Good at Being Alive(18)

“Like…everything?” I ask.

“You can leave the panties on,” she replies.

Theo was here yesterday. I have the strangest twinge of jealousy imagining Mindy asking the same thing of him. That we haven’t even been wed for a full week and I’m already jealous and bitter about our lack of a sex life does not bode well.

Mindy glances over at me, now shivering and mostly nude, and holds out a cashmere sweater and a really cute jacket with a faux-fur hood. “You’ve got the perfect frame for TV,” she says. Before I can allow myself to feel flattered, she continues. “It’s terrible to say but underweight looks so much better on camera.”

So…not especially flattering after all.

Does Theo’s complication look good on camera? Probably not. But that just means she looks good in real life, which is ultimately more important. I hate that I care. That fucking kiss has ruined me.

That fucking kiss makes me want to know what else he does well.



* * *



? ? ?

It takes about six hours to get from Newark to Reykjavík, and they’re basically the worst six hours: a red-eye that leaves at eight thirty at night and lands at two thirty in the morning, except because of the time change it’s not two thirty there…it’s six thirty. Daytime. And thanks to the genius planning of one Theodore Roger Porter, we’ll be jumping right into filming from the moment we land.

I’m already resentful of this as I walk up to him at our departure gate. And I resent how good he looks in jeans and a quarter-zip sweatshirt when I’m trying to stay mad at him. I’d convinced myself his hotness was suit specific, and I was incorrect.

God, how sexually deprived must I be that the hint of his T-shirt is making my stomach flutter?

“I didn’t know you owned jeans,” I say.

“I didn’t know you were capable of making it to the airport on time,” he replies.

I raise my eyebrows. “Wow.”

The color drains from his face. “Rebecca, god, I wasn’t thinking…I didn’t mean that. I just meant, you know…fuck.”

Theo is usually so smugly self-assured and disdainful. It’s absolutely delicious watching him helplessly fumble, guilt ridden.

“Some Starbucks would make me feel better,” I whisper. “Venti strawberry a?aí, light ice. A scone if they have them, but not vanilla bean.”

For one panicked moment he’s considering it before he rolls his eyes. “You’re fucking with me.”

I crack my first smile. “It was so easy.”

When we get onto the plane, he hoists my bag into the overhead compartment without being asked and carefully folds my coat before he stashes that too. I tell myself not to get accustomed to these niceties.

“Are you going to try to sleep?” he asks as he buckles in.

I shake my head. “I can’t sleep on planes. You?”

He raises a shoulder. “I’ve basically been making this trip weekly, one direction or another, for a while now. You learn to sleep where you can.”

He’s been taking a long flight back and forth from the UK to the U.S., missing out on his actual life, on his friends and the complication, in order to step into my father’s role while I’ve been eating donut holes and shouting, “Don’t marry Jax!” at this girl on Vanderpump Rules.

No wonder he was trying to condense this trip into a day and a half.

“We should hire someone to manage the U.S. office,” I tell him.

He runs a hand over his face. “I’m interviewing candidates. With all the travel for the show, managing both offices is going to be impossible.”

I guess I could offer to help, but since I already know exactly the sort of caustic response I’ll get in return, I don’t.

Besides, I still have several seasons of Vanderpump Rules to get through.

“Speaking of travel,” I add, “if we get to the hotel tomorrow and there’s some kind of fucked-up one-bed situation, you’re sleeping on the floor.”

He raises a brow. “I’m not entirely clear on what a ‘one-bed situation’ is.”

“It’s a staple of romance novels. You know. ‘Oh, this hotel only has one twin bed left, so you two attractive strangers will have to share.’?”

“Why wouldn’t the attractive strangers just go to another hotel?”

I shrug. “Loads of reasons. Maybe it’s the only hotel—”

“What kind of town only has one hotel? And has a room with one twin bed? That’s ridiculous.”

“Or all the hotels are sold out.”

“If the first hotel you’ve checked has an available room, are you really going to assume there isn’t another hotel with a room available? You can’t expect me to believe that two reasonable people with no connection to each other aren’t going to investigate before they agree.”

“God, you’re so tiresome,” I sigh. “Anyhow, my point is that if it somehow happens, you’re taking the floor. It isn’t going to turn into some deal where we’re both sharing a small bed and nude.”

“Why would we be nude?” he asks. “This can’t really be a plot point.”

“Maybe it seems weird to you because the British all sleep in nightshirts.”