Disclaimer: I don't own any of TDI.

I stood on the porch of the cabin, feeling that something was wrong. I couldn't put my finger on it. Maybe it was something to do with the Group B and C people making strange paths across the campsite to their cabins. Maybe it was something to do with the way the ground looked like it had been turned upside down during the night. Maybe it was the fact that it was 8 AM, and we still hadn't gotten a wakeup call. Or maybe it was because Patrick and Dominic were into Talia.

Yeah, that last one was it.

Dominic joined me on the porch and put the feeling I had into words. "Something's up," he said suspiciously.

"I agree," I said. I shrugged the feeling off and decided to get breakfast. I stepped onto the ground and heard a ticking sound.

Dominic tackled me right before the mine exploded. We laid still on the ground, listening for more ticking. "Hey, thanks," I said grimly when I realized nothing was going to explode. "Could you get off me now?"

"Oh, yeah," he said quietly, scrambling to his feet. He pulled me up and we stood stock still. I was checking out the freshly dug up ground, but I don't know what he was looking at. He was staring off in the opposite direction.

"Is there anywhere they didn't dig?" I asked, resigned.

"Why don't we just run for it?" he suggested, still not looking at me.

"I've got an idea. Carry me."

His head whipped around and I noticed that his face was flushed. "Um, okay," he said agreeably.

"Get down, I'll get on your back," I advised. He crouched and I climbed onto his back. He ran for the mess hall, carrying me on piggyback. Somehow, we only set off three mines on our way there. The ride there was actually quite comfortable for me. I buried my face in his shoulder. He smelled really good for a guy. Not flowery, just clean.

"We made it," he announced, stepping into the hall.

We were the only people in the mess hall. I could hear Chef doing something or other in the kitchen, but the pizza was sitting untouched on one of the tables. I opened the box and when the smell of pizza hit me, I dry-heaved. "I'm going to go see what Chef has in the kitchen," I said.

"With you on that one," Dominic said quickly.

I pushed open the door and was nearly hit by a flying pan. Thankfully, the crazy reflexes I had gotten from this internship really paid off. "Get out o' my kitchen!" Chef screamed. "I'll serve it when I want to serve it!" I pushed open the door more cautiously the second time. I ducked out of the way of the flying wooden spoon.

"Ow," Dominic said behind me, rubbing his head.

"I told you to-" Chef stopped speaking abruptly when he saw us. "Oh. Thought you were Chris."

"We were wondering if you had any food besides pizza," I said warily.

"I'm using it to cook," he barked. "Stupid Chris says my cooking is disgusting."

"I'm sure it isn't," Dominic put in.

"You wanna try it?"

I jabbed an elbow into Dominic's spleen, which he deserved completely. From what I had seen of Chef's culinary skills, eating his food could have been used as a method of torture. "Yeah, sure," I agreed. If it got us food that wasn't pizza, I was willing to try almost anything.

Chef spooned something onto a plate that was grey and furry. Correct me if I'm wrong, but food isn't supposed to be furry. He handed us forks, which I forced myself not to stab Dominic with. The one bite I took of the concoction stayed with me for a long time. The taste was memorable, to say the least. The bite also coated my mouth with fur. "Delicious," I lied through my teeth. "Is there anything in the fridge?"

"Help yourself," Chef said distractedly. "I've got to get cooking."

The fridge was stocked mostly with raw ingredients, which were useless to us. I scavenged through the cabinets and found two apples. I tossed one to Dominic and kept looking. In the end I settled for one of the cartons of strawberry ice cream in the freezer. Dominic and I returned to the mess hall triumphant, snacking on our newly won breakfast.

I heard an explosion and a scream of pain from the outside. "I feel really lucky," Dominic said. He dug into the carton of ice cream with his spoon.

"The only reason I got over here is because you carried me," I pointed out. "So thanks for that."

"No problem," he said. He grinned and took a bite of ice cream.

The door flew open and revealed Patrick standing outside. He frowned at us. "How'd you guys get here so quickly?"

"Your pants are on fire," I pointed out calmly.

He beat out the small flame smoldering on his jeans and sat with us. "Ice cream? Awesome." He pulled my spoon out of my hand and dug into the ice cream.

"Hey!" I protested. "My spoon!"

"Sorry, it's just the idea of sharing an indirect kiss with you is so appealing," Patrick said with a straight face. He stuck the spoon in his mouth before I could do anything.

"Shut up, Patrick," I replied. I headed for the kitchen to grab another spoon. Once again, Patrick had thrown me for a loop. Just when I thought I was getting to know him, he'd always say something utterly ridiculous like that.

When I returned, Talia had made it to the mess hall. It gave me great pleasure to see that the ends of her hair were singed. "Oh great, it's you," she said.

"I should be the one saying that," I said under my breath.

"Actually, I want to talk to you," she said, an evil grin on her face. "Alone."

That was certainly intriguing. I allowed myself to be pulled aside. She stood by the door, silently leering at me, until I broke the silence. "What do you want?"

"I know about what happened with Chris," she whispered.

My heart didn't just skip one beat, it skipped about three. "I don't know what you're talking about," I said unconvincingly.

"Don't bother denying it," Talia said, a superior smile on her overly made up face. "I've got proof and I'll tell everyone. You wouldn't want those two knowing about that, would you?" She gestured towards Dominic and Patrick. "They'd be so jealous and would probably never talk to you again."

"Why would they be jealous?" I asked, completely clueless about what she was talking about.

She laughed like I had said something unbelievable. "Wow, you're even dumber than I thought. Do I have to spell it out for you?" Evidently, she did. "They're totally into you," she said slowly, like I was a two year old.

And then the penny dropped.

"Now that you've all made it over here," Chris said, looking us over for signs of injuries. He wasn't disappointed. "We're going to head on over to the cliff."

I tuned him out. What was I going to do about the Patrick/Dominic situation? Did I even like either of them? I glanced at the two of them. They were sitting on either side of me, listening intently to Chris. There was Patrick, who was always teasing me with some sort of nickname or pickup line. But when I actually talked to him that time in the pit, I ended up liking him. Then there was Dominic, who had helped me out so many times during those crazy challenges we tested and was able to calm me down from one of my outbursts, which not many people could do.

"Alexis?" Dominic called. "Hello? Anybody in there?"

"What?" I said like an idiot.

"Hurry up, sweetheart," Patrick said. "Everyone else is already gone."

I looked up and saw that it was true. "Okay." I didn't miss the look Patrick and Dominic exchanged. I knew I was acting strange. Normally, I would have snapped at Patrick for calling me sweetheart, but I just didn't have the energy.

"You feeling okay?" Dominic asked.

No. Not at all. "Yes," I said brusquely.

I puzzled over the problem all day, which distracted me from everything I was forced to do. Dominic was the only reason I didn't kill myself. I set off several mines while not paying attention to where I was going. After pushing me out of the way for the fifth time, Dominic asked if I was sick. I babbled something incoherent and continued on my way.

"Psst!" Nina said loudly, distracting me from my thoughts. "Come here!" I did so grudgingly. I didn't want anything to distract me until I figured out a solution to this problem. "I just wanted to tell you I'm so sorry about the Chris thing," Nina said quickly. "I totally didn't mean to show Talia that, it was just that she was so interested in looking at the camera footage that I let her check out the recordings we took and then we saw you kissing Chris and she was all like, haha I'm going to get Alexis, and I didn't even know that she didn't like you and-"

"Please stop," I interrupted her, putting an end to the barrage of words coming out of her mouth. "I don't really care right now. And I didn't kiss Chris, he kissed me. Without my permission."

"That makes more sense," she said, nodding.

"Bye," I said, already wandering off. I think I was supposed to be running through the minefield, but I couldn't be bothered.

I still hadn't reached a conclusion by dinner. Which one was I going to choose, if I even decided to choose one of them? I jumped a mile into the air when somebody said my name.

"Oh, hi, Patrick," I said.

"What's up?" he replied. I looked at him carefully. I thought he was good looking. And I enjoyed spending time with him. He was possible boyfriend material.

Just not my possible boyfriend material, I decided. Just because he was buff, tan, and hot didn't mean he was right for me. "I heard that you liked me," I said, cutting straight to the chase.

He He laughed awkwardly and rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah?"

"I just wanted to tell you that I wasn't interested," I said hurriedly. "Sorry."

"Okay," he said uncomfortably.

"Sorry," I said again. I walked as briskly as possible away from him, into our cabin. Hopefully, I hadn't lost a friend there.

Inside the cabin, I met Dominic, like heaven had put him there. He grinned at me, the dimple appearing again, and tossed a blue ballet flat at me. "I found your shoe," he said. "It was under my bed."

I looked at the shoe in my hand and got this funny feeling in my chest, like my heart was doing somersaults in there.

I chose Dominic.

The one who had saved my bacon more times than I could count.

The one who tried to make Talia apologize to me.

The one listened to my crazy rants.

"Hey, do you like me?" I asked.

"Yeah, you're a great friend," he said.

I stuck my thumbs in my jean shorts' pockets. "Not like that," I said, never one to beat around the bus. "Like a girlfriend."

The ground suddenly fascinated him. "Yeah."

I slid my arms around him and rested my forehead on his. "Me too." I kissed him then, long and slow.

That pretty much wraps this story up. Well, except for a few tiny details.

Dominic pulled out of the kiss suddenly, his expression one of alarm. "I didn't tell you something important."

"More important than kissing?" I wanted to kiss my new boyfriend forever. Or at least until I got too hungry to ignore my stomach anymore.

"I lied to you," he said seriously. Okay. That got my attention. I sat back and listened. "I never told you why I made friends with you. You knew that Patrick and I knew each other before this internship, right?" No, I hadn't. I shook my head. "Well, anyway, we kind of made a bet to see if I could make you like me or if Patrick could make you like him. The winner got a hundred bucks from the loser. But then both of us started to really like you and we forgot about the bet. Anyway, I'm really sorry." He stopped babbling and checked my face to gauge my anger.

"That's pretty despicable of you guys," I said, choosing my words carefully. But you know what? I would forgive him just this once. I'm sure there would be plenty of other stuff for me to get mad about in the future. And I had a confession to make too. "But I'll forgive you. And I have something to tell you too." I took a deep breath before blurting out the terrible truth. "Chriskissedme."

"What?"

"Chris kissed me," I repeated.

"When?" he asked incredulously.

"When I was yelling at him about the mechanical bull thing," I said miserably.

He shrugged. "You are pretty hot when you're yelling at people."

"You really think so?" I said brightly. My eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Wait, is that why you always look so cheerful and calm when I'm yelling at you?"

He chuckled and kissed me.

I eventually became so hungry that I pulled Dominic over to the mess hall. We were greeted by something even more terrible than pizza.

Chef had begun to cook for us. Apparently, our praise for his cooking earlier and convinced him that his food was delicious and Chris had no sense of taste. (Chris had hired Chef because of his terrible culinary skills. Chris' only mistake was telling Chef that fact.) My appetite fled when I caught sight of what Chef had served and I found myself actually wishing for pizza again.

Talia's face lit up with evil glee when she caught sight of me. "Listen up, everyone!" she yelled, standing on the table. "Did you know that Alexis kissed Chris?"

"I didn't kiss him, he kissed me!" I retorted. "Big difference!"

There was a shocked silence in the mess hall until one of the girls from Group B piped up. "He kissed me too," she said quietly.

"Me too!" another girl yelled.

"No way, me too!"

"Yeah, he kissed me too!"

I started to laugh. This day just got better and better. I had gotten the guy and foiled the evil plans of my nemesis. I was pretty awesome, if I did say so myself.

A/N: And we're almost done! This is technically the last chapter, but I have an epilogue to put up later. Thanks for reading, everyone! Here's an extra-special recommendation for you guys:

Recommendation:

Total Drama: Payback

After four rough seasons of Total Drama, Courtney, fed up with Chris's sick and borderline inhumane tactics, teams up with the producers to create Total Drama Payback, a season with a focus instead on finally getting revenge on Chris.

Sound good? It should. First of all, the summary has good punctuation and grammar. Secondly, the idea is actually executed well with crack pairings and a plot that will knock your socks off. What are you waiting for? CLICK ON THE LINK ALREADY!