Good at Being Alive(40)

I guess I should push the button, but there’s suddenly a lump in my throat.

Almost five months have passed, and it still makes no sense. I don’t see how they can be gone. I don’t see how three lives can just have been wiped away without warning. It wasn’t the end of their story. Bronwyn’s life was only beginning. She was perhaps five chapters in, merely approaching the best part, and there’s this hollow thing inside me, still waiting for her to come back, like an orphaned toddler who can’t understand that her mother isn’t going to return.

A waiter is at the foot of the table, asking something. God, I don’t know why I’m here. I thought it would be like poking my head in a closet, assuring myself nothing dangerous awaits, but it’s not a closet—it’s an abyss. I glance at the champagne button and the menu and suddenly that lump in my throat becomes something else, something I won’t be able to form words around without bursting into tears.

I need to get out. I need to get the fuck out of here.

“She’ll have a Hendrick’s and tonic,” says a voice. “As will I. And another place setting when you have a moment.”

Theo slides into the seat across from mine, his tie slightly askew, a millimeter of scruff shading his jaw.

He’s so handsome I feel sick from it.

“What are you doing here?” I whisper as the waiter walks away.

He gives me the smallest smile. “You didn’t think I’d allow my wife to eat at Bob Bob Ricard alone, did you?”

I blink back tears. He reaches under the table and squeezes my knee. “Deep breath, Bex. You’ll get through it.”

I do as I’m told, my throat aching as I inhale. By the time I exhale, I can speak without bursting into tears. “Thank you. I wasn’t thinking.”

“If you die first, I’m putting ‘I wasn’t thinking’ on your headstone. Anyone but you would have realized eating here alone would be brutal.”

I laugh shakily, grateful he’s making jokes rather than turning this into a Very Serious Moment. “If you die first, I’m putting ‘It turns out you CAN die from masturbating too much’ on yours.”

He sighs. “The past few months have certainly put that to the test.”

I’m still trying not to cry, and I’m also incredibly turned on by the idea of him feverishly jerking off. It’s an odd combination.

“Look at you, joking about both death and masturbation five minutes into a meal,” I say, my voice almost itself again.

“It would appear you’re rubbing off on me.” He nods at the button. “Go ahead. Press it. I’ll film you and post it online as if I’m your besotted husband.”

My smile fades. “Is that why you’re actually here? For the publicity? I won’t hold it against you.”

Which is true—I wouldn’t hold it against him, but I suspect it would hurt for reasons I’m not clear on.

He laughs. “Rebecca, you know how cheap I am, as well as how much I hate social media. Do you really think I’d come here on one of my few nights in London and spend a bloody fortune on dinner solely to acquire and post a ten-second video?”

I smile. No, I suppose I don’t.

So I press the button, and he orders two glasses of champagne, but not the cheap stuff, and it’s almost as if, in this moment, he’s all the best parts of the people I’ve lost.

I get the steak for dinner and he gets the salmon en cro?te. He talks about his brother a little without being forced, telling me how Kieran once hopped on a plane to camp in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains having never camped before.

“He sounds really interesting,” I say. “And passionate about things.”

“He was incautious,” Theo counters. “He followed his heart, not caring about the consequences…and it’s his family who paid those consequences, in the end.”

The bread in my mouth turns into a solid lump. How many times did Jessie accuse me of not caring about the consequences? Would anything have changed if I’d been with them the day of the crash? Would I have made them even later than they were, late enough that we’d have missed the train entirely? Would I have persuaded my dad that we should get a car to the airport instead?

“You’re not incautious, Bex,” he says, somehow reading my thoughts. “You want to appear incautious—God knows why—but I’ve seen you think through too many things to believe you actually are. Although I’d prefer you not wear a dress like that when you’re going out alone.”

I could argue that a female should be able to wear whatever she wants, wherever she wants…but I’d already concluded it was a bad idea on the way here.

And I kind of like the fact that he’s noticed.

At the meal’s conclusion, we grab a cab, and when we arrive at my hotel, he climbs out and walks inside with me, though I’d assumed he’d go on with his evening.

“Oooh,” I say, “I guess you expect me to put out since you paid for dinner. That’s fair.”

His nostrils flare as he moves us toward the elevator. “Rebecca.”

I laugh. “I’m joking. It was good, but it was maybe a third-base dinner, not full-on intercourse.”

He sighs. “I’m just seeing you to the elevator. You were getting a little too much attention in that dress.”