by Rachel Del
I lifted a hand to my own hair subconsciously and racked my fingers through it.
“Well, thank you. Whatever it was we were talking about must have snapped some kind of twig in my brain.”
She cocked her head to the side. “What were we talking about, anyway?”
Honestly, I couldn’t remember. So I said, “Can I ask you something personal?”
“Always.”
“Did you always know you wanted to become a writer?”
She smiled then and leaned closer. “There is no such thing as a silly question,” she whispered, and then shifted back in her chair. “And to answer your question … not always. I—”
My phone beeped and buzzed on the table beside us, interrupting her. “I’m sorry,” I said, not bothering to look at it. I moved to silence it.
“That’s okay. You should make sure it’s nothing important.”
I sighed and picked up the phone. It was a text from Ryan.
Ryan: You busy? I’ve got the house to myself ;)
I locked the screen and tossed the phone back into my purse, turning my attention back to P.J. “It was nothing.”
The look on her face was one I would see often. It said, without words, I see right through you. I laughed nervously. “It’s just a guy.”
“Ryan,” she said. She lifted her hands onto the table in front of her and wrapped them around her now-cold cup of coffee. I’d offered twice to get her a refill but she had waved me off. “Tell me about him.”
I didn’t want to talk about him, not with her. Not after she’d made it clear how she felt about him. But a flush had crossed my face, and there was no going back.
HE SAT THERE WITH SUCH CONFIDENCE, in a way that only someone who had never been told no could. He’d cut his hair since I’d seen him last, so short that it could almost be mistaken for straight, and it made him look more innocent somehow. If I didn’t already know him I might have allowed my imagination to run wild, imagining a future with him where there could never be one.
I had come to realize that, slowly at first and then all at once, incensed that I had been so blind to it. But by ruling out any kind of serious relationship with him, he could be exactly what I needed him to be. Sometimes it meant someone to share a coffee with, but most of the time we confined ourselves to the bedroom, happy to live under the sheets. Because I didn’t want to date him, I never felt the need to impress him. There was much I could get away with so long as I kept letting him see me naked.
I looked up from my coffee to see Ryan looking at me.
“Tell me what you do all day.”
My question surprised him. “What specifically do you want to know?”
It was like that with us. We didn’t know how to be with each other in a way that didn’t involve our mutual need to orgasm. “I don’t expect you to tell me your life story here, but I don’t think I’ve ever known so little about a guy who I’ve let put his dick in me.”
He laughed loudly. The kind of laugh that makes you never want to stop making him laugh. “You have got one foul mouth on you, don’t you?”
I dropped my head to the side. “Don’t go pretending that you don’t adore that about me.”
He smiled and looked at me for a long moment. He reached out and brushed a strand of hair out of my face. His hand lingered there. I thought he might kiss me. I licked my lips to bring them to his attention.
But the moment passed.
“There’s not much to me. When I’m not working I try to play guitar as much as I can, or read as much as I can. Drink as much as I can,” he added with a smirk. “I’m a simple creature.”
It was about what I had expected to get out of him.
He was uncomfortable. It hadn’t been his idea to go out that afternoon. I had suggested it in an attempt to see just how much I could get from him, to where he would draw the line.
I hadn’t expected him to agree to coffee.
We had never been seen together in public; something about his fear of Matt finding out. We’d never really seen much of each other with our clothes on.
I didn’t want to date him, but I wanted to know him, and I wanted him to know me. By then we’d had sex more times than I could count. I didn’t think that was too much to ask for.
By the time I had finished my story, P.J.’s excitement had completely vanished. I cleared my throat nervously, my eyes darting away from her for a split second.
“I would preface what I’m about to say with something like, ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying, but…’, but I’m not really that kind of person. What you see is what you get.”
“Okay …”
“From what I can see, Penny, you’re a strong and independent woman. This guy—” she said the word like it was allegedly so, “You’ve — and I’m sorry to borrow words from mainstream television — let that lightning bearer take your wind.”
I couldn’t hold in my laughter. She seemed so out of place to me then; this middle-aged woman quoting from an episode of Friends. It felt as though she was trying too hard. Oddly though, it made me feel comforted, like she had wanted me to be impressed with her. Which, of course, I was.
She had leaned into me, her chest spreading out across the table top. “I made a mistake like him, once. I’d just come out of a tiresome relationship and he felt like a breath of fresh air. I mistook our incredible sexual connection for something deeper. In the end, he was exactly what I had always known him to be, and I was heartbroken, even though I’d known all along that it could never have ended well.”
A chill ran through me.
P.J.’s eyes narrowed. “You’re thinking: that sounds an awful lot like Ryan, aren’t you.”
It was a statement more than anything.
I nodded slowly, and she said, good, she didn’t want me making the same mistake she had. “It’d be a mistake to lose focus on your writing now, Penny. You’ve just begun to really hit your stride. Focus on that. Nothing else.”
Right.
Easier said than done.
Chapter 29
Alex
I tried to put her out of my mind, I really did. And for a while it worked. For a while, I was just another twenty-five-year-old guy stuck in a shitty job, unsure of what to do with his life. For a while, I didn’t have a best friend who was falling apart, who, as days went on, wanted less and less to do with me.
For a while, I could pretend that she hadn’t slept with Ryan West.
Until I couldn’t.
I had been sitting waiting in my car for three hours by the time I saw the Audi pull into the driveway. By then I had worked myself up into quite the frenzy. The fact that Penny hadn’t seen my car in front of her house was a small miracle.
She stepped out of the driver’s seat and slammed the door.
“Tell me it’s not true.”
Her hand flew to her chest as she tripped backwards, her back hitting the car. “Oh, my God, you scared me!” She bared her teeth. “What are you doing here?”
I narrowed the distance between us in four, large steps. “Ryan West. Tell me it’s not true.”
She snorted as she gathered herself, walking away from me towards her front door. “Like I already told you, it’s none of your business.”
I followed her.
“You told me you weren’t going to date him.”
She answered over her shoulder. “And I’m not.”
Now it was my time to snort. “So you’re just fucking him, then? That’s so much better.”
She was inside the door now, and spun on her heels to face me. “Go home, Alex.”
But I stood my ground, staring her down.
“I said, GO HOME!”
“Why Ryan?” I said, my voice cracking uncharacteristically. “You could have anyone, Pen. You could have—”
You could have me.
Was that was I was about to say? What did I expect to happen? She’d stop staring at me like I was the devil and throw her arms around me? This was Penny we were
talking about.
My best friend, Penny.
Her hands gripped the edge of the door, her knuckles white. “I said, go home.”
And then the door slammed closed.
Penny
I’d been surprised to see Alex. Happy almost. I’d spent the last two days obsessing over what I’d said. How I’d said it. Why I’d said it. I was no closer to answering those questions, but I knew that I needed to apologize. Alex wasn’t the problem here. I’d come to realize that.
I didn’t need to push him away in order to gain control over my life. They weren’t mutually exclusive. I’d intended to tell him just that the next time I saw him. But then he’d opened his big fat mouth.
Any thoughts I’d had about apologizing to him went right out the window the moment he mentioned Ryan’s name.
“I said, go home.”
It felt good to slam the door in his face.
I flew into my room in a fit of rage, tossing my purse clear across the room where it landed on my bed, its contents spilling from within. I ripped my shirt and shorts off my body like they were on fire, glad to be free of them.
If only it were so easy to shake Alex.
Try as I might, I just couldn’t understand why he was so angry. What did he have against Ryan? Against us getting involved with one another? It didn’t make any sense. He’d always been protective, but he was taking this to a whole other level. It was almost like he was … jealous.
No. Not possible. This was Alex we were talking about. We were friends and nothing more. I shook the thought from my head, determined to let it go. In fact, I needed to forget everything that happened that afternoon.
The shrill ring of my phone jerked me back to reality. I found it on my bed, answering it without much thought. “Hello,” I said once the call had connected.
“Penny, honey.” There was a long exhale. “Thank you for answering.”
No. I wasn’t ready.
“I can’t … dad, I’m not…”
“Please, Penny. Please don’t hang up, I’m so so—”
I didn’t wait to hear anymore.
The calls had started innocently enough. After the night my father walked out the door, he’d called regularly, wanting to know how Dex and I were doing, how we were handling things. I took his calls at first, craving that connection to him now that he was no longer home with us. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that he didn’t truly care what answers I gave him. He was calling out of obligation. Out of guilt.
He didn’t care about us. He never had.
I sank down to the floor, tears bubbling just below the surface. It would have been so easy to fall apart then, to let go. But that wasn’t me. I couldn’t let my father win.
I wiped a finger under both of my eyes and shook my head to banish the thoughts.
My eyes travelled the length of my room, all the while cursing my father under my breath. He left us. Destroyed us. He didn’t have the right to keep squirming his way into my life when all I wanted to do was forget him. Forget the mess he had made of everything.
I pushed out a deep breath and climbed to my feet, heading for the bathroom. With a shaky hand I pulled open the vanity, my eyes locking on the familiar orange, plastic bottle. I hadn’t thought twice when Dr. Scott had first prescribed the pills, but as time went on I began to wonder if they were really necessary.
I’d even brought it up at a recent session. “If you’re not comfortable with the medication, Penny, you’re welcome to ween yourself off them, but my professional opinion is that they could help, for now. Help to even you out a bit,” he’d said.
I looked down at the little blue pills in my hand, hesitating.
My eyes fluttered closed and there he was.
I didn’t let Ryan touch me. Not at first. I had something to say that couldn’t wait. I’d left him last time feeling badly because of the guilt he’d felt. That wasn’t going to work for me. He was meant to be a distraction. Something to make me feel better, not worse.
I carefully removed the hand that Ryan had placed on my inner thigh. “It’s time to set some ground rules.”
Ryan’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Ground rules…”
“Yes.” I didn’t wait to continue. “But there’s only one that we really need to concern ourselves with, and that is this is about sex, and nothing else. There is nothing romantic about it. There will be no dates, no hand holding, and no meeting of the friends. I have too much shit in my life for this to be another thing that gets complicated. This—” I wiggled a finger between the two of us, “—stays between the two of us.”
I don’t know how I expected Ryan to react. But maybe a small part of me wanted him to push back a little.
Instead, he looked me straight in the eye as he ran his hand up my thigh, stopping at my panties. His thumb played with me over the flimsy fabric. I was already wet.
I inhaled a sharp breath.
“I’ll agree to your rules,” he growled, “but I have some of my own, as well.”
I wet my lips. “Okay…”
His finger disappeared inside me. “No one goes home until we’ve both come.”
Oh, game on, my friend.
Chapter 30
Alex
I stared at her ass shamelessly as she hurried around in the kitchen. I didn’t have a clue what she was doing, but she was a woman on a mission.
“Monica.”
She whipped her head around to face me. “Hmm?”
“Whatever it is that you’re doing in there, do it later.”
Her face broke out into a smile. “Ready for round two already, are we?”
She walked over to me and I took hold of her hand, dragging her towards her bedroom. Her bed was unmade, a mess of sheets and pillows and I smiled at the thought of what we had just done in there minutes ago.
I pulled her down onto the bed and pressed my lips against hers.
“How did we even get here?” she murmured. I smiled against her mouth.
It happened so slowly that I didn’t even see it coming.
Later, I replayed it the past few weeks in my mind, trying to see if I could pinpoint when it had all begun. Maybe it had been that morning at the office, the only time since we’d first met that we had spoken to each other with an ounce of respect. Or maybe it had started all those years ago. And maybe, if I had been a man and listened to my dick instead of my heart for once, we could have started this a long time ago.
Whatever this was.
“Hey,” Monica said, waving her hand in front of my face. “Where’d you go?”
I looked at her from the corner of my eyes, smiling.
She pushed herself up into a seated position against her headboard, pulling her legs against her chest. “Can I ask you something? And I really don’t mean for this sound as pathetic as I’m certain it will. I’m just curious.”
I waited for her to continue.
“What changed? Since you first started working for me, I mean.”
I knew what she was asking. Why had I turned her down then, only to be here with her, now? It was a question that I knew the answer to, but it would do no good to tell her the truth. “I don’t know if I really have an answer for that.”
She looked a little hurt.
“I can assure you that it has nothing to do with the way you look, which is incredible, by the way.”
I allowed my gaze to slip down her body and follow the long length of her legs, down to her— she crossed her legs at the ankles, blocking my unhindered view of her, well, you know. I begrudgingly lifted my eyes to meet hers.
“You’re incorrigible.”
“I’m a guy, there’s a difference.”
“Not really,” she said with a smirk.
I wasn’t concerned that she was questioning our past. I probably would have too if I were in her position. From the first day I started working for her it was obvious that there was a spark between the two of us. She had the kind of sense of humor that I’d never be
lieved existed, and we’d gotten along well. We started staying late at work, just so we’d end up the only two left in the office. She introduced me to the genius of David Sedaris, reading to me bits and pieces from her well-worn copy of Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls. In turn, I helped her to expand her musical taste beyond shitty boy bands and pop divas. Her lack of musical taste didn’t even faze me, not when she so clearly had such great taste in books.
There had been a night, of course, a moment where I felt my feelings shift. It didn’t take a genius to know that she felt the same way.
But I was concerned. As great as she was, we worked together. Not only that, but she was my boss. And, Penny…
Penny.
And so I made the choice not to pursue Monica. And I’d been paying for it ever since.
Then there was Penny, whom I hadn’t spoken to in weeks.
Penny, whom I’d heard was still fucking that douchebag Ryan West.
Penny, who was slowly fading into the past like a bad habit.
Penny
“Almost sixty thousand words. I can’t believe it.”
P.J. looked up from her laptop, the look on her face one of pure pride. How I’d managed to write so much about my life was a mystery, but there it was. 59,297 words; 308,581 characters. Words that only P.J. had read, words that I couldn’t imagine anyone else reading.
“What now?”
The corner of P.J.’s mouth turned up in a crooked smile. “Penny, my dear, now the real work begins.”
My eyebrows jumped.
“Writing the first draft is the easy part. Now you need to edit.”
“I know nothing about editing,” I admitted.
P.J. cocked her head to the side. “Good thing you still have me.”
I didn’t want to admit how right she was, how much I had come to depend on her. How much I had grown attached to her. I lived in constant fear of the day she told me she was headed out of Vegas, heading somewhere new. She’d told me early on that she never spent more than a few months in one place before moving on to the next. I pictured her sitting in another coffee shop somewhere like Portland or Seattle, without me. The image made my stomach turn over. I had to make the best of my time with her while she was still here.