Page 33 of Good at Being Alive
“You could have just picked me up and spared us this indignity,” I say as my heels touch the ground.
“Please. They will not spare us any indignity. If we hadn’t done this, they’d have made me take you in that closet to the right and bend you over a chair.”
I blink, feeling seen. I don’t think he reads minds, though heisBritish and he’s basically admitted Hogwarts is real.
Maybe he just wants to hate-fuck me too.
• • •
I’m given an hour to myself at the hotel before it’s time to get ready. A woman named Yara then arrives to blow out my hair. She shows me pictures of her beautiful baby and teaches me how to say “Theo, it’s okay if you can’t perform” in Dutch.
When she departs, I open the garment bag and pull out an envelope from Mindy specifying the outfits for each part of the trip.
Today I’m expected to wear a linen skirt, with a white tank and sandals. I wonder if she realizes that Amsterdam in May is not exactly tropical.
Theo is typing furiously on his phone, handsome face in a frown, when I reach the hotel lobby. I want to think he looks annoyingly adult there, frowning and being responsible, but there’s a tiny flip of a muscle in my stomach.
This morning’s kiss might have broken me. Weirdly, more than the wedding kiss did. Though there was no tongue, though it was brief, he just kisses like a man who knowsexactlywhat he’s doing and really wants to be doingit.
He’s in a T-shirt, too, which doesn’t help. Granted, the T-shirt appears to be ironed and expensive but again…those biceps. They’re the sort you make an excuse to slide your palm over.
He looks up, his gaze suddenly sharp on my face before it lowers, and I force my lecherous thoughts to cease lest they somehow make themselves known to him.
“How very respectable my child bride looks this afternoon,” he says, slipping the phone into his pocket.
“You know if this were real, you probably wouldn’t be outing yourself as a sicko who marries someone way too young for him.”
“If this were real,” he counters, as a bellman holds the door for us, “I’d come up with a better way to occupy that smart mouth of yours.”
Oh. Damn. Well played, Theo.
Outside, the air is cool and the skies are gray. I’m the only person out here dressed in white linen, which makes sense as it’s barely seventy degrees, if that. I take a deep breath—I’d readthat the air sometimes smells like chocolate cake thanks to the Zaan cocoa factories, but all I get is the earthy, damp smell of the canal.
Theo starts to pull out his phone again, no doubt to check the map, and I wave him down. “I know where we’re going.”
“How?” he asks.
I turn in the direction of the Keizersgracht and am nearly run over by a bike. His arm shoots out to stop me. His bicep brushes my breast in the process. Is he as aware of it as I am? Doubtful.
I start walking up the street. “I looked it up. You know, one of those days I spent just lying on the couch.”
His mouth curves into a smug smile. “Isthatwhy you’re still so testy? I thought it was some endless monthly thing.”
It takes me a second. “Are you suggesting that I’ve been having my period for two weeks straight? You know, not every variation in a female’s mood is hormonal. Sometimes it’s because her husband invades her space, then proceeds to comment on how little she’s doing.”
“I said thatonce.”
“You thought it. Constantly.”
He raises a brow. “Whowouldn’thave thought it, Rebecca?” The afternoon light graces his arrogant profile, reminding me of how much I want to punchit.
“If this were our actual honeymoon, you wouldn’t be getting laid once,” I say, turning right onto Westermarkt.
“If this were our actual honeymoon,” he replies, “you’d be too busy begging for another round to start these arguments in the first place.”
Ugh. I should find his cockiness repulsive, but instead there’s that muscle spasming again, low in my belly, agreeing with every word he says.
We reach the first shoot location, where the crew is alreadyset up outside a coffee shop to film us placing stroopwafels over lattes. I’m not clear on why this scene couldn’t be filmed indoors, next to a roaring fire. Or why Mindy couldn’t have sent along a fur coat or whatever it is rich people wear when cold.
