Good at Being Alive(50)

Paula looks between us. “Theo’s right—it’s inappropriate, Caden. But there’s nothing sexy about the two of you sitting there fully clothed.”

I could argue that the cover-up was hardly fully clothed, but instead I pull my polo overhead and hand it to Bex. “Put it on.”

“But—” Paula begins.

“There’s nothing sexier than a woman wearing a man’s shirt, Paula,” I say. What I’m actually thinking is that there’s nothing sexier than Bex in my shirt. “And it’s that or I walk off the fucking boat and take her with me.”

“Fine,” says Paula. “But Theo, you’re not in charge.”

Caden smirks.

“Neither are you, Caden,” she adds.

Bex swallows, pulling the shirt on and tying it off at the waist as I take my place beside her again. “Thank you,” she says quietly, and then she stretches out, lying face down on her lounge chair—which means her lovely ass is on display for Caden, for the crew, for the viewing public.

For me.

I understand why Browning’s obsessed hero strangled Porphyria.

Dealing with a bunch of feelings you can’t act on is incredibly unpleasant.





Bex


Theo’s on edge. It started long before the argument with Caden…probably from the moment I stepped off the elevator. And sure, the weather could be warmer, and I’d prefer not to be filmed as we approach Capri, but this is a pretty sweet gig. So why does he appear to hate it a bit more with every moment that passes?

“What’s wrong?” I ask. We’re basically alone, as the crew is getting footage of the rocks jutting from the water rather than us.

“Just tired,” he grunts. “It’s going to be a long day.”

The wind whips my hair across my face and I push it back. “We have a lot of long days. What’s going on?”

He glances at me with a frown. “My brother got married here. In Capri. Seven years together, two full years of it spent planning this fucking wedding, and she was probably sleeping with Kieran’s best friend even then.”

Oh. No wonder he’s been in such a foul mood.

“Do you still…speak to them?”

He shakes his head. “I bought Kieran’s half of the business just to make sure his wife wouldn’t ever get to succeed with it and take the credit. I’ll never say a word to her again.”

It’s probably why he was so livid the night of the interview: because I was unable to hold it together while he’s had to offer benign responses for years about Penelope’s role in his brother’s death.

I lower my sunglasses. “Did you even want to run the business?”

He shrugs. “Not especially. I thought I was saving his company and creating a legacy for his son…I’m not sure how well that’s panning out at this point.”

“His son?” I whisper. “They had a child?”

“He didn’t know she was pregnant when he jumped. He never would have done it if she’d told him.”

I can’t believe in all this time Theo has never mentioned a nephew. “Are you close?”

He stares straight ahead, his jaw locked. “I’ve never met him. My mother says he looks like Kieran and he’s very clever, but I imagine she’d say that of any grandchild.”

I shift toward him. “Dude, you’ve never met your only nephew?”

He narrows his eyes at me. “Am I really about to be counseled on my failings by a woman who sits on the couch all day watching reality TV?”

I could argue that there’s a big difference between having no purpose and having a fatherless nephew you’ve intentionally avoided, but I sense that this isn’t the time for argument. I elbow him. “Don’t forget that I also fucked a bottle.”

He laughs, begrudgingly. “I’m unlikely to ever forget that.” He glances at the crew before he looks back at me. “Please don’t discuss this with anyone. It makes Kieran sound unbearably selfish, leaving a child behind, and he really wasn’t.”

I nod, rubbing at a happy/sad thing that resides just below my clavicle, a feeling I don’t yet have a name for. If, in all this time, I never heard about the kid from Theo and in all the preceding years I never heard about a son from my dad—and my father would definitely have reached out to Kieran’s kid if he’d known—then this isn’t something Theo tells many people, yet he just told me.

It means more to me than it probably should.



* * *



? ? ?

The therapist I was forced to see as a kid, once I started getting in trouble, thought expressing what you feel was a cure in and of itself.

Even as a small child, I knew this was crap—expressing a thing didn’t cure me of it, it only cemented my anger: what was vague and uncertain in my head would take form once I’d said it aloud, growing into something fiercer. Situations that merely bothered me before were suddenly enraging instead.

I wonder if this is what I’ve done to Theo, in forcing him to tell me what’s wrong. Because his mood has gone straight downhill ever since that conversation on the boat.

We’re given an hour to get checked in to the hotel and change, and then we’re filming again: cappuccinos and chocolate croissants at a café, wandering through the bright yellow shops and white-tented stalls of Anacapri. The shopping is less fun than it should be—it’s hot now, the streets are packed, and the stalls are selling the exact same combination of limoncello, wood carvings, and leather bags that we already saw in Sorrento and Positano. It’s mostly not fun because I’m stuck doing all this with Theo, and it’s not the crowd or the heat or the merchandise irritating him…it’s me.