Good at Being Alive(90)

“Maplewood won’t be quite this scenic,” Bex pants as we run, “but it’ll be a lot less humid.”

Though it’s clearly difficult for her, and I’m not running as fast as I would on my own, she is keeping up admirably. It’s hard to believe she’s the same girl who barely managed four miles in Amsterdam. Then again, the one consistent thing about Bex is that she’ll impress the hell out of you when she decides to.

I love that, more and more, she’s deciding to.

Lars has promised us a relatively easy afternoon, given how tired we are by the time we’re done. We shower, change into swimsuits, and are taken to Porto Moniz, where there are natural pools formed by volcanic rock. It would be amazing if it weren’t for the fucking cameras and microphones.

And if it weren’t for the texts coming from London, warning me that it’s all about to go tits up.

“There’s nothing like a twenty-mile run to make you appreciate lying flat on your back,” Bex says, stretching out in the poolside chair beside mine.

I have the scratches on my arse to prove she appreciated lying flat on her back last night, too, but I can’t say this with the entire crew listening in.

“You know how I’d respond if we weren’t being recorded,” I murmur.

She raises her sunglasses to grin at me. “No clue. Whisper it.”

I know she has a clue, simply by the way her eyes gleam.

“I’ll tell you later,” I reply. “I’ll tell you repeatedly.”

She bites her lip, thoughts similar to my own clearly etched across her face. My phone, in the pocket of my swim trunks, vibrates with another text, ruining the moment.

This trip with her is a small taste of what my life could have been if I were someone else. And it might be the last taste I get.

“I have an idea,” she says, pushing up to her feet with a groan—stiffness from the run setting in—and walks over to this little hut selling pool toys and sunscreen.

Her suit is cut high on her perfect bum. Every man she passes turns to watch.

All mine, I want to growl.

For now, warns a voice in my head.

She buys something at the stand and returns with a wide grin and two deflated rafts. Those eyes are still on her as she walks back, and I can’t fault any of them. The sun has put streaks of caramel in her hair and her skin is tanned from a summer spent outside. Her eyes gleam and though she’s still slender, she has a softness to her curves that wasn’t there when she was so broken last winter. I don’t want to look at anything but her anymore.

“You have the most amazing eyes,” I tell her. I’m being recorded and I just don’t care. Time is ticking away, and I might not get the chance to tell her later. “They’re the first thing I noticed about you.”

She blushes, fighting a pleased smile. “Are you just saying that to get out of helping me inflate the rafts?”

I shake my head. “No. But do you have any idea how long it’s going to take to blow these up?”

“Not for me.” She winks. “I’m good at blowing things.”

It’s a shot right to my groin. I glance from her to LJ, standing five feet away with the camera trained on us. “Rebecca.”

“Sorry,” she says with a cheeky grin, sounding not at all sorry, and my stomach squeezes again.

Am I going to have to go through the rest of my life without that grin? Without hearing her reference blow jobs in the worst possible place? God, I hope not.

We each get to work on a raft. Thanks to the run, it’s harder than it otherwise would be. Neither of us has the energy.

“Maybe I’m not so good at blowing things,” she wheezes.

I cover my valve just long enough to raise a brow. She’s incredibly good at blowing things, and she knows it.

Eventually, I finish mine and then finish hers for her. She uses the cord wrapped along their edges and the plastic packaging to lash them together.

“Look at how clever I am,” she says as she climbs to her feet. “I’d be the perfect person to be shipwrecked with. Although Bronwyn would be better. I got kicked out of the Girl Scouts in the fifth grade but she did it until high school. She knew all kinds of outdoor shit. I only know how to make a papier-m?ché snowman.”

I’ve noticed this before. Every time she does something well or toots her own horn, even in jest, she backtracks to insist Bronwyn would have done it better.

“Let me guess,” I say as we pull off the mics and battery packs. “You threatened the troop leader? Or corrected her when she was wrong about some wilderness fact?”

“I did want to correct her, frequently,” Bex says. “But no. I was selling Girl Scout cookies at a significant markup, which is apparently frowned upon.”

A year ago, Jessie would have told a story like this to prove Bex was always bad, and I’d have believed her. Now I hear it and all it proves to me is that Bex has always been strong, has always had some fight in her, even if she can’t see it herself.

I follow her into the water, and we carefully climb onto the raft. I exhale in relief as my eyes close, and I brush my hand against hers. They’re still filming, but they can’t hear a fucking word we exchange.

It’s the perfect time to say, “This may be about to turn bad; let me explain.”

“This seems like it’s halfway between the Maldives and Primrose Hill,” I say instead. “We could settle here rather than Iraq.”