Chapter 27 All Aboard
All Aboard
Bridget and I lie side by side in my new, queen-size bed wearing the matching pink pajama sets I bought especially for girls’ night. We have mashed-up avocado masks covering our faces, and thin cucumber slices rest on our eyelids.
When the timer rings on Bridget’s phone, we pull off the cucumbers and sit up. “Next time,” I say, “we’re eating a salad instead of wearing it. Deal?”
She snorts. “You’ve definitely chilled out lately, but you still suck at relaxing.”
“I can relax without smelling like a salad.”
“Maybe. But your skin won’t be as glowy.”
“Isn’t that what the body glitter’s for?”
Bridget laughs. After we wash our faces, we return to my bed, gossip magazines and a tub full of frosted animal crackers spread out on the striped duvet between us.
I moved into Mrs. Baker’s carriage house last week, and I’ve already started to make it feel like my own.
First, I painted the wall behind my bed.
Some might argue that “duck green” is a neutral shade, but considering I’ve never moved past the greige spectrum of paint colors, my new accent wall may as well be highlighter-yellow.
Look out: A lava lamp might be next.
Bridget stops flipping through People to beam at her phone, where one text bubble after another keeps popping up. I nudge her knee with mine. “How’s Eeeethan?” I tease.
Not that I’m one to talk. I keep glancing at my phone, too. Penn and I text nonstop, our conversation never quite ending. We message about our days—what we’re watching, what we’re listening to—and key issues, like Does cream of chicken count as meat soup? Or is it not meat-forward enough?
And I can tell he’s triple-guessing all his messages, too. While we were mapping out plans for the PennPals launch party, he texted like a sweet, frantic mess, sending six consecutive messages within three minutes.
Are you free tomorrow?
I can come to you if it’s easier.
Or you’re welcome to come to my place.
But you don’t have to stay over, or anything.
Unless you want to.
I have a couch.
I plan to tease him about “I have a couch” for years.
Meanwhile, in person, we’re moving slowly, carefully, like on some unspoken level we both know we’re walking a thin tightrope. It’s the same reason I haven’t told Bridget how I feel about Penn yet. But it’s becoming much harder to hide the truth from her.
“It’s so good with him,” Bridget gushes.
“Ethan just gets me. Not because we’re similar or anything, because in a lot of ways, we’re not.
He’s quieter, and introverted, and he didn’t know who Kathleen Kelly was until last week.
” She laughs. “He literally thought she was my friend, and not, arguably, the most iconic Meg Ryan character, because of how casually I kept bringing her up in conversation. But still, I swear we speak the same language. The one that matters, anyway. He’s intentional with me, you know?
I can’t believe how right it feels already. ”
“Bridget!” I feel my smile matching hers, giddy and unavoidable, her excitement contagious. I take her hands like we’re eleven years old, crushing on boys at recess, and almost squeal the words: “I’m so happy for you.”
It’s an understatement. Bridget’s always dreamt of living out the sweeping, cinematic kind of love story I was too afraid to want for myself.
Big feelings have never scared her. If anything, they’ve built her.
At home, she had so much love poured into her—too much, she sometimes jokes—and it’s like she had to spread it around to keep herself from overflowing.
She carried all that affection into every room with her, warm and palpable, and I’ve been so grateful to receive so much of it over the years.
I can’t wait for her to get the kind of love she wants right back.
Bridget scrunches up her nose, entirely unable to play it cool. Then she pulls a face, her cheeks rosy. “I’m sorry. I know. You probably think I sound ridiculous.”
“No.” I shake my head, feeling my eyes well up. “You don’t sound ridiculous. You sound like you’re letting yourself fall in love. For real. And I…I get it.”
She laughs. “Yeah, right. It took you, like, six months and three spreadsheets to decide you could commit to Connor.”
“True,” I admit. “But I technically fell in love with Penn overnight.”
She freezes. Her jaw drops. “You what?”
I nod, wrestling with an unstoppable grin. My turn to play it zero percent cool.
“Ohmygod,” Bridget exclaims. She slams her hands on the bed, accidentally spilling frosted crackers everywhere. “I could tell something was different when you told me about the game. You couldn’t even say his name, but…” Her eyes widen as she grips my knee, rattling me. “You love him?”
I cover my impossibly big smile with both hands. “So much.”
We both laugh, two blushing idiots. Bridget pours us more wine and screeches at all the right times while I give her the MASH relationship rundown. When I reach the end, she says, “Let me get this straight. In the seventh-grade matrix, or whatever, you both fell in love.”
“Right.”
“But here, you and Penn are still just friends. Who like to flirt.”
“Right,” I say again. She pauses, her eyes fixed on the wall behind me as if she’s still wrestling with the facts. “It’s a lot to take in,” I acknowledge. “So, just…let it marinate.”
Two seconds later, she eyes me, head tipped to one side, and asks, “What was Penn like?”
I shrug. “Same as here.”
“In bed, I mean.”
“Bridget.”
Her smirk is wicked. “What? It’s a fair question.” She dips her chin. “Clearly, it couldn’t have been that good, or you’d have already made your way to bone town.”
“Uh, you’ve skipped a few stops between friendville and bone town.”
She points at me. “That’s your problem. That’s where you’re stuck right now, isn’t it? Somewhere in the middle. You need to make a choice. Go one way or the other.”
“I know,” I say, sighing. “I’ve just been torn on whether I should get off this train for a while and try to get on a new track, or—”
“Oh, you should absolutely get off.” Bridget winks and pulls an imaginary train whistle.
“Helpful,” I deadpan.
“Sorry,” she says. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around what’s holding you back here. Are you afraid he won’t feel the same?”
“I’m afraid of all of it,” I admit, letting out a low, nervous laugh.
“It was one thing to fall for Penn inside a game, but this is real life, and I’m stuck with whatever happens, good or bad.
So are you. And Ryan. If we give it a shot, it’ll shake up everything.
I don’t want to rock the boat and throw everyone overboard. ”
“Ruby.” Bridget clicks her tongue. “This isn’t about me, or Ryan, or our feelings.”
My throat tightens. “Everything is about you two to me.”
“I know. But not this.” She gives me a small, warm smile, and we may as well be lying side by side in our sleeping bags like we used to, our stuffed teddy bears tucked to our chests. “All we want is for you to do what makes you happy. And obviously, Penn does.”
Bridget’s got a point. After all, isn’t that what I’ve been preaching for her and Ryan to do, too? To follow their hearts and be true to themselves?
“I don’t know what to say to him,” I tell her. “I can’t just, like, come out with it.”
“Well, how did you make everything happen in the game?”
My eyes close as I recall the palpable humiliation. “I put on teen movie soundtracks and made out with him on a beanbag chair.”
Bridget cackles. “Well, hold the music, but keep the playbook.” She raises a finger.
“Actually, you know what? Let’s stop comparing life to whatever happened in your little MASH galaxy, okay?
Love isn’t a game. And all that fear about what Penn might think, or how the rest of us might react—that’s just your excuse to keep stalling the inevitable. ”
I inhale sharply at that word: inevitable.
“But what if I lose Penn for good?”
Bridget lifts a shoulder. “Yeah. What if?”
I get what she’s saying. There’s nothing she or anyone else could say to make me feel safe, or sure. It’s impossible. All I can do is try.
Maybe that’s where I went wrong in the game.
Maybe it was never win or lose, and all I ever needed—all I was there to get—was a participation trophy.
Because I can’t plan out every move, and I can’t fix the part of Penn that tells him he’s loved only when he’s needed, or the part of me that sees everything that could possibly go wrong.
But I can love those parts in both of us, and take care of them, and give Penn the chance to do the same.
Bridget sits back, smirking. “I can see the wheels turning.” She does that mortifying train-horn motion again. “All aboard!”
“No, B,” I warn. “Don’t do it.”
“Next stop,” she calls out, ignoring me. “Bone town!” As I hang my head, she touches my arm and adds, “By the way—have I ever told you about The Move?”