Chapter 32
I pick at the scarred wooden armrest of my chair and glance over at Margie. There are, surprisingly, tears in her light-brown eyes as she watches the heart-eyed couple at the front of the room. I guess being in love does wild things to you.
“By the power vested in me by the State of New York…”
I flinch when the duo standing in front of the Justice of the Peace, a mature couple flanked by what appears to be their children from other marriages, launch themselves at each other, kissing with a jubilance so potent I could roast marshmallows on it.
I rub at my chest, at the bite of a smoldering ember hidden somewhere in the blackened crater that was my heart.
Margie leans forward in her chair, clapping along with the rest of the people waiting their turn in the yellow-walled City Clerk’s Office.
Avery’s handsome profile comes into view in the seat next to Margie’s.
He pushes his glasses up his nose, an ear-splitting grin perma-etched across his face as he releases Anna’s hand to clap for the couple.
I’ve had to watch two of these depressing unions so far.
“Avery Vaughn and Anna Craig,” someone intones.
We all stand and move to the front of the room, with Anna leading the charge.
She races to the Justice’s dais and turns to us, beaming.
Her mahogany hair is pulled back in her trademark tight bun, perfectly setting off her delicate features.
Avery joins her, taking her hands in his.
Watching them, something inside me pitches.
Margie cracked a joke when we got here, saying that Avery got his hair cut twice for today.
He looks as neat as always—not a hair out of place, not ever—but he’s lost the hot-librarian look we always tease him about.
At least, he has to me. I tilt my head, analyzing him.
I’ve seen Avery with girlfriends in the past, but I’ve never seen this look in his forest-green eyes before.
That’s what it is. There’s a fierceness, an intensity there, that would’ve had me sighing if I hadn’t just had my heart broken.
They look perfect together. Tall as Anna is, she still just comes to Avery’s shoulders. He bends his head to whisper something in her ear, and her cheeks color.
Margie and I stand as their witnesses. Since there aren’t a ton of couples waiting behind them, the officiant lets Avery and Anna say a few words to one another.
“Anna, I’m not impulsive. I’m not.” Avery shakes his head emphatically. “I research everything. I deliberate. But for the first time in my life, I’m going with my gut because I know something… I just know it.”
My eyes well, watching him, one of my dearest friends in the world.
“Avery, I love that you love me so much,” Anna says, lifting his hand and lacing her fingers through his.
A fleeting frown, a match of my own, passes over Margie’s face.
Anna looks to their joined hands and says, “I don’t have to fight for your time, or chase you, or twist myself into a pretzel to make myself fit into your life. You’re…a grown-up, and kind, and I’m so happy you’re mine.”
Then they speak the words that bind them together, and the waterworks begin in earnest for me. Margie is crying, too, so I don’t have to explain why I’m a sniveling mess. Anna hugs me, shoving her makeshift bouquet at me. I gaze down at those flowers before handing them off to Margie.
We head to La’s for a celebratory drink, and Anna squeals, delighted by my story about refusing to give away the time or place they were getting married to Jack.
I leave out the part where I spent hours in her brother’s arms, convinced I’d maybe found something my mother always insisted didn’t exist.
“He’s the family’s keeper. He got a job at a gas station near our house when he was sixteen after my dad started his chemo, and he would give my parents his paycheck every week.
He ratted me out for throwing a party in high school, even though his friends were invited!
Rule-follower was doing the laundry when everyone showed up.
He kicked them out. It was like he felt guilty having fun or whatever, and so he’d lecture me when I just wanted to live.
And I already told you he worked two jobs in college, even though he had a full ride, and he gave every dime to my parents, right?
Which was nice and all, but… He just has to fix everything for everyone.
Martyr complex. It’s so fucking basic,” she says.
“It’s not good to try and control—” I start to say.
“It’s not even about control. He’s like a jigsaw junkie. Thinks he’s got to pick up everyone’s pieces and help put them back together, whether they want him there or not.”
A spark of loyalty flares. That sounds like caring to me.
Love. And I don’t know all of their history, but Anna definitely came to Jack with her pieces in hand, begging for his help to put them together again.
“But I mean, you went to him when you broke up…” I trail off.
It occurs to me too late that I probably shouldn’t mention her breakup on her wedding day.
A queer look—a cross between anger and anguish—flits across her face, but it’s there and gone again in a blink. I rush to change the subject, drawing Margie over to shoulder the burden of conversation.
Not long after, Avery and Anna say their goodbyes and rush off to do very newlywed things.
I find myself fighting off rising panic as I watch them leave.
Jack called me once, when I was in my Lyft, causing the air to squeeze from my lungs when “Demon” showed up on my screen.
I promptly blocked him, his remembered words bringing a rush of anger.
I think of that call now. The thought of going back to my apartment, of maybe seeing him, or not seeing him, has me freaking out.
La and Margie are whispering to each other.
I turn to them, standing silently until they stop canoodling and notice me.
Then, with minimal prompting: “I slept with Jack, and I thought it was going to work out, but how could it when he thinks I’m an Anna?
So I broke up with him.” A surprise sob catches me off guard. La wraps her arms around me.
“Hey. You’re going to be okay. I’m going to feed you,” she says in a reassuringly firm way. Margie offers me her guest room. She and La bustle me back to the apartment.
I pour my heart out, with La running her hand up and down my back in comfort—she’s surprisingly like a pack of Mentos, her hard shell shielding a super-soft and sympathetic minty-fresh heart. They flank me on the sofa, sentinels against heartbreak, letting me cry it all out for ages.
Later, Margie pets my hair and feeds me popcorn. La prepares a dinner that looks incredible and that I don’t remember tasting.
A commercial comes on for a legal show, and it snaps me out of my misery enough to remember that I haven’t asked poor Margie about work.
“The show’s still in limbo,” she says, waving away my concern, “but a meeting with the showrunner is coming any day now.”
I nod wearily and shuffle to the guest room, sniffling and clutching a fistful of tissues.
The next morning, a rainy, miserable Monday, I find myself sitting in my cubicle, wearing Margie’s borrowed clothes, staring at my swollen eyes on a Zoom video call. The call ends, and I pull off my headset, glancing up at Rochelle when she stops at my desk with a smile.
“Penny, did you see the request that came in on Friday? Did you send me your feedback on the lead scoring model—”
“Sorry. No. I’ll get that to you. What’s happening with my raise, by the way?” I drop the last bit with all the subtlety of an Acme anvil crushing a cartoon coyote.
Rochelle’s smile is the same one she gives me every time I ask, and I think I read in it everything I missed all the other times. It’s uncomfortable, pacifying… It suddenly occurs to me that I’m not sure she ever asked for a raise for me at all.
“I’m going to keep trying—”
I start packing up my stuff, throwing odds and ends into my handbag.
“Penny…” Rochelle laughs nervously. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, I quit.” I smile at her, feeling liberated.
That light-in-the-heart feeling I only really get when I’m around Jack.
At the thought of him, the light dims, but I grit my teeth and press on.
I don’t have an apartment anymore anyway, without the raise.
I can crash at Margie’s in that tiny extra room for a while until I find a new apartment and a new gig.
I’m just…over this. All of this. I don’t want chicken slop. I want my damn chicken sandwich.
Rochelle’s shock is gratifying. As is the desperation on her face. “No. Wait. Right there. I’m going to talk to HR right now and…”
“How about I leave, and you talk to HR after I’m gone, and instead of me waiting around for you to see what you can do, you find out what you can do and just tell me?
It’s been three years and a lot of promises, Roch.
I’ve always really admired you and enjoyed working with you, but I’m done.
I know my worth, and I deserve a raise. If you can’t give it to me, I need to find somebody who will. ”
I stand, and Rochelle stares after me. In the elevator, I shake off the fear and the inner doubting voice that sounds an awful lot like my mom’s. And for once? I just do what makes me fucking happy.
I walk out into the rain and look around, exulting in my newfound freedom but not at all sure where I want to go. The rain plasters my shirt to me as I wander a few blocks, peering into storefronts. A thought occurs, and I hail a cab.
“Hi. Short trip,” I tell the cabbie, shivering in the air-conditioned space. “Can you take me to Rizzoli? It’s the bookstore on Broadway. Between Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth.”
That night, I feel less fragile about everything.
Turns out that demanding your worth for the first time in your life will do that to you.
And spending the afternoon wandering a bookshop, eating your feelings, and getting a pedicure helps, too.
There isn’t a repeat of yesterday’s outpouring of misery, but seeing Margie and La so deeply in love, on the heels of Avery and Anna’s wedding, has me feeling like I’m cradling a glass heart in my chest. One that’s taken way too many hits over the years, too many of them self-inflicted.
I miss Jack’s crisp, piney smell, his dumb humor, his sharp retorts.
I miss ripping down a wall with him, building one back up, getting him over to my side of it.
I miss feeling him holding me. I miss him.
Everything about him. The thought of rebuilding the hole he’s left inside me leaves me exhausted.
That night, when I’m tucked up in Margie’s guest room, reading my newly purchased replacement copy of The Pirate Duke’s Revenge—my first copy forgotten in my dash out of the apartment—and fighting the urge to check my phone every few seconds, a text finally comes through. But it’s from Avery.
“Ugh… Margie?” I yell.
Margie appears at the threshold, her hair frazzled, her eyes wider than I’ve ever seen them. For once, she’s not trying to be the actor and is allowing pure concern and desperation to wash over her face. “Get dressed. We need to get over there.”