Chapter 34 Penny
Chapter 34
Penny
Penny’s nauseated from the curvy roads leading to the hike. She’s listening to Simone explain where they are, pointing out landmarks. “On your left is the Grandfather Winery, which we might be able to make a pit stop at on our way back. They’ve got food trucks and a gorgeous stream running through the property. Live music.” They travel a few more miles on a straight, flat road, and only then can Penny begin to collect her thoughts.
The news of the Rose-Walls’ divorce hit her hard. Divorce always does. She’s been up close and personal with it and knows how it can upend lives. She hates that she and Leo are headed in that direction. Hates that their children will have to face any challenges.
She glances out the window, Leo in the seat in front of her. The brown strands of his hair nip the back of his smooth neck, the soft skin, but she doesn’t touch it. Last night, they came close to spending the night in his room. She’d followed him upstairs, and they’d opened the window and passed a joint back and forth. It reminded her of when they were teenagers, hanging out in his bedroom, having sex. So much sex. And it was that memory that tugged at her. That sensual pull that’s ever present when Leo is near.
“Have you heard from Alara?”
She shook her head.
“You?” she asked. “Buckley?”
“Nothing. I think they need more time.”
She inhaled, holding her breath before releasing. “There’s no amount of time that will ever heal them.”
The sobering reality sat between them, imagining the worst possible thing to happen to a family. She allowed the drug to flood her bloodstream, unable to process the magnitude of the loss.
“We should have been able to mourn together. We should have mourned together.” He looked at her when he said this. “We could’ve been there for each other.”
She went over that day in her head. She went over every decision, every choice. She thought about all the pieces that had to fit together to eventually blow them apart. She looked at him. And she hated what they’d become. Because she loved this. Being alone with him, just the two of them, the life they had away from the big screen.
“What was that about tonight?” She didn’t have to elaborate.
“I told you I don’t like seeing you with someone else.”
“Ouch.” She puffed, propping herself atop the window seat, dangling the joint out the open window. “As if I’d ever be interested in that jackass. Sienna’s so cool. I don’t get it.” She inhaled, let out a cough. “Guess you never know the secret formula.”
“Nothing’s ever as it seems.” The phrase came out simultaneously, and they laughed, stripping away some of the tension.
“I guess I see these couples,” he began, “and I wonder, if we could go back, would we do it differently? Knowing what we know now.” He sat beside her, and she thought about how easy it would be to give in.
“You feel it too, don’t you?”
He latched on to her eyes with his. The brown and the blue held her in their stare.
Then he reached over to touch her face, his hands sliding along her cheeks. She leaned into him, smelling a mixture of weed, Leo’s musky scent, and a whiff of the North Carolina mountains. She could never give his scent a suitable name, but it always reeled her in. She wouldn’t lie. She had dreamed about this moment. Night after night, she had imagined Leo being hers again, and in the dream, there was no tragedy. How easy it would be to just move in closer and taste his lips, feel his mouth.
But the fear was too big. She couldn’t lose herself again.
Or worse, let him in and lose him again.
“I should go,” she had said.
“Please stay.”
“I can’t, Leo.”
“But you want to.”
“I do, but there’s a million reasons I can’t.”
He dropped his head, and she kissed his hair, breathing every inch of him in.
She snaps back to the present as Simone points to the eyesore that is Sugar Mountain. The mountain itself is bold and lush, but the ten-story condominium at the top sits like a concrete figurine on a wedding cake, poking at the sky and marring the view.
They pass through the quaint town of Banner Elk, families crossing the two-lane street to get to the café or walking their dogs to the Barkery. The nausea returns as they make the turn to Beech Mountain. The switchbacks and narrow roads that hug the mountain are too close to the edge of the ridge for Penny’s comfort.
This part of the area is new to her. Back when she and Leo were married at the inn, they rarely left the property. Not then, and not the few years that followed. They had sunk inside the cushiony rooms and peaceful forest and wrapped themselves in cottony white linens, rarely coming up for air. The reprieve gave them time to reconnect and recharge away from Hollywood’s glare. But then the kids came along, and their schedules revolved around their togetherness, and their visits to the inn came to an end.
A faint hint of music filters through the van’s overhead speakers, and she lightly sweeps her fingers across his skin as she hears the first few notes of Cyndi Lauper and Sarah McLachlan singing “Time After Time.” It reminds her of those afternoons on Key Biscayne when the original song hummed through the breeze. Things were simple back then.
They had waded in the flat, turquoise water as the song danced around, and he promised her that their lives would never change. He kissed her lips, and she tasted the salt; his mouth opened wider to let her in. Now, with her hand grazing his neck, he doesn’t turn around, but his hand finds hers, and if Penny weren’t sick from the steep incline, she might have smiled.
Beside her, she catches Cassidy staring at them. Her expression is hard to read, a mixture of longing and approval. She’s wearing a large floppy hat, and her lips are pressed together tightly. Henry’s next to her, having left Lucy, at her insistence, to convalesce. Whether it’s due to her broken ankle or her need to recover from their uncorked story, Lucy wants to be alone. Adam squawks into his cell phone. Rosalie’s absent. The efforts to get her to join them failed. She prefers to be in the kitchen.
Penny thinks Cassidy has a right to be disappointed. It would bother Penny if her kids chose to be anywhere but with her. But she can’t entirely blame Rosalie for opting out. Penny’s ears pop as they ascend another switchback. The road flattens, and they pass a minigolf course and pizzeria. Her stomach grumbles. The song comes to an end, and they pass Fred’s General Store and descend the backside of the mountain. The nausea kicks in again.
“You okay?” Cassidy asks. “You look a little green.”
“I’m fine,” she mumbles. “How much longer, Simone?”
And before the words come out of Simone’s mouth, the tires screech, and the car veers off the road.