Page 95 of Good at Being Alive
“Thirteen stone. You’re fine.”
I spread my legs anyway, despite his warning, and he bottoms out. I’m soaked, my body is strung tight, and I no longer care what they can see on camera or who’s listening.
“Why the fuck do you measure in stones anyway?” I ask, pressing my mouth to that straining tendon in his neck.
“Oh, like pounds make more sense?” he demands, burying himself insideme.
My nails dig into his back. “Theo,” I warn.
He pushes harder, spreading my thighs as if he’s forgotten what he himself said.
I make a small, desperate noise, he places a hand over mymouth, and Lars’s voice comes over the loudspeaker, heavy with disgust. “Okay, guys, that’s a wrap. Apparently, a discussion of dinner rolls and American versus British measurement systems is all we’re getting out of you tonight.”
I’m so fucking close, perhaps three thrusts away from coming hard enough to pass out. “My god, his timing is bad,” I whisper.
Theo quietly groans as he slips out, still thick, long, and deliciously swollen. His swallow is audible. “I’m so hard right now that it’s painful, Bex. I’m never going to fall asleep,” he whispers.
“Wait five minutes,” I whisper. “Then meet me in the bathroom.”
He laughs. “The only way would be on the sink. We’re going to break it.”
“You worry too much,” I reply.
• • •
Nine hours later, Paula is in the RV and frowning at me like a pissed-off parent. “You’re saying the sink justbroke.Out of nowhere.”
I wish LJ wasn’t already filming us, because I suspect I’m going to lie quite poorly.
“I was leaning on it,” I tell her. By which I mean that I was sitting on it. “Barely.” By which I mean I was sitting on it while Theo first went down on me and then thrust into me, hard, for several minutes. It didn’t actually give way until we’d both come, thank god.
We had to have sex sitting on the toilet after that.
“The lid of the toilet tank fell off too,” says Theo, refusing to meet my eye. “Just the edge cracked, though.”
“This is the most expensive shoot of the trip,” she carps to Lars, “and getting more expensive by the minute.”
We’re filmed running up Flydalsjuvet, only five miles butstraight uphill on legs still sore from our long run the day before. We’re permitted to shower afterward, though I’ve noticed that Lars seems to be intentionally detaining us so we’re never inside the RV at the same time, and then we’re off on an inflatable boat through the fjord, which seems to have a new waterfall every five feet.
I tell Theo how families with farms at the top of the cliffs used to keep their children from falling off the edge—they could only go outside attached to a rope.
His mouth moves upward, fighting a smile. “I was considering something similar for you in Italy.”
“Yeah, you’d just love to tie me to you, wouldn’t you?”
He grins. “At times, yes.”
Lars throws out his hands. “Paula, we’re going to have to reorder the whole fucking thing. They’re too goddamn happy.”
Bex
After a long period ofsilence, Baby Makes Three is mentioning us again. Kylie says she’s still gathering details but her “source” informs her that Theo is with someone else, and that they’ve been together for a very long time.
“When this story blows, it’s gonna be huge,” she says.
I imagine this is about thecomplication,and maybe someone is feeding her a bunch of bullshit that was true last fall but no longer is. I know Theo wouldn’t see someone behind my back, yet this tiny seed of fear remains firmly planted in my chest anyway.
If I wasn’t such a mess, would I ask him? I’m not sure. I suspect that if I wasn’t such a mess, I’d have noneedto ask him because the whole thing would seem laughable.
