8. Chapter Eight
Penelope
The last exam of the semester is a drawing practical.
They give us a prompt and a room. Mine is a small studio — a set of dimensions on a card, a window orientation, a ceiling height — and the whole task is to put it on paper so someone could build from it.
For two hours, I’m in the zone, drawing this small studio as perfectly as I can.
Then I go home and eat the cupcakes I baked this morning to celebrate because I know I aced it.
Ivory has one exam left and eats one anyway, perched on the counter with her heels hooked on the cabinet the way she knows I hate.
“Come abroad with me,” she says, not for the first time. “Barcelona.”
“You said Paris last week.”
“Paris, then. Imagine us in Paris.” She licks frosting off her thumb. “You have the money. You have the grades. You’re a month ahead of everything, same as me. There is no reason.”
There’s one reason, and she knows it, so I don’t say my mother out loud.
Ivory’s face goes soft in a way I don’t love. “You even engineered a way out of going home for Christmas. I noticed. Very impressive.” She sets the cupcake down. “And now you’ll sit here alone in a dead town while everyone we know clears out, and you’ll tell me you’re fine.”
“I have work.”
“You have an internship.”
“A paid one. And Lyla. And I’ll get Taylor to drive out.”
She looks at me. We both know Taylor, my best friend since we were fifteen, has never once made the drive and won’t ever.
“When I actually leave,” she says, quieter. “To live abroad. Who are you going to have?”
I don’t answer because the honest answer is a list of people who want things from me, and she’d know it. She pulls her binder out of her bag and opens it to the first page.
“Test me.”
I grab it and say, “If you get more than five of these wrong, I’m not visiting you in Paris.”
She rolls her eyes at me and answers the first question correctly.
Christmas break does not go the way I planned, because Julia put me on the December schedule without mentioning that Whitmore closes for the holidays.
I don’t know if it was a joke, but I fell for it.
I learn this at the office Christmas party, which I have shown up to in a blazer that my mother bought for me, ready to work.
Oliver finds me inside the hour. He hands me a small box with a ribbon, and I feel the room tilt a degree.
“I didn’t get you anything,” I say politely as I look down at the gift.
His eyes meet mine. “That’s alright. Open it.”
I pull at the ribbon and open the box. It’s a drawing pencil. A beautiful one, weighted, the kind I’d pick up in a shop and want and make myself put back.
“Thank you,” I say. “It’s lovely.”
“Are you busy New Year’s Eve?”
Lyla appears at my shoulder before I can answer, and her eyes drop to the pencil. “That’s a nice gift.”
“White Elephant,” Oliver says, half a second too fast.
“I didn’t know we did White Elephant this year.” Lyla’s smile doesn’t move. She looks at me. “Who did you get?”
“You,” I say back quickly.
“You have a gift for me?” she asks, perking up.
I nod.
Oliver clears his throat and finds somewhere else to be.
When he’s out of earshot, she says, “Are you serious?”
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s at my place. Let’s get out of here.”
Outside, in the cold, Lyla threads her arm through mine. “He is obsessed with you.”
I counter, “He’s our boss.”
“He got one person a gift in all the years I’ve known him.” She stops walking. “You.”
Lyla doesn’t end up coming over, so I walk to my car and drive home. The thing is that I love the pen. I’m going to use it. Maybe that’s my problem.
Ivory leaves for home that weekend, and then it’s just me and the snow, which doesn’t stop for days.
Theo texts once. I feel nothing about it, which tells me everything the last few months should have. Taylor doesn’t offer to visit, and I don’t ask. The town empties until it feels like somewhere that’s been evacuated and no one told me to go.
I don’t remember most of that night at Hawthorne.
I remember pieces. A jacket that smelled masculine going over my shoulders, and the boy who put it there didn’t turn it into a move.
A single glass, in the morning, washed and set in the rack that I hadn’t washed.
And in all the weeks since, not one person has said a word to me about a freshman goalie walking me home in the dark, which means he never told a soul, not even the house he lives in.
Everyone I know wants something from me. My mother wants an image. Oliver wants me to perform. Theo wanted sex. Even Ivory, who I love, wants me to study abroad with her. And somewhere in this dead town is a boy who wanted nothing. Who saw me at my worst and asked me for nothing.
I look him up. I’m not proud of it. He has no presence anywhere I can find, which doesn’t surprise me.
I click Stanley’s profile instead, since I already follow him, and it’s all hockey, every post — which I’ll give him credit for, he has the face and the arrogance to do worse with it.
Benson barely exists online either. I put the phone down before I embarrass myself further and pick up my sketchpad, because drawing has always been the thing that kills the hours.
My mother calls a few days before Christmas.
“Penelope. I’ve heard through the grapevine that Whitmore is closed, and you aren’t working. Come home.”
“Hi, Mom. I think I’m snowed in.”
“That’s nonsense.”
I look outside and sigh. “I’m not driving hours through this. It’s dangerous, and it takes twice as long.”
“You’ll leave first thing tomorrow.”
I watch the snow come down like it’s been sent to help me, and I reach for the one card that’s ever beaten her. “I have a Christmas Eve dinner. With Oliver.”
She pauses. My mother respects exactly two things in my life, and one of them is a Whitmore. “You do? Why didn’t you say so?”
“New Year’s, too, most likely.” The lie comes out smooth. I’ve had good training.
“Well. Then I understand what you mean by work.” Warmth, now that I’m being useful. “I’ll call on Christmas. Goodbye, Penelope.”
She hangs up. I set the phone down.
Going home has never pulled at me, and I only have to remember my last winter break to know why.
She laid a dress on my bed before I’d stepped a foot into the house — yellow, because she’d decided yellow.
A seat at dinner beside a Harrington boy I wanted nothing to do with.
My mother answering the question about my studio before I could open my mouth.
My father, who caught my eye across the table, gave me a sorry look, refilled his wine, but didn’t bother to stop any of it.
Home is not a warm place. I’d rather be alone.
I spend the next few days inside my apartment in a tight routine. I do Pilates when I wake, have a high-protein breakfast, and then I draw until my hand cramps. It’s the kind of quiet I stayed for, and the solitude is great until Oliver texts me.
Oliver: I hear I’m taking you to Christmas Eve dinner.
My stomach drops. No, she didn’t. I look at the screen, read the text again, and wince. She did.
Oliver: The Camerie is the only place open in town. Eight o’clock.
I hear Lyla in my head saying, “He’s obsessed with you,” and I quiet the voice.
Me: I’ll see you there.
Thank you, Mother.
The Camerie is, unfortunately, exactly the kind of place I’d build if anyone ever let me build a restaurant.
The ceiling drops over the tables, the aged plaster, the way the bar is set against the wall, and the décor to go with it.
I’m in love with this place before I’ve even reached the table, and Oliver somehow thinks it’s his.
“I like seeing you like this,” he says, once we’re seated. He isn’t looking at the room. He’s looking at me.
“I like the room,” I say, which is true and is not what he meant.
“Yeah.” He holds the look. “Me too.”
I turn my water glass a quarter-turn on the linen and remind myself this is a work dinner, my mother’s connection, that men like Oliver are the entire point of the navy dress, and that my mom is proud that I’m at a dinner with my boss on such a big holiday.
I’ve nearly got myself back inside my own composure when the busboy leans in to fill my water.
“Thank you,” I say, looking up.
And it’s him.
Percy.
The recognition lands under my ribs before my head catches up — the black clothes, the careful hands, the quiet coming off him — and for one second the whole evening tips sideways and I forget the man across the table exists.
Percy meets my eyes for a single second, nothing in his as he fills the glass and moves down the row of tables like it’s nothing. Oliver is saying something, and I don’t hear a word of it.
“I need the restroom,” I say, and I’m up before he can point me in the direction.
I find Percy at the back, shoveling ice from a bin into a bucket. He straightens when he sees me.
“You work here?” I ask.
“For the break.” There’s no shame in it, no apology, just the flat fact of it.
I left my phone at the table, so I hold out my hand. “Give me your phone.”
He looks at my palm, then reaches into his back pocket and sets his phone in it. I type my number into a blank message and send myself a single period. It’s the most reckless thing I’ve ever done, but there’s something about this quiet boy that makes me feel at ease.
I hand his phone back. “Come over tonight.” It’s out before I’ve cleared it with myself, and I hear how uncomposed it is. I stand taller but fail at taking the words back. “When your shift’s done. If you want.”
He studies me the way he does. “Yeah,” he says.
“What time is your shift done?”
“Ten-thirty.”
“Okay.” I need to go before I say anything else that’s true.
Oliver watches Percy clear a table over my shoulder when I sit back down. “You didn’t go to the restroom. You know him?”
“A friend from Camden.”
“Is he in the program?”
“No.”
Something in his face eases. He asks whether I ski.
I do. He tells me the snow suits me. He eats slowly, the way men eat when the meal is really a way of keeping you at the table.
I answer all of his questions with my guard up.
I don’t look at Percy once, and as far as I can tell, Percy returns the favor.
When dinner is finally over, and I’m reaching for my coat, Oliver says, “You don’t want dessert? Chocolate mousse?”
“No. Thank you.” I leave before the no can turn into a conversation.
“Penelope.” Oliver stands.
I look back at him, wondering what it is.
He says, “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas, Oliver. I’ll see you next year.”
Then I’m out in the snow. I don’t run, but I want to.
At 10:35, a number I haven’t saved sends me two words.
I’m outside.
I take the elevator down. When the doors open on the lobby, Percy’s there in all that black, snow melting into his hair, taller than he keeps being in my memory, and he doesn’t say hi. He says my name the way he did on the street, like it’s a whole sentence on its own.
“Penelope.”
“Come up.” I hold the elevator doors open for us.
He steps in, and I press the button. The doors close on the two of us.
“When did you start at the Camerie?” I ask, filling the silence.
His voice is deep when he replies, “It’s just for the break.”
“Do you like it?”
He almost shrugs.
The doors open on my floor. “Tonight was a work thing,” I say to him as we step out.
He nods, like he understands.
My heart pounds as I unlock my front door and hold it open. He stops at the doorstep. His eyes look around the place, and they land on me.
“Where’s your Christmas tree?” he asks quietly.
“I didn’t get one this year.”
He nods once and then asks cautiously, “Do you celebrate?”
I let the door fall slightly. He notices, and he puts a hand up to catch it.
I step inside my apartment and answer, “Yes, of course. I love Christmas.”
I watch his Adam’s apple bob. “I have a tree.”
I look at him. He finally steps in, and the front door clicks shut.
“At Hawthorne,” he explains. “And none of the guys are there.”
“Okay,” I say.
We stare at each other for a long second.
“So?” I ask.
He glances down. “Um,” he says under his breath. “Do you want to come to Hawthorne instead?”
My eyes stay on his timid face. He shoves his hands in his pockets.
I don’t let my grin show. “Did the guys decorate for Christmas?”
“Oh, yeah,” he says with a confident nod. “They went all out.”
“But none of them are here?”
He shakes his head. “Blue left two days ago. Row, Benson, and Stan all left over the weekend.”
“Okay.”
“Only if you want,” he adds. “I don’t mind being here, but just in case you wanted to––” He shrugs.
“Yeah,” I nod. “Let me just grab a few things, and we’ll go. Can you drive?”
He blinks. “I walk to work.”
I stop in my tracks. “You walked here? It’s so cold out.” He doesn’t say anything. “Can you drive my car? I hate driving in the snow.” He doesn’t answer, so I ask, “You have your license, right?”
He nods quickly. “Yeah, I do. I can drive.”
“Okay,” I grin. “Give me a second.”