Three hours later I head out to the Valley of the Nuns for our final day of shooting. It’s gloriously green—surrounded on all sides by sky-high volcanic cliffs. A beautiful place that I’m absolutely miserablein.
Everyone keeps saying how much it sucks that Theo is missing this…and I agree, but not for the reasons they think. It sucks because hechoseto leave. It sucks because there’s so much he hasn’t told me…and if he’s still being this evasive with me now, it’s hard to imagine I’m not fooling myself into believing there’s more between us than thereis.
I slide down waterfalls, I rappel, I jump off a cliff. My body aches from yesterday’s run but the pain is almost inconsequential next to my anxiety about Theo. I’ve been telling myself since this started with him simply to enjoy it while it lasted. But I’ve been leaning on him, even before we were together, in ways I never realized until this moment and I want to take every one of them back.
I rappel down one last waterfall and Lars positions me onthe river’s edge afterward to pepper me with questions, on camera.
“How was it today?” he asks.
“It was great,” I reply through clenched teeth.
“Complete sentences, Bex,” he reminds me—they want, as much as possible, to keep their voices out of this.
“Today was great,” I say woodenly. “I loved the rappelling.”
“You don’t seem happy,” he says. “Is that because of Theo?”
Internally I groan. He’s trying to get me to say something that indicates an issue in our marriage. It frustrates me more than normal because this time…thereisan issue.
“It was disappointing that Theo had to leave for work early,” I say, my voice flat. “I think he’d have enjoyed this.”
“Bex,” Lars groans, “you sound like a CEO talking about a merger that went poorly. This is yourhusband.You flew thirteen hours for this trip only to have him take off early and miss the best day. Where’s the emotion? Where’s the sadness or the rage?”
“Is that how you’re planning to edit this?” I ask, my voice rough. I narrow my eyes at LJ, my signal to stop rolling, but he ignores me. “Are you planning to make it look like I got left again?”
“Is that how you perceive this?” he asks. “Do you feel like Theo left you?”
“He didn’t leave me. He was always meant to be Bronwyn’s anyway.”
God.I can’t believe I said that.“Stop filming,” I demand, wiping my eyes as I turn toward the van.
No one brings up my outburst on the way home, but they’re on eggshells, discussing anythingbutTheo and the trip, which is almost worse.
Why the hell did I say that about Bronwyn? Did I thinkadmitting what I’d taken from her would somehow set things right? That it would magically make Theo call? Because he hasn’t. He must have arrived in London hours ago, but there’s nothing from him even after we’ve reached the house.
I climb into the shower and press my face to the wall as Lars’s final question rings in my head.
Do you feel like Theo left you?
“Yes,” I whisper aloud. “And I don’t know what more I could have done.”
There’s never been a time when I wasn’t left behind somehow, and despite my apparent IQ, I’m not smart enough to make it stop happening.
I was too young to do much about it when my mother was deciding to leave. No three-year-old has the wherewithal to make herself slightly more lovable.
But after that? I did everything I could. I failed tests and classes on purpose, gave up travel soccer, never voiced a word of complaint about anything, and it still wasn’t enough. Jessie still didn’t invite me to family dinners and bad-mouthed me whenever she got the chance.
Every fucked-up family needs an anchor. That way, you can blame the anchor for what’s gone wrong and ignore the fact that your boat was never all that seaworthy in the first place. I became that anchor, but they all still left me behind, and I asked nothing of Theo, not a single thing, and that wasn’t enough either.
I never asked him what he wanted. I never asked what would happen after the show ended, if I was at all different from the hordes of women who came before me, why he never suggested I come back to London with him. I never demanded a single whisper of assurance, hoping that, for once in my life, someone would just chooseme.
It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. And I’ve been knockedto the ground at many points over the past year, but this is the first time I haven’t been sure I can pick myself backup.
• • •
In the evening I join the crew on the patio for our final meal together until the marathon.
“You’re quiet,” says Katrina.
