Bad Penny

by Staci Hart

  “No, it’s okay,” I said as the music started.

  We turned in our seats.

  From the green archway, Penny appeared on Patrick’s arm, that dress sweeping the green grass at her feet like she was floating, and her eyes found mine and held them.

  “I just want her,” was my answer to Annika, to the universe. To myself.

  The ceremony was simple and perfect. Ramona and Shep were married under the gazebo, staring into each other’s eyes like no one else was there. When they said their vows, when they kissed, a lump formed in my throat, and Annika pressed her fingertips to her lips. We all stood and clapped and cheered and smiled as they walked down the aisle — this time, as husband and wife. And when Penny passed me and her eyes found mine, they were shining, her cheeks flushed. She told me a million things I somehow couldn’t decipher; I could only feel them all and try to understand.

  I offered my arm to Annika, and we made our way into the reception tent and to the head table where our dates would be joining us. We sat next to each other, chatting as everyone found their seats.

  The DJ kicked off “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” by The Darkness, and Penny blew onto the dance floor with Patrick, inflatable guitars in hand, air-strumming. Penny actually hitched up her skirt and slid across the parquet, red bottom lip in her teeth and head banging in time to the beat.

  The rest of the wedding party came out, and once they were present, they made an archway with their black guitars, and then Ramona and Shep ran through to finish the song to a standing ovation.

  After the song, they headed over to us — Penny practically jumped into my arms, sending me off balance, and I swung us to keep us upright.

  The sound of her laughter in my ears was the sweetest song.

  I set her feet on the ground, sliding her down my body, and she cupped my cheek and kissed me gently, smiling softly. She looked at me like I was a king, and I felt like every bit of one with her on my arm.

  We took our seats and ate our steaks, laughing and talking and high off the night, the moment. Toasts were given. Speeches were made. Tears were shed. And all the while, Penny’s hand was in my lap, our fingers threaded together.

  And then the party started.

  The sun had gone down, and the dance floor was illuminated by naked bulbs strung in arcs from one end of the tent to the other. Shep and Ramona’s first song was a spinning, swaying, brilliantly choreographed dance to “Never Tear Us Apart” by INXS. After that, Ramona, Penny, and Veronica did their own choreography to “Scream & Shout,” and the guys surprised them by jumping in halfway through with their own moves.

  Joel, Shep, and Patrick — aka two tattooed Sasquatches and a male model — throwing lassos and yelling Britney, bitch was the most hysterical thing I’d ever seen in my life.

  And then Penny was in my arms for the rest of the night. First, we were bouncing around to New Order and Lady Gaga. Then, The Clash came on, and I kissed her in the middle of a sea of people jumping and singing to “Rock the Casbah,” just like the first kiss, the kiss that I thought of so often.

  I pulled her outside to get a drink and spotted a swing on a gargantuan old tree.

  I tugged her in that direction, stopping just next to it. “Remember the park by the beach where we used to party in high school?”

  My hand rested on her waist, and she smiled up at me, reaching for the rope of the swing.

  “How could I forget?”

  “You’re just the same as you were, except now you’re more you than you ever were. You’re just as beautiful. You’re just as brash and brilliant. But now, you’re free.”

  She fiddled with my lapel with her free hand, and her eyes watched her fingers. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I want to be. I try to be. But sometimes, my freedom is a cage.” She seemed to shake the thought away and smiled, meeting my eyes again. “Your outsides have changed, but your insides are exactly the same. I wish … I wish I’d seen you then like I see you now. If I had, maybe things would have been different. Maybe I’d be different.” Her words were soft, her eyes bright and shining.

  “I wouldn’t want you to be any different than you are right now, Pen.” The words were quiet, solemn.

  And for a moment, we stood in silence until I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t let her say anymore, because if she did, the thin façade I’d built would crumble and blow away, exposing me, exposing her.

  So I kissed her instead. She tasted of bourbon and cake, smelled of jasmine, felt like silk against my fingertips, against my lips.

  When I let her go, I guided her to sit on the wide wooden plank, her long fingers wrapping around the ropes to hang on. And when I pulled her back by her waist and released her, the gray silk of her dress billow and her silvery hair fly with the sound of her laughter in my ears.

  Too soon after, the night was nearly over. The DJ had brought the tempo down, and I found myself in the middle of the dance floor with Penny against my chest, The Cure singing “Pictures of You” as the two of us moved in small circles on the parquet.

  It was strange, how I felt. Like I was dreaming. Like my heart had opened up and so had hers. That we were open to each other. I could feel the connection like a tether between us. That everything that I felt, she felt. That everything I wanted, she wanted.

  I kissed the top of her head, and she shifted her face against my beating heart.

  I had to tell her. I needed her to know that I wanted her, wanted more, felt more. I wanted to soothe her, ease her fears, promise her anything she asked for. Because I’d give her anything even if it meant giving her nothing. Even if it meant we kept going just how we were.

  But if I told her, things wouldn’t go on like this. Things would change.

  I could lose her.

  My heart skipped a beat against her cheek.

  The war between trusting her with my feelings and giving her the space I knew she needed battled in my ribcage. When did the sacrifice of what I wanted become too much? How would I know she was ready, that I wouldn’t scare her off?

  I’d coaxed the wild pony out to eat from my hand, but putting a bridle on her was another thing altogether.

  I couldn’t tell her, not yet. I only hoped I had the resolve to hold on.

  * * *

  Penny

  I could have stood there on the dance floor in Bodie’s arms with The Cure on repeat for the rest of my life.

  The night had been full of magic.

  Every moment between us deepened my feelings, and I knew he felt what I felt. I didn’t know how I knew, but I did. It was as if every second that ticked by whispered, Yes, as if we were caught in something we couldn’t turn back from, swept away in each other. I didn’t even want out. I could drown in him, and I should have been afraid.

  But I wasn’t.

  I felt safe. Safe and warm and cared for. This was what trust felt like, real trust between someone who valued you as much as themselves — I realized it distantly, as if I were floating above the two of us swaying in each other’s arms. I trusted him because he’d proven that his words were truth. He’d agreed to everything I’d asked for. He’d made me promises and held them, and I had no reason to doubt him.

  But when I really held his actions and words up next to each other, they weren’t quite the same. He’d said it was all copacetic, sure, but he felt more just as much as I did. He wanted more. I’d denied my feelings, but he’d known all along.

  I knew it as suddenly and clearly as if I’d looked in a mirror for the first time.

  He’d just been giving me what he knew I needed, just like he always had. He’d sacrificed what he’d wanted to make me happy.

  I thought I’d want to cut and run at the realization, but I didn’t. I couldn’t, not only because he had done everything for me without asking for a single thing in return, even my heart, but I wanted to stay because he’d shown me how to trust again. He treated me with care and respect. He honored me without thought to himself.

  I wanted
to stay because I’d never been with anyone who didn’t play games. And with Bodie, there was no power play, no control, no upper hand.

  We were equals. And I’d had no idea something like this could even be real.

  I had two gears — full-blown obsession and apathy. This gear that I was on was unknown, a lurch in my life that left me reeling, without any context or boundaries or rules.

  That unknown brought a flicker of fear. But in the circle of his arms, with his heart beating under my cheek and his breath warm on my skin, I was safe. He was exactly what I needed, and he was everything right.

  There was nowhere else I could have imagined being.

  The DJ came on when the song ended, directing us to the front of the gardens so we could send Ramona and Shep off, and Bodie and I hurried over to the stairs. We each grabbed sparklers and lit them when we were told, holding them up so my best friend and her husband could run through. I’d sworn I wasn’t going to cry, but there was no stopping it — the sight of them golden and beautiful and smiling and crying as they waved goodbye to all of us was too much.

  When the door to the limo closed, I turned to Bodie, who smiled down at me as he captured my chin, and then he kissed me, stealing my breath, stealing my heart.

  I was beginning to realize that I’d never stood a chance.

  Worry sprang like a broken fire hydrant — I didn’t know if I could keep my heart together. If I let myself go, if I opened that door, would I be able to maintain what we were?

  The more I felt for him, the less rational I’d be. I’d scare him.

  I’d lose him.

  I needed more time.

  So I turned the giant wrench on that spewing fire hydrant and shut the motherfucker down.

  Tonight, I wasn’t crazy. Tonight, I had Bodie.

  Tonight, he was mine.

  When the limo was gone and the guests dispersed, Veronica and I dashed off to gather our things from the bridal suite. She took all of Ramona’s things, citing a trip by Ramona and Shep’s new place to drop it all off. Something in her eyes said she was a goddamn liar about her plans, and I should have pressed her. But I was too anxious to get back to Bodie to care. She could go be a sneaky liar on her own time.

  The cab ride was too long, but I spent the duration tucked into Bodie’s side, the two of us recounting the night like we hadn’t been together for all of it. And then we were walking down my silent hallway together, smiling at our shoes. And then we were inside, and I was closing my door.

  I took him by the hand, and he followed without question into my bedroom and leaned against the door as I turned on one of my smaller lamps just so I could see him. Just so he could see me.

  My heart thumped at the sight of him, so tall and easy, hands in his pockets, the line of his shoulders and arms and long legs speaking to the artist in me. Because he was art with a heartbeat. But what hit me, what nearly stopped me in my tracks was the expression on his face.

  The playfulness and charm were gone, replaced by something deeper, something more. It was the tightness at the corners of his eyes, the depth of his irises, so blue. It was the shape of his lips, the crease of his lips where something waited for me, words he didn’t want to speak. Words I wasn’t ready to hear, and he knew it.

  But that was what Bodie did. He anticipated what I required and gave it to me, even when the gift was his silence. He cared about me more than he’d said. But he still cared for me without demand, without expectation.

  He was air and sun and soil, just existing around me to give me all I needed to grow. And all the while, I’d grown and blossomed and bloomed, not realizing that I needed him to keep me breathing.

  I crossed the room, overwhelmed and overcome by the revelation, trying not to think of what it meant or what it would mean. Instead, I looked into his eyes and told him without a word what I felt for him. I told him with my fingers slipping under his coat that I wanted him. I told him with my lips pressed to his that he’d changed me and there would be no going back.

  His body was hard against my palms as they roamed up his chest, and I leaned into him, the two of us angled against the door, me standing between his legs so I could reach his lips.

  And that was the thing that struck me the most; he felt what I felt. He knew what my body told him just as much as I knew what his told me.

  Never in my life had I felt this before. I’d had power sex. I’d had flirty sex. I’d had fun sex and serious sex. But in that moment, I became aware of a fact that that changed me, there in my room, kissing Bodie.

  I had never been intimate.

  I wasn’t just hungry for his body. I was hungry for his heart and soul.

  I wanted all of him. I just hoped I could hold onto him without it breaking me.

  My tongue swept his lip, and he opened his mouth, turning my face with his hand, and I opened up in kind, leaning into his palm. He pulled me into him with his free hand — the length of him pressing against my belly sent a shock up my spine, to my lungs, springing them open as I sucked in a small breath.

  He hooked his arm around my waist, keeping me flush against him as he pushed away from the door, leaving my feet dangling off the ground, even as I wished they were wound around his middle but my dress wouldn’t allow it. And then gravity shifted as he lay me down in bed gently. But he didn’t lower his body onto mine like I wanted, and I hung onto his neck like it could convince him to.

  His hand ran up my arm and to my face, and he broke the kiss with a smile, his eyes laden with something that betrayed the levity of his lips.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Penny,” he whispered, coaxing me to let him go.

  But the words meant more than that to me.

  I relaxed my arms, and he stood, his eyes sliding up and down my body as he unbuttoned his coat and grabbed his lapels, pulling it open, exposing his broad chest, then shoulders, then arms. His big hands tugged the knot of his tie, slipping one piece from the other with a whisper of silk. And it seemed to take an hour for him to unbutton his shirt. I could have watched that in slow motion on a loop — the sliver of skin on his chest that grew wider with every button, his hands gripping both sides as he opened it just like he had his jacket. Except when that crisp white shirt was gone, all that was left was his beautiful naked chest, all shadows and angles and planes and the tattoo on his arm where I’d put it.

  He could have undressed and redressed and undressed again and again, and I would have laid there and watched, content and unhurried and perfectly satisfied.

  His pants were next, his leather belt in his fist sending a burst of images through my head — his cock in his hand, the pop and sting of that leather belt against my ass. He snapped open his button with a flick of his fingers, lowering his zipper just as quickly, kicking off his shoes and dropping his pants in movement that felt deliberate and restrained.

  And then he was naked before me, the man who’d snuck his way in without me even realizing.

  I moved to sit, but he stopped me, laying me back with his hand on my cheek and thumb shifting against my skin. I turned my head to press a kiss into his palm, and he bent to kiss my lips, a kiss without demand but one that burned with smoke and fire and want and need.

  He still wasn’t in bed with me, and I reached for him, wanting him on me, around me, in me. Just wanting him. He was too far away, but he didn’t give me what I was asking for, not this time. This time, he would do what he wanted.

  Bodie walked to the end of the bed and slipped his hand over the bridge of my heeled foot and up my leg, pushing the hem of my dress up with it. I opened my legs, and one of his knees slid between my calves and then the other, his hand still on a track up my leg as he climbed onto the bed and knelt before me.

  His hand moved from my thigh to the tie of my dress, a simple bow, and he slid the silk between his fingers, meeting my eyes as he pulled. The bow came undone and fell away, and my dress opened just enough to expose a slice of skin down to my belly.

  He sighed, his eyes on his h
ands as he ran his fingers down my sternum, down my stomach, hooking under one side to expose my breast, leaving the chiffon pooling around the bend of my hip. But that sliver of me was naked, from my neck to the center of me, and his eyes drank me in like he was parched.

  I spread my thighs, opening myself up to him. And he lowered his lips to my offering, closing his eyes as he kissed the hot line between my legs like he was confessing a secret.

  My hands slipped into his hair, my hips rocking and breath shuddering, my pulse climbing as my body neared the edge, the blissful edge.

  I called his name — a plea— my hands on his shoulders to tell him I needed more, that I wanted it all, I wanted everything, and he climbed up my body, his hand on my jaw, his fingertips in my hair, the tip of his crown at the slick center of me. And then he looked into my eyes and shifted his hips, filling me up, claiming me as his, giving himself to me, all in a breath.

  His body moved, rolling and flexing, his eyes on mine, his lips parted and brows together, and he said my name. And that whisper on his lips was all it took to push me over that edge in a rush of heat and a burst of electricity down my spine, sending my back arching and lungs gasping and body pulsing. And at my release, he found his own, my name in a loop that followed every thrust of his hips as they slowed.

  Our eyes were closed, his forehead against mine, his body pinning me down and our breaths mingling. And for some reason, I felt tears pricking the corners of my lids, my nose burning and a lump heavy in my throat.

  I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him down to bury his face in my neck so I could hide from him. Because in that moment, for the first time, I’d found something real, something beyond me, even if I didn’t know what to make of it. I only knew how it felt, and I felt it all the way through me, through every atom. And I made a vow never to forget it.

  If I hadn’t been addicted to him before, now there would be no hope. No amount of rehab would cure me.

  We held each other like that for a long time before he rolled onto his side, pulling me with him and pulling out of me in one motion. He kissed me sweetly before rolling out of bed and heading to the bathroom, leaving me alone.