Page 39 of Good at Being Alive
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 ofPopular Mechanicssomeone 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 Iam.
• • •
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 heis.
“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 aboutthem.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.Mostpeople 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 ofdark 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 wasI 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.
