Page 24 of Winging It with You

Theo

Ria Park Garden Hotel

Algarve, Portugal

Asher’s kiss kept me up all night.

Every time I found myself on the verge of sleep, my mind had other ideas, reminding me what Asher’s lips felt like and sending a jolt of electricity straight down my spine.

I also kept secretly hoping he’d climb on top of me, taking me in as each torturous hour passed, but that would most definitely violate our silly little rules.

Instead I tossed and turned all night, wildly horny.

So, after thoroughly giving up on sleep, I snuck out of bed, quietly threw on a pair of running shorts, and tiptoed to the door, shoes in hand.

Asher’s back is to me as I close the door, his hair wild and his long leg sticking out from beneath the comforter. As much as I’d love to burrow back into bed with him, I need to clear my head.

And if I’m being honest, to just have a moment away from Asher and Jo and the cameras.

We didn’t say too much last night after the kiss.

Arthur had convinced us to join him and some of the other crew members and contestants for dinner.

After a few too many beers and cheese arepas (and some horrific-tasting rum concoction), upon returning to the hotel, Asher and I were finally able to break away.

We literally passed out from exhaustion.

“Well, look who’s up before the sun,” Jenn’s familiar voice calls the second I step out of the elevator. She’s sitting with some sort of notebook in her lap, dressed both stylishly and comfortably in a white tank top and pair of flowy linen drawstring pants.

“Morning,” I say after crossing the tiled lobby to join her. “I was just going to get some air before it got too hot out.”

“Perfect…I’ll join you,” she says, closing her book and inviting herself. Before I can find some way to politely decline or stress the fact that I was just looking for a little alone time, she’s gotten up from her seat, leading the way out the front door and into the cool morning breeze.

I have no choice but to follow her.

Jenn loops her arm through mine when I flank her outside, and the two of us wind our way through the quiet city.

She doesn’t say anything at first, her head on a constant swivel as she takes in the local scenery.

I think I’m starting to understand that she’s a genuinely curious person.

Someone who looks at the world with wonder.

Like she’s trying to memorize every detail around her.

Every so often, her pace slows, mine along with it, and she unhooks herself from me.

Opening the notebook she’s had tucked into her side, Jenn scribbles something down before relocking our arms and setting off again.

Curiosity gets the best of me after our fourth stop. “What are you jotting down over there?”

A warm smile spreads across her face. “Oh, I just have my little lists,” she says, opening her notebook so I can see inside.

The pages are filled with columns of notes.

In some instances, there’s just a word or two.

In others, a full sentence. “Food we’ve tried.

People we’ve met. Things I need to remember,” she says, trailing her finger across the neat script.

“All of it. I don’t want to forget anything from this trip, so it’s all in here. ”

That’s adorable and entirely in line with the image slowly forming of Jenn in my head. In a lot of ways, she reminds me of my own mother, and there’s a small part of me that thinks she feels that.

“Are you at all curious to know what I wrote back at the hotel?” she asks, tapping her index finger toward the middle of the left page.

Check on Theo.

My heart constricts at the thought of being checked on, a dull ache laced with a longing I think I tricked myself into believing wasn’t there. When we look at each other, I fail to find the right words.

“Why?” I ask, the only word I seem to be able to mutter when we simultaneously slow to a stop.

Jenn tilts her head in the direction of a bench just up ahead, nestled beneath an overgrown flowering tree, its branches swaying. Sitting together, my movements a skeptical mirror of hers, Jenn folds her hands in her lap.

“Do you remember what I said to you when we first met?” she asks. While I can conjure up the memory of meeting Jenn and Ellie at the contestants’ welcome reception, for the life of me, I cannot recall what we talked about.

She laughs with a soft little sound that reverberates throughout her entire body.

“No, I wouldn’t imagine you would with everything else we’ve had going on,” she says, patting me on the arm.

“I’ll remind you. I said you didn’t need to pretend with me and you looked like you were going to choke.

” Funny enough, I feel like I could at any moment. “Kinda like you do right now, sweetie.”

I swallow, mulling over my next words very carefully.

“Jenn, I’m not sure what you mean—” I start but she literally shushes me.

“Oh, darling, why waste your breath?” she asks directly.

“I overheard Jo on night one yapping away on that phone of hers about liability waivers and needing to swap out paperwork for, what were her words? Something like the grumpy one’s faux-beau situation …

” Yup, that sounds like Jo—especially on that first night.

“I don’t know,” she says, now laughing again. “Maybe I got that wrong.”

I choke out a laugh, turning my entire body toward Jenn. “So, let me get this straight. You’ve known this whole time about us ,” I say, dropping my voice to a whisper, which now feels pointless, “and you didn’t say anything?”

“Now, where would be the fun in that?” she says, playfully nudging me. “Besides, who doesn’t love to be on the inside of a juicy little secret? Even if no one else knows I know…you know?” she adds with a wink.

“Then why now?” I ask, genuinely intrigued.

Jenn pats her notebook. “Like I said, just wanted to check on you. Who knows, maybe not pretending might be nice. Even for a moment…” There’s something else entirely lingering behind her words.

Huh. Not pretending. The phrase swishes around my brain, because after all this time with Asher and the show, it’s getting harder and harder to separate what I’ve been pretending about and what I haven’t.

“Sweetie, my husband died last year,” Jenn says both abruptly and a little too causally for the weight of that statement.

She places a warm hand on my arm the moment I open my mouth.

“It’s fine—well, not fine,” she corrects, her warm facade slipping ever so slightly.

“But you know what I mean. We’re…well, we’re managing. ”

“Jenn, I don’t even know…I…I’m so sorry.” I stammer out but the words feel meaningless because an I’m sorry from a stranger means nothing after such a huge loss.

“I know, I know,” she says quietly, shaking her head.

“I appreciate you saying that. I really do. I only brought it up because I wanted you to know I relate. This whole thing—competing on this show, Ellie and I being here together, that was something she was supposed to do with her father, and instead, she got me.” The grief in her voice is unmistakable, any icy edge to her normal cheerful demeanor.

So much so that it makes my own throat tighten with each breath.

“So, the whole pretending everything is normal thing you’ve got going on? I get it.”

Without any hesitation, I throw my arm around Jenn and pull her tight against me. She rests her head on my shoulder when I do—a simple act that feels entirely familiar.

“So, you and Asher…” she inquires after a moment. “What’s the real story there?”

There’s that word again: real .

The city around us has slowly begun showing signs of life. Pedestrians have started milling around and street vendors have been setting up shop. A familiar smell of smoke and fresh bread fills the air, causing my stomach to rumble.

“It started off as something easy…arbitrary, I guess.”

“And now?” she asks, a hint of smile behind her question.

I’m starting to picture what really being with Asher could be like. The line between what’s real and what’s not grows thinner and thinner by the moment. “It’s…complicated.”

An older man pushing a fruit cart stops in front of us, and the aroma of the chopped pineapple invades our space. “Ananás?” he asks through a toothy grin, offering us a large container of the bright fruit.

Jenn gets up without a word, pulling out some of the folded euros that production made sure we exchanged at the airport and offering them as payment.

Their transaction concludes silently—a nod here, a smile there—while I just watch it all unfold from our bench.

When Jenn reclaims her seat next to me, pineapple in lap, the quiet vendor continues down the street.

“You know what I think?” she asks, tapping the lid of her container.

“What’s that?”

“Sometimes, complicated is the word people use when they don’t want to admit something’s actually just…hard,” she says rather bluntly. “And you, Theo Fernandez, don’t seem like the kind of man who shies away from hard things.”

I fight the urge to insert a perfectly timed that’s what he said but decide against it because the reality is, that’s all I feel I’ve done for the last couple of years.

With my family and the hard conversations I know in my heart we should be having.

Don’t even get me started on my dating life—or lack thereof. The second something turns from a convenient hookup to, well, more, I’m out .

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? Stop being 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.