Chapter 27
Jonas
The guys don’t let me starve.
And none of us catch fish.
Pretty sure they knew that would happen. They pull a cooler out of the truck and produce packets of dehydrated backpacking meals once we get back from our trek to a stream-fed pond not far from camp.
Pretty pond, but the fish weren’t biting. And we stayed until I was good and pink on my arms.
Might need better sunscreen at this elevation. Probably should’ve asked Emma what she uses.
Not sure what I can use to help my tongue, though.
And I’m not talking about the heat from the water that Grey boiled with a fancy miniature propane stove and that they used to rehydrate the meals in their own pouches.
“Good, isn’t it?” Theo’s lounging in a camp chair, slouched low, legs kicked out and crossed at the ankles. There’s a water bottle in his armrest cupholder, and he’s chowing down on a packet of rehydrated pad thai.
Grey sits taller in his chair, one ankle propped over a knee, slowly sipping off a can of kombucha while enjoying his packet of red beans and rice.
“Nevah had cam foo like dis,” I reply. I’m working on a packet of jambalaya, and my mouth is on fire.
Fire .
I like spicy food, but I’m starting to wonder if they doctored mine with extra hot sauce when I wasn’t looking.
I can’t feel my tongue.
I can’t feel my teeth.
I can’t feel my gums or my throat.
“Was your camp food usually catered?” Theo asks.
“Don’t knock catered camp food,” Grey says. “It gives you fancier constipation.”
I’d laugh, but my tongue might be swelling. I glance at the package again as I reach for my own kombucha.
Salty Marvin’s Fire In The Hole .
That’s the brand.
And I picked it.
And when Theo said, you sure? , I doubled down.
I’m an idiot.
No doubt my two hosts are well aware.
Neither of them have Salty Marvin’s meals. They both have different brands.
“You go to camp when you were a kid, Jonas?” Theo asks.
“Dee-ah— ahem . Theatah cam.” I guzzle more kombucha. Not helping. It might actually be like gasoline to the fire that is my dinner. “Yeah. Catah-ed mees. You?”
Jesus. This is embarrassing.
I can’t even talk .
I understand myself less than I understand Bash, and I know what I’m trying to say .
“Made my own summer camp. Grey?”
“Summer camp is the only academic program I was ever kicked out of.”
Theo does a double take, then starts to grin. “Gonna need the rest of this story.”
“Can’t.”
“What, you have an NDA?”
“Nope. Forgot about it until just now, and I haven’t told Sabrina the story yet. She gets it first.”
“I won’t tell her if you tell us first.”
“Yes, you will.”
Theo grins again—definitely agreeing with that sentiment—and looks at me. “What about you? You ever get kicked out of theater camp?”
I shake my head.
Sweat is beading at my forehead thick enough to drip into my eyebrows.
“Okay there?” Grey asks me.
“Not eading undil you sweadin.” Is that a line I said once in a script for a movie where a very similar situation played out? Not eating until you’re sweating .
It’s familiar.
Yes. Yes, I think it is a line I’ve said in a script.
And Grey pauses and stares at me like he knows it.
Theo notices Grey staring, but if he’s aware of why, he doesn’t let on.
Instead, he nods to me. “You sure you usually sweat that much when you’re eating?”
“Aww da tye,” I lie.
They share a look and a smile.
Uh-oh. “Ith thish when we thtart the inquithition?”
Both of them grin wickedly, this time at me.
Thought so.
“Where do you see yourself in five years?” Theo asks me.
Grey chokes on his drink and comes up laughing.
Theo shoots him a shut the fuck up look. “Laney’s rubbed off on me. I think about the future now. Rutherford. Talk. Where are you in five years?”
Not dying from my tongue swelling up over making a very poor decision that I wouldn’t be doubling down on under any other circumstances.
I gulp more kombucha and make myself concentrate on enunciating clearly. “No idea.”
Both men cross their arms over their chests.
More kombucha.
More kombucha is the answer.
It still does nothing to tame the lava sitting under my tongue, but I have too much at stake to keep slurring my words for not being able to feel my mouth.
“Athk me that a month ago, and I’d thay traveling the world looking for bigger and bigger thtories to tell.
” Shit. Shit shit shit. “Today?” More kombucha.
Crap. Can’s empty. But I make myself speak clearly anyway. “Different priorities.”
“You want more kids?” Grey asks.
“If everything elthe— else in my life lines up to make more kids, yes.”
“Tell me what happened in Fiji,” Theo says.
Not just the fire in the hole —aka my mouth hole —making me sweat now. “What do you think happened in Fiji?”
“Why were you there?”
“Hiding from the preth— press and my own poor dethi—decisions.” Talking is actually good. Talking means I don’t have to eat more.
“It true you got divorced because you pulled a bait-and-switch on your wife?”
Maybe talking isn’t good. “Tha’s the bones of it.”
“Fill out the flesh of it.”
I have two options.
I can confess the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life and risk being left here to forage my way to survival if I pick the right direction for the nearest town.
Or I can tell them if Emma wanted them to know, she would’ve told them.
Which also risks me being left in the wilderness.
Good news is, fear is calming the fire in my mouth. I’m starting to get concerned for the hole it’s about to burn in my stomach—pretty sure my intestines are next for dying of hot sauce poisoning—but I can talk.
“I got married because I lived a fairytale life and she was a fairytale princess and we were going to have a fairytale movie star power couple life. I’ve been sheltered and spoiled, and I own it.
But when she suggested a project outside of Razzle Dazzle, I got cold feet.
Refused to admit it was cold feet and came up with a plan to stall her by telling her I wanted a family right away instead of waiting like we’d agreed. ”
They’re both folding their arms again.
Neither’s smiling.
“I hitched the first ride I could find to the most remote spot I could think of when she went public with the news about our divorce,” I say.
“Landed in Fiji. Got drunk. Passed out on Emma’s porch.
She recognized me and told me to get lost. Didn’t want the press spotting us together while she was already in the middle of publicity hell. ”
Theo frowns.
“Know a little about handling publicity,” I tell him.
Still sweating. Tongue’s simultaneously still numb and also on fire, but I make my mouth work right like my life depends on it.
“My family are champs at it. And I’d seen the video.
She was in over her head and also didn’t realize how private the island was.
Didn’t know it was safe to leave her house there.
So I decided it was my job to help her make the most of what she had left of her honeymoon. ”
Grey hands me another can of kombucha.
I guzzle half of it.
Theo’s glaring at me like sleeping with my sister is not how you should’ve handled it .
The kombucha fizzles on my tongue, reigniting some of the fire.
Dammit .
“Why’d you leave?” Grey asks.
“My family found out where I was, and that the press was on the verge of figuring it out too. They—they basically extracted me in the middle of the night.”
They both stare at me.
I shove a hand through my hair.
This is the hard part.
“If I could go back, I would’ve given Emma my number the day we met.
Swear I would’ve. But when I heard the paparazzi were on the way, I knew I needed to get out before they spotted me with her.
If I was the news, all by myself, for the disaster that was my divorce, they’d leave her alone. If we were in the news together?—”
I shake my head and look at Theo. “You were there. You were at the wedding. She didn’t look much better when I crashed her porch in Fiji. No chance in hell I was making it worse for her.”
He’s scowling.
Grey’s frowning, but it looks more like he’s thinking about something.
And not how fast he’ll have to move to keep Theo from ending me.
I’ve heard about the get-out-of-jail-free pass.
Also pretty sure it wouldn’t extend to him murdering me.
But only pretty sure.
And that might depend on how much the sheriff likes my old Razzle Dazzle films. Or my podcast.
If she’s not even the tiniest bit of a fan, I could actually be fucked.
“Why didn’t you answer any of her emails?” Grey asks.
Maybe it’s the heat finally dying down in my mouth. Maybe it’s the fact that they haven’t tried to feed me to a bear or a moose. Maybe it’s just getting my story off my chest.
But I’m starting to relax. “My team was fielding about three hundred emails a day with women offering to have my baby or claiming to be carrying my secret love child since the news was reporting I wanted to be a father so badly I’d fuck up my marriage for it.”
“ Three hundred ?” Grey says.
I giggle.
Giggle ?
Yeah.
Giggle.
Weird. “Yeah. At least. The IT team at Razzle Dazzle did some woowoo magic IT thing, and they said we were getting hit with targeted AI spam bots who were taking advantage of the keywords in the stories about my divorce and hoping I’d think one or two were real enough to convince me to send child support. ”
“And how many could’ve been real?” Theo asks.
I giggle again. Shit . What the fuck? “None. I mean, Emma. But otherwise, none.”
“You sure about that?”
I nod. Emphatically . And it makes my brains catch fire a little too, on top of going a little sloshy.
The elevation is making me drunk.
On straight kombucha.
Weird.
“Why didn’t you tell them to watch for emails from Emma?” Grey asks.
“I was the dick who didn’t say bye-ee .” I toast them with my kombucha can, which is a weird-ass thing to do, but it feels right. And then I guzzle the rest of this second—no, third can too. I had one while they were cooking. “She didn’t want to hear from meeee .”
Theo sets his trash on a folding table, tops it with a rock, and then settles back in his chair again, hands folded over his stomach. “Tell us the rest of the story but sing it.”
“Like Ryan Reynolds,” Grey adds. “My sources tell me you do a killer impression.
What’s the rest of the story?
Oh, wait.
I have orders.
I clear my throat.
Feel the burn on my tongue.
Feel the fizzies in my brain.
I can do this. “Whaa—aat’s the rest of the stoooooooooory?” I sing.
Like Ryan Reynolds would.
I honestly can do a killer Ryan Reynolds impression. It’s a gift.
Grey makes a choking noise and reaches for his own drink.
Theo looks me dead in the eye without cracking a grin. “Why are you here now ?”
“Oh, that,” I start. And then I remember my orders. “Should I dance too?”
“No,” Grey says. “We don’t want to scare the wildlife.”
“Or have them mistake your dancing for a mating ritual,” Theo agrees. “Sing. Why are you here now ?”
Yes. That. I squeeze my eyes together, and the dots behind my eyelids crisscross until they tell me I should answer with a real song.
A Bro Code song. Like Ryan Reynolds would sing it. “ Because she’s my everything sweeeeeeetheeeeaaaart ,” I bellow. “ My dreeeeeeammy swweeeetheeeaaarrt. ”
“You just woke up one morning, remembered she exists, and decided she’s your sweetheart?” Theo is still not cracking a smile.
Grey’s like, whimpering . The man can’t hold his laughter. Just can’t.
I have broken him.
Hear that sizzle?
That’s the sound of my burnt tongue making a checkmark in the sky.
Jonas, one. Grey, zero.
I mean, Grey forty-three billion, because he was there to see Emma pregnant. To watch Bash grow. To be part of their family.
And I just have one.
A measly, measly one.
“Was she—” I clear my throat. Orders. I have orders to perform. “ Waaaas sheeee beee-yooo-tiful when sheeee waaaas carrrrrying my baaaaaaby? ”
A bug flies in my throat, and I choke. Gag.
Spit.
Cough.
“Do not give him another kombucha,” Grey orders Theo.
Kombucha .
“Shiiiiiiiiit,” I say. No, sing, performer. Sing. “ The kombuuuuuucha was druuuuunk. ”
“You’re drunk,” Grey says.
“I’m haaaapppppy and my moooouth is on fiiiiii-ya! ” And the kombucha was hot.
Heavy.
Hard .
It was hard kombucha.
“ I’m a altitude on liiiiiightweeeeeight ,” I sing.
“Elevation,” Theo says. “It’s only altitude if you’re not touching the ground.”
“Sabrina’s gonna kill me for not recording this,” Grey mutters.
“I’ll kill you if you do.”
“I know.”
“Was an assident,” I say on a sigh. “My assit—asskit— assistant was trying to find an email from Emma Wass—Wax— Watson ’s people. That’s know I how. Know I how. Hew I now . Shit.”
I. Drunk. Am. So.
“Can I wakey-wakey tomorrow on Emma’s porchy-porchy?” I ask my friends in my best Ryan Reynolds voice.
Yeah.
We’re friends.
Friends tell friends things when they’re high on the booch.
“Why would you want to do that?” Theo asks me.
“Start over. Be better. Be what she deserves.”
There’s a heavy sigh.
And a snore.
I don’t know who’s doing what.
But I know the stars are back behind my eyes, and they’re pretty.
I want to show Emma the stars.
She’s pretty.
And she’s strong.
And she’s brave.
And I like her.