Page 46 of Winging It with You

No, Jenn clearly doesn’t know the real me. But does anyone?

Do I, even?

“Right now, I’m not so sure about that,” I admit, my throat thick and my palms starting to sweat.

“If I’ve learned anything over the last year,” Jenn says, turning so her eyes lock with mine, “it’s that when things happen outside our control—the things that change every single aspect of who we are and what we thought our future would be…” Her voice hitches and I want to tell her that she doesn’t have to talk about any of this anymore. Especially not for me. But she carries on anyway. “When your heart suffers a loss or takes a hit, all you can do is cling to whatever happiness you can find. Because you will be happy one day. I have to keep telling myself that—over and over again so I believe it,” she says, nudging my thigh. “You’ll feel the sun on your skin and remember the good times, and while that pain never goes away—because let’s be honest, honey, it doesn’t—it shifts into something else entirely.”

I pray she’s right.

Of course she is—she’s the mother of a teenage daughter, for crying out loud, and a no-nonsense woman who’s been there, done that.

She’s a widow.

“I’ll take your word for it,” I say, hoping she doesn’t notice me wiping away a stray tear with the back of my hand. “You gonna eat that?” I ask, pointing my chin toward the pineapple she has yet to touch.

“Oh, heavens no,” she says, passing the container over to me. “That shit’ll kill me. I’m deathly allergic.”

My jaw drops. “Wait…what?” I ask, laughing so hard my eyes fill with tears again. “Why the hell would you buy it?”

Jenn stands, shoves her hands in the pockets of her linen trousers, and shrugs. “I hate saying no to people, okay? Stopbeing so nosy.” I can’t believe this woman but couldn’t adore her more. “Come on,” she says, “let’s go see if those no-good partners of ours are up yet.”

And without another word—or waiting to see if I’d followed her again—Jenn takes off back in the direction we came from, leaving me feeling a little lighter than when she’d found me.

14

Asher

Ria Park Garden Hotel

Algarve, Portugal

Arthur and Jo wait for the most inconvenient moment to demand social content.

Theo was abnormally quiet when he returned to the room this morning. It’s weird—we’ve been sharing a bed for only a short amount of time yet before I’d even opened my eyes, it’s like some part of me knew he wasn’t there. We took turns getting ready, the quiet between us twisting my stomach into anxious little knots, and when we made our way to down to the lobby together, it was Arthur’s face that greeted us the second the elevator doors opened.

“I promise, this’ll be quick,” he calls over his shoulder and leads us out the hotel door and around the building. Jo and Arthur have a knack for finding partially secluded outdoor spaces to film these things in, which I’m not complaining about considering doing them with an audience is the definition of my personal hell.

Per usual, Jo is waiting for us while stress-scrolling on her tablet. Arthur seems to have ditched his usual camera setup and is going for something more mobile; I see a phone hooked up to some sort of stabilization apparatus between the lights.

“Hopefully you two are rested and settled into your room. Do you need anything?” she asks, not looking up from her screen. Jo is quite literally the employee who’s constantly putting out dozens of professional fires. But I’m learning that regardless of how demanding her job is or the fact that she’s constantly juggling nine trillion things at once, there isn’t anything she wouldn’t do for her contestants.

Theo and I shake our heads.

“Excellent—whaddya say we knock out a social video and then all grab a bite after? I’m starving.” She slides her tablet into her messenger bag and crosses her arms. At the mention of food, my stomach growls.

“I could eat,” Arthur chimes in as he digs through his own bag, retrieving various cords and plugging them into his setup.

“Since Asher did the last one,” Jo says, stepping forward to physically manipulate Theo and me, “I think we oughta let Theo have a turn.”

“How kind of you,” he says, sticking his tongue out at her, but she just flings his big arm around my shoulder. I have to remind myself I’m not supposed to like having Theo all over me this much. That none of this is real and every time he shows the slightest hint of affection toward me, it’s because Jo’s making him or it’s for the cameras.

But still.

He’s unfairly attractive, and being pressed against his body the way I am now all but forces my mind to fixate on how sturdy he feels next to me.

Theo shifts his weight from one leg to the other, causing his thick thigh to flex ever so slightly against mine. I grit my teeth and shove my free hand in my pocket so I’m not tempted to brush against said thigh.

“The two of you are getting a lot of love online already” she says, a smile pulling at the corner of her mouth as she fusses with the sleeve of my shirt. “#Thasher has been trending again. It’s cute, don’t you think? I love it.”

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