Good at Being Alive(41)

My heart beats faster than it should. Why do I like it when he sounds possessive? It’s not as if it’s going to last.

I flutter my lashes as he hits the elevator button. “Is this like in the rom-coms where they’re pretending they’re together but he’s falling for her in real life? Are you going to give me our first off-camera kiss?”

“It wouldn’t be our first off-camera kiss,” he grunts.

I wave a dismissive hand as the doors open and I step inside. “That didn’t count. I attacked you. You didn’t even know what you were doing.”

“I knew what I was doing,” he says, sighing as the doors slide shut.

I fall back against the elevator wall, stunned, with my stomach lurching in the oddest way. A way that almost feels like hope.





Theo


I call my mother when I get in. Today is Kieran’s birthday, and though I usually ignore the date and won’t mention the occasion now either, the sight of Bex in that large booth tonight, trying so hard to hold herself together and so alone in her grief, made me realize something: I’ve been leaving my mother alone in hers too. It was selfish. Yes, I’m furious at everyone who played a role in his death—including Kieran, for caring so little about how his actions would affect us—but I can’t punish her for it.

“I was just looking at that video you posted,” she says. “Your bride’s a lovely little thing, isn’t she?”

Lovely doesn’t begin to describe it. Bex lights up every room she enters. But it won’t do to say this to my mother, who’s clearly hoping I might just choose to remain married when it’s all said and done.

“Pretend bride, Mum. And I guess she’s okay.”

She laughs. “Well, I suppose that’s an improvement from what you said a few weeks ago. So, you’re getting on then? You must be, if you’re taking her to Bob Bob Ricard.”

Nothing I can say will dissuade my mother from seeing this as a real romance, but I have to try, for both our sakes. “I had to. It was something she was supposed to do with her family and she was planning to go alone on her last night here. Her lack of logic is startling at times.”

My mother releases a wistful sigh. “I wish I’d known she was here. I could have taken the train down to meet her.”

God, what a disaster that would be. My mother would scoop Bex to her chest as if she were an orphaned baby. Even if she didn’t, Bex would be so charming even the most heartless fake in-law couldn’t resist her.

“Mum, don’t start convincing yourself she’s sticking around,” I warn. “I’ll barely see her again once the show’s done filming.”

I’m not sure if I’m saying this for her benefit or my own. Increasingly, I can’t imagine a time when Bex isn’t around.

“So today was all right, then?” I ask, swiftly changing the subject.

“It was rather nice, actually,” she says. “I went to Kieran’s grave, and then had lunch with Pen and Thomas.”

My jaw grinds. I don’t know how she can stand to be civil to Penelope, after what she did. Forgiveness isn’t for her, my mother has said before. It’s for me, so I can move on.

But I don’t care. I don’t care if rage burns a hole in my heart, if it burns bright until I’m in my grave. I won’t forgive Pen, I won’t forgive Fi, and I won’t forgive myself for not seeing through the two of them.

“Do you remember when you were small and you kept blowing out Kieran’s candles before he could get to them?” she asks with a laugh.

“Vaguely,” I reply, though I suspect it’s simply that I’ve heard the story so many times. “Kieran should have decked me.”

“He loved you too much,” she says. “He finally just put his arm around you and said you could do it together.” There’s fondness in her voice, rather than pain.

I called because I was worried about her. As it turns out, I’m the only one of us who can’t quite move on.



* * *



? ? ?

Bex leaves the following morning, which I only know because the company booked her flight. Somehow, London feels a little emptier without her, though it’s not as if I’d have seen her were she still here.

I try to fall back into old routines, but nothing is quite right.

My flat, far nicer than Rick and Jessie’s home, just seems lackluster. Ditto the office, the dinners out. I see my friends again but the whole evening is tense, plagued by moments of irritation and old grudges—Bryce making mild threats, and Peter essentially trying to blackmail me into giving him a job in his most charming Peter way.

I think of Bex calling Bryce a prick to his face, telling Lars I decapitated the baby. It’s probably the only time I smile all evening.

Maybe it’s just some kind of trauma response, Stockholm syndrome, but I miss that moment of wondering what the fuck she’ll say next. I want to see her face light up as she laughs, probably at my expense, and I want the fizzy buzz of laughing along with her when I’d intended to act annoyed.

I want a lot more than that too.

But even if I was willing to ignore her father’s final words to me—I hope to God neither of my girls ever brings you home—and the fact that I’ve dug myself into a hole with my personal life, one I may not be able to climb out of, I cannot ignore the fact that she is precisely what I’ve sought to avoid for a very long time. She is someone I could lose myself in, and for my mother’s sake and my own, I refuse to take that risk.