17. Penny #3
He drives me to school. My playlist on the speakers. Coffee in the cup holder he made for me. An apple and a breakfast sandwich in a bag because mom taught him that you don’t let people you love leave the without food.
We pull into the lot. He parks. We get out. And here is where the test happens.
Iz is by the entrance. Leaning against the wall. Waiting for me—the way he waits every morning now, the loyalty of a boy who shows up regardless of what happened the night before.
I look at X. He looks at me. The eye contact of two people who have just agreed to rebuild a friendship and are now about to test it against reality.
I walk to Iz. Take his face in my hands. Kiss him. Not performative. Not aimed at Xander. Just… real. The kiss of a girl who has feelings for this boy and is not going to pretend she doesn’t just because the other boy is watching.
Behind me, I brace for the explosion. The storming off. The fist through a locker. The Xander response.
It doesn’t come.
I look over my shoulder. X is leaning against his car.
Arms crossed. And he’s… smiling. Not the predator grin.
Not the performance. A small, pained, real smile.
The smile of a boy who just watched the girl he loves kiss another man and is choosing—choosing—to take it in stride because he knows he has to earn what he lost and earning means enduring the consequences of his own destruction.
He nods at me. Barely. The nod that says: “I see it. It hurts. But I’m not running.”
Then he walks into school. Alone. Head up.
That’s different. That’s new. The old Xander would have ripped Iz off me and slammed him into the wall. This Xander watched and smiled and walked away clean. That’s not nothing. That’s everything.
Iz looks at me. “You okay? That was… unexpected. The smiling.”
“Yeah. I think he’s actually changing.”
Iz doesn’t respond to that. I can feel the complicated emotion in his silence—the discomfort of a boy who has been the alternative and is watching the original reclaim its position. We walk inside. His arm around me. The comfortable weight. The safe weight.
By the lockers, the boys converge. Kaiden first. Then Danny. Ryan. They form the formation—the Elite Five arrangement, minus one, plus me. Xander is at his locker down the hall. Close enough to see. Far enough to give space.
What I notice is this: Kaiden walks past X and touches his shoulder. A squeeze. Brief. Danny nods at him. Ryan makes a gesture I can’t decipher from here but it makes X laugh—a real laugh, short, surprised.
Then they come to me. And the energy is… different. Not tense. Not the walking-on-eggshells energy of boys trying not to pick sides. Something warmer. Something that looks like relief.
“What’s going on?” I look at Kaiden. At Danny. At their faces, which are wearing the particular expression of boys who know something I don’t. “Why is everyone being… nice to Xander?”
Kaiden looks at me. Considers. Then: “X texted the group chat last night. He was struggling. Wanted to use. But he called Darla instead. And then he texted us to hold him accountable.”
“Oh. He showed me that last night.”
“Yeah.” Danny. Quiet. The reverence of a boy who understands how hard that sentence was for Xander Anderson to type. “First time ever. In writing. To all of us. He said ‘I’m struggling and I’m asking for help.’ Do you know how big that is? That’s like… that’s like Xander admitting he’s human.”
“What triggered it?” I ask. The question automatic. The clinical language of a girl who has been in Darla’s program long enough to know that cravings don’t arrive without invitations.
The boys exchange looks. The particular eye contact of people who know the answer and are deciding whether to share it.
Kaiden: “You should ask him.”
I find X at his locker. Alone. He sees me coming. Doesn’t brace. Doesn’t mask. Just… waits.
“The guys told me about the group chat. About calling Darla.”
“Yeah.”
“What triggered it, X?”
He looks at me. The open face. The honest one. “You. Kissing Iz. In the kitchen. In front of everybody. In front of your parents and my… and the dads.”
The sentence lands in my chest. Not like a punch—like a stone dropped in still water. The ripples spreading outward, touching everything.
I did that. I kissed Iz in front of Xander deliberately, to hurt him, to make him feel the whiplash I’ve been feeling for months. And it triggered a craving so severe he almost called Reece. My performance of pain almost caused his relapse.
We are mirrors. The things he does to me, I do right back. The cruelty we exchange is the same cruelty wearing different clothes. He parades Bella to hurt me. I kiss Iz to hurt him. And neither of us stops to count the cost until the bill arrives.
“I’m sorry.” The words come out small. “I didn’t—I didn’t think about what it would—”
“It’s okay.” And he means it. I can hear that he means it.
“I’m not telling you to make you feel bad.
I’m telling you because Darla says we name our triggers out loud so they lose their power.
You’re my trigger, Penny. And I’m yours.
And we’re going to be living across the hall from each other while we both try to get sober, which means we have to learn to exist in each other’s space without detonating. ”
I nod. My eyes wet. The sting of a girl who is realizing that her recovery and his recovery are tangled together like the threads of a bracelet, and pulling one strand affects the other.
He squeezes my arm. Brief. The first touch today. Then he walks to class. I stand at his locker. Processing. The weight of knowing that your pain causes someone else’s pain and their pain causes yours and the loop is the thing that has to break for either of you to heal.
Iz appears beside me. “Hey. You okay?”
“No.”
He takes my hand. Walks me to the bench by the south staircase. We sit.
“Talk to me.”
“I’m a terrible person, Iz. I’m a terrible friend and a terrible human being.
I kissed you in front of him to hurt him and it almost made him relapse.
And I slept with him the same night you were in my room.
And I’m using you to fill a gap that only he can fill and you deserve better than that and I’m so sorry—”
“Penny.” His hand on my face. Gentle. The Iz touch. “Stop. Breathe.”
I breathe. He waits.
“I need to tell you something,” he says. “X and I fought. Physically. In the locker room.”
“What?”
“Punches. Blood. The whole thing. I told him I’m not backing down. Not until you tell me to. Because you get to choose, Penny. Not him. Not me. You.” He pauses. “And he took that. He didn’t agree with it, but he took it. Which is… different. For X.”
“Iz, I don’t deserve either of you. I’m so far behind on my recovery—X is texting accountability messages and calling Darla and I’m still lying to the group about how I’m doing.
He called me out in session today. In front of everybody.
And he was right. I’ve been performing ‘okay’ while everything inside me is rotting. ”
“Then stop performing. For them. For yourself. For me.” His thumb on my cheekbone. “You don’t have to be okay right now, Penny. You just have to be honest. That’s the whole point of the program. That’s the whole point of us.”
“What even are we, Iz?”
He smiles. The Iz smile—warm, wide, even through the bruise on his cheekbone from X’s fist. “We’re two people who care about each other. The label doesn’t matter right now. What matters is: are you safe? Are you sober? Are you breathing?”
“Yes. Yes. Yes.”
“Then we’re fine.” He kisses my forehead. “The rest we figure out as we go.”
The bell rings. We stand. He takes my hand. We walk to class.
I am not okay. I am behind on my recovery and in love with two boys and triggering one by kissing the other and performing wellness in a room full of addicts who see through me. I am a mess. I am a disaster.
But I am sober. I am honest. And for the first time, the people around me are honest too. Maybe that’s the start. Not the middle. Not the end. Just the start.
One day at a time. One truth at a time. One honest sentence in a hallway, surrounded by people who refuse to let me hide.