Chapter 51 Penny
Chapter 51
Penny
He’s waiting for her in the Mustang. She studies his profile as she approaches, the sunlight streaming along his face—the golden boy brighter than she remembered, or maybe she sees him with fresh eyes. He turns toward her, just as she opens the door, his smile wide and welcoming. She tosses him the extra water and straps on her seatbelt.
“Are you ready?” he asks.
She leans back in her seat. “Let’s do this.”
They’re barely a mile through the Profile Trail when Penny realizes they might have made a mistake. The climb is steep, and the sunny sky is turning gray. A raindrop pelts her cheek. Leo isn’t as outdoorsy as he professes. She’s the one who coerced him to climb mountains, roam through thickets and trees. He had done it for her; he had done a lot of things for her. But now he’s out of breath, and she can sense the worry on his face, especially when the last batch of hikers warned about a bear in the area. “Maybe we should go back,” he says.
“I’ll protect you,” she teases.
A group of teenagers passes by, showing off their speed and stamina. They don’t recognize Leo because they’re too young, or maybe because his yellow ski hat and oversize glasses hide his most recognizable features. But then a group of college coeds in ASU gear catches up to them just as Leo slinks behind a tree to pee. One of them spots Penny, and she screams, “OMG! Penny Shay!” She’s youthful and dewy in head-to-toe Lululemon. “You’re even prettier in person!”
The four girls hover around as Penny takes a backward glance at Leo, who holds a single finger up to his lips.
“You can’t hike Profile alone!” another one shouts. This one has kinky curls and enormous blue eyes. “Come with us!”
Penny smiles. “I’m good. My friend’s on a bathroom break.”
They gaze behind her, unimpressed.
“Penny,” begins the one in head-to-toe Lululemon, adopting her first name as though they’re lifelong friends. “Thank God you moved on from that prick, Leo. What an asshole.”
And once they get started, they don’t stop.
“I’ll never see another movie of his again,” says Vanessa, introducing herself and offering her hand.
“I don’t think he’s making any more movies. I think he’s been blackballed.” This comes from the girl dressed in sweatpants and a white tank top that shows her nipples thrusting against the thin fabric.
Penny catches Leo hiding behind the tree listening in. He must hate this.
“What about Claire Leonardo?” Nipples asks. “She should be ashamed of herself.”
“You can’t blame Claire,” Vanessa says. “Leo’s a grown man. He was the married one.”
“He didn’t deserve you, Penny,” Lulu says.
Nothing about the conversation feels good. They don’t know Leo. Or her. They don’t know about Ellie and the grief that swallowed them whole. How water had filled their lungs and drowned them too. She wishes they hadn’t agreed to the vague public statement, but Leo’s publicist insisted, “You don’t pander to gossip.” But if Leo had come out with the truth, then she wouldn’t be standing here defenseless on this mountain.
“His loss,” Lulu adds.
Then they ask if they can pose for a selfie, and she relents—that Penny, always the pleaser. They stand together, their lithe bodies crammed next to hers, and one of them laughs. “All together: ‘Fuck off, Leo Shay.’”
Penny fake smiles, and it’s weirdly unsatisfying—their outrage at Leo. She feels Leo’s eyes on her. And when she hears the crackling of leaves and sees his shadowy figure approaching, she braces for a showdown.
The girls, moments before cackling with energy and insults, go mute when they spot Leo removing his hat and propping his sunglasses on top of his messy hair. A light film of sweat covers his cheeks and neck, and Leo’s no dummy. He knows exactly how to shift the narrative, make people—women—speechless. Leo, with his annoying good looks, is even more handsome when he’s “mussed” up. If you typed mussed hair in Google, Leo Shay would appear first in the search results. He’s the Jen Aniston of man glam. This isn’t lost on Penny, who just ran her fingers through that hair.
“Leo Fucking Shay,” Lulu announces. “Should’ve known you’d be lurking around, ashamed to show your face.”
Leo flashes his high-voltage smile. “And who do I have the pleasure of meeting?”
Leo’s upset. This won’t end well.
“Come on, Tracey,” says Nipples, the quiet one. “Let’s get out of here.” The poor girl can’t keep her eyes off Leo. Another one holds up her phone.
Leo manages to avoid Nipples’s nipples. “Hello, Tracey,” he says, offering her his hand, and she wastes less than zero seconds before taking it into hers. And her smile. It’s cloyingly sweet and immediately gets under Penny’s skin.
But then this Tracey moves in and points. “What the hell’s wrong with you, Leo Shay? You had the world by the balls! Look at this woman ... Now, granted, Claire Leonardo is beautiful too, but she’s no Penny. Your wife. The mum to your kids.”
Leo crosses his arms close to his chest and listens, innocently giving Miss Tracey his famous starry-eyed gaze.
“You are everything that’s wrong with men today. You’re the reason marriage has become a hopeless ideal. And you broke the trust. Look at us.” She gestures to her pack of friends, staring in disbelief. “You and Penny ... you were everything we wanted. Everything we dreamed about as little girls. And not just because you’re Leo Fucking Shay. We idolized you two. We watched you hold doors for Penny. Piggyback your daughter through the Oscars. You were macho, but you were sensitive and sexy and unflinchingly loyal. You made us believe that happily ever after just might exist.”
Penny thinks this Tracey might begin to cry.
“I love Penny,” Leo says softly, not nearly as loud and insistent as Tracey. “I still love Penny.”
Penny breathes in his words as a pulse of lightning illuminates the sky, a telling sign that they should end this madness and turn back.
“If you loved her, you wouldn’t have embarrassed her publicly. That’s the problem with you stars, with your egos and entitlement. You think relationships are disposable. Then you sideswipe her with a divorce—”
Penny interrupts. “I think I may have been the one to file.”
She smiles at Penny, this Tracey. “You know what I mean. Tomato. To-mah-to.”
“No, actually, I don’t know what you mean. I had a say in this. It wasn’t only Leo.”
“You wouldn’t have had to file had he not let that other head of his do the thinking.”
She’s wrong. They’re all wrong. It’s taken her some time, and maybe she’s been unfairly stubborn, avoiding the bigger issues, but she knows Leo didn’t cheat. Leo didn’t lie. But why are they arguing with this woman? “Leo,” she says, “let’s go.”
Tracey raises her voice. “If you love her, Leo, you need to prove it.”
Penny waves a hand in the air. “This is ridiculous.”
Leo’s losing patience. She sees it in his eyes.
“I’m not engaging in this lunacy,” Penny says, louder than she should. She grabs Leo’s hand, and that’s all the girls need to start snapping with their phones. Tomorrow’s headlines will blare, “Are They or Aren’t They?” And “Is the IT Couple Back Together?”
They form a human blockade, preventing Leo and Penny from passing.
“Look at you, Leo. Pathetic.” Then they shift to Penny. “It’s abusive to stay in a relationship like this, Penny. Didn’t your mother ever teach you about self-respect?”
This is the point when Leo loses self-control, dropping Penny’s hand.
“Don’t you dare talk about Penny like that.”
“There he is. Our little action hero. Come on, Leo, show us what you got.”
“I’m really getting tired of this, Tracey.”
“Come on, Leo,” Penny says. “Let’s go.”
Then Leo turns back to Tracey. “You don’t know me. You don’t know Penny. You think you know us because we’re on magazine covers, or you saw me on some screen, and you thought I was talking to you. I wasn’t. I wasn’t talking to you, and you can’t just come here—”
“Actually, I can come here. This is a state park.”
Penny tugs on Leo’s arm, but something in him snaps.
“Tracey, you want to know what happened? You’re so self-important you think you know everything. You don’t. Here’s something for your little TikTok show—”
“Leo! Enough!”
But Leo can’t stop. “You can insult me all you want, but Penny’s off-limits. Do you get that? My wife ...” He gazes at her, and Penny can’t let him do this. She can’t let him shoulder the blame because it’s hers too.
“Leo, please don’t.”
But he’s too far gone. “I hope you never experience what we went through. Long before that day. Long before you thought you saw me cheating. The two of us ... I am not a cheater!”
For fuck’s sake, what is he doing?
“We lost someone we loved ... she was just a child ... and man, it’s messed everything up. Is that what you want to hear? You want to know how we screwed up, that there was an accident? A mistake we’ll live with for the rest of our lives? You want to know how it tore us apart, tore up our family?
“But you ...” He motions toward the girls. “You saw what you wanted to see. Claire. Me. Because for some reason, you’re so damaged you can’t imagine anyone else being happy ... because you don’t know how to trust and have probably never been loved the way I love Penny. You just created your own story ... like you always do.”
“Guess that’s the price you pay for being Leo Shay,” Tracey says.
“I’ll pay that price, but my wife, my children, and the people who didn’t ask for this are off-limits. You need to back the fuck off.”
Leo turns to Penny. All the pain and hurt there in his two-tone eyes.
“You have no idea what you’ve just done,” she says.
“I won’t let them disrespect you.”
She breaks free and starts heading down the mountain. The rain has descended, pebble-size splotches slapping the ground, slapping her face.
She doesn’t know how much time passes before she hears his voice: “Penny, wait.” The desperation in his tone stops her, the wind scattering leaves in the air. When he gets close, she searches his eyes for answers, wondering how the hell they’ll manage this. How long until the press finds Alara and Buckley.
“You can’t say those things to strangers, Leo—”
The realization hits him, and he hides his face with both hands.
The girls aren’t far behind. Rain coats their hair, and Tracey’s phone is perched in the air recording everything.
“You sure got them to back off.”
The forest is dark and stormy, and they move as quickly as they can until they lose the girls. “What were you thinking? You just gave them more to talk about. We made a promise. This will wreck Alara and Buckley.”
“I’m giving them the truth, Pen.”
As another loud boom cracks through the sky, she stomps along the slick, muddied ground. It’s the fallout that scares her. What he’s just done courses through her veins and sends her down the mountain at an alarming speed. The last thing she hears is Leo behind her shouting, “Penny!”