Chapter 39
Penelope
CeCe was easily one of the nicest people I’d ever met in my life. A couple days after returning from Jalisco, she and I took
seats next to each other at the pottery wheels in front of floor-to-ceiling windows that offered a view of the West Side.
CeCe sat in front of a messy slab of clay as she attempted to throw a new piece. I took one that I’d already thrown, and the
clay had dried. Today, I planned to put some details on it.
“Thank you for inviting me along again.” CeCe sat up straight on the bench and focused keenly on her work. The mound of clay
was slightly higher and turned a bit more like a bowl.
Ever since getting back from Singapore, I’d been coming to the Augustus Club more often to work on a project. I usually came
alone, but after inviting the girls a few weeks ago, I realized how much I’d probably missed out on not inviting them sooner.
“Thank you for coming.” I pressed the pedal of my pottery wheel tentatively. The light streaming in from the windows we sat
in front of cast a shadow that moved slowly with the turning wheel. “It’s been nice to have company.”
I worked on more details, taking a looped texture tool and making a few delicate lines.
Since Sloan was busy with wedding details and Selena and Henry were in LA visiting her mother, CeCe and I came here together.
We began our work. She told me about helping plan the Central Park Conservancy Gala next week, one we’d all attend.
“I heard about the painting,” CeCe said over the subtle hum of the pottery wheel a few minutes later.
My heart skipped. I stopped my work to glance up at her, but she remained focused, pushing her thumbs into the center of the
clay to begin shaping it.
She’d probably heard from Sloan, since I had it hung in my office after the weeklong showing ended, and Sloan smiled with
so much withheld excitement that she looked exactly like her mother did on the patio that day that flipped our entire world
upside down.
“Yes, it was sweet.” I could feel my entire face heat up.
The whole lot of them—the girls: Sloan, Selena, and CeCe—all took their turns to quietly nudge the subject since we were back
from Singapore. Sloan, who acted like the mother of a teenage daughter desperately trying to be “the cool mom,” was terrible
at pretending she didn’t have a vested interest. She was my first friend here and things working out with Xander meant she’d
be my sister.
Guilt twinged my heart for a moment.
Whether the guilt was misplaced or not, it didn’t matter. I had a sister. And I missed her. Ignored her for years in deference
to being here.
“It’s nice. To see him like this,” CeCe stated as her hands worked their way up the short bowl, pulling the clay with them.
Bringing the edges higher. “It’s been a while.”
Another twinge.
I let the pottery wheel stop and decided to work on details that didn’t require my full attention now that I was distracted.
“A while?”
“Well, yeah.” CeCe’s cheeks lifted up in a wide smile as she pulled the bowl into standing higher; it was the first time she’d been able to make something that tall and stable since coming here with me. She watched it carefully, so focused it seemed she didn’t realize where this conversation was going. “Romantically, anyway, he hasn’t been like this since—”
She stopped herself and her hand slipped. The side of her bowl flopped onto itself.
“Reina?” I finished for her. She didn’t say anything, she didn’t look up, so I went on. “What happened between them?”
I had to know. Xander didn’t talk about her, obviously that would be a little weird.
It wasn’t jealousy, or I told myself it wasn’t. But it was wanting to know why something bad happened. Like knowing the cause might placate the fear that it would happen to you.
To rationalize that you’d never be in that situation.
“They were young.” CeCe shrugged; her eyes scattered all over the pottery wheel. She blew a few puffs of air upward to the
strands of her blond bangs that fell in her face, since her hands were still covered in clay. “Who stays with the person they
met in college anyway?”
I meant what I said to him in Singapore. I wanted to explore this thing we had between us, but I wasn’t sure where it would
go. At the time, I wasn’t sure where I wanted it to go.
But now I was.
Ever since that day with the painting, it felt like everything was telling me that this wasn’t just real, but it was also...
It felt like it was meant to be.
But the intrusive part of my mind reminded me that while I hadn’t known this deep and all-consuming feeling before, Xander
might have. And I just needed to know why it hadn’t worked then.
“Is that all? Or is it a secret?” I mumbled to myself, a little resentful that I didn’t know him as well as all the others even though he’d never once tried to keep something from me.
He told me about Reina, not what broke them up, but I didn’t ask either.
“It’s not.” CeCe stopped her wheel and turned to me. “We just... I dunno. The rule is if it isn’t your story, you don’t
tell it.”
I knew what she meant, like Xander’s vague mention of something that happened to CeCe in Paris. When CeCe was ready to share
whatever happened there with me, she would.
The whole group had a way of looking out for each other. Sometimes keeping secrets between them only for the sake of the person
they were meant to safeguard. In this case I suspected it was my husband’s heart that required protection.
“Reina’s a journalist,” CeCe explained. “She got a job to be an international correspondent for a little while. A little while
turned into the foreseeable future.”
I nodded. “So, she left.”
“Yeah.”
“And Xander stayed.”
Because why would he leave? He had such deep roots here. Who could possibly compete with the gaggle of best friends, the deeply
loving—albeit meddling—family.
“Yeah,” CeCe repeated.
“And he sort of—” I stopped myself.
Xander told me what happened after. Falling apart around a broken heart, something he seemingly protected himself from over
the time I’d known him. Until now...
“But that’s the past,” CeCe added brightly.
She looked back at her haphazardly fixed bowl, smiled, and slowly used the peel to pull it off the base and I did the same.
“And if there’s one thing I know”—she went on as we both stood and walked to the sinks to wash our hands—“It’s that the past is best when it’s left there.”
She dried her hands and offered me the towel.
“Trust me,” she added, and adjusted her headband to let down her golden hair. “It was a long time ago. A lot has changed.”
A lot had changed. Between the painting, all the items he tried to check off my list, the way he showed me a side of himself he hid
from others. It all told me that this was real.
I nodded, feeling a heaviness fill my lungs despite the bright realization.
It should have made me float on air, but instead I focused on Reina. The striking similarity between the situations was impossible
to ignore, as much as I wished I could.
We made our way to the end of the studio when she stopped and looked down at a large tarp covering a project with my name
written on it.
“What’s this one?” CeCe asked.
“Oh nothing.” It was something I’d been working on since my things were delivered from the Hamptons. I wasn’t sure why I was
working on it, but I couldn’t help myself. “Long story.”
In the last few weeks, I’d become very comfortable asking for what I wanted, thanks to Xander. I’d realized that I wanted
two things. I suspected they might be in direct conflict, but now I knew what they were.
And the dread of having to face that made me wish I never knew.