by Rachel Del
I nodded. “And the second thing?”
“The second thing you must do is live. I’ve spent all of forty combined minutes with you and I can tell right away that you’ve been holding back. What I want to know is, why?”
I felt the words bubbling up in my chest, trying their best to push themselves from within me. “I’m scared.”
P.J. leaned in closer to me. “I’ll let you in on a little secret: we all are. What I mean is that we’re all scared of something. It’s what we do about it that ultimately defines us. Do you want to be the kind of person who curls up into a ball and lets life pass her by, or do you want to be the kind of person who jumps first and thinks later?”
I honestly didn’t know. Much like my life those days, I was still trying out different sides of myself. I was ripping off tiny pieces of myself and throwing them against the wall to see what stuck.
Alex
“Do you think I’m boring?”
Fresh off her morning with P.J., Penny had barely been in the car with me for three minutes, yet it seemed she was ready to dive right into the heavy stuff, no ‘hello’ or ‘how was your day’ necessary. I eased up to the stop sign and looked over at her. My gaze bounced quickly from her bare legs up to her face. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”
Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “I haven’t really done anything exciting with my life.”
“Says who?”
She ignored my question. “Do you think I’m the kind of person who just curls up in a ball and lets life pass her by?”
I snorted. “What are you even talking about? You sound like—”
She looked up at me guiltily. “What?”
“Where is this even coming from?” I asked. But even as the words came out of my mouth I knew. “Is this P.J. getting in your head? She’s known you for what? All of five minutes and she’s making all these assumptions about the kind of person you are. Don’t you find that strange?”
She seemed to think about that for a moment. “Does it really matter who brought it up if it’s true?”
I shrugged, and pulled away from the intersection. “You’re not boring. You’ve just been really focused on school. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“But look at Natalie and Ash, look how much fun they have.”
I snorted and shot her a look from the corner of my eye. “Do you really want to be comparing yourself to them? I’d be surprised if they’ve got a 3.0 grade average between the pair of ‘em.”
“But they’re fun.”
I sighed. “You’re fun, Penny. And not in the kind of way that is predicated on alcohol.”
She stared out the window, watching the palm trees pass us by. It was only 9 a.m., and already it was hot and sticky. We were in for a killer summer.
“I’m tired of being so good.”
I laughed. “So do something to shake things up. Stay out past curfew, or wear white after labor day.”
“I’m serious!”
“Okay, okay,” I said, reaching over and giving her thigh a squeeze. I let my hand linger only a moment, snatching it back when I felt a familiar stirring in my pants. Get a hold of yourself, man.
“It’s just always been easier to give in, you know? To let someone else take the lead. I’ve been doing it my whole life. Take this job with my dad for example. One day he suggested I come to work for him after graduation and I just never challenged it. I let him decide for me.”
“Is that really such a bad thing? Maybe you’re just the kind of person who likes a little nudge in the right direction. Not everyone is a born leader.”
“That’s fine if we’re talking about team work or something, but to not be in control of my own life? How sad is that?”
I checked my blind spot and moved into the right hand lane.
She clicked her tongue. “I don’t know, I guess I’ve been thinking too much.”
“Well, that’s not really anything new. But seriously, if you aren’t happy with the way your life is going, then do something about it.”
“You sound like Matt.”
“Ouch. Don’t you ever say that again.”
She turned to me, her eyebrows high on her forehead. “How do I even do that? ‘Be happy,’ they say, like it’s as easy as snapping your fingers.”
I pulled up to my house and killed the ignition. “There are plenty of ways.”
The truth was that I always knew Penny had it in her. That deep down she knew she was capable of so much more, of cultivating a much better life for herself. It was exciting to know she was ready to make some changes. Like ditching the dead weight that was her boyfriend. I hoped so, anyway. Not because I was interested in filling his shoes. Like everyone but the two of them, I knew she deserved better.
I followed Penny inside and we walked silently up to my bedroom.
She was a good girl, but since when was that a bad thing? The fact she sat at home reading a book while Natalie and Ash were out partying was a positive thing in my book. Yet Penny couldn’t see it as anything but. Sure she let other people take the reins a little more than most would, but she had an incredibly successful father and a doting mother leading her around. It wasn’t as though it was the blind leading the blind.
Still, I knew Penny well enough to know that when she made her mind up about something, there was no going back. And if she had come to the conclusion that her life was too boring, well then … I knew to buckle myself in and enjoy the ride.
Chapter 15
Penny
I didn’t know how to face him. I felt ashamed. Guilty. Lost. So much of my existence had been wrapped up in him, in our relationship. I wasn’t sure I even knew how to be on my own. I’d become so dependent on him to make me happy, and that wasn’t right. Putting my happiness into someone else’s hands was playing with fire. Testing fate. Sooner or later, my luck was going to run out.
Or maybe it already had.
When Matt came to the door, I stared down at my shoes sheepishly, unable to look at him. Running off to California had been something I had to do, but I realized now I had gone about it in all the wrong ways. What I needed to do now was right my wrongs.
“I’ve been giving you space, Penny … the space that you asked me for … because I know you’re going through something.”
My whole body seemed to sigh.
“I hear you’ve been going out a lot and getting drunk and I think; okay, we’re young … she’s allowed to do that. She’s going through a hard time and needs to blow off some steam. But then you took off to La Jolla with Alex and some other guy without as much as a courtesy text. Do you know how hard that was?” He didn’t wait for a response. “What did you even do with him?” He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “Did you sleep with him?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Are you insane? Of course I didn’t.”
But he kept on going down that road. “How am I supposed to believe you? What kind of girl just up and drives to California like that?”
I couldn’t comprehend why he was getting so angry. Yes, I had left and not told him, but I had thought it was pretty clear why I needed to get out of town, why I needed to put some distance between myself and the shit storm that had become my life here. How could he possibly not understand, even if just a little? “I did what I needed to do.”
Matt threw his hands up in the air. “What does that even mean?”
“It means that I’m finally doing what I want to do.”
“That’s funny,” he said, his mouth screwed up, “because it looks to me like you’ve lost your mind.”
I spun around to face him, my face screwed up in anger. “You are such a hypocrite!”
He looked like I’d punched him. “Me? How do you figure?”
I jabbed the air with my finger. “I told you how I was feeling. I told you that I needed some time. And you know what you did? What you said? Nothing, you said absolutely nothing. I was sitting in front of you, cracking, falling to pieces, and you said
nothing.”
Matt scoffed. “What do you want me to say here, Penny? Because I’m beginning to feel like no matter what I do, it’s going to be the wrong thing. This is feeling too much like a lose-lose situation.”
The door closed with a click that seemed to echo through the house. My cheeks were wet with tears, my stomach tied up in knots.
I felt Matt’s hand on my shoulder, which I promptly shook off. “Please don’t touch me.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“You should go.”
“Go? Are you kidding? I’m not leaving you now, after wha—”
But I screamed. I screamed at him for not wanting to leave. For my father not wanting to stay. For my mother not being able to make him stay. For me not being the kind of daughter that makes it impossible to leave.
“This isn’t your fault,” he was whispering in my ear. It only made me angrier.
“I asked you to leave. What don’t you understand?”
I shook away the memory. My words came out in a whisper. “I just want to be happy.”
Chapter 16
Penny
It really was that simple, wasn’t it? I wanted to be happy, but maybe I was going about that the wrong way. Maybe it was better than sitting idle and doing nothing. I shuddered at the thought. Doing nothing was the worst thing I could possibly do.
Matt scoffed. “Then be happy, Penny. But there’s a difference between doing what makes you happy and acting crazy.”
“Stop saying that,” I seethed. “I am not crazy.”
Matt jumped to his feet and began pacing his bedroom. I had known he wouldn’t understand. I hadn’t expected him to.
“Listen…,” I began, shaking my head. I didn’t know how to have this conversation. “I don’t expect you to get all this. I don’t even expect you to stick around. But I do expect you to respect me and my decisions.”
“You don’t expect me to stick around?” He shook his head slowly from side to side. “What exactly are you trying to say?”
I stood quietly, taking slow, deep breaths to try and calm myself. “Matt…” I played with the words in my mouth, but could not bring myself to say them out loud. I blinked slowly, and then lifted my gaze to meet his. His brown eyes were darker than I remembered.
“Penny, what the hell is going on?”
I sucked my bottom lip between my teeth and released a breath I didn’t know I was holding. How could I tell him that even though I loved him, I was drowning, too?
I still remembered the first time I saw him; he was all legs and arms, and awkward as hell. We’d been just friends then, but there seemed to always be an undercurrent of admiration. I wasn’t surprised when one night after our friends had long gone, he turned to me on the couch and pressed his mouth against mine. We’d been together ever since. Four years. And now, here we were.
I wasn’t sure I knew how to exist as a solo entity.
“I keep making the same mistakes over and over.”
He looked stunned. “So now I’m a mistake?”
“I don’t know how to explain it, Matt. It really isn’t about you.”
But of course it was. I was bored and I had cheated and there was no way to come back from that. At least not for us. “I’m just a different person now,” I said.
He let out a grunt. “You can say that again.”
I didn’t know how to explain it all to him. He would never be able to understand. “I’m so sorry. I am. But I don’t want to wake up one day to find that I’m forty-years-old and can’t take anything back.”
He didn’t know about P.J.’s book and my connection to it — another thing I had kept from him for no apparent reason— so my words fell flat.
Matt was shaking his head. “I’m done here,” he said, surprising me. And even though I knew this was what I wanted, what I had gone to his house for, I felt a little like my own heart was breaking. “This really has nothing to do with you.”
He snorted. “Yeah, well that I agree with.”
I was taken aback. “What is that supposed to mean?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking the question I was sure I didn’t want to hear the answer to.
Matt looked livid. “You’re obviously going through something — other than dealing with the divorce, I mean. And you think that you’ll find the answers at the bottom of a bottle or between some Italian guys’ legs.”
I stepped back, my eyes widening.
“That’s right, I knew. And if this whole break-up is about you wanting to get your rocks off with someone else, then good luck with that. But when you get whatever this is out of your system and realize you’re just fucking sad … don’t come running back to me. You’re Alex’s problem now.”
I clamped my lips together, sighing. “You’re seriously bringing him into this?”
“Please. Alex has always been a part of this.” He waved his hands in a half-circle around us. “You two have been circling each other for years.”
“What does that even mean?” I know I sounded like a broken record, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say in response.
Matt was quickly losing his patience. “You know exactly what it means.”
My heart hammered in my chest. “Listen, this has nothing to do with Alex, just like it has nothing to do with you. This is about me and what I want.”
“So you keep saying.”
I stilled. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. I slowly lifted my gaze to look at him. His eyes gave away all that he couldn’t say. I found myself thinking about the night he first told me he loved me.
It was on our third date. I'd had my mouth full of hamburger when he smiled at me from across the table and said "you know what, Penny? I love you."
I was shocked to say the least.
"I know it's crazy early, but I just wanted you to know," he said. “I’m not the kind of guy who keeps things like that to himself.”
I blinked and the memory was gone.
Matt stood. “Are we done here?”
I nodded once.
“Good. Then get the hell out of my house.”
Chapter 17
Penny
“My father has this story he likes to tell me about the first job he ever had. He was fourteen — much too young for the work he was doing — but he had been tall and muscular, with a deep voice that often tricked people into thinking he was much older. Every weekday morning he would get up at 4:30, get on this rusted old bike and ride the three miles to town, where he would join the throng of middle-aged men filing through the factory doors. These men had spent their last twenty-five years in that building. Their skin was weathered and thin from all the years of smoking; the only glimmer of excitement in their otherwise hellish work day, and they seemed hardened and weary from the work. My father, an often too painful reminder of the young men they had once been, kept his head down and his opinions to himself, knowing far too well what would happen otherwise.
“After his shift, while the other men showered off their day, my father bolted for the door and biked home as quickly as he could. Some afternoons he would stop for bread and butter and a small bouquet of flowers if he could afford it. At home, he’d spread the salty butter on the uneven slabs of bread and present it on a tray, along with the flowers, to his mother.
“On her good days, she would thank him; pat him quickly on the head while she reminisced over how she had gotten so lucky to have a son like him. But on her bad days she would knock the platter from his hands, cursing up a blue streak without peeling her eyes from the small TV in front of her. Through it all — the good days and the bad — my father kept working at that factory, watching with rapt attention as the other kids his age laughed and played on their way to and from school. An education was not a luxury that he could afford, not when his mama depended on him the way she did, but that didn’t stop him from fantasizing about getting out of that town and starting over.”
Dr. Scott rubbed his forefinger across his bottom lip as he listened.
&
nbsp; “I’ve heard him tell that story so many times that I can practically tell it verbatim.”
“Why do you think he tells you so often?”
I smiled. “He’s reminding me that he rose from the dirt of that old life, got an education, and made a new life for himself … for his family. And now I am a part of that.”
Dr. Scott dropped his hand into his lap. “A part of what?” he asked.
“In the same way that my father knew he would make something of himself someday, I grew up knowing that I would study business and join him at his marketing firm after graduation. Matt and I would move in together, get married and have kids. I’ve always known that was my future.”
Dr. Scott narrowed his eyes, though not unkindly. It was as though he was trying to see right through me. “I think the important question is whether or not that is the life you want, Penny?”
I sat back and thought about his question, fiddling with the hem of my shorts as I often did. It was a loaded question, and I could think of a hundred different answers.
“I’m not so sure anymore. But I know one thing: Matt and I weren’t working. So I ended things with him.”
“And how did that feel?”
“Honestly? It feels like a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders.”
Dr. Scott leaned back in his seat. “What else would you change if you could?”
I began talking and found I couldn’t stop.
Alex
I did my best to pretend I was disappointed that Matt and Penny had broken up, but after she called me with the news I couldn’t help but feel as though something was finally going my way.
She had called me in the car on the way over. When I opened the front door for her I was shocked by how different she looked to me suddenly. A thought I pushed from my mind.
“Do you feel better?” I asked as I handed her a soda from the fridge. She looked at me like I was crazy.
“I feel like I just broke up with someone.”