Chapter 18
Bex
Theo is tense. We’re barely in the air before he’s asking the attendant what types of scotch they have.
He’s left his phone face up and open in his lap while holding this conversation, so he’s basically asking me to read the texts he’s been exchanging with his friend group.
No court could convict me.
Theo: Rebecca and I will be in town for the next two nights if you’d like to meet for a drink.
Wendy: Oh, it must be serious. He’s actually introducing us to his child bride.
Peter: It’s interesting that you keep calling her that. Aren’t you twenty years younger than YOUR husband?
Ross: Better do it someplace quiet or one of your exes will turn this into Rebecca’s most interesting London trip yet.
Bryce: Remember the one at uni? The one who scaled the wall? What was her name?
Theo: Anyway, is 8 good?
Wendy: Her name was Stef. You know she’s a member of Parliament now?
I sort of like that they’re ignoring his wishes and appear to be gossip-prone, but I dislike that this bitch is calling me a child bride, even if I’ve referred to myself that way more than once.
By the time he concludes his tedious conversation about scotch, I’ve seen all there is to see on his phone and have picked up a copy of Popular Mechanics someone left in the seat-back pocket.
He glances over. “Gamma-ray lasers?” he asks. “You’ll literally read anything, won’t you?”
You have no idea, Theo.
“I was bored,” I reply. “It’s not like I understand it.”
He frowns and puts down his phone as he turns to me. “Don’t do that,” he says quietly.
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t attempt to play dumb. I know you understand it.
I have no idea what kind of fucked-up thing you had going with Jessie where she needed to tell the world you were troubled and not especially bright, and you played along, but it’s ridiculous.
I don’t know how the school system could have just missed it.
Did they never…say anything? Test you somehow? ”
I shrug. “A psychologist gave me an IQ test but nothing came of it. Maybe I’m not as smart as you think.”
He rolls his eyes. “I don’t care what the tests said. You’re fucking brilliant and anyone worth knowing would like you better for it, so stop dimming your own light. No one needs you to do it.”
He continues texting, thanking the attendant as he accepts his mini bottle of scotch, while I quietly reel. I know that I’ve been lying. That for most of my life I’ve downplayed some things about myself in order to keep the peace.
The revelation is that…I might not need to pretend. That someone might like me exactly the way I am.
· · ·
He picks me up at my hotel that evening. For his sake, I’ve made a bit of an effort. I’m wearing clothes Mindy sent rather than my own, and I’ve bothered to straighten my hair.
None of this effort appears to soothe Theo, however. His jaw is locked as he drives us to the bar, which forewarns me that his friends will prove more uptight and judgmental than he is.
“What do I need to know?” I ask, biting my lip.
His gaze seems to catch on my mouth for longer than it should, especially given that he’s currently driving down a busy London street.
By the time his head jerks back to the road, his face has reverted to its standard disdain.
“Nothing in particular. I grew up with Wendy, Ross, and Bryce—Wendy and Ross are siblings. I went to uni with them and our friend Peter. Ross’s wife, Nell, will probably come if they’re currently speaking, and our friend Garrett never commits but usually shows up at the last moment.”
I groan loudly. “I don’t need to know about them. I need to know about you. I don’t know where you grew up. I know nothing about your mother. I don’t even know your favorite position.”
“I’m glad you brought it up,” he replies, sliding his car into a tight space with an expertise that dumbfounds me, “because the one thing you should know is that I don’t have the sort of friends with whom you’d repeatedly reference your dead family or discuss sexual positions.
Most people don’t have friends like that. ”
“This evening is shaping up to be every bit as dull as I’d anticipated,” I reply as I climb from the car. “And your intense fear that I’ll say something horrifying in front of your friends only makes me want to do it more.”
“As if you were going to restrain yourself,” he mutters, which is fair, because I probably wasn’t.
He opens the door into a quintessential English pub—lots of dark wood and brass fixtures—and leads me toward a group of people who appear to have been at it for a while. The table is already a sea of empty mugs.
I’m introduced to them one by one. Peter enfolds me in a hug.
Ross is pleasant but seems vaguely concerned, though I’m not sure about what—perhaps he was following me on Instagram before I cleaned it up.
There’s a guy named Adam and his mousy wife, followed by Bryce, who gives me a drunken once-over, head to toe, as if I’m not here as his friend’s wife.
Finally, there’s the staggeringly pretty Wendy—her pale blond hair gleams in the light and her bone structure would make models weep—but her smile suggests that I have failed a test.
“Adorable,” she pronounces, resting a hand on my cheek. “I can see why he married you.”
It’s as if I’ve been complimented and sliced open in the same breath. As if what she really meant was I can see why he married you in spite of the glaring flaws, but I actually don’t see why he married you because I thought he was smarter than that.
“Wendy actually has a title now, thanks to her husband,” Peter says. “And he’s still in line for the throne, yes?”
She rolls her eyes. “Yes, but with all these grandchildren being born, I’d say the odds are not in his favor.”
I could mention that Queen Victoria was fifth in line, that George I was fiftieth. I don’t because Wendy seems smug enough without the information.
Questions are asked about the show, about Iceland, and our upcoming trip to Italy. Peter asks where we’re going to settle and I say, “The Maldives,” just as Theo says, “Probably Primrose Hill.”
“Already a lover’s spat and they’re only a month in,” mutters Bryce. “Theo scoops up all the prettiest ones but doesn’t know how to treat them.”
There are looks exchanged and someone quietly tells Bryce to shut the fuck up before Peter gamely attempts to make a joke about it. “I hope Theo warned you what you were in for with the lot of us.”
I respond with a nervous laugh. “Not really. I know you all grew up together, and that’s about it.”
“Oh, that’s rich,” says Bryce. “He told you we grew up together?”
“Bryce, stop,” says Wendy before she turns to me.
“Ignore him. He’s just jealous because Theo’s the only one of us who’s made millions.
We did all grow up together. Theo and Kieran’s mother worked for our family for many years, and they lived on the grounds.
That’s about as close as growing up with us as one can get. ”
I blink at Theo in surprise. Everything about him reeks of privilege.
I never envisioned him being from the other side of the tracks—the British version of it, anyway.
But it explains some things, too—that hint of grittiness in him occasionally, like with Caden in Iceland.
It wasn’t a refined response at all but a “you’ve got two seconds to back off or I’ll make you regret it” sort of response.
I liked it more than I should have.
“Yes, yes,” Bryce says. “No one can argue that Theo and Kieran didn’t make the most of the opportunities they were given. They went to the best schools—”
“And did far better afterward than you,” Ross says.
Bryce grimaces. “I was getting to that. Anyway, they both made the most of the little they started off with, and no one can fault them for it. But you know what’s implied when someone says they grew up with you.”
Theo’s face is carefully blank. He doesn’t look especially bothered by anything that’s been said but more…accustomed to it. “Ignore him,” he tells me. “He’s had too much to drink, which is something one generally assumes anytime Bryce is in public.”
“Which is what has always made me so much more fun than you,” Bryce replies. “Fat lot of good it did me.”
Wendy swats his arm, leaning toward me. “There’s a class system in England that you really don’t have in the States. And Bryce has had a lot to drink.”
She’s defending Theo, but he behaves as if she hasn’t spoken. As if she’s invisible to him. Why?
“I’m simply objecting to the phrasing!” Bryce shouts. “You know I’m right. Or did you not want your sweet young wife to realize how humble your origins are?”
Theo’s hand flexes. “I have no issue with my origins, though you may think a bit highly of your own.”
Bryce rolls his eyes. “He’s spent too much time in the States, clearly. I was just having a bit of fun.”
“Interesting,” I reply. “In the States we call that being a bit of a prick, but you do you.”
Peter laughs. “That’s what we call it here too. I’m beginning to see why you married her, Theo.”
“It would be refreshing if we could spend two minutes tonight not discussing how wonderful Theo is,” Bryce announces.
Ross jumps in, suggesting a game of billiards…and suddenly I find myself at the large table with only Wendy and Peter.
She raises her glass to me. “Well, we thought he couldn’t be reformed. You need to write a book on what magic you’ve used to make him commit.”
Peter frowns, as if she’s alluded to something she shouldn’t have.
I set my glass down. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Oh, don’t you know?” she asks. “Our Theo dated absolutely everyone until he met Fi, and after that debacle, he got a thousand times worse. We thought he’d never let himself get tied down again.”