Good at Being Alive(39)

He pulls up in front of my hotel and puts the car in park. “I used a chunk of it to buy Kieran’s share of Families Travel from his wife, and the rest is in a trust I can’t touch.”

It sounds like he basically made two really bad investment decisions, but I’ve fought with him enough for one night.

I reach for the door. “Well, I’d thank you for a lovely evening but…” I let my shrug say the rest.

He ignores this. “What do you have planned for tomorrow?”

My shoulders sag. “There’s this restaurant my family was supposed to eat at our first night here with this press-for-champagne button. I’ve got a reservation there at eight.”

“Alone?”

I swallow. It seemed like the kind of thing I should do, under the circumstances, but now I’m not so sure. “Well, I don’t know anyone in London, so unless you’re open to me going on British Tinder—”

“It’s just called Tinder here, Rebecca, and I am not.”

“Then yes, I’m going there alone.”

He appears to dislike this as well, frowning as I reach for the door. He frowns at me a lot for someone whose friends are such dicks.

“Does it not concern you at all that two of your oldest friends tried to make you look bad?” I ask, turning toward him.

He doesn’t entirely meet my eye. “They both have their own things going on right now.”

I already know he won’t say more, and I wish he would. Even if he gave me a few of his secrets tonight, it still wasn’t enough.

I want all of them.



* * *



? ? ?

I wake to a sunny but cool London morning, with no sign of the weather system currently drowning Amsterdam. I don the sweatshirt Theo got me, though it’s just as dorky as it was a few days ago, and head out, darting around the city by Tube and taxi to get in as much as possible.

I race through Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London. I rush from there to the City of London, giving St. Paul’s only the most cursory glance before I wander in search of all the streets named after what they once sold: Bread Street sold bread, Honey Lane sold honey, Cock Lane sold…prostitutes. That fact would have made Bronwyn laugh while Jessie rolled her eyes, so I’d have brought it up more than once.

I conclude by taking the Tube to Covent Garden and standing in line for the ice cream Bronwyn wanted to try. The girls ahead of me chatter to each other, checking their phones. That would have been us—me dealing with drunken texts from Brian back on the West Coast, her telling me to block him while lamenting Theo’s absence.

My appetite has dwindled to nothing by the time I reach the kiosk. I order rhubarb with hot custard because that’s what Bronwyn would have gotten—she always ordered the strangest combinations—and then I burst into tears and walk off without waiting for it to arrive.

For the first time I wonder if going to the press-for-champagne restaurant is a good idea after all. I suspect it’s not, but it just feels like something I have to do. As if I’m closing some loop, and things will be better once it’s done, though I already know they won’t.

Two hours later I’m in a dress Jessie would have hated and calling a car to take me to the restaurant and more certain than ever that tonight is going to hurt.

“Bob Bob Ricard?” asks the driver, his eyes dropping to my cleavage. “Someone’s splashing out for this date.”

“I’m not going on a date. My family was—” I pause. Theo suggested I stop referencing my dead family all the time and he perhaps had a point. Just because I find it funny to make strangers uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s actually funny. “I heard it was good, and I’m not in London very often.”

His eyes fall to my cleavage again. I wish I’d worn a turtleneck because he’s going to get us killed. “You’re eating alone? At Bob Bob Ricard?”

“It didn’t seem especially weird until now,” I reply, though I guess Theo said the same thing.

He weaves through the traffic on Regent Street, barely missing buses and pedestrians. It’s evening, but the sidewalks are as packed as New York City at rush hour, the crowd surging from Tube stations, flowing around all the twentysomethings outside pubs with pints in hand.

Those pubs look fun, the kind of thing I’d have dragged Bronwyn to. We’d have too much to drink and when Bronwyn asked for aspirin in the morning, Jessie’s gaze would narrow on me, the culprit. I’d have resented it, though she’d be right.

The driver veers off Regent and comes to a stop at a busy corner in Soho. Inside, the hostess frowns at her screen before leading me to a booth big enough to seat four people and removing the other place settings.

There is, indeed, a button on the wall with an old-timey sign that says “Press for champagne.” I imagine socialites in here after World War II, slim and elegant, ordering Dom by the bottle.

If we’d made dinner that night, the way we were supposed to, Jessie would have insisted that Bronwyn or I push the button. My dad would have given a beleaguered sigh and asked that we order the least-expensive champagne and Bronwyn would have known enough about champagne to explain to him why that was a bad idea.

I can see it, and I can see all the nights and years that would have followed: my dad and Jessie retiring to Florida, buying a boat, and acquiring year-round sunburns. Bronwyn coming to London for work or because she’d married Theo and laughing about the night we ate here, making us all sound every bit as unsophisticated as we are. Were.