing I could do about it; there was nowhere to go and no one that could help me. So instead, I resorted to pacing along the edges of the green room, trying to dissipate as much nervous energy as possible.

"Jeez, Pop, relax, would you. You're stressing me out," Ella called out from across the room.

But I couldn't stop, couldn't slow my body down now that I was so close and yet so far from Callum.

Finally, after what felt like eons, there was a knock on the door and Harry poked his head in.

"Okay, ladies. We're ready for you," he said, his smile wide.

This was it. The last twenty-four hours of stress and anxiety and being away from Callum had all led to this moment.

On some grander level, it felt like my whole life had led to this moment, really.

We filed down the hallway after Harry. The villa had grown even more chaotic since we walked in, with producers and PAs running around and the buzz of an impending live show palpable in the air.

We came to a stop at the end of the hall. It was bittersweet standing here as I had every night before. Six weeks of waiting in this very spot, and now here I was, one last time. Part of me wanted to stay here forever, in this tiny hallway. It was safe from the noise and chaos and complications that I knew waited for me on the other side of the door.

The sound team came to mic us, and just as the first night, a mic pack was strapped to my back at my bra line, and a tiny wire was laced up and under my dress and secured right at the edge of the neckline.

“Your mics are all hot,” one of the sound guys said before hurrying out into the garden, already focused on his next task.

“Yeah, so don’t say anything you’ll regret all of production hearing,” Chiara quipped.

More producers and crew members began filing down the hall and past us, out to the yard, and I knew we were only moments away from showtime.

Harry had been chatting away the whole time, flitting from exited encouragements to logistical notes and then back again. “You’ll walk out live, so keep your eyes up and your shoulders back. No bad posture here, ladies. Gosh, you all look bang on smashing. Wardrobe’s done their big one, I’ll tell ya that.”

On and on he went, his eyes dancing with excitement and his body vibrating in anticipation of the night ahead. When his gaze found mine, he gave me a wink.

And then he was opening the door to the garden, and everything around me slowed down. I could feel the steady beat of my heart, pounding in my chest; could feel the blood flowing through my veins. The world awaited on the other side of the door, and now that I was here, on the cusp of it, a strange sense of calmness washed over me. Everything else fell away until it was just me and the ground below my feet and the air above my head.

Whatever happened next, I would get through it. I would walk out that door with my head held high, with my shoulders back and, as Harry had told me long ago, my tits out, because I was here. I made it to the other side of this whole experience. My life had been upended; I took a path I would have never imagined for myself, and yet I was still standing.

The roar of a live audience could be heard from around the corner as the girls ahead of me began to file out.

I took one last deep breath and followed along.

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