26. Chapter Twenty-Six
Penelope
Theo’s in the passenger seat before the bus has finished emptying, bag in the back, saying something about the game that I’m not hearing as I pull out of the lot.
“—so we’re down two and Kovac just stands there,” Theo’s saying. “Best hands on the team, no hockey IQ. None.”
“Mm,” I say, but I can’t shake the feeling.
It comes up low under my sternum, a pressure that makes my heart hiccup.
I breathe around it as Theo continues to talk.
But my vision is replaying what just happened in the lot, coming off the bus.
I shouldn’t have looked up. I don’t know why I did.
I spotted him nearly right away. His overgrown blonde hair, and the eyes that I know are as blue as the ocean.
He had a bag on his shoulder, that stillness he has, and when our eyes caught and held, across the whole distance, it felt like a crack in my system.
Theo says something and laughs.
This was the plan. I reached for the one reliable off-switch I have — texted him, arranged it, drove out here at eleven at night to collect it.
Theo is nothing. Theo has always been nothing, and nothing is the whole point of him.
Nothing is exactly what I wanted, a warm body, and no questions.
I just wanted a few hours where I don’t have to be anyone or feel anything at all. I don’t want it anymore.
Somewhere on the last block, it stops being possible, the way the pencil stopped being possible in August, my hand hovering over the paper every morning and not coming down. A thing I could always do that I suddenly can’t.
“Actually,” I say, and I hear myself say it, “I’ve got the firm at eight, I completely forgot. Let me drop you home.”
Theo stops talking and looks at me, “Really?”
I nod.
“Okay, all good.”
That’s it. He doesn’t ask if it’s him, doesn’t push, doesn’t care, because caring was never part of the arrangement, so I drive him to his dorm on the other side of campus.
He leans over, and I turn my face, so it lands on my cheek.
He says text me and gets out. The door shuts, and I watch him walk up to his building without once looking back.
And then I’m alone, and the crack breaks. One second I’m sitting with my hands on the wheel, and the next my hand won’t close. The whole of it comes up my throat at once, and I make a sound in the empty car I have never heard myself make.
My hands are shaking on the wheel. I take them off, and they keep shaking.
There’s heat coming up my face, and my breath has gone wrong, short and high and out of my control.
I press the back of my wrist hard against my mouth to stop the sound, and the sound comes anyway.
I realize I’m crying, that I have been for a few seconds without knowing it started, that my face is wet, and I didn’t feel it happen.
I don’t do this. I am not a person who does this.
I have spent my whole life making sure I never have a feeling this size.
I keep everything at a distance, and here it is, all of it, at a curb at midnight.
It currently has its hands around my throat, and I can’t breathe through it.
Because it isn’t just one thing. If it were one thing, I could solve it easily.
It’s the pencil that won’t move and the drafting table I sit at every morning like a stranger.
It’s a room in Lisbon where I stood at a window my aunt told me to admire and felt nothing –– nothing, a girl who has felt buildings in her body since she was eleven, standing in front of a beautiful thing, feeling nothing at all.
It’s Theo’s door shutting a minute ago. It’s my mother’s voice.
It’s whatever the summer took out of me that I’ve been lying to myself that I’d get back. I’m not getting it back.
And it’s his face in that lot. Under all of it, the thing that pulled the pin is his face finding mine across a parking lot, and something in me lighting up that has been dark since May, an ache turning over in a place I had convinced myself was empty, the exact place I have spent six months arranging my life to keep empty.
I cry as I pull out of the lot. Both hands shaking on the steering wheel. When I get home, I sit in the parked car, defeated. I stare out at the darkness of the night.
I don’t remember getting the phone into my hand. My thumb has a mind of its own, moving over his name on my contact list and hitting FaceTime before I can comprehend what I’m doing. The little ring starts.
What am I doing?
He’s not going to answer. He saw Theo Marsh get into my car.
As soon as I click the red button, his face pops up for a quarter of a second.
My heart slams heavily against my chest, so I clutch the phone.
My shoulders shake, and I’m mortified because I was so sure, so completely sure, that he wouldn’t pick up.
He saw Theo get in, and he looked at me like he knew.
I shouldn’t be doing this. This is so fucked up of me.
My own heart is tangled in whatever it’s doing.
And now I regret ending the call. He was right there.
He was willing to talk to me, and I couldn’t––
My phone starts to ring.
He’s calling back.
He’s actually calling, and I have to answer, oh God, I have to answer it. I wipe my face fast with the flat of my hand. I let it ring once more because I don’t trust my voice yet. Then I answer.
His face is near the phone. I glance at his full lips and then his blue eyes hidden behind long lashes.
Neither of us says anything.
He’s in the dark. His face is lit by the screen. I’m at a curb with my makeup wrecked, and I know he can see it, but I don’t turn the phone away. We just look at each other for a minute, and there’s something set in his face, something behind his eyes I can’t place and don’t try to.
“Did you mean to call me?” he asks, cautiously.
“I don’t know,” I croak out.
He looks at me. I look at him. And my lungs cinch, not letting any air in. I’m not thinking clearly. I haven’t felt like myself in months, and I know it, so the words on the tip of my tongue should stay exactly where they are.
And then they fall out in a single breath. “Do you want to come over?”
His face doesn’t change much. His eyes do something.
“Give me two hours,” he says, not letting the question hang.
And then I remember. “Ivory’s home.” I press the wrist of my free hand against my eyes. “She’s — she’ll be up. I can’t.”
He’s quiet for a moment.
“Come here, then,” he says.
I go still. “The guys,” I say.
“Park down the street. I’ll come out and get you.”
“Percy.” My heart’s doing something I can’t get under control. “Are you sure?”
He nods, and whatever’s in his face goes soft at the edges.
“Two hours,” he says. “Text me when you’re close.”
The call ends, and the air rushes back into my lungs all at once, and there’s a lightness in my chest I haven’t felt since spring.