Bex #3
And I’m certainly not going to ruin it by suggesting I could stay in London with him once my interviews here are over.
He knows perfectly well I have nothing to do in New Jersey and could spend the nine days before Norway lounging in his flat instead of going home.
Sure, he’d make me go for some god-awful run along the Thames, and I’d probably have to see his terrible friends at least once, but I’d forgive him for both.
We do it a third time, and he no longer believes me when I tell him I’m fine. He forces me into the bath while he orders us dinner, and then we eat in bed while I try to persuade him the bath solved everything and I’m no longer the least bit sore.
He swipes his thumb along my lower lip. “You’ve proven to have a shaky relationship with the truth,” he says. “So I’m not sure I believe you.”
I set my tray off to the side and untie my robe, pulling one knee up as if to assess for damage myself. “Hmm,” I say, running my hand between my legs while his gaze grows heated. “It feels okay to me.”
There’s a clatter as he kicks our tray off the bed and climbs above me. And when he’s groaning my name minutes later, I know I’d give anything to jump past every terrible conversation and land at some mythical point where all this is mine and I no longer have to fear giving it back.
· · ·
When my eyes open at dawn he’s fully dressed and pressing a kiss to my neck. On the one night when I’d have preferred not to, I slept like the dead.
“I have to go,” he says. “There’s a lunch thing I can’t miss. But I’ll see you in Bergen?”
I nod. My smile is forced. I’m not ready for it to be over, I long to tell him. It all went too quickly. “I’ve got my Norway facts ready.”
“Of course you do,” he says, and then his lips press together, a moment of hesitation. “With your interview today…and around the crew…we should probably keep this to ourselves?”
He wants to keep it a secret. It’s not as if I was going to say anything, but it bothers me that he’s asking.
“That’s probably best,” I reply. He kisses me one last time and then he’s gone, leaving me behind with more questions than answers, my mood morphing from sunshine and rainbows to utter despair.
Just two days ago he was saying it would be messy and “I have a lot of baggage,” which is exactly what I’d say to a guy I was only interested in sleeping with one or two times.
I’ll bet I’m not even out of the shower before he’s texted to tell me he’s worried this will ruin our friendship, or that it’s a busy time for him, which are other excuses I’ve made quite often.
I mean, there’s definitely something going on with the complication, right?
Because even if he gave me that song and dance about “Not every story is mine to tell,” he would have said it was over if it was over.
I know he wouldn’t cheat on someone—that’s just not who he is—but they might have an open relationship.
For all I know he lives with her—it would certainly explain why I’ve never once seen the inside of his flat.
Maybe he’s given her a ring too…and it’s one Lars didn’t choose.
All I’ve seen of Theo is what he’s permitted me to see, and it’s not a hell of a lot.
Actually, it’s almost nothing. He’s stayed in my home, but I don’t even know where his home is.
He knows some of my neighbors, who I was dating, my fucked-up family dynamics, and all I know about him is that he’s British and his brother is dead.
Is the fault mine for respecting his boundaries, or is the fault mine for thinking a man who holds every secret close to his chest, a man known for his reluctance to commit, was somehow going to be different with me?
For the first time in my entire existence, I’m reminding myself of Bronwyn, who displayed some fairly irrational behaviors when she was infatuated.
She’d name their children, check her phone a hundred times an hour, fall into a week-long funk when he failed to reply or ghosted her or did any of the other shit most men do at some point.
But me? I always assumed it would end badly, that the guy didn’t quite want me enough, so I didn’t get invested. If I was finally going to give someone a shot, why the hell did I give it to Theo, a guy I already knew had someone else?
A few hours later, I shower and force myself into camera-appropriate clothes and makeup.
In today’s interview, Paris will be presented as the midpoint of our relationship, and Lars wants me to be largely optimistic but point out just a few issues—like the fact that my handsome husband ditched me mid-trip to go back to work.
It’ll be easy enough to act upset. I am, even if I have no right to be.
The crew files in. Lars, Paula, Katrina, Jon, LJ, Sean, and…
“Where’s Caden?” I ask.
“Home,” Lars says.
Fuck. I don’t know if he was sent home or if he chose to go home, but even an NDA won’t keep Caden from causing trouble, and I’m sure he wants to cause maximum trouble now that Theo has punched him repeatedly.
“Look, yesterday wasn’t great, I know, but honestly…
Theo will be fine. There was some tension building, and now it’s over. ”
Lars laughs and pulls out his phone. “Allow me to read you the text Theo sent two hours ago: ‘If I see Caden anywhere near Bex again, he’s a dead man.’ ”
I fight a smile. What an asinine display of male aggression, and why do I love it so much? “I’m sure he wasn’t seri—”
“ ‘I’m serious, Lars,’ ” Lars continues to read before turning the phone to face me. And that’s what it says, verbatim. “Anyway, Bex, let’s talk about the fight.”
I frown. LJ is already rolling. Jon has headphones on, listening in. “On camera?” I ask.
Lars shrugs. “They’re mostly checking lighting and sound, but if we end up using the fight, we might use some of this as well.”
“You can’t use the fight,” I reply. “Theo is co-owner of the company. You can’t show him—”
“Defending his wife?” Lars asks. “I’m pretty sure a lot of husbands would have reacted badly to what Caden was doing.”
“Not that badly,” I mutter.
“You’re right,” says Lars. “Not that badly. So why did Theo?”
I breathe through my nose, my mouth tightly shut. There’s no good answer here. The audience isn’t going to love Theo was just hungover and in a bad mood. Diplomacy was never my strong suit—it was Bronwyn’s. Is there a single part of this show she wouldn’t have handled better than me? I doubt it.
“Look,” I begin slowly. “Theo wasn’t feeling great yesterday.
Shooting this is a lot more stressful than I’m sure it appears on-screen, and the stress is cumulative.
We don’t wake up and start fresh. We wake up worn down by the previous days and all the pressure, and then we’ve got to go on camera and have it appear that we’re having the time of our lives. ”
Lars nods, as if everything I’ve said makes sense and is entirely reasonable.
This is why he’s so good at his job…because he can think one way and behave in another way entirely.
“Tell me a little about what happened with Caden, but do me a favor and don’t refer to him by name. Just call him a crew member.”
I sigh. I’m not even sure I should discuss this on camera.
What if Caden sues? He seems like the kind of weasel who would.
“A member of the crew has been hitting on me pretty consistently since we first began filming, some of it out in the open—one of the directors had to personally tell him to knock it off in Capri. It’s been getting worse as it’s gone along. ”
“And did you share any of this with Theo?”
Where is he going with this? I don’t fault Lars and Paula, but they’ve always got an angle. Maybe they’re going to make me look like an unhinged troublemaker who led her sweet husband to violence.
“Only recently. And that unfortunately seemed to coincide with the crew member being a lot worse in front of Theo. It almost felt intentional.”
His head tilts. “You said earlier that we make you act like you’re having the time of your life. Are you not actually enjoying this?”
My lips purse. “I didn’t say that.”
He nods. “Tell me your favorite moments of the trip thus far.”
“In Paris?” I gulp.
What am I supposed to say? All my favorite moments have been off camera.
The two of us alone. And not even necessarily the day we just spent in bed.
I loved lying beside him in the dark after my nightmare.
I loved sharing a bottle of wine on the Five Guys terrace and talking to him during the second half of our endless run.
I loved seeing his face every morning and standing in line at the kiosk downstairs for lattes and croissants while I tried to make him laugh.
And I’m not saying any of this on camera because eventually it will end, if it hasn’t already ended, and this will all be…
humiliating. “We went out the night before last and wound up at this bar. That was very fun. And…”
“And?” he prompts.
The damage is already done, isn’t it? Theo probably has a very good idea how I feel whether or not I admit it on camera, and the camera’s caught it as well. “It isn’t about doing anything in particular,” I admit, my eyes falling closed. “It was just about being here together.”
“So when it’s just you and Theo together, it’s fun and it feels like a vacation?” he asks.
“Why do I feel like I’m on trial here?” I ask, just as someone knocks on the door. Katrina goes to answer and returns with a box for me.
The note attached says, “Eat up. You’ll need your energy when I see you in Norway next week.”
Theo. I’m already grinning ear to ear before I open the box, which contains donut holes, naturally.
I have no idea how he managed to find donut holes in Paris and get them delivered from a train.
But it’s not the behavior of a man who’s about to tell me we’re better off as friends.
Nor is it the behavior of a man who’s serious with someone else.
Lars raises a brow.
“Theo sent donut holes,” I tell him. Jesus, I’m blushing. I don’t want the crew to know what’s going on with us, not when it could still fall apart, but I can’t knock the smile off my face.
Paula and Katrina smirk at each other. “I think we’ve got it,” Paula says. “LJ can grab some B-roll and we’re out.”
I don’t know what they got when I never answered a single question about Paris.
I’m too happy to care.