Good at Being Alive(48)
I grin. “If we were living during Prohibition, you’d have been the one to think of it and create the marketing plan.”
Her head cocks. “You say that as if it’s a good thing.”
“I think it is, don’t you?” I ask. “You can only suppress people for so long before they find a way to fight back.”
She blinks, something uncertain passing over her face. I’m not sure why it’s such a revelation…it seems to me she’s been fighting back against one thing or another her entire life.
Lars tells us they’ve got enough as darkness settles in. The lights of the cliffside homes twinkle like a thousand stars, and I guess that’s a once-in-a-lifetime view too, but I’m still not paying it much attention.
We hand our mics over, the crew leaves, and the waiter returns with a plate of cookies and a bottle of amaretto.
I fill both glasses and we toast each other, our shoulders settling. She makes it look easy on film, but she’s happier, more relaxed when the cameras are gone.
“How classless will you find it if I wrap this cookie in a napkin and take it back to the room?” she asks, sipping her amaretto.
I raise a brow. “You can do whatever you want, but why don’t you just eat it?”
She shakes her head. “I prefer them frozen. I’ll put it in the fridge and have it later.”
“Frozen? That’s the craziest thing I’ve heard you say, and as you’re aware, the bar was already set rather high.”
She shrugs, not quite able to meet my eye. “I just like to eat my cookies frozen. It’s a weird thing from childhood.”
I cock my head. “Aren’t they hard to eat?”
She sighs. “I guess. I told you it was weird.”
“But how does something like that even…evolve? You’re taking a delicious food and making it intentionally almost impossible to chew.”
“Jessie used to hide these cookies in the freezer, and—”
“Why was she hiding cookies in the freezer?”
A faint blush graces her cheekbones. “I was a really hungry little kid. She had to hide stuff and lock it up so I wouldn’t eat it.”
What. The. Fuck.
Bex, if anything, borders on being too thin. Even a few days of filming takes a toll on her, so of course she was a starving little kid. “Why wouldn’t she just give you the fucking food?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m sure she got tired of me eating it all. Anyway, she’d keep cookies in the deep freezer for her and Bronwyn, but Bronwyn gave me the code.”
This story is getting worse by the second. Jessie hid the food from her stepkid, the one who clearly needed it, and let her kid have whatever she wanted.
“It just turned into this weird thing where I started to actually enjoy it,” Bex continues, her teeth sinking into her plump lower lip. “It felt like…a relief, somehow, gnawing on one. I know it’s weird and pathetic. I have no idea why I was so much hungrier than her or Bronwyn. I just was.”
I stare at her. These little snippets that she’s offered of her childhood have been consistent in one way only: they paint Jessie in a highly unflattering light. And it’s not that I think she’s trying to do it. I think Jessie deserved to be painted in an unflattering light, and for some reason, no one did it. I’m not even sure that Rebecca has put it together herself.
“I don’t think that’s weird,” I tell her. “I think it’s fucking heartbreaking. Why did your father allow that?”
Her gaze is fixed on the empty shot glass. “I probably never even mentioned it to him.”
Why? Why didn’t she mention it, and why didn’t Rick ever ask his wife why the fucking freezer was padlocked, and, come to think of it, why did he allow her to take so many potshots at Bex when they were in public?
Jessie was always throwing Bex under the bus, right in front of him. And even when she wasn’t around, Rick never once alluded to how fucking brilliant his daughter was…and he must have known. Spend an hour with Rebecca and she’ll do or say something extraordinary.
“Freeze one of the cookies if you must, but eat the other one now.”
“I don’t want it now.”
“Bex, you’ve got a hollow leg. I’ve never seen you claim to be full. Eat the fucking cookie, right here, and I swear I’ll never bring it up again.”
With a deep sigh, she lifts the cookie, bites into it, and chews, frowning the whole time.
“What’s the verdict?”
Her eyes narrow. “It’s really good.”
I laugh at the almost childlike anger on her face. “But you’re still pissed at me?”
“Yes.” She takes a second, scowling bite.
Beneath the table I reach out and squeeze her knee. “Then at least we’re back to normal.”
* * *
? ? ?
Because the waters around Capri fill up fast, the only way to make the boat ride from Sorrento to Capri without too much traffic clogging the view is to leave at sunrise. I get down to the lobby at six and Bex arrives only a minute later, wearing a gauzy swim cover-up through which I can see the outline of her white bikini and a whole lot of skin. I picture the robe sliding from her shoulders. The way she’d gasp as I pulled the ties of that string bikini and let it fall to the floor.