Good at Being Alive(8)

“I didn’t know if you were coming,” I say as I sink into a seat and reach for a bottle of water from the center of the table.

He tips back in his chair and raises a brow. “I still don’t entirely believe you got us this meeting. I’m assuming you called up the first Emil you found online and asked if he wanted to shoot up. I’m here to thwart a kidnapping.”

Theo, like everyone else, assumes I’m too incompetent to ever do anything significant on my own. I won’t bother to correct him because that’s fairly accurate.

I wet a napkin and attempt to blot the stain off my blouse. When I glance up, his eyes are on my chest and the now damp shirt before they jerk away. “So what kind of outrageous lies did you tell in order to make this happen?” he asks.

Yes, I lied my ass off to reach Emil Harris—I claimed to be his daughter, Steven Spielberg’s wife, a senior VP at Sony. But I lost my entire family because a fucking reality show made them late. I lost my entire family in a train crash that did not kill a thousand other passengers. The fates did not worry about what was fair or right, so why the fuck should I?

“No lies,” I reply. “But if it comes up, you were Prince Harry’s bunkmate in Afghanistan and are currently dating Angelina Jolie.”

“Rebecca,” he sighs. “Seriously?”

“You can just call the thing with Angelina ‘complicated’ if that helps.”

He doesn’t laugh, so I give up with a tired exhale. “I just told him what dicks Baby Makes Three have been and how they’re trying to steal our show idea.”

“Unless he comes in here with a plan to murder the owners of Baby Makes Three, I don’t know how he can help.”

“Let’s hear your big idea, then. Since you’re British, I assume it involves recruiting a few cash-poor wizards from Slytherin.”

“I’m beginning to fear you think Hogwarts is a real school,” he says just as the door opens and Emil Harris enters the room with his team.

Introductions are made: there is Lars, middle-aged and handsome, with an accent I can’t place; Paula, who I immediately deem the Competent One because she’s officious and older than everyone else; Katrina, who is all smiles and appears to worship Lars; and finally there’s some douchey kid named Caden, unbearably smug as he tells each of us, in turn, that he’s studying film at NYU.

It’s not as impressive as he thinks, but I should let someone else inform him since I myself never got around to graduating.

Emil drops into a rolling chair and spins toward us. “We’ve spent a good part of the day going over the situation. And you are well and truly fucked, as Bex charmingly informed me last night.”

He grins when he says it, but my stomach tenses. If I’ve dragged Theo into the city for no reason at all, I’ll never hear the end of it.

Well, I will hear the end, because I’ll block his number at some point, but the next few days will be rough.

I glance at Theo. “I guess we’ll need to murder Kylie and Jasper. I wish I’d had some time to practice murdering first.”

“Rebecca,” Theo says wearily, pushing a hand through his hair, “you’d blurt out what you’d done to at least five people while leaving the crime scene.”

Lars smiles at Emil, then us. “I do have an idea that isn’t murder, though you may find it nearly as unpalatable.”

I hold my breath as Lars leans back in his seat, tapping a pen against his mouth.

“First of all, you’re very attractive,” he says to me.

It’s less unpleasant than I’d expected…but Katrina’s mouth gapes open and Theo doesn’t seem to love the compliment either. He leans forward, his jaw locked tight, his eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what—”

“Both of you are,” Lars continues as if Theo wasn’t speaking. “We couldn’t hire models more attractive than the two of you, and Theo is fairly well-known because of his last company. So I think we can sell this show.”

Theo looks as if he’s in the path of a speeding car as I clap my hands together. “I knew Two Whorish Singles Take On the World was a good idea.”

“Not so fast,” says Lars. “Like I said, this won’t be pleasant for either of you on a number of levels. The way we sell this to the network is if we position it as a triumph over tragedy. You’ve both suffered unimaginable losses. I’ll need you to be willing to talk about it. On camera.”

Theo and I exchange a glance. I’d sort of forgotten that Theo has suffered too, that he only came into possession of his half of the company when his brother jumped off a hotel balcony after catching his wife cheating. So I guess his story is somewhat tragic, though not nearly as tragic as mine.

“If there’s really no other way, I’m willing,” Theo says. “But I still don’t see how that turns into a show.”

“I wasn’t done,” says Lars with another smile. “And that wasn’t the painful part, which is this: we need a story. Humans are wired for stories—it’s how we’ve learned since time began. And that story is that the two of you are together.”

My jaw falls. “Together.” My idea has really run off the rails, which is a bad analogy under the circumstances, but he can’t possibly mean together together.