Chapter 21 Penny
Chapter 21
Penny
This thing with Lucy happened fast. One minute they’re careening down the windy path, and the next she’s fallen and crying out for help. Penny can’t help but notice how the two couples look after each other, and it reminds her of when she and Leo spent every waking moment with their former best friends, Alara and Buckley.
God, she misses them. But she can’t think about that now.
Simone encourages them to stay put and enjoy the afternoon. “ Tante Renée is meeting us at the hospital. One of us will come back for you.” But the mood has shifted. Sienna won’t leave her best friend, and Cassidy’s carrying Lucy’s backpack, edging closer to their bubble. Penny knows she and Leo should go back. She knows the rules of hiking: the group stays together, but Simone is already handing her their lunches, and between her moans, Lucy breathlessly tells them there’s no reason for their day to be spoiled. Penny can’t help but think this is some sort of ploy, as though the gang is pushing Leo and her together.
And maybe it’s the sound of the rippling water, or the sparkle that catches the sunlight and turns the forest a vibrant green, but she remembers how she once loved being here. And she once loved being here with Leo. She’s caught between the group already crossing the narrow bridge and the tug of Leo wandering toward the stream. Against her better judgment, she places one hesitant foot in front of the other and makes her way downstream. And it is decided.
The sounds behind her fade away, and she follows Leo along the water’s edge, keeping a safe, reasonable distance. She studies the shape of his shoulders, his confident gait. Leo. Is it really him, or is it his alter ego, movie star Leo? Because that’s what she wondered when the picture of him and Claire Leonardo popped up on her phone. She felt duped.
In Penny and Leo’s world, every move had to be calculated and meticulously thought out. You couldn’t risk lunch with a platonic friend unless you wanted to end up splattered across Page Six with some shocking accusation. The press could make up bold, splashy lies with headlines, but despite the cliché, pictures don’t lie. Leo had been on set, at that point the distance between them more than physical miles, and she had just dropped the kids off at school when her mother texted the photo of her husband and Claire holding hands under the table at Marie et Cie, their favorite coffee shop.
To say her world came crashing down that day is an understatement. There’s no phrase powerful enough for that gut-punch, the visceral ache that spread through her bloodstream. Penny felt the heat rise in her chest, the nausea closing in. She would always remember that moment, her sweet Cody turning around before she entered the school building, smiling and giving her a wave, her cheeks dimpled, the French braid falling down her shoulder. She’d smiled back, though this would mark the moment their lives irrevocably changed. It had all been leading to this, the sad patch of grass they couldn’t skip over.
A cold sweat paints her skin, and she stops. I can’t do this. If she turns back now, she can catch up with the others, so she spins around, her heart thumping loudly, and she tries to escape before Leo sees her. She can’t do this. She can’t get stuck inside the memories and forget the pain. But he’s fast. She hears him approach behind her, and then she feels his hands on her shoulders. Firm. Too firm.
“Don’t go,” he says, out of breath.
His hands move down her arms. Close. Closer than he deserves to be. Closer than she should allow.
“Stay.” He says it again, reminding her they’re alone in the place that holds their history. She slowly turns to face him. His eyes are their brilliant blue and brown, and she loves that about them—their differences, the contrast, how he can be so many things at once, though she hates it too, because it’s the same reason she lost him.
His hands, soft and smooth, slide to her fingers, and she doesn’t have to look to see the scar on his left thumb from when Buckley’s German shepherd bit him when they were seventeen. She memorized his hands long ago.
“Come with me.”
He grabs hold of her hand and leads her down the path. With each step, warnings blare, but her legs mechanically follow. This is what happens when they’re cut off from “breaking news” and Entertainment Weekly . Once, their relationship was entirely theirs, a private arena where no one got through. She tells herself this is merely a walk along their favorite trail, but the charge radiating from their palms says otherwise.
He stops to face her as they reach the boulder. And this is no ordinary boulder. This is the boulder where he took her hand in his, got down on one knee, and asked her that question people ask when they’re in love.
He’s staring, and she can’t turn away. She sees all the hurt and pain and regret. She knows. It mirrors her own.
“What are you doing, Leo?”
He sits on the boulder, and she resists following but gives up and takes a seat near the edge. The stream hurries by, and she imagines sticking her hand in to make it stop. To make him stop. She doesn’t want to dredge up the past. She doesn’t want to remember all the events that led to this. Ellie died. Does he think reminding her of the promises they made will change that? Love does wild things to a person, and theirs made them careless. Now their goddaughter is dead, and Alara and Buckley are gone from their life too.
“Maybe if we talked about it last summer, we could’ve worked through it. Maybe you would’ve stayed—”
“And what?” She can’t help herself. “You wouldn’t have fucked Claire Leonardo?”
This is what she does when the subject of Ellie comes up. Seething rage falls from her tongue.
“You know I didn’t fuck Claire, but if that makes it easier for you ... to blame me ...” He pauses to let that soak in, but all she feels is the spray of water from the flume. Much like that day in Palm Springs. Six tan kids splashing in a shimmery pool.
The public had no idea why Penny picked up the kids and moved back home. But in Hollywood there’s always speculation. So when the picture of Leo and Claire surfaced months later, the media shaped and molded their story to fit a trashy magazine’s narrative.
“I got the divorce papers,” he finally says. “Is this really what you want?”
Their love once burned big and bright, their passion deeply sensual. But how could she stay in a marriage when his touch reminded her of that day? When his lips and hands are tied to regret? When something marks a marriage so deeply, it’s hard to find your way back. A silence takes over, and the crack widens.
She inhales, stuffing Ellie back into a dark crevice in her head and finding her strength. “I filed. Of course it’s what I want.”
He stares down at the platinum band on his finger, refusing her eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
“I’m not the liar, Leo.”
He ducks from a bee floating by, but it could’ve been her words.
When the picture landed on her phone, the relationship was already broken. He tried explaining, but she had seen enough. Nothing he could say would change her mind. And he tried. He’d said it was Ellie’s birthday, that he and Claire had gone off the lot for lunch. She had no idea the restaurant was Penny and Leo’s place. There’d been some production delays; the director was “unimpressed” with Leo’s performance. He and Claire had always been able to work through any on-set tension, but this time they couldn’t.
“I told her about Ellie.”
“You crossed a line.”
“I was broken, Penny,” he says. “She held my hand to comfort me. And it did comfort me. For a minute. But Claire misread, and she leaned in for a kiss.” He stops. “I turned away. The paparazzi were fast.”
She remembers how she laughed when he tried to explain at the time, her emotions numb and hardened. “Your own Me Too moment.”
Leo doesn’t find it funny. “She assumed we were having problems ...”
Spite spills from her mouth. “No one could ever refuse you, Leo. Do you want a prize?”
Claire had called her to explain, but the damage was done. They’d been friendly, as friendly as any wife could be with the sexy actress who spends more waking hours with her husband, mostly in compromising positions. Her statement was weak, the apology flimsy. Claire’s gift was acting. How could anyone believe her? Penny had seen the way Leo looked at Claire. The two got caught, and now they were playing cleanup.
“Come on, Leo.” Penny snaps back to reality. “Now you’re free to do all the things a family held you back from.”
He looks as though she’s beaten him with a stick, and it should make her feel better, but it doesn’t. “I love my family. And the only woman I’ve ever wanted was you.”
It sure doesn’t feel that way.
He drops his head. “I think we abandoned each other.” He unlaces his shoes and takes off his shirt. “But I didn’t cross any line.” Edging closer to the tumbling water, he slips a foot in.
“I didn’t need to come here to rehash all this, Leo. I’ve lived it every day.”
“Then why did you come?”
She’s still asking herself that question. The girls come to mind—a plausible excuse—and by taking this leap, she’ll be a hero in their eyes, but there’s more. There always is. Maybe somewhere deep inside, somewhere she’s kept caged and guarded, is the desire to go back to the beginning. That simple place before fame and red carpets.
“I’m not sure, Leo.”
“I think you do.”
She feels his eyes travel up and down her skin.
“Come in the water.”
“I’m not going in the water.”
“Come in the water.”
And before she knows what’s happening, he’s dragging her by the ankles, ripping her shoes and socks off, carrying her into the falls. Their bodies are slick and wet, and she feels her nipples against his bare chest. The rush of the water is cold, but instead of chilling her, she feels a warm longing.
“Please don’t, Leo.” She backs away, steadying herself on the slippery rocks lining the riverbed.
“Don’t what?” His eyes bore into hers. “Pretend that I’m not feeling everything you’re feeling? You think it was easy to come here knowing what I’m up against? To go down the memory lane of this horror show, to see myself in the mirror of your eyes knowing how badly I hurt you? That maybe you wouldn’t even show up?” He stops to take a breath. “I love you. I love you fucking madly. Whole heart, full stop. Finally, every love song makes perfect sense.”
“Are you fucking kidding me, Leo? You think I didn’t see you on that sappy holiday special with whatever her name is using that exact same line?”
He splashes her when he says this: “I knew you watched.”
“Your daughter watched. I was hovering nearby.”
“You let her watch? Don’t you think that’s confusing for her?”
“Not as confusing as seeing you and Claire plastered all over the news.”
He ignores the swipe. “But you watched.”
She splashes him back. “All of America has used that line. Almost worse than that hello line Tom Cruise used on Renée Zellweger.”
“ You had me at frog dissection is much better.” He bows his head. “But it’s true. It’s how I feel.”
“Why’d you have to go and ruin everything?”
“I didn’t ruin anything. I’m not lying. I would never lie to you. Ask yourself why you’re fighting it, why it’s easier for you to believe I cheated. I know we agreed we wouldn’t speak to the press, but I will if I have to. I’m not with Claire, and that kiss ... it wasn’t even a kiss.”
She swallows hard, running her fingers through the water. “There’s someone else, Leo.”
This gets his attention. “I know when you’re lying. If there were someone else, you wouldn’t be here.”
A gaggle of screaming kids comes tumbling down the bank, and soon they’re jumping into the narrow pool. Their parents aren’t far behind when one of them spots Leo. Their whispers bounce off the trees. Is that who I think it is? Oh my God, Leo Shay! This is the part of their relationship that has often given Penny an out, an excuse to duck down and leave Leo with his fans while she slips away.
“Don’t go,” he says.
“That’s the thing, Leo, I’m already gone.”