34. Chapter Thirty-Four
Penelope
I’m in a downward dog, and Ivory is in a child’s pose when she looks at me and says, “So Drew did the thing again where he says he’s not ready for a label and then gets weird if I talk to literally any other person, which is—” she waves the glass “—that’s not how it works, Drew, you don’t get the jealousy without the title, those come as a set—”
“They do come as a set.”
“Thank you. And then last night he tells Walker that I’m ‘basically his girlfriend,’ so now I’m basically his girlfriend according to everyone except him.
” She sighs, and she sounds a little sad and a little pleased at once.
“He’s not a bad person. He’s just Drew. He means about sixty percent of what he says, and you have to guess which sixty. ”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It’s a little exhausting.” She smiles into the glass. “It’s fun, though. It’s fun right now. I know it’s not — I know I’m not going to marry Drew Faulkner.” She nudges me with her foot. “Speaking of things that aren’t going to happen. Theo keeps coming up. Drew won’t let it die.”
And there’s my opening. I take it, because I decided this before she said his name, this morning, in the shower, clean and clear and for no reason but that I finally know myself again. I don’t know what summer did to me, but I’m finally feeling like me.
“It’s done,” I say. “The Theo thing. It’s over. I’m not doing it anymore.”
Ivory sits up. “Since when?”
“A while.” The yoga class on the TV comes to an end, so I sit. “I let it hang around because it was easy and it didn’t ask anything of me, but I don’t want easy-and-nothing anymore. I’m done with it. He can hear it from me or hear it from Drew. I don’t care, but it’s over.”
She studies me. “Drew’s going to be crushed. He had a whole plan—”
“Drew’s plan was never my problem.”
“No.” A slow grin. “No, it wasn’t.” She grabs her water and clinks it against my shoulder.
“Good. Honestly. You’ve been too good for Theo Marsh since the day you met him.
I’ve been waiting for you to notice.” She leans back against the couch.
“Whoever’s got you drawing again, it’s not him, and I’m glad you finally cut the dead weight.
” She shrugs. “If you’re happy, I’m happy. ”
My mother calls at eleven, while I’m getting ready for the firm.
“I ran into Diane Whitmore yesterday,” she says, no hello. “She asked how you were. I had to tell her you’re at some little practice over a hardware store.”
“It’s a good firm, Mom.”
“It’s eight people, Penelope. Diane’s daughter is at Gensler. Chicago. The thing you had, the thing you walked away from—” a breath, precise, measured out. “I’m not going to relitigate it. I just find it hard to smile at Diane Whitmore and explain that my daughter chose a storefront.”
“It’s the work I want to do.”
“You always say that.” Like it’s a symptom. “The work you want to do. As though wanting were a career.” She pauses. “You were on a track that meant something. I hope this — phase — is worth what it cost you. Call your father. He worries.”
She hangs up first as always. I stand in my room with the phone going dark in my hand, and I let it sit on me for a second, the weight of it — the storefront, the phase, the thing I walked away from — and then I put it down, and I finish getting dressed, because she’s wrong, and the drawings on my table are good.
I know it even when she makes me feel like I don’t.
The firm is good that afternoon. Renata drops the Halvorsen revisions on my desk without a word and I get into them. The hours go easily.
It’s the next evening, on the couch, Ivory’s scrolling, half-telling me about her day, and she gets to Drew, because it always comes back to Drew.
“—oh, and apparently practice was insane yesterday, Drew is still talking about it. Some drama with the goalies or whatever.” She’s not even looking up.
“The backup guy — the quiet one, nobody really knows him — he like, ran Theo into the boards? In practice? Out of nowhere. Coach lost his whole mind, threw the guy off the ice. Drew said it was the weirdest thing, everybody’s confused, the kid never does anything, and then just—” she makes a little crashing gesture with one hand “—snapped. On Theo. For no reason.” She goes back to her phone.
“Anyway, Theo’s fine, he’s just being dramatic about it—”
I hold my face, the way I’ve held it a hundred times in a house where a wrong face cost you. Ivory keeps talking and I stop hearing her, because the pieces are moving.
The backup goalie. The quiet one nobody knows.
Percy.
Percy ran Theo into the boards. Percy, who is all stillness, who kept his face flat through eighteen months of everything, who says four words, who has never in the time I’ve known him done a single thing he didn’t decide to do first — cracked. In front of his whole team. At Theo.
Ivory keeps talking, but I’m too busy in my own head, putting the pieces together. The two-word reply. The way he looked away the second I smiled at him. It hadn’t worried me before –– I thought it was Percy just being Percy –– but it isn’t that. He thinks I’m with Theo.
“—right? Like who even does that,” Ivory’s saying.
“Insane,” I manage.
Ivory starts talking about how Gianna should go to a Hawthorne House party just to spite her brother, and I’m not hearing any of it because I’m already reaching for my phone.
I need to see him. Not talk over text, not a call where I lose my nerve halfway through. I need to be in a room with him and say it to his face. I pick up my phone.
Me: I need to see you tonight. Please.
I hit send before I can talk myself out of it, and then I sit there with my thumb still on the screen and my heart racing, because I have never once in my life sent a message like that to anyone, and now it’s out there, and there’s nothing to do but wait and see if he answers.