by Naomi Niles
“She was right for him, and I tried to tell myself I was happy for them, but that didn’t stop me from crying myself to sleep at night. That didn’t stop me from sitting up in bed, shaking so hard I could barely speak. For about a year, everything reminded me of him, and I had to give it up because the memories were too painful. No more eating ice cream, no more watching Doctor Who, no more Christmas lights. After that, all I did after I came home from work was change out of my clothes and write long novels about women who got married and had babies and lived the kind of life I wanted but couldn’t have. And for a long time, there was no dancing.”
Darren was quiet for some time after I had finished talking. He kicked off his shoes and lay back in the grass with a thoughtful expression.
“I wish I’d known,” he said finally. “You always said you had never dated, so I assumed there had been no guys in your life.”
“I’m sorry if you feel like I lied to you.”
“No, it isn’t that. I’m just sorry you had to go through that. I know how much it hurts when your best friends move on and forget about you.”
“I wish now I had told him how I felt. I always do this. I keep my distance from boys because I ‘just want to be friends,’ when all along I would have given anything to go out with him. But of course, he didn’t know that because I never told him. As far as he knew, we were just friends.”
“Maybe you ought to look at how far you’ve come in the last five or six years,” said Darren. “You had the courage to come right out and tell me you liked me. I know that couldn’t have been easy for you.”
“Well, I didn’t want to make the same mistake again. I didn’t want to lose you.”
“You’re not going to lose me.” He sat up and looked me in the eyes. “You haven’t scared me away yet, and you’re not going to.”
“We could break up someday,” I replied, a touch defensively. “We’ve only known each other for a few weeks. You don’t know what could happen in the future.”
Darren didn’t have a good answer for this. He obviously wanted to protest his undying devotion, but he couldn’t argue with the points I had just made. “I’m just saying it’s not going to be like it was with Liam. That was a time in your life that’s passed, and you’ve grown up, and you’re in a real relationship. You never slept with him; you never even kissed him.”
I shook my head sadly. “No. No, I didn’t.”
“I don’t know if Liam ever had feelings for you. If he did, he never told you. But I’m here, and I’m telling you I really like you. I’m crazy about you in a way I don’t even really understand. The fact that I like you as much as I do confuses me. Sometimes it feels like my heart and body have rebelled against me and declared you their queen.”
“Do you not want to like me?” I asked with an effort.
“I’m not upset about it if that’s what you mean. I just don’t understand the intensity of these feelings. I’ve never felt this way about another person, and I’m still trying to get my head around it. Who even are you that you can make me feel this way? Like a meteor, you came out of nowhere and have totally upended my life in a matter of weeks. It’s not going to be the same for a long time, if ever.”
“I think these are all compliments,” I said slowly, “so thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Penny.” He crept over and took my hands in his. His eyes were shining. “I don’t think I can say this often enough: You mean more to me than any car ever has, any amount of money. I feel so unbelievably lucky to have met you.” Motioning to the stars over our heads, he added, “Think of all the billions of worlds in all the millions of different galaxies, and we happened to end up on this planet together at the same time and the same place.”
“When you put it that way,” I said, smiling for the first time, “I suppose I ought to feel grateful.”
“Not as lucky as me, dear one. No one in the universe has the pleasure and privilege of getting to date Penny Shook but me.”
I didn’t care if he was just being smooth; he had almost completely won me over now. The anger and hurt and hesitation I had been feeling when we walked out here had evaporated, replaced by an abiding sense of gratitude: for Darren and the stars and the firm earth around us.
“Did you still want to go home?” asked Darren. There was a disappointed tone in his voice, which he was at pains to conceal.
“No, I want to be here with you.” I took off my cardigan and threw it at some distance into the grass. Then I removed my shirt in a single fluid motion and added it to the pile. Darren watched with a look of interest bordering on fascination. Without once taking his eyes off me, he crept closer.
Although it was a warm night, I felt goosebumps on my arm and began to shiver. “Last time, I don’t know if I was ready for this,” I said quietly. “But now I think I’m ready.”
Darren placed a hand on my face, his eyes firmly fixed on my bare shoulders. “God, I can’t believe I get to be with you. Do you know how much I’ve wanted this?”
“Why don’t you show me?” I whispered.
Over the next hour, he did.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Darren
Penny was much more composed and confident that night than she had been before. She made out with me for a long while wearing only her high-waisted jeans and a white bra. Her breath tasted of mint and honey, and her hair smelt strongly of soap. As we kissed, the scent worked its way into my brain, slowly divesting me of my ability to reason until I was all want and hunger.
“I’ve never seen you like this before,” I said as we sat there together under starlight.
“Like what?” She leveled her eyes like lamps at me and folded her legs to her chest.
“So aggressive, so sure of yourself and of what you want. It’s kind of thrilling.”
“You really think so?” The old shyness returned to her voice for a moment.
I leaned forward and gave her a small kiss on the lips, then slowly pulled away with a dreamy look. “I do.”
“Well, what I want is to be with you,” she said. “I don’t know much else, but I know that.”
“Then we’re in perfect agreement.”
“I guess so.” She sat hunched over with her arms folded in front of her, looking cold. She had small, sloping shoulders that gave the upper half of her body a kind of oval shape, and her chest was flat and splotchy. “I can’t get over how you look at me like I’m the most perfect thing in the world.”
“It’s because you are.” I leaned forward and kissed her just under her collarbone, then slowly descended. Penny leaned her head back and wrapped her hands tight around my back.
***
When it was over, we gathered up our discarded clothes and returned to the car. Hardly anyone else was on the road that night, and the trees that lined the highway glowed eerily in the lamplight. Penny sat quietly staring out the window, looking thoughtful.
“If you want, we can go back to my house,” I said as we approached her house. “I don’t mind you staying with me.”
Penny hesitated for a moment before saying, “No, that’s okay. I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
“You sure? I’m not going to force you. I just like having you near me.”
“I know you do.” Judging from the tone of her voice, it sounded like she was already regretting saying no. She waved miserably as she got out of the car and headed up the driveway toward her house, where a single light was burning in the kitchen. I drove home through the empty streets remembering the feel of her body on mine and wondering why I suddenly felt so alone. There was a space on the bed that belonged to her, but for now, it was vacant, and was likely to remain vacant for some time.
***
It was the morning of the next day, and Mama and I were eating together in the kitchen of the farm out in Sulphur Springs. Mama had made warm buttermilk pancakes, thin chicken crepes, and smothered onions served over hash browns. It was remarkably good, even better than the meal I had eaten at Meso M
aya the night before, and I wished Penny had been there to share it with us.
“Somethin’ about Carlotta always rubbed me the wrong way,” said Curtis, scratching the back of his neck. “I’ve never in my life met anyone who was both so pretentious and so dumb. Most people pick one or the other.”
“I admit I probably made a mistake going out with her. But I think you’ll like Penny. It’s hard to imagine a woman more different from Carlotta. She’s not wealthy and doesn’t have any aspirations to be, but she works hard, and she’s smarter than she gives herself credit for. She reads and writes a lot. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day she was a published author.”
“That all sounds great, Darren,” said Mama, smiling warmly. “I like the tone of pride in your voice when you talk about her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, you never talked about Carlotta that way. You always treated her like an embarrassment, like an unfortunate affliction that had to be suffered for the greater good.”
I took a sip of my orange juice and glanced through the window into the back pasture. It was a clear, cloudless morning, and the dogs ran joyously together. “I think in my heart I always knew she was no good for me. But that’s hard to admit when you’re already dating. It’s easier just to shut your eyes and pretend you don’t see the obvious problems.”
“I think we’ve all had a relationship like that,” said Curtis, scooping some more onions onto his plate. “I think there’s a grace period when you’re young where you can make those kinds of mistakes. But after a certain point, you’ve got to grow up and settle down.”
I had an odd feeling Curtis was talking to himself as much as anyone else; his early twenties had been notoriously reckless. “It’s actually kind of liberating dating a mature, responsible woman,” I replied. “Not that she doesn’t have her own issues, but she’s a shining beacon of sense and sanity compared to my last girlfriend. I can take her out in public without worrying that she’ll embarrass me. With Carlotta, it felt like I had to watch her at all times or she might steal all my money and head south.”
“I think we all had that feeling when it came to Carlotta,” said Mama. “I didn’t like the way she kept fingering my vases when you brought her over here. It was like she was planning to sell them on eBay.”
“I remember her complaining that you seemed to be watching her the entire time,” I said with a laugh. “Looking back on it, I can’t say I really blame you. She was always engaged in some shady business or other. She’ll probably end up in prison by the age of thirty.”
“And you know, that might not be the worst thing,” said Curtis.
Just then Dad came walking out of the back room wearing his gray tweed vest and herringbone flat cap. “Y’all need to hurry up and finish. After breakfast, we’re going out to the pond.”
“Are we going fishing?” I asked
Dad laughed in a manner that didn’t leave me very hopeful. “No, some of the planks on the dock are loose, and they need to be nailed down again.”
Curtis groaned while I just rolled my eyes. “You wanna know something funny? This morning when I got out of bed, I almost put on my work boots. But then I said to myself, ‘You know what? I don’t need to wear these; I’m only going over to Mom and Dad’s house.’”
“Well, you should’ve obeyed your first instinct,” Dad said, opening up the back door and letting a blast of warm air in. “I’ll meet y’all out there in a few minutes.”
“He’ll meet you out there,” muttered Curtis, before downing the last of his juice.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Penny
I don’t think Darren entirely realized what it did to me when we slept together.
I couldn’t sleep much after I got home that night because I kept thinking of the look in his eyes when he lifted my chin and kissed me. I wanted to believe the promises he had whispered in the heat of passion. But I feared that eventually he would tire of our relationship and abandon me as Liam had. He didn’t seem to realize that what I was saying to him with my body was that I loved him and would never leave him unless he wanted me to. I would be faithful to him forever, for as long as he would have me.
I stayed up at the window for a couple of hours watching the stars burn holes in the night. Somehow, I doubted that Darren had had trouble sleeping that night. He hadn’t stayed up wondering whether this relationship would flame out after a few months, or whether we would get married and live in a house of our own. He wasn’t agonizing over what we would name our kids, if we had any. His pillow was dry, and his dreams were untroubled.
I envied him.
I couldn’t get to sleep no matter how hard I tried. At around 4:00am when I knew there was no hope of my getting to sleep that night, I put on a Taylor Swift album and danced. I danced for the husband I wanted and the children we might have had. I danced for the hope of a future where all the troubles of the present were forgotten. I was so tired and sore already, but I didn’t care. Caught up in the rhythm and the music, I hardly felt it. I sang as loud as I dared and danced, danced, danced.
I didn’t see Darren again for the rest of the week, and by Friday I was panicking. Nic must have sensed my distress, for she asked me about it over breakfast at Waffle House.
“Are you doing okay?” she asked. “You’ve barely spoken more than three words since we sat down.”
“I’m alright,” I replied. I turned my eyes to the window, on the other side of which a light rain was falling. “I just get scared when I haven’t heard from someone in a few days.”
“Has he spoken to you at all since Friday night?” I shook my head. “Have you tried texting him?”
“I’ve been waiting, sort of hoping he would text me. I like it when he texts me first. It makes me feel like he really cares about me.”
Nic glanced around and lowered her voice. “Didn’t he sleep with you on Friday?”
I shrugged. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean much if he doesn’t follow up. How would you like it if a boy wanted to sleep with you but would never talk to you?”
“It happens sometimes,” said Nic, blushing furiously.
“Maybe it does. But I don’t want to date one of those boys. I thought Darren was better than that. Sometimes I think we ought to ban men.”
We were silent for a moment while Nic studied me curiously. “There’s something so different about you lately,” she said. “I can’t put my finger on it.”
I brushed my hair back, feeling suddenly shy. “What do you mean?”
“You’re colder somehow, and there’s no emotion in your voice. You remind me of a woman who’s just gone through a nasty breakup and wants to burn down the world.”
I smiled at the exaggerated image. “Maybe not the whole world,” I said quietly and took a sip of my tea.
“Anyway, I hope you haven’t given up on Darren yet. At least text him before you decide the relationship is over and begin to plan your revenge.”
This was so funny to me that I nearly choked on my drink. “I love how you think I’m some kind of deranged, vengeful woman. If he decides to bail, there’s not much I can do about it. I’ve never been a really resentful person. When I feel betrayed or abandoned by someone, I’m more likely to turn inward and blame myself and spend the next eight months in a haze of depression.”
“I can see that,” said Nic.
“It’s happened before. I won’t even bother putting on makeup. I’ll wear my glasses for thirty days in a row instead of putting in my contacts. I’ll get in my car and drive out to my secret place and rest my head on the steering wheel and just cry for hours. But I won’t want to get revenge on the other person. I’ll just want them to come home.”
Nic seemed to be growing uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. She cast her eyes down on her plate and began to play with her fork. “Hey, how’s your dad doing?”
“He’s doing okay,” I replied. “Things have been fairly up and down this week. This morning, he was telling me s
tories from when I was born—how he brought me home from the hospital on the same day Mom was laid in the ground. He doesn’t seem as bitter about it as he used to. Lately, he’s been talking a lot about the old days. I think maybe he senses that we’re about to lose each other, in one way or the other.”
“Maybe so.” Nic shoved her plate away. “It’s weird how the passage of time can make us nostalgic for the most miserable times in our lives.”
“Who knows?” I said with a sad smile. “Maybe someday we’ll even look back fondly on this.”
We left Waffle House and drove to work through the rainy streets. A thin layer of mist hung over the fields like a blanket of low-lying cloud. I wasn’t looking forward to going and sitting behind a desk all day. Recently work bored me, and I spent the whole day watching the clock, counting the hours until I could go home and work on my book where love was taking shape and evil was being defeated.
During the first few days of that week, I had glanced up with a hopeful feeling whenever the doors opened. But it was never Darren, and by now I had given up hope. So when he strode up to the counter at noon, boyishly grinning, and slapped down a jar of double Dutch dark chocolate mix, I stared in surprise.
“What is this for?” I asked. “Are you just showing me?”
“No, silly,” Darren said with a laugh. “I bought it for you. I know how much you love double Dutch dark chocolate and figured you might like to have some for your cocoa in the mornings.”
Part of me wanted to fling it back at him for ignoring me all week, but I felt my heart swayed by the thoughtfulness of the gift. “Thank you.” I took it gingerly in both hands and placed it beside my purse. “I’ll drink it every morning and think of you.”
Darren smiled, looking rather pleased with himself. “Anyway, I’d been looking for an excuse to come visit you all week. But I figured if I just walked in without a reason, you’d think I was being a creeper.”