Chapter 5 Penny
Penny
NOW
These boots were not made for walking, not at this pace, but I can’t slow down now. I can’t put distance between me and that house fast enough.
Is this a nightmare?
I pinch my forearm then slap a finger to my neck, checking my pulse.
Nope. I’m wide awake. So it’s a living nightmare.
My Pilates instructor’s voice pops into my head: Inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth. It’s supposed to help.
It doesn’t.
He moved in with his dog…like they are playing house. Does Fia think he is here to save the day? What the hell is he even doing back?
Last I heard, he was in Southern California, probably pretending his past didn’t exist.
I brush the dirt streaks off my black leather leggings from his dog’s paws—Tank—and stop to check myself out in a parked car’s window. The window distorts my heart-shaped face, and even though I just got my thick eyebrows tamed, they look crazy. So I look as crazy as I feel right now.
I pull my vibrating phone from my pocket, seeing a missed call from Audrey. Straightening myself, I step to the side so a couple can pass me on the sidewalk and call her back.
“Hey, sorry,” she says over the clang of metal mixing bowls and blenders. “Quick question for you.”
Audrey is my best friend in the entire world. We’ve been inseparable since freshman orientation at UNC. Which also means she’ll be able to hear distress in my voice—even a hundred miles away.
However, there’s a lot Audrey doesn’t know about my life before college. No one does, and I prefer it that way. When I left this town, I got to be someone new. I didn’t have to be the girl whose best friend and brother were in prison, whose parents left her—none of that.
“Yeah, what’s up?” I chew my lip, glancing back to make sure Fia and Jesse aren’t following me down the sidewalk. They aren’t. It’s just me, speed-walking down an oak-tree lined street like a madwoman.
“Do you want to grab dinner Friday before we check into the spa? There’s a new Mediterranean place opening north of downtown, and I can make a reservation.”
My stomach drops. Damn it. The spa day we planned months ago is at the end of this week, on the opposite end of the state in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was supposed to be a pre-Christmas getaway, an indulgent treat for both of us after a year of really hard work.
I stomp my heeled boot into the concrete sidewalk and toss my head back toward the gray sky. “You’re going to hate me,” I groan into the phone.
The whisking noise stops. “Uh-oh…what’s going on, Pen?”
I exhale sharply and squeeze my eyelids shut. “I can’t go this weekend.” I brace for her disappointment. I hate letting people down.
“What? Is everything okay?” I picture her adjusting her perfect chocolate-brown hair.
“I’ve been in Wilmington for an hour, and everything’s already fucked.” I laugh—sharp and humorless—and stop at a crosswalk, debating which way to walk. Back isn’t an option. I’ll walk all the way to the ocean if I have to.
“Is Fia okay?” Her voice is gentle now, full of concern. I wish I could teleport to her front porch, where she’d hand me coffee, hug me, and let me rant.
“Other than the fact that she is six months pregnant...yeah, she seems great and totally aloof to her reality.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yep.”
I’m silent for a moment, running a hand through my frazzled ponytail, finally knowing which way I’m heading.
“What else is going on?” she asks carefully.
“Just…ghosts from my past.” I’m not sure how much to divulge. I’ve kept that door sealed for years, but Audrey waits. She knows me—I always crack eventually, and she’s the only person I trust right now.
“Okay, so Fia has a new roommate.”
“Oh?”
“And it’s my high school ex. Jesse.”
“You’re kidding me.”
I shake my head, still in disbelief that those words left my mouth.
Audrey knows about Jesse in the generic high school ex-boyfriend kind of way. I kept it light, like it was just teenage drama, because that’s all I could handle. She doesn’t know Jesse is stitched into the fabric of my past in a way no one else understands.
It’s a secret I was ready to take to the grave.
But him walking through that back door changes everything.
“Oh no, Jesse’s not the father, is he?” she whispers.
I gag, lurching forward. “Oh god no! No. No. He’s like a big brother to Fia. She trusts him for some stupid reason, and he needed a place to live. It’s karma, huh?”
“Okay… So, how did it feel when you saw him?”
My eyebrows knit together, and I scoff, watching cars fly past.
“I wanted to choke his tattooed neck,” I respond bluntly.
“Wait, I’m confused. I thought you were into that?”
I laugh, despite myself. “Audrey, what the hell! He’s my ex…whatever… It was so long ago. I don’t trust his intentions. I don’t know why he’s back.”
After all this time. Why did it take him ten years?
“And he doesn’t even look like himself anymore,” I add for good measure.
“So, he’s ugly now? Because I know you, and you’re not exactly…not shallow when it comes to who you date,” Audrey snaps back.
I roll my eyes. She’s not wrong; I don’t do relationships. I casually date, and if it’s going to be casual, they need to be tens.
“No, he isn’t ugly.” If she saw the fullness of his lips or him standing at his full 6’4” height, she wouldn’t even joke. He’s painfully good looking. “But you’re getting off topic.”
“Well, I’ve never seen a picture of him. Give me his last name so I can stalk him on social media.”
I puff out a laugh because the Jesse I knew would never have social media. He was a punk kid who didn’t conform, and the idea would probably repulse him. Though I can’t be totally sure. I’ve never searched for him, even when I was drunk. I knew it would be too painful.
It’s one Pandora’s box no amount of tequila could get me to pry open.
“No last name will be given.” I sigh, my breath puffing in the cold. “He’s tall. Dark hair, green eyes. Tattoos from his knuckles to his jawline…I’m assuming. Still wears all black. Probably spends too much time lifting. He’s a douche, okay?”
“Mmhmm,” she replies smugly.
“I’m serious. Nothing about this is fun for me.”
“Okay, okay. But...he sounds hot? I mean, you don’t date, so what’s the harm in warming up to him?”
The idea has me clenching my phone, and I look back over my shoulder, even though I know he’s not following me.
“I think you’re forgetting that my delusional little sister is having a baby in a few months, the house needs probably fifty grand in repairs, and my ex-boyfriend just moved into the spare room. It’s complicated. And you know I don’t do complicated.”
The bell chimes in her bakeshop, but she keeps talking to me.
“I know, I know. I’m just trying to ease the tension. This isn’t like you.”
I nod, expelling a shaky breath into the cold air. “I’m never myself when I’m in Wilmington.”
I know Audrey, of all people, will understand the pain of going back to the place you grew up in, the way it surrounds you like a suffocating cloak.
Returning here reminds me of all the beautiful things I miss most, like my Nan, the ocean, and my sister. But it also strips me of all the stability I’ve worked for.
She is right, I’m not being me.
I’m a positive person, annoyingly so. Always searching for silver linings, always ready with a pep talk. I schedule my fun so I never miss it. Always in control, that’s how I stay safe.
That’s how I’ve built a successful life.
I stepped onto that campus ten years ago with a shattered heart, but I made a choice to let it build me rather than bury me.
So I decided to become sunshine.
Even when it was hard. Even when I wanted to crawl back home and disappear.
I stayed in control.
Another bell chimes over the door of Audrey’s bakery. “I’m so sorry, babe—someone just came to pick up their cake,” Audrey says. “Text me, okay? You’re going to be fine. You’re Penelope Hanson. Literal boss bitch.”
“I love you. Thanks, Aud.”
“Love you, too. And seriously—send me a pic of your tattooed ex.”
“Never,” I say, and we hang up.
The last thing on my mind, the last thing I would ever do, is let Jesse back into my life.
Fia may think she knows what’s best, but I’ve got two weeks to convince her otherwise and fix this mess.
Audrey is right, I’m Penny Hanson. Literal boss bitch.
Five minutes later, and roughly a half mile from the house, I stop at the edge of Magnolia Street Park. The swings are no longer the jagged sun-faded rubber I remember, and the mulch is replaced with an expensive looking rubber flooring.
I gaze across the park toward the magnolia trees lining the back fence. My chest eases just a fraction when I spot it.
The bench.
It’s still there, worn and weathered.
A mom pushes her toddler on a swing nearby, but she doesn’t look up as I cross the brittle, winter-dead grass. I keep my eyes on the bench like it might disappear if I blink.
When I reach it, I sit slowly, cautiously, not wanting to draw attention to myself.
The moment I settle, a weight presses into my chest and floods down my legs, anchoring me to the old wood slats like the bench knows me.
I drag my fingertip along the board beneath me, tracing until I find it.
J + P
Jesse and Penny…it’s etched deep.
Deep enough to outlast ten years.
Deep enough to outlast us.