Page 10 of Good at Being Alive
I slap a hand to my face. “Are you crazy? We can’t even sit in the same room for five minutes without fighting. I’m not spending a year married to you.”
“You wouldn’t be. We film this rubbish and go our separate ways afterward. I don’t even live on the same continent as you. We’re talking a few weeks together at most to save everyone’s jobs and make a whole lot of money.”
I hate how completely rational this argument is. I also hate that I care just enough about my dad’s employees to be considering it. Linda doesn’t have enough saved for retirement because her worthless son is always hitting her up for money, and our communications director is a single dad with a very sick daughter. If only I’d tuned those details out when my dad would discuss them over dinner.
“Don’t you have, like, a girlfriend?” I ask. “The woman you were meeting last winter?”
I catch the vaguest hint of guilt in the way he doesn’t meet my gaze. “It’s…what was your Angelina Jolie phrasing? Complicated? It’s complicated. She’ll get it.”
“She won’tneedto get it because I haven’t agreed, Theo.”
His long fingers tap impatiently on the table. “You’re the one who made this meeting happen and it’s a much, much better option than anything else under discussion. I’m not asking you to live with me or perform a single wifely duty aside from pretending you find me bearable in public.”
“Pretending I find you bearable is a lot harder than you’re making it sound.” This is not entirely true, but I’m still a little annoyed by the disgust in his voice when he said, “I’m not telling the world I’m married to her,” moments earlier.
But this showwouldtotally sell, because who wouldn’t want to watch a good-looking couple who married too fast visitingbeautiful places while their relationship implodes?She wants to party in Ibiza but he wants to hear about how they laid marble in the thirteenth century! These hot idiots won’t last the season!
I’d watch the shit out of that show, the company would finally be everything my dad wanted, and Linda would keep her job.
It would be fake, obviously. But…I press my hands to my face as I realize what my objection truly is. It’s that Bronwyn will be upset. It’s that she won’t be able to marry him if I’ve already pretend-married him.
Because ten weeks have passed and a part of me still thinks she’s coming back, still wonders what I should get her for graduation and if I can convince her to move to LA afterward.
She should be the one here. Man, she’d love to be in the predicament I’m in. Theo would have fallen head over heels for her, and it would have been the cutest story ever.
Instead, it’s the saddest, and if I agree, I’m betraying one of the two people I love most—a person I still can’t accept is gone.
Lars and the others are laughing and cheerful as they reenter the room, but I guess no one is trying to force any ofthemto get married.
“We’ll do it,” says Theo.
I glare at him. “I still haven’t agreed.”
Theo and Lars exchange a glance, the kind of glance Jessie used to share over my head with my dad. Jessie’s saying, “God, isn’t she tedious?” and my dad’s saying, “Give her a minute.”
“Rebecca,” Lars says gently, “there’s really no other choice.”
I look between them. “Why does it feel like it’s 1640 and you’re not really asking buttellingme I’m getting married? Is this some European thing? Because we don’t do that in America.”
Lars smiles. “No, Bex, we don’t generally force women into marriage in Europe, either.”
“Well,” says Theo, “they do in wizarding communities, but nowhere else.”
For a moment we grin at each other before we realize we’re doing it. Before we realize that we’re acting like people who make jokes and get along and eventually marry.
Oh my god. We are. We’re people who make jokes.
And we’re apparently going to be people who marry.
Theo
My brother loved his wifetoo much, end of story. He made his love so public that there was no walking it back—he even hired a skywriter to propose. But that was Kieran—he threw himself into things so wholeheartedly that reason abandoned him.
Everything he cared about stopped mattering once he met her—me, our mother, his goals. He didn’t think about any of it when he jumped off that balcony. It was all Pen and the way she’d extinguished his light.
I’d long seen Kieran as a cautionary tale, even before his death, and I’ve had a singular goal since that happened: don’t ever get so enmeshed with a woman that I make a fool of myself over her. And I’m not enmeshed, but I’m certainly about to look like a fool.
The original show was going to be on some cable channel I’ve never watched. Now, twelve hours after our meeting, Emil has emailed both of us to say he’s pitched it to the top streaming company in the U.S…. and they’re interested.
