Good at Being Alive(78)

“Is that really what you want to discuss right now?” he asks, frowning.

He’s not going to frown me into dropping this. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

He sighs. “I made a few unfortunate decisions after I ended things with Fiona. I was just well-known enough for people to care.”

“What sort of decisions?”

“This feels like more than one question,” he says tersely.

“I never promised I was going to ask only one question.”

He pushes the carryout container away. I’m not sure if he’s done or if he’s simply lost his appetite. “Among other things, I slept with someone the press follows. Unbeknownst to me, it was filmed. That was dealt with, but people were talking.”

Wow. I’m a little jealous. I shouldn’t be. It’s not like I thought I was his first. I might not even be his only. But he slept with someone famous enough that the press would care. I’m not sure how I compete with that.

“Okay,” I reply, doing my best to hide these thoughts. “Next question. You said Wendy and Bryce were both—”

“Ahem.” He raises a brow. “I believe you’ve had your question. And, by the way, you’re wearing a lot of clothes, which begs the question…were you wearing next to nothing every time I came to your home intentionally?”

He’s probably just trying to distract me, but it’s working. He’s already got that soft, playful smile on his face as if he knows the answer.

“You’re right,” I tell him. “I am wearing a lot of clothes. I should probably remove a layer or two, huh?”

There’s a shift in his face. “I’m taking this call to the bedroom.”

I shouldn’t be having phone sex with a guy who is still hiding so much of himself. I shouldn’t know so little about him that I’m thrilled to finally see his bedroom…over the phone.

No matter how right this feels, that wiser girl inside me suspects that this is still going to go very wrong. If Bronwyn was in my place, I’d be telling her to cut her losses.





Theo


My brother leapt into things. He’d hear about a buddy going to some godforsaken country and be on the next flight out. He’d read about a deadly trek over waterfalls in Antarctica or crossing a desert so hot that you needed special shoes that wouldn’t melt—and he’d be calling people to make it happen an hour later.

Sometimes it turned out well, and sometimes he barely escaped with his life, and while I admired him, I always knew that leaping in the way he did would get him killed. And it did—just not in the way I expected.

He met Penelope during a layover and flew to Australia, where she was studying, a week later. I wanted to caution him the way I always did—Slow down, give this some thought—but I didn’t, because it wouldn’t have mattered. Penelope was already his whole fucking world.

Even then, at the start, it set off alarms for me. What do you have left when you’ve lost yourself entirely in someone else?

I was furious at his lack of caution—and I guess I’m still furious—but I’m starting to realize that sometimes you don’t have a choice.

My every thought, asleep or awake, is about Rebecca Daniels. About her laugh, and the feel of her ponytail clenched in my fist, and the way she smirks right before she says something intended to annoy or titillate me. About her facts and her jokes and her gasps. They’re all I ever want to hear for the rest of my life.

When I reach my flat, it’s midday in New Jersey and she is found, as she’s always been of late, with a box in front of her. Her hair is in a ponytail, tendrils of it slipping around her face. There’s no bra under the T-shirt, and I’m imagining sliding my hand beneath it before I can stop myself.

“Is that look because you’re admiring how productive I’m being?” she asks, propping the phone on a shelf. Her breasts bounce as she reaches up to fix her ponytail. “I hope so, because I’m unlikely to ever be productive again.”

“You’re full of shit, you know that?” I ask.

She raises a brow, lifting the stack of books to her left. “Yes, I’ve never tried to hide this fact. Which particular falsehood are you focusing on, however?”

“The one where you’re a disaster and unmotivated and lazy,” I reply. “You’re none of those things. It’s all some story Jessie told and a part of you believed her.”

Her mouth twists into a frown. “I was a disaster, Theo. Let’s be clear about that. I got bad grades; I got into trouble constantly. Jessie might have enjoyed the fact that she’d produced the good child, but it doesn’t negate the fact that I was the bad one.”

The more I know about her, the more I refuse to believe any of this was true. Jessie pushed her into this situation and Bex doesn’t seem to have a clue. “You nearly failed a class you were brilliant at just to keep the peace, Bex. So what else did you do to keep the peace? I’m not even sure you know. Yet somehow you don’t seem to resent Bronwyn for any of it.”

“She didn’t know,” she says, taping up the box. “I did my best to keep her unaware of it.”

“But why?”

She frowns at me, and I’d expected this. I can say anything I want about anyone, but Bronwyn is off-limits.