Chapter 20 Penny
Penny
Busting through my apartment door, I’m already talking to Talia. “Oh my God, you are not gonna believe what happened at the post office!”
Expecting her to be ready to hear my crazy story, I’m completely unprepared for hers.
“He says he’s here to apologize.” Talia holds her hands up, though I’m not sure if it’s in surrender or to stop me from attacking the man sitting on our couch, who also looks concerned I might launch myself at him, and not in a good way.
Griffin.
I cannot believe the audacity this guy possesses. Showing up after what he did? Fuck that, and fuck him. Not literally, obviously, but in the fuck-off way. In my mind, I flip middle finger after middle finger at him. Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!
I don’t speak to him, but to Talia instead. “Well, you can tell him to apologize to someone who wants to hear it, because it’s not me.”
I drop my bag on my desk chair, glaring death at the son of a bitch, who’s sitting with his elbows on his spread knees, eyes locked on me.
At the post office, I felt like prey and those scary guys were predators.
But I was wrong. How Griffin is looking at me now?
That’s predatory. His brown eyes are dark, intensely focused, and I suspect that if I went for the door, he’d beat me there because he’s watching my every move that closely.
“I’ll leave you two to it,” Talia says uncertainly. And then, traitorous bitch that she is, she picks up her purse, shoots me a look of sorry—or maybe it’s don’t be too loud or Mrs. Rosenthal will call the super—and vanishes out the door, abandoning me to this rapidly sinking ship.
“She did not just do that,” I say to no one in particular, because I am not talking to Griffin. Like ever again. Silent treatment? Try invisible treatment. No talking, no looking, no acknowledgment. That’s what he gets.
“I brought you ice cream. It’s in the freezer.”
I whirl on him, incredulous. “You think ice cream is gonna fix this? You must be stupid if you think I’m that easy.”
So much for the invisible treatment.
He flinches instantly at my sharp tone. But the shadow that passes over his eyes when I call him stupid sends regret through me.
I’m not mean and cruel that way. I’m not the bully.
He is, and I refuse to stoop to his level.
“I’m sorry. You’re not stupid. But ice cream isn’t going to undo what you’ve done. ”
“I know. Brody just always says . . .” He shakes his head, and pushing on his thighs, he rises from the couch. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have come.”
Curiosity piqued, I ask, “Brody says what?” Jordan Krivosky, a.k.a. Brody, is the youngest player on the Hawks, with a reputation for being in the throes of his oat-sowing days. He’s definitely not the type Griffin would typically take advice from, on anything.
Griffin slowly lifts his eyes to mine, his frown creating deep lines around his mouth.
“That he takes girls their favorite treat, whatever it is, because it’s a surefire way in.
I knew you wouldn’t want to talk to me, so I was willing to do anything.
I figured you would’ve already had coffee this morning, and I couldn’t find any Thin Mints at the three grocery stores I went to, and some lady finally took pity on me and said they don’t even sell them there, but I knew you liked the ice cream at Kitty’s Creamery, so that’s what I got in the hopes you’d at least talk to me. ”
He shrugs like it’s no big deal.
It’s so a big deal.
It’s not some huge, overly grand gesture, but it is sweet.
Especially on a game day when I know he has an entire routine to stick to, but he’s ignoring all that to go to three grocery stores on an errant cookie scavenger hunt, bring me ice cream, and, according to Talia, apologize.
So yeah, it doesn’t fix everything, but it does soften me a little.
Like the tiniest sliver of a single percent softer. “Thank you.”
Hearing the opening, Griffin rushes to add, “And I am sorry. That’s what I came to say. I’m sorry for not having the balls to tell you the truth.”
“Which is?” I arch one brow expectantly. He’s the one that said he wants to talk, so he should get to it before I change my mind.
“Oh, uh—” He pulls on the back of his neck, nearly cracking it in the process, it looks like, and his eyes drift up to the ceiling. It feels like he didn’t think he’d actually get this far into the possible conversation and isn’t sure what to say now.
Meanwhile, I’ve played out approximately eleventy-three bajillion possible conversations in my head over the last few days.
None of them went quite like this, but those scenarios did tell me one thing: Regret is pointless.
We can’t go back and unfuck each other. Even if I could, I’m not sure I would. Not that I’m telling him that.
“It’s fine, Griffin. We’ll pretend the other day never happened.
No harm, no foul. I won’t say a word to anyone, especially my brother, and we’ll just go back to family dinners, hangouts with Dominic, and it’ll be fine.
I don’t need to be coddled like some emotionally fragile, delicate flower.
I’m tough, I can handle that what happened was obviously unexpected by both of us, and take it as what it was . . . a one-off, casual fuck.”
“No.”
That’s it. One word. I get that silent and grunty works for some girls. I’m not one of them. I snort a humorless laugh and deadpan right back, “Yes.”
Griffin takes three steps across the room until he’s standing directly in front of me, and I have to crane my neck to look up at him.
He takes my upper arms in his hands, his touch gentle despite the pain on his face.
“You asked me if I hate you as much as I act like I do. No, the answer’s no.
And no, I don’t want to go back to acting like I do.
No, I don’t want to act like I never tasted you, like I was never inside you, like I never heard my name on your lips when you came. ”
Stay strong, Penny.
“That’s great and all, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve hurt me.
And I don’t want to pretend that a couple of weeks of being nice fixes years of you treating me like I’m either invisible or annoying.
I don’t want to act like a good fuck negates how cruel you were after being inside me, because that shit hurt.
I refuse to accept that a half-assed apology with no explanation changes everything. ”
“Goddamn it, Penny,” he spits out harshly. He releases me, spinning away to cross the room like he needs space from me. But I think what he really needs is distance from the truth. “I’m fucking trying here.”
“Try harder. What’s going on in your head? Today, last weekend, for the last five years,” I challenge. “What do you think about me? Feel about me? Want from me?”
I’m not playing games. I never was, and I’m not going to start now.
I might be a living, breathing disaster, and have enough flaws of my own to write a War and Peace–size novel, but he’s fucked up too.
And while I might be able to withstand whatever he’s got lurking in his depths, I shouldn’t have to do it without an explanation. I refuse to.
He turns back to face me, his eyes full of fire. “I love you. Is that what you want to hear? I’ve always loved you.”
I did not expect that. Not in a single one of those eleventy-three-bajillion possible scenarios did Griffin Mahoney confessing his love for me come up as an option.
Except it’s not a sweet-nothings type of admission.
It’s an accusation, like his feelings are somehow my fault.
As if I’m flying around in a diaper and wings like baby Cupid, shooting arrows at him to make him fall in love with me no matter how hard he doesn’t want to be.
News flash: I haven’t done a damn thing but live my life.
“You have a funny way of showing it,” I accuse right back.
“I know!” he roars. His eyes are jumping left and right, like he’s seeing something, but it’s damn sure not my living room’s wood flooring. Maybe the past? Or whatever inner monologue is running in his head?
As for me, my brain’s singing “Tubthumping,” à la getting knocked down, but getting up again.
This whole thing with Griffin is one more dramatic moment in an otherwise drama-filled life for me, and I’ll get through it the same way I have everything else—one breath at a time until it’s a funny story I relate during a family game of Never Have I Ever.
Dominic will be pissed when I win with a blindside of slept with my brother’s best friend.
Then, shaking his head, Griffin quietly confesses, “I don’t know how to do any of this. I’ve never loved anyone. Hell, I’ve never been loved by anyone.”
Those few words change everything. I think I might be seeing the real him for the first time, because I think that might be the most real thing he’s ever said.
All my weird thoughts stop, and the desire to angrily lash out abruptly evaporates, replaced with genuine concern.
Gently, I ask, “What do you mean you’ve never loved anyone? Never been loved by anyone?”
He scrubs his hand over his mouth like he doesn’t want to say any more, but after a few seconds in which the air in the room feels heavy with history, he lowers himself to the couch, his elbows on his spread knees and hands hanging between his legs. “What has Dominic told you?”
Not a lot, to be honest. But even if he’d told me everything there was to know about Griffin Mahoney, it wouldn’t matter. I sit down beside him, my crisscrossed legs between us so I can look at him directly. “I want to hear it from you.”