Vote Then Read: Volume III

by Aleatha Romig

  For Penny.

  But not for free…

  “All right, I’ll keep the kiss between us,” I say, hurrying on when she tries to thank me. “But in exchange, you agree not to use Penny’s sisters to manipulate her. No more threatening to withhold visits or coming between them in any way.”

  “Done,” she says with a firm nod. “I felt terrible about that anyway. I’ve felt terrible about a lot of things the past few years, but all that is going to change. Right now. I’m ready to lose one-hundred and eighty pounds of pure trouble and get my life back on track.”

  I nod and hold out an arm. “After you.”

  I follow Anastasia through the dunes and up the path toward the house. We’ve just rounded the corner and are moving between the two small guest bungalows when Ana stops dead in the middle of the trail with a soft gasp.

  I don’t have to ask what’s the matter. I’ve already seen them and no matter how much I want to, I can’t seem to look away.

  I can’t tear my eyes away from the sight of Penny—my Penny—making out with Phillip under the awning of the guesthouse, wearing the white chiffon dress she was wearing when we first kissed. Her arms are around his neck, his hands are on her ass, and her lips are parted while she kisses him the way she should only kiss one man. Me. But that’s not me and clearly Penny hasn’t told Phillip to go to hell and rot there and take his marriage proposal with him.

  No, it looks like Penny and Phillip are back together.

  She’s gone back to the man who set off a dirty bomb in the middle of her life, the fuck stick who treated her like shit on his shoe right up until the moment it became clear someone else was in love with the girl he’d thrown away.

  Like Rachael. It’s exactly like Rachael, except it hurts so much fucking more.

  I thought Penny was different.

  I thought she was one in a million. My one.

  For a moment, I have the strange urge to sit down and put my shoes on, so I can run away from her faster, but Penny isn’t even looking at me. She has no idea I’ve seen what I’ve seen or that she’s broken the fuck out of my heart.

  So I don’t run. I turn and walk away, back down to the beach, up around the side of the mansion—where Penny and Phillip may end up living happily ever after if Anastasia decides to take that suicide swim after all—and down the drive to my car. And then I pull away and I don’t look back.

  I’ve broken almost all of my rules with Penny. But I won’t break this one.

  One and done. A Magnificent Bastard intervention is a once in a lifetime opportunity. No exceptions.

  Not even for her, the girl I already know I’ll never be able to forget.

  41

  And now something from

  Francis and Edna “Eddie” Pickett-Baxter

  Dear Sebastian,

  Mom told us not to write you a letter.

  She said that some things are better left alone and that you probably wish you’d never come to the wedding or heard the name Pickett. But since we’re half Baxter—that’s our dad’s last name—we figured we would write anyway.

  (And Francis loves to do things she’s told not to do.

  Our psychiatrist says she has oppositional defiant disorder, but I think she just doesn’t like getting bossed around. I don’t care as much about getting bossed around because I don’t have a lot of strong opinions the way she does. This is Edna writing this part, by the way.

  Eddie, to you, because we’re friends. At least, I hope we still are.)

  Back to the point! This is Francis writing the main letter because I have better handwriting, but the words are from both of us.

  And we both want to say that we’re very, very sorry.

  We should never have set up our nanny cam in the sunroom. We only did it because Penny said that Mom threw up in a flowerpot right before she walked down the aisle at two of her wedding rehearsals and we thought that would be a really funny thing to get on video. We could have sent it in to America’s Wackiest Home Movies or just uploaded it to the cloud and used it as blackmail to convince Mom to let us have sugar whenever we want.

  Or at least on weekends.

  We know too much sugar isn’t good for us and no matter what Mom says we aren’t animals who would run wild without rules.

  (At least, I’m not. Sometimes Francis is like a wolverine when she’s angry. She has a big temper. She let me write this because she’s proud of it. She’s also proud of how bad her farts smell.

  This is still Eddie, by the way. You can tell because my pen is blue.)

  ANYWAY!

  The point is, we’re sorry. We would take it back if we could. We never meant to cause trouble or make everyone angry and sad. Mom says it isn’t our fault and that nothing was ruined that shouldn’t have been ruined, but we’re not sure that’s true.

  We just know that we wish things had happened differently.

  And we hope we can still be friends.

  Mom says that’s never going to happen, either, but Mom has been wrong about things before.

  Here’s hoping this is one of them.

  Here’s hoping it a LOT because we like you and think you make a great uncle.

  Your friends?

  Francis and Edna “Eddie” Pickett-Baxter

  42

  Two Months Later…

  Text from Aidan: Heading out to grab brunch in about an hour, you want to join?

  From Bash: No thanks.

  Aidan: Come on, it’s this new place. Supposed to have the best Bloody Marys in Brooklyn.

  Bash: Definitely no. I hate Brooklyn.

  Aidan: Since when?

  Bash: Since forever. That borough is dead to me. I’m never going there again, not even for ice cream.

  Aidan: Dude. This has to stop. It’s been two months.

  Bash: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  Aidan: Bullshit.

  You know exactly what I’m talking about. This is even worse than after Rachael, and Penny wasn’t even your girlfriend.

  Bash: I don’t want to talk about Penny.

  Aidan: But you know she didn’t marry that guy, right?

  In fact, according to the tabloids, it seems like she and her mom sent him packing not long after you left the Hamptons.

  Bash: So?

  Aidan: So maybe you have this all wrong.

  Maybe there’s been a misunderstanding. Maybe you’re wasting your life holding a grudge over something that didn’t even happen.

  Maybe you both are.

  Bash: Don’t take this the wrong way, man, but why don’t you shut the fuck up about stuff you don’t understand.

  Aidan: Why don’t you get off your ass, come meet me for brunch, and help me understand it.

  Bash: *middle finger emoji*

  Aidan: I’m your friend, Bash. This is what friends are for, to talk you through the you-broke-up-with-your-assistant pain so you can move on with your life.

  Bash: Maybe I don’t want to move on. Maybe I don’t see the fucking point.

  Aidan: Okay. Then maybe I won’t be able to meet that woman for orientation tomorrow.

  Bash: Hell, no. Don’t you dare pull that shit with me!

  You WILL be at that orientation, Aidan, or I will fucking fire your ass.

  Aidan: Then fire me. I don’t want to work like this anyway.

  When I signed on, this outfit was run by a Magnificent Bastard who left the house once in a while and knew how to enjoy his life. Not a Cranky as Fuck Bastard who would have died on his couch if it weren’t for Thai food delivery.

  Bash: Papers have been signed with this woman! Legal fucking papers!

  And she happens to be a fucking LAWYER.

  If you don’t show up tomorrow, she could sue my ass, Aidan.

  Aidan: Then I guess you’d better meet me for brunch and let me be your friend.

  Bash: Fuck you, you son of a bitch.

  Aidan: Come on now, friend. Let it happen.

  You know you want brunch. And fri
end time.

  Bash: This is blackmail, not friendship.

  Aidan: You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to.

  Bash: Fuck…

  Aidan: Brunch is on me and I’ll have a spicy Bloody Mary waiting for you when you get there…

  Bash: Fine, text me the address. But if I eat brunch with you, then you meet with this woman tomorrow. No more bullshit.

  If you want to back out of the job, you’re going to have to wait until after this assignment. I can’t take over with Beth. She needs a Spectacular Rascal, not a Magnificent Bastard.

  Aidan: Deal. Oh, and Bash…

  Bash: What, asshole?

  Aidan: Wear something nice. I like it when you look pretty for me.

  Bash: That reminds me…

  One time I told Penny that I rubbed your feet when they were cold, but that you were too macho to admit it.

  Aidan: I’m not macho. I’m a real man, the kind who has never had his feet rubbed in his entire life. But if rubbing my feet will bring you back to the land of the living, we can work something out.

  On the down low, of course.

  Bash: Nah, that’s okay.

  But thank you. And Aidan…

  Aidan: Yes?

  Bash: She was a lot more than my assistant.

  Aidan: I know.

  43

  The sun is brighter than I remember. And it’s hot as fucking hell.

  As I emerge from the subway stop near Prospect Park, I wish very much that I’d worn shorts instead of jeans. But that’s one of the hazards of not leaving the house in several weeks except for butt crack of dawn morning runs and late night foraging for alcohol and ice cream—one forgets that summer in the city is all about misery and sweat pouring from your balls.

  I’m contemplating buying some shorts to spare myself a case of swamp crotch and hoping Aidan got a table inside this stupid trendy brunch place instead of out on the sidewalk facing the park when a voice straight out of my dreams calls my best friend’s name.

  I see Aidan first.

  He’s standing on the sidewalk, turned toward the park so he can’t see me coming. He smiles as he lifts a hand to the woman on horseback, guiding her mount along behind a row of other Sunday morning riders, down one of the many trails running through the park.

  He doesn’t look in the least bit surprised to see Penny.

  My Penny, looking even more fucking beautiful than I remember in a white tank top and a flirty little red skirt that’s completely inappropriate for horseback riding—I spent summers growing up riding at my grandmother’s farm upstate and know a thing or two about saddle chafing—and a big grin for my best friend.

  I’m already smelling a rat when she reaches down and pulls that inappropriate little skirt up on one side, sending a shock of awareness bolting through my body as she bares some brightly colored, sexy new ink on the thigh where Mr. Whiskers used to be.

  “Look,” she says, raising her voice to be heard over the sound of a taxi rushing down the otherwise quiet, Sunday morning street. “All the swelling has gone down! And you can’t see any of the old tattoo. I’m so in love with it!”

  “It looks great,” Aidan calls back, grinning like a fucking lying asshole who tattoos his best friend’s heartbreaker, ex-assistant behind his back. “I’ve got a table for us in the garden. Just come on through when you’re done.”

  “Will do,” she says. “I just need to…” She trails off, spine going stiff as she tilts her head, lifting her adorable nose into the air. Then, like she’s scented Magnificent Bastard on the wind, she turns, shifting in her saddle to gaze over her shoulder, looking straight at me.

  And for a second, the world stands still and there’s just her and me, two people who have a connection that sizzles across time and space and humidity-soaked summer air. Two people who share a secret no one else knows because no one else understands the way it is between us when our clothes are off and her breath is my breath and there are no more questions, just answers, and every single one is her name.

  Penny. My Penny, who ripped my heart out of my chest, hacked it into pieces with a machete, and threw it into the Dead Sea, which has nine times the salt concentration of a normal sea, which is of course why she chose it because she wanted me to hurt nine times more.

  And just like that, the spell is broken and time jerks back into motion as I remember that her secrets were all lies.

  The friendly light in her eyes goes out, her mouth tips down at the edges, and her lips part to say something I’m sure I’m not going to enjoy hearing. I’m working up an I-don’t-care-how-beautiful-you-are-or-how-much-I-miss-you-you-are-fucking-dead-to-me glare and a few choice words of my own when the cop across the street shouts—

  “Hey, you! Use the fucking crosswalk!”

  —to a jay-walking hipster stepping off the curb.

  But the hipster doesn’t reverse direction and the cop, out in the heat in head-to-toe polyester, assigned to police people too stupid to use a crosswalk, is clearly at the end of his rope.

  Face going beat red, the officer lifts the air horn in his hand overhead and blares it loud enough to wake the dead.

  A second later, the peaceful morning is shattered by the shrieks of frightened horses and the startled cries of the riders across the street trying to keep their seats as their mounts twitch, dance off the trail, and rear back on their hind legs. But Penny’s horse doesn’t do any of those things. Penny’s horse screams like it’s been thrown into a vat of boiling oil and bolts across the park like a bat out of hell.

  I watch, my heart lurching into my throat, as she’s almost thrown. She slides off the saddle to the right, but at the last minute, she grabs onto the saddle horn and locks her legs tight around the horse’s middle, hanging on for dear life as the terrified animal streaks away through the trees.

  Before I realize what I’m doing, I’m sprinting into the street, earning another shout from the officer policing the crosswalk.

  But I don’t stop to tell him he’s a fucking idiot or that I’m coming back to beat the shit out of him if anything happens to Penny because of his stupid air horn. I’m too busy jumping the fence near the trail, running across the grass, and snatching the reins from an older man who has just slid to the ground beside his horse, looking grateful to be alive.

  “I’ll bring him back,” I assure the man before swinging up into the saddle and digging my heels into the horse’s sides, spurring the well-fed beast after Penny.

  Leaning into the wind, I urge the animal on with my legs, applying pressure behind his barrel until we’re flying along beneath the trees, following the divots Penny’s horse left behind in the grass. It only takes a few seconds for Penny’s horse, and Penny, who is still clinging to the horse’s side, to come into view.

  But those few seconds are enough to make me feel like I’m having a heart attack. My chest is tight, my ribs squeeze, and I break out in an all over cold sweat as the reality that Penny could be stomped to pieces by a spooked horse at any moment penetrates with enough force to chill me to the bone.

  She could die and I will never get to see her smile again, never get to look into her eyes and feel that connection I’ve never felt with anyone else, never get to tell her how much it hurt to see her with Phillip, but that I love her anyway. That I’m always going to love her, from now until the day they put me in the ground because she’s it for me. My one, the one who has ruined me for all other women.

  “Please,” I beg, breath coming faster as my horse gains ground.

  Please let me get to her in time.

  Please let me get her off that horse.

  Please let me get her safe in my arms and figure out a way to hold her there because I know that once I touch her, I’m never going to want to let her go.

  My thoughts become a constant prayer, a fevered, incessant mantra begging the horse and the universe and any gods out there who have pity on poor lovesick bastards to let this be okay. Let me make it okay. Somehow. Because with Penny’s head inches
from flashing hooves and her life on the line, my rules don’t seem so fucking important anymore.

  Fuck the rules. Fuck no more second chances. Fuck one and done.

  I just want Penny. I want to find a way to forgive her and be forgiven and make this work because nothing works without her.

  “Please, please, please,” I mutter as I pull up alongside her horse and lean over in the saddle, reaching for her lost reins while fighting to keep my own seat.

  I am not a cowboy or a stunt rider or a member of the Cirque de Soleil’s equestrian troupe. I am not a knight in shining armor or a prince who lives to save maidens whose horses have gone wild and run into the forest. But at that moment, I channel them all. I become something braver and better because I need Penny to be safe more than I need anything else.

  And as I grab hold of the reins and pull our horses to a swift stop at the edge of Prospect Park Lake, I realize that this is what it means to be someone’s Prince Charming. It means putting another person ahead of yourself and your ego and all the other bullshit. It means giving everything you have to protect the one you love.

  But unfortunately, not even Prince Charming can protect against the laws of physics. An object in motion is inclined to stay in motion and apparently Penny’s arms must have run out of clinging power.

  As the horse grinds to a halt, Penny keeps moving, losing her grip on the saddle and flying out across the lake to land with a splash.

  One second I have a scandalous view up her skirt as she soars through the air; the next she’s under the water, sinking out of sight.

  44

  Vaulting out of the saddle, I run into the lake without bothering to chuck my shoes, scared to death that Penny’s hit her head on something beneath the surface and is going to drown.

  But by the time I near the place where she went under—charging into water that reaches the bottom of my ribs—she’s breaking the surface, sputtering and coughing and wonderfully, perfectly alive.