17. Penny #2
“And Xander.” Quieter now. The fury spent.
What’s left is the hurt underneath the hurt.
“The closet. His hands. How he didn’t ask.
How I didn’t say no but I didn’t say yes either and I liked parts of it and hated parts of it and the liking makes me feel sick and the hating makes me feel broken and I don’t know which version of that night is the real one.
And then loving him. And then hating him.
And then Iz—Iz who is kind and asks and goes slow and makes me feel safe—and I have feelings for him, real ones, and I have feelings for Xander, real ones, and they’re different feelings and they pull in different directions and I can’t hold both of them without splitting in half. ”
I stops. The rocking slows. The breathing evens. Not calm—emptied. The particular aftermath of a person who has purged everything and is sitting in the hollow that remains.
“I have too many feelings, Darla. There are too many of them. And they’re all happening at the same time and the only thing that ever organized them into something manageable was the pills and I can’t take the pills so I’m just—drowning.
In feelings. Every minute of every day. I don’t want to be alive anymore because being alive means feeling all of this and I’m not strong enough to feel all of this. ”
Darla is holding my hands. She hasn’t interrupted once. The discipline of a clinician who knows that the first complete telling of a trauma is sacred and must not be edited or redirected or cut short. She let me spill every shard. And now she’s holding the hands that did the spilling.
“You just did the bravest thing I’ve seen in twenty years of this work,” Darla says. Quiet. Not clinical—awed. “You named every wound. Out loud. In a hallway. That took more courage than most adults have in their entire lives, Penny.”
Xander moves. Around Darla. Toward me. He kneels. His face is wrecked—tears, red eyes, the devastation of a boy who has just heard the complete catalog of a girl’s trauma and recognized his own name in the list.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Penny.” His voice is destroyed.
Not the dark voice, not the closet voice.
The boy voice. The seven-year-old voice.
“Fuck, I’m so sorry. For all of it. For the closet.
For walking away. For every time I added weight to what you were already carrying.
I didn’t know—I didn’t know all of it. And that’s not an excuse. It’s just—fuck.”
He pulls me against him. I let him. Not because I’ve forgiven him—because my body is too emptied to resist and his arms are warm and the safety of being held by someone who is crying with you rather than for you is the one thing the pills could never replicate.
We sit on the hallway floor. Two broken kids holding each other while a doctor watches and lets the healing happen the only way it can: messily, painfully, without a script.
After a while, X stands. Extends his hand. “Let’s go home, Penny.”
I take it. He leads me out. Buckles me into his car. Drives home. No music. Just breathing.
At home, my parents meet us at the door—Mom's face white, Dad's jaw tight. They see my face. They see X’s face. They pile onto my bed—all four of us, a tangle of arms and tears and the particular intimacy of a family that is finally sharing the same pain in the same room at the same time.
I tell them. Not everything—some things are for Darla, some for Cat, some for the hallway floor. But enough. Enough that the sealed compartments crack open and the air gets in and the grief has somewhere to go besides my bloodstream.
We cry. Together. For what happened. For what could have been stopped. For what was always beyond anyone’s control.
My parents leave eventually. Kissing my forehead. Closing the door. Xander stays. Holds me through the night. Not talking. Not fixing. Just present. The thing dad taught him. The boring, ugly, two-a.m. version of love that doesn’t require a soundtrack.
I wake up to his heartbeat.
My head on his chest. His arm around me.
The particular warmth of a body that stayed all night and is still there in the morning.
I reach for the empty space instinctively—the muscle memory of a girl who has woken up alone after every night with Xander—and my hand finds his chest instead of cold sheets.
He’s awake. Looking at the ceiling. His hand absently playing with the ends of my hair.
“You’re still here.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
He looks down at me. “Because leaving after what happened last night would make me the worst person alive. And I’m trying to stop being the worst person alive.”
I sit up. Pull away. Not far—just enough to see his face without the angle of intimacy. I need to see him straight on for what I’m about to say.
“Xander. I need to be honest with you. And I need you to hear it without the mask and without the games and without the closet voice.”
He sits up. Crosses his legs. Gives me his full face. The open one. The morning-after one. The one that exists only in rooms where the door is closed and the performance is off.
“This is going to take work. Real work. Not one good night and suddenly we’re fixed.
I can’t play games anymore, X. I can’t do the back-and-forth—the alcoves one minute, Bella the next.
The midnight bedroom visits followed by empty beds in the morning.
I can’t be your dirty secret. I can’t be the girl you touch in the dark and ignore in the light.
If we’re doing this—if we’re rebuilding this—it has to be honest. All the time. Even when it’s ugly.”
He nods. Slow. Not the easy nod of a boy agreeing to get what he wants. The deliberate nod of a person absorbing conditions and weighing whether he can meet them.
“I need to get clean and sober, Xander. That’s the priority.
Not us. Not Iz. Not the drama. Me. My sobriety.
And I can’t do that if you’re playing mind games with my heart and my body.
I need stability. I need to know which version of you is going to be in that kitchen when I come down for breakfast.”
“The same version. Every day. That’s what I’m working on.” He reaches for his phone. “Letme show you something.”
He opens his texts. Shows me.
The group chat. The message he sent: I’m struggling tonight. I wanted to use. But I called Darla instead of Reece. I’m asking for help. The boys’ responses—Kaiden’s “always,” Danny’s pride, Ryan’s promise, Iz’s complicated grace.
Then the Bella text: We’re done. Stay away from me. I mean it. Her response. His block.
I stare at the screen. The evidence of a boy who is, actually, making changes. Not performing them—documenting them. Putting his vulnerability in writing where it can be seen by the people who matter.
“It helps,” I say. Handing the phone back. “It doesn’t fix everything. But it helps.”
“I know it doesn’t fix it. I’m not trying to fix it overnight. I’m trying to fix it one day at a time, like Darla says.”
I pull my knees up. The defensive geometry. The posture I use when the next sentence is going to cost me. “I need to tell you something. And I need you to not lose your shit.”
“Okay.”
“I caught feelings for Iz. Real ones. Not just the performance. I care about him, Xander. He was there when you weren’t.
He held me when you walked away. He kissed me in daylight and asked before he touched me and made me feel like a person instead of a problem.
And I’m not going to pretend that didn’t happen or that it doesn’t matter. ”
His jaw tightens. The green beast flickering behind his eyes. But he doesn’t explode. Doesn’t stand. Doesn’t do the Xander thing where emotion converts to aggression in real time.
“I know,” he says. Quiet. The particular restraint of a boy who is practicing the thing dad taught him—listening more than talking. “Iz and I had it out. He told me. We fought—actually fought. And he said he’s not backing down until you tell him to. And I… I respect that. Even though it kills me.”
We sit in the quiet. Two people who are being honest with each other for the first time in months. The quiet is not empty—it’s full. Full of the things that have been said and the things that still need saying and the weight of a relationship being rebuilt from the foundation instead of the roof.
“Your dad is helping me get into a real gym,” he says. Changing the subject. Not avoiding—shifting. Giving us both a breath. “MMA. Sanctioned fights. A circuit. An actual career path that doesn’t end in a cage in Bridgeport.”
“Xander. That’s amazing.” And I mean it. The pride of watching someone you love find a path forward that doesn’t lead to self-destruction. “You’re really good. Like—scary good. With the right training—”
“I know.” The grin. Not the predator grin. The real one. The boy-from-the-swings grin. “I’m wicked excited.”
The old word. Wicked. The Massachusetts of it. The childhood of it. The reminder that underneath all the damage, we are still two kids from the same street who grew up saying “wicked” instead of “very” and eating Goldfish crackers on swing sets.
I smile. Not a big smile. Not the fixed-everything smile. The small, careful smile of a girl who is seeing the first green shoot pushing through scorched earth and doesn’t want to celebrate too early in case the frost comes back.
“This is going to be slow, X. I can’t just jump into your arms and pretend the last few months didn’t happen. There’s too much damage. Too much hurt. I need to trust you again, and trust is the thing you broke the hardest.”
“I know. And I’m going to earn it. One day at a time.”
“So we’re… what? Friends?”
“Best friends,” he says. “The rest comes when it comes. No pressure. No timeline.”
Best friends. The word that started it all. The word from the treehouse and the bracelets and the swings. Maybe going back to the beginning is the only way to build something new.