Chapter 19
Theo
I call my mother when I get in. Today is Kieran’s birthday, and though I usually ignore the date and won’t mention the occasion now either, the sight of Bex in that large booth tonight, trying so hard to hold herself together and so alone in her grief, made me realize something: I’ve been leaving my mother alone in hers too.
It was selfish. Yes, I’m furious at everyone who played a role in his death—including Kieran, for caring so little about how his actions would affect us—but I can’t punish her for it.
“I was just looking at that video you posted,” she says. “Your bride’s a lovely little thing, isn’t she?”
Lovely doesn’t begin to describe it. Bex lights up every room she enters. But it won’t do to say this to my mother, who’s clearly hoping I might just choose to remain married when it’s all said and done.
“Pretend bride, Mum. And I guess she’s okay.”
She laughs. “Well, I suppose that’s an improvement from what you said a few weeks ago. So, you’re getting on then? You must be, if you’re taking her to Bob Bob Ricard.”
Nothing I can say will dissuade my mother from seeing this as a real romance, but I have to try, for both our sakes. “I had to. It was something she was supposed to do with her family and she was planning to go alone on her last night here. Her lack of logic is startling at times.”
My mother releases a wistful sigh. “I wish I’d known she was here. I could have taken the train down to meet her.”
God, what a disaster that would be. My mother would scoop Bex to her chest as if she were an orphaned baby. Even if she didn’t, Bex would be so charming even the most heartless fake in-law couldn’t resist her.
“Mum, don’t start convincing yourself she’s sticking around,” I warn. “I’ll barely see her again once the show’s done filming.”
I’m not sure if I’m saying this for her benefit or my own. Increasingly, I can’t imagine a time when Bex isn’t around.
“So today was all right, then?” I ask, swiftly changing the subject.
“It was rather nice, actually,” she says. “I went to Kieran’s grave, and then had lunch with Pen and Thomas.”
My jaw grinds. I don’t know how she can stand to be civil to Penelope, after what she did. Forgiveness isn’t for her, my mother has said before. It’s for me, so I can move on.
But I don’t care. I don’t care if rage burns a hole in my heart, if it burns bright until I’m in my grave. I won’t forgive Pen, I won’t forgive Fi, and I won’t forgive myself for not seeing through the two of them.
“Do you remember when you were small and you kept blowing out Kieran’s candles before he could get to them?” she asks with a laugh.
“Vaguely,” I reply, though I suspect it’s simply that I’ve heard the story so many times. “Kieran should have decked me.”
“He loved you too much,” she says. “He finally just put his arm around you and said you could do it together.” There’s fondness in her voice, rather than pain.
I called because I was worried about her. As it turns out, I’m the only one of us who can’t quite move on.
· · ·
Bex leaves the following morning, which I only know because the company booked her flight. Somehow, London feels a little emptier without her, though it’s not as if I’d have seen her were she still here.
I try to fall back into old routines, but nothing is quite right.
My flat, far nicer than Rick and Jessie’s home, just seems lackluster.
Ditto the office, the dinners out. I see my friends again but the whole evening is tense, plagued by moments of irritation and old grudges—Bryce making mild threats, and Peter essentially trying to blackmail me into giving him a job in his most charming Peter way.
I think of Bex calling Bryce a prick to his face, telling Lars I decapitated the baby. It’s probably the only time I smile all evening.
Maybe it’s just some kind of trauma response, Stockholm syndrome, but I miss that moment of wondering what the fuck she’ll say next. I want to see her face light up as she laughs, probably at my expense, and I want the fizzy buzz of laughing along with her when I’d intended to act annoyed.
I want a lot more than that too.
But even if I was willing to ignore her father’s final words to me—I hope to God neither of my girls ever brings you home—and the fact that I’ve dug myself into a hole with my personal life, one I may not be able to climb out of, I cannot ignore the fact that she is precisely what I’ve sought to avoid for a very long time.
She is someone I could lose myself in, and for my mother’s sake and my own, I refuse to take that risk.
I do what I’ve always done when I’m not sure how to deal with my life: I work longer than anyone else, I drink more than anyone else, I hit the gym harder than anyone else. And by the time I land in Newark, I’m finally together again.
I call after I land. “I was going to come straight there but I wanted to make sure it was, er, a good time.”
“Come over,” she says. “I don’t actually love being here alone. Though you’re not likely to be much of an improvement.”
I laugh, unwillingly. She’s already fucking doing it. She’s already charming me, enticing me, seducing me, and she isn’t even trying.
I can’t wait to get there, and I suspect I should be staying almost anywhere else.
· · ·
An hour later, she’s standing in the frame of the door, fresh-faced and glowing, wrapped in a blanket.
“Welcome home, darling,” she says. “I made a roast.”
My brows raise. “You made a roast?”
She grins. “No, of course not. But I was trying to think of something a TV wife would say. It was either that or ‘The police came today; why did they need your hard drive?’ ”
Inside, the house looks even more faded than it did the last time I was here, as if Bex is sucking the little light it had away and keeping it for herself.
She removes the blanket around her shoulders and I wince.
She’s wearing shorts that might actually just be underwear and a crop top. “Dress code, Bex,” I growl.
She picks the blanket back up with a sigh. “You are not instituting a dress code in my home.”
I raise a brow as I look around. “Do you seriously expect me to believe you consider this place home?”
She flops on the couch, the blanket parting just enough to give me a flash of her inner thigh. “Wow. You’ve been here two seconds, and you’re already randomly insulting me. It’s a new record.”
“I’m not insulting you,” I reply, perching on the chair across from her. “I’m saying that I don’t understand why the fuck you’re still here.”
Nothing changes in her posture, but I sense the change in her anyway, a certain stiffness in her smile. “I’d think you’d approve of the fact that I’m still here, Mr. Frugality. And thank god I didn’t go splash out on a fancy apartment since you were running our business into the ground all winter.”
“Bex,” I groan, and a grin flashes across her face.
“Fine, it was already in the ground. But that doesn’t change my point: What is it you think I should have done instead?”
I shrug. “Put it on the market? This is a decent neighborhood. With new carpet and paint, you’d do okay on this place.”
Her smile fades. “Yeah. I just…” She tugs at the frayed blanket in her lap. “It just doesn’t seem right. I mean, they had this whole life, and the least worthwhile member of the family shouldn’t get to come in, wipe it from existence, and sit on the cash.”
“Least worthwhile? Bex, what the fuck?”
She looks at me, sighing. “You know it’s true. You said as much when we spoke last spring.”
“I never said you were the least worthwhile member.”
“No, you said, ‘Your father works his ass off, your mother runs a charity, your sister is in law school, and you’re in jail for threatening a horse. What does that tell you?’ ”
I did say that. And I remember now that yes, I’d thought she was that one kid in every high-achieving family who decides to pursue performance art or fashion design and winds up doing nothing. Or goes to jail for threatening to punch a horse.
And none of it was true. Not a single fucking thing. What’s more appalling is that with all that talent and all that charm and intellect, Bex should have thrived but floundered instead. Jessie clearly wanted it that way, but why the fuck did Rick allow it to happen?
“Bex,” I say hoarsely, running my hands through my hair.
“I was wrong about you. A lot of people were wrong about you. And I’m still trying to figure out why we were all so wrong but…
if one person in this household was going to survive that crash, I’m glad it was you.
And I think, perhaps, it was meant to be you. ”
I’ve thought this—that she was saved, that she was meant to survive—for a while now. Perhaps it’s because she shines so bright. Perhaps it’s just that I can’t imagine my world without her in it.
She blinks back tears. “You’re incredibly sweet when you’re not being a prick.”
Every bone in my body wants to cross the room to give her a hug, something I’m definitely not doing when she’s dressed the way she is.
I lean back instead, throwing my phone on the ottoman in front of me.
“I’m never sweet, and I don’t say anything I don’t mean, which is how you can be certain it’s true.
Except”—I nod at the massive book open on the table—“please tell me you weren’t reading a fucking encyclopedia tonight.
That thing’s got to be twenty years old. ”
She shrugs. “I was trying to see how they characterized our relationship with the USSR at the time of its writing, and I just kept going.”
Only she would look anything up in an ancient encyclopedia and just keep going. I fight the part of myself that loves this about her. I’m never getting married, but that’s exactly the sort of quirkiness I’d want in a wife if I did.
“Bex…maybe instead of reading an encyclopedia, you should be thinking about the future a little? The show is going to end and yes, you’ll have money, but will that be enough?”
She stretches out fully and stares at the ceiling.
“I read this book once where they surveyed the happiest countries and the most miserable, and you know where it said people are super miserable? Dubai. Primarily that the native population doesn’t have to work at all—it’s like an entire country full of people who’ve won the lottery, and the lack of purpose makes them miserable. Isn’t that fascinating?”
“I’d think you’d find it instructive more than anything else.”
She rolls toward me, hitching a shoulder. “The thing is, you have to be interested in something or competent at it to have a purpose, don’t you? I’m not interested in anything, nor am I especially competent at anything.”
“Give me a break. Are you interested in gamma-ray lasers?”
She shrugs. “Well, yes, but they’re pretty amazing because—”
“Are you interested in downregulation? Reynisdrangar? Amsterdam during its shipping heyday in the sixteen hundreds? The answer is yes, to all these things. You’re interested in everything, and you seem to have a photographic memory, so it basically comes down to you just deciding what job you’d like.
There’s not a job on the bloody planet you couldn’t do. ”
She tugs on her lower lip. “Is sleeping with rock stars a job? If so, I’m willing to take that on, though I don’t see how the photographic memory will serve me.”
My eyes narrow and my irritation is not entirely feigned—I am her husband, after all. Even if it’s fake, I don’t need to hear that she really wants to bang multiple rock stars. “Bex.”
She throws back her head with a throaty laugh, my new favorite sound. Every time I groan her name like that she’s delighted. I have no idea why.
“I guess you could teach me how to manage the office here so you don’t have to lose years of life due to jet lag.”
“You would hate managing the office and the woman we’ve hired is getting up to speed anyway. But if you’ve got this time free while we’re filming, I wish you’d spend it figuring out what your purpose is or what you’re interested in.”
Her mouth opens.
“Other than banging rock stars.”
Her mouth closes.
I rise to my feet and gather my things. “We can talk about it while we run tomorrow.”
She frowns. “I’ve been pushing myself to run more. You don’t need to force me.”
“I just ran with you in Amsterdam. I’m somewhat familiar with how much you’re pushing yourself.”
She pulls the blanket over her head. “I’m busy tomorrow!” she shouts. “I’m finding my purpose!”
I laugh quietly. I meant to get a full day of work in, rather than fucking around for the entire morning in a place I dislike. And I can’t wait.
I didn’t shake a single thing off in London.