I Never Meant to Cause You Any Sorrow

So far, Paige's plan had seemed to work a lot better than last week. Turner wasn't acting super hostile to her. While he was still rejecting her advances, that was to be expected of a person who, according to Mandy, was super inexperienced.

That was a lot better than what she had achieved last week. While she did manage to get more out of him then, it was more like one step forward and two steps back. Today, however, had seemed like two steps forward and only one step back. She wasn't back to square one this time.

He had, however, let go of her hand when they decided to leave the movie theater, and had made no move to hold it as they were walking back. People walking by would likely assume they were just siblings, or friends, not anything more than that. Paige was a bit bothered by that, because while other people in the area had been making headway with Turner, she was still here having to play the long game.

"What's gonna happen with me when I get back?" Paige wondered. "Back on Earth...Turner works in Washington, but I'm nowhere near that. I'm still stuck in that lame town that we grew up in..."

"Where do you live?" Paige blurted out as they walked back, causing Turner to raise an eyebrow.

"Where do I live?" Turner echoed, before laughing nervously. "That seems like a bit of a strange question to be asking me right now. Are you trying to pick up the narrative where this is our first date again?"

"No, no, I'm just thinking about the reality of the endgame," Paige amended.

"The endgame?" Turner once again echoed. "Paige, we're on our second week, and you're already thinking about the end of the game?"

"Well...yeah," she admitted. "It's never too late to think about that, right?"

"No, you're right, but that's just not something I would've expected from you," he chuckled. "Sorry, I didn't mean that to come off so harshly. What I meant is...you always seemed more of the type to go with the flow and just let what happens happen. I would've expected something like that more from people like Mandy, Kathryn, or Becca. Not people like you, no offense."

Becca. That name caused Paige to involuntarily clench her teeth, which Turner picked up on.

"Woah, I didn't mean to say that about you, just a few years ago...shit, I can't stop putting my foot in my mouth-"

"No, it's not that," Paige waved her hand to stop his train of thought from derailing. "You're right, I'm not usually like this, but something has just made me über-competitive here. After last week, I was in first, but then Sara took that away from me with the challenge and just because people like her a lot more...I dunno. I just don't want to fall by the wayside while people like Sara, Abby, Kathryn, and Becca get ahead."

Now it was Turner's turn to bristle, brought on by Paige mentioning Sara's name. "She still doesn't know what happened last night," he reminded himself.

"What?" she simply asked.

"Nothing," he repeated for the umpteenth time that night.

"Okay, you're gonna have to give me something to go off of here," she declared, suddenly stopping in the middle of the street and facing him. "So many times this night, you've been in another world, not really paying attention to me or what I'm saying on multiple occasions. Does this date mean nothing to you? Are you just being this way because it's me and you'd much rather spend the night with another girl? Am I...not enough for you?"

"Hoo boy," Turner prepared. "I'm really in deep shit now. Why couldn't I have just paid more attention...I just keep thinking about what happened last night with Sara..."

"Turner?" Paige repeated, this time a bit less accusatory.

"I...you're right," he said, dropping his head down briefly. "I haven't been paying as much attention as I should with you. This is your night, and...it's being squandered by me. I shouldn't be doing that."

"What's got your attention?" Paige asked, more tenderly than critically.

"Sara," he simply said, which caused Paige to raise an eyebrow, prompting him to continue. "Remember how at the very beginning of our date here, I asked something like if you had heard what happened last night?"

Paige nodded, giving him space to explain.

"Well...as I'm sure you could've guessed, something big happened on my date with her last night," he plowed forward. As uncomfortable as this was making him, he kept telling himself that it was better to get it over with now than when Paige offhandedly saw that Sara's score had gone off the charts. "Her and I...we went all the way."

The blonde girl nodded again, but more slowly this time. She was digesting this information, but it was a bit harder of a pill to swallow than she anticipated.

"Why?" she asked.

"Why what?"

"Why with her specifically?"

"...You mean why not with Becca or you first?" Turner raised an eyebrow when he asked this, to which Paige solemnly nodded.

"As I said earlier this evening, I'm not supposed to play favorites," Turner explained. "And, well, it just happened, you know how it is."

Paige contemplated that for a moment, thinking of how it may have happened, before realizing she could just ask Turner. He'd probably tell her.

"How did it happen? Like...how did that just come about?"

Turner paused for a minute, thinking of whether he should tell Paige or not. It was ultimately Sara's decision to tell Paige what happened, because if he was held responsible for everything that happened, he would be bearing the weight of ten other people.

"We went dancing," he trepidatiously said, being careful not to be too open with the girl who had broken his heart. "Then, one thing led to another, and, well, yeah."

Paige was content with that answer. It was more than she expected to get from him, and it was more than she would've gotten in the last five years about his life. After standing there for a few seconds, they both simultaneously turned back towards the hotel and started walking there. There was an uncomfortable air between the two of them that wasn't present before she had decided to call him out.

"And that's back to square one again," she thought to herself. "I need to find a way out of this loop."

---

"She called me Lana," Liam kept repeating in his mind as he paced around the room. Thankfully, Abby wasn't back yet, so he didn't have to go through any more social interaction for the time being. "And it was without her thinking, too."

His next lap around the room ended with him looking in the mirror. Anybody passing on the street would certainly think that his name was Lana instead of Liam, but the people here weren't just random people encountered in everyday life. Some of them were people he'd known for years.

"Emma's known me for enough time to not make that mistake," he thought. "At the very least, she's been on this island with me for two weeks, and she's called me Liam probably several dozen times. Why the sudden switch now? It's not like Kendra rewrote my history, I just have...two histories now."

One of the things he was gifted with was a decently good memory, and after mentioning the two histories, it prompted him to think about the exact wording of his transformation.

"...the more I accept femininity, the stronger the fake memories get," he recalled. "But I don't think of myself as a woman. Sure, I look like one, but that doesn't mean that I am one."

It was about then that the door to the house opened, signaling Abby's return from her night out. He walked out into the main room to see her closing the door.

"Hey, Liam," she absentmindedly said as she put a bag down. "How're you doing?"

To anybody else, it would've seemed like the average greeting, but being called Liam was like a sigh of relief for him. "Does this mean that I only appear more feminine to Emma? Or is it because I thought about it between now and then? What happened there?"

"Liam?" Abby repeated, more deliberately. "You there?"

"Huh-what?" Liam shook his head, coming back down to Earth. "Oh, yeah, I'm fine. How are you?"

"I'm good..." Abby skeptically said, trying to search Liam for any clues that might lead to why he spaced out. "You sure you're good? You seemed a little...off."

"I'm fine," Liam restated.

"You know...last night, I thought of something," Abby continued pressing. "And just now, when I called you Liam, it reminded me of this. My memories of you were being replaced last night, but it seems like they got reverted today."

She didn't phrase it in the form of a question, but made sure Liam knew that she expected a response.

"That reminds me of Emma earlier today," he muttered.

"Come again?" she responded.

"I said that what you said reminded me of something Emma said earlier," he reiterated.

"What did she say?" she questioned.

"She..." he started, but then got a little quieter, as if saying it loud would make it more true. "She called me Lana."

Abby frowned at that.

"And...combined with what you said about last night, it got me thinking," he continued, still very softly. "My transformation...it says something about how my history will be overwritten with hers the more I 'accept' that I am her."

Abby prompted him to keep going.

"But...when you opened the door and called me Liam, it just shocked me," he finished.

"Maybe there's something that Kendra didn't account for in there," Abby offered. "Maybe she thought you would be a lot more malleable, and she didn't account for any...backtracking, if you excuse my use of that word."

"Maybe..." Liam agreed, gazing off into the distance as if he was trying to see Kendra. "It doesn't really feel good knowing that me undoing this stupid transformation is an accident though."

"I hate to break it to you, but that's kinda our lives now," Abby smiled wryly.

"I know, but it just...it just sucks!" he finally raised his voice back to its normal volume again.

"I know it does, I know," Abby repeated, trying to console him. "You need a hug?"

Liam looked up slightly, equal parts bewildered and thankful. He did move into Abby's open arms, and the short girl locked him into a bear hug.

"Wow, for someone so short, you're shockingly strong," he mused.

"I used to be taller than this," she rolled her eyes. "I guess Turner's transformation of me didn't involve anything to do with strength."

"So basically you're a buff shortstack now?"

"I'm not a-" she started, before composing herself. "I guess, if you want to see it that way, sure. I wouldn't necessarily say that I'm buff, I just happen to be stronger than the average person of this height."

---

"Very interesting," Kendra thought.

"What's interesting?"

"The development with Lana," Kendra clarified.

"What do you mean? What's interesting about it?"

"Lana somehow reversed a transformation I put on her," Kendra mused. "Lemme look at the exact wordin' I used in her transformation..."

Kendra looked over the wording, trying to find any holes in her logic that could've been exploited by the defiant gamer girl, before her eyes landed on a key phrase.

"The more Liam accepts femininity, the stronger those memories become in everyone's mind," she read out loud. "Did I forget to put a failsafe in there in order to prevent the opposite from happenin'?"

"It sure seems that way."

"Why don't you go and make yourself useful instead of just commenting on everything I do here?" Kendra snapped at the person standing in the doorway to her office.

"Do you still-"

"Hush your mouth!" Kendra interrupted. "I gotta figure out what in the hell I'm doin' with Lana over here, so again...If y'ain't gonna make yourself useful, at least get outta here!"

"No, what I was gonna-"

"What part of 'hush your mouth' don't you understand?" Kendra stood up out of her chair.

"...fine."

"I guess I should get goin' and make myself a surprise visit down to Lana," Kendra muttered to herself as she left her office. "Not like I'm gonna be missin' anything happening with Paige."

---

Speaking of Paige, she and Turner had decided to turn in for the night. Well, Turner had decided to turn in for the night. Paige originally had laid down in bed, but after laying down there with her thoughts resonating in her head, she couldn't take it and decided to take a walk. Albeit, it was a very limited walk, just around the rooms in the penthouse.

"Did I do something wrong?" she thought. "Was it my fault for what happened tonight with Turner? I thought we were having such a good time, and then it seems like I ruined it for the both of us because I wouldn't shut my big, stupid mouth and prodded him about things that, frankly, I'm not sure I wanted the answer to."

She stopped in front of the scoreboard, and she saw Sara's name above her own, the older girl's 41 points seemingly mocking hers, only about half of that.

"I didn't do anything wrong," she tried to convince herself. "It's all Sara's fault. If she hadn't pounced on Turner the first chance that she got, we wouldn't be in this situation right now. Right? I'm not the one who's in the wrong here, she is!"

Even when just thinking it, she knew how weak that defense sounded.

"I can't keep thinking of these things, otherwise I'm not gonna be able to stop myself from jumping on Turner myself, and then we'll have a repeat of last week, which I'm sure is gonna cause a bunch more problems."

She stepped out onto the large balcony and saw Kendra walking along the beach. Well, walking wasn't the right word. It was more of marching.

"What the fuck is she doing out this late?" she wondered. "Shouldn't she be asleep right now? Does she even need to sleep, since she's a supernatural being? Is she gonna go interrupt someone else's sleep for another fucking reward like she did for mine? Is she here to tell me to go bed or something, like I have a curfew?"

"Paige?"

The girl in question whipped her head around, after hearing her name come from a deep voice inside the room. A second of rational thought and her eyes adjusting to looking into the darkness of the penthouse confirmed that it was, in fact, Turner.

"What are you doing out there?" he asked.

"It's a free country," she passive-aggressively responded.

Turner smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand, before rising out of bed to join her on the balcony. "You know you can't say that when we're not on Earth anymore, right?"

"Who's to say we're not in a free country while we're over here?" she shot back.

"Aside from the fact that we're literally being denied our freedom?" he reminded her.

"How is that any different from the United States?"

"Anyways," he tried to stop the conversation from derailing. "I get the feeling you're mad at me for something."

"That's crazy, why would I ever be mad at you for anything ever?" she spat back, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

"I dunno, just little things like that lead me to believe that you are," he rolled his eyes. "Did I do something?"

Paige sat there for a minute, letting the question linger in the air while trying to figure out what was going on. Why was she mad with him? So far, he'd been nothing but accommodating. The instances where he'd backed off from her had been completely justified. Here she was, acting like an entitled bitch for trying to make him forget everything that had happened before, taking advantage of his kindness.

"Why did it have to be Sara?" she softly said, almost in a whisper.

"I already told you earlier," is what Turner wanted to say, but he knew saying that wouldn't help anyone's case. It was true, but both of them already knew it, and he didn't need to rub that in her fact right now. That was something he would've done to his ex-girlfriend, but looking down, he didn't see his terrible, abusive ex-girlfriend. He just saw a girl who was conflicted, and just happened to sound, look, and be named exactly the same as his ex-girlfriend.

"Paige...I know you wanted it to be you," he said, looking genuinely at the blonde girl. "But if we look at it realistically, there are ten people here, and, if I'm gonna be frank, you're the one who's screwed me over the most in the past."

He sighed deeply, not wanting to let that statement sink in too deep. "But it's just the way things panned out. I didn't plan it, Becca didn't plan it, I'm doubting that Sara planned it either. Kendra may have planned it, but how she orchestrated that is way beyond my pay grade. And with you...I feel like we have to take things a lot slower than everyone else here, just given what's happened between us in the past."

Paige finally raised her head to meet his eyes. She didn't say anything for a few minutes, just wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug, which Turner was shocked by at first, but eventually returned.

"Thank you," she finally said.

"For what?" he asked, confused.

"I just needed a reality check," she answered. "I'd been driving myself mad up here."

"Well, let me follow that up with this," he replied. "Tonight has been the best night I've had with you in years."

"It's the only night you've had with me in years," Paige corrected, backing away from Turner slightly and chuckling. "Aside from last week."

"That doesn't mean it's not the best," he pointed out.

Now in a much better mood, the two of them walked back inside and fell asleep.

"Not all hope is lost," Paige thought.