Good at Being Alive(84)

“I suppose we’d better put on a show, then,” says Theo, rolling me beneath him, his weight pressing me into the mattress.

My eyes meet his as I reach below the blanket and slip his shorts down. He’s hot and hard in my palm.

“Rebecca,” he warns, removing my hand.

He doesn’t whisper it, but I imagine everyone listening will assume I pinched him or did something less pleasant than what I’m actually doing.

“Please,” I mouth.

“Fuck it,” he grunts. Before I can ask what that means, he pushes my shorts to the side and slides inside me. I swallow hard to hold in a gasp. His mouth lands on mine, quietly releasing his own.

He moves to my ear. “Say something mean. If you don’t complain, they’ll start to suspect.”

I gasp again, grasping his face and pulling it back to my own as he thrusts harder. “For once in my life, nothing’s coming to mind.”

My legs spread wide to let him go farther, and he nips my earlobe. “Don’t,” he groans into my ear. “I’ll come too fast if you do it. Please complain. Fuck. That’s so good, Bex.”

“You’re incredibly heavy,” I announce loudly. “How much do you even weigh?”

“Thirteen stone. You’re fine.”

I spread my legs anyway, despite his warning, and he bottoms out. I’m soaked, my body is strung tight, and I no longer care what they can see on camera or who’s listening.

“Why the fuck do you measure in stones anyway?” I ask, pressing my mouth to that straining tendon in his neck.

“Oh, like pounds make more sense?” he demands, burying himself inside me.

My nails dig into his back. “Theo,” I warn.

He pushes harder, spreading my thighs as if he’s forgotten what he himself said.

I make a small, desperate noise, he places a hand over my mouth, and Lars’s voice comes over the loudspeaker, heavy with disgust. “Okay, guys, that’s a wrap. Apparently, a discussion of dinner rolls and American versus British measurement systems is all we’re getting out of you tonight.”

I’m so fucking close, perhaps three thrusts away from coming hard enough to pass out. “My god, his timing is bad,” I whisper.

Theo quietly groans as he slips out, still thick, long, and deliciously swollen. His swallow is audible. “I’m so hard right now that it’s painful, Bex. I’m never going to fall asleep,” he whispers.

“Wait five minutes,” I whisper. “Then meet me in the bathroom.”

He laughs. “The only way would be on the sink. We’re going to break it.”

“You worry too much,” I reply.



* * *



? ? ?

Nine hours later, Paula is in the RV and frowning at me like a pissed-off parent. “You’re saying the sink just broke. Out of nowhere.”

I wish LJ wasn’t already filming us, because I suspect I’m going to lie quite poorly.

“I was leaning on it,” I tell her. By which I mean that I was sitting on it. “Barely.” By which I mean I was sitting on it while Theo first went down on me and then thrust into me, hard, for several minutes. It didn’t actually give way until we’d both come, thank god.

We had to have sex sitting on the toilet after that.

“The lid of the toilet tank fell off too,” says Theo, refusing to meet my eye. “Just the edge cracked, though.”

“This is the most expensive shoot of the trip,” she carps to Lars, “and getting more expensive by the minute.”

We’re filmed running up Flydalsjuvet, only five miles but straight uphill on legs still sore from our long run the day before. We’re permitted to shower afterward, though I’ve noticed that Lars seems to be intentionally detaining us so we’re never inside the RV at the same time, and then we’re off on an inflatable boat through the fjord, which seems to have a new waterfall every five feet.

I tell Theo how families with farms at the top of the cliffs used to keep their children from falling off the edge—they could only go outside attached to a rope.

His mouth moves upward, fighting a smile. “I was considering something similar for you in Italy.”

“Yeah, you’d just love to tie me to you, wouldn’t you?”

He grins. “At times, yes.”

Lars throws out his hands. “Paula, we’re going to have to reorder the whole fucking thing. They’re too goddamn happy.”





Bex


After a long period of silence, Baby Makes Three is mentioning us again. Kylie says she’s still gathering details but her “source” informs her that Theo is with someone else, and that they’ve been together for a very long time.

“When this story blows, it’s gonna be huge,” she says.

I imagine this is about the complication, and maybe someone is feeding her a bunch of bullshit that was true last fall but no longer is. I know Theo wouldn’t see someone behind my back, yet this tiny seed of fear remains firmly planted in my chest anyway.

If I wasn’t such a mess, would I ask him? I’m not sure. I suspect that if I wasn’t such a mess, I’d have no need to ask him because the whole thing would seem laughable.

I resolve to keep the questions to myself, which might be a sign of my maturity or perhaps my cowardice, but by the time his taxi pulls up to my father’s house after six long days without him, I’m glad I left it alone.