35. Chapter Thirty-Five
Percy
Penelope: I need to see you tonight. Please.
I just got home from the early skate. Blue, Benson, and me had the ice to ourselves at six, no Fuller, nobody, just the three of us and a bucket of pucks. I came home wrung out, and then her name lights up the screen, and it’s the please on the end of it that already has my body up off the bed.
Me: Are you okay?
Me: Come. Text me when you’re close.
I stand in the middle of my room after I’ve sent it.
The text is burning a hole through my heart as I stare at the screen, waiting to see if she’ll text back.
I read it a hundred times and sigh when I realize she’s not going to text me back.
I sit back down on the edge of my bed, leaning my elbows onto my knees.
I stretch my back and look at the phone again.
No three dots. Just tonight sitting there, a whole day away.
The day is long and useless. I’ve got two classes. I attended both of them, but I couldn’t tell you one thing that happened in either. I sit in the back, the professor talks, and my leg won’t stop. I keep checking the time like midnight’s going to come any sooner.
I cross the quad between classes, and I see Rowan. He’s with a few guys from the team. I catch Drew’s laugh. Then I see Theo talking animatedly. I look at him for one second, and something goes cold and hard in my gut. I put my head down and keep walking.
I come home at six after studying in the library for hours.
That helped take my mind off things for a bit, but now I’m back at Hawthorne, and my nerves are high.
Stanley is barking at Benson about the FIFA game they’re playing on the TV.
Rowan’s cooking something that smells like onion and rosemary.
Blue’s on the couch, watching the TV blankly.
I sit at my spot at the table and pull out my book.
Stanley notices me come in and says, “I was thinking we should put Percy on defense.”
Benson scoffs.
Rowan turns to look at me. “Hear that?”
“Yeah,” I say, keeping my eyes on the book. “I did, and it’s not happening.”
Stanley laughs from the living room.
Rowan drops a plate of dinner in front of me, and I look up. “Smells delicious, Laurens. Thanks.”
He nods. “Eat your vegetables.”
Stanley runs into the kitchen. “Is dinner done?”
He glances at my plate and then goes to the cabinet to grab a plate to make his own. “I’m starving, man. This looks good.”
The guys pile in, sit down, and eat. Stanley’s going on about some NHL game, and then Benson, not looking up from his plate, says, “You good, Deveroux? After yesterday.” He doesn’t make it a thing. He just asks. And Blue’s eyes come up off his food and land on me too, quiet, the way they do.
“Fine,” I say.
Benson holds it a second, then lets it go, and Stanley’s already onto something else.
But I feel them watching me, worried in the way this house worries, and the one thing that would explain any of it is a girl I can’t say a word about.
I sit there and eat and give them nothing, and I hate that I can’t hand them the truth even while they’re asking for it.
I’ve learned to watch their cues, so I sit at the table until dinner’s long done, and the guys start yawning.
Everyone is in bed by eleven. Rowan first, then the game ends, and Benson and Stanley drift off. Blue is last. He goes up without a word.
When the house falls silent, it almost feels ridiculous that I’m waiting up for a girl in the dark like this.
I read to pass the time and don’t take in a word of it.
By ten to midnight, my leg won’t stop. I don’t know if something’s wrong or if she just needs to not be alone.
It’s eating me alive. My palms start to sweat with each passing minute.
Five minutes till midnight, and I’m turning off all the ceiling lights. I take a step outside and walk down the street to where she parked before. I glance up at the house I live in, double-checking nobody is looking out their windows. They’re not. I’m in the clear.
Penelope walks around the corner, and my breath stalls.
She’s always been striking, but I let myself admire her for a minute as she walks towards me.
Shit, I’m fucked tonight. I notice that she parked further away this time, and I don’t think it’s a bad idea.
I don’t know what the fuck to do with my sweating palms, so I just stand there and watch her walk closer.
“Hi,” she whispers when she’s close enough.
Her eyes burn holes in me so deep that I feel it in my stomach, so I quickly look away before I completely lose my mind.
“Hi,” I reply, looking back at the windows to make sure none of them are peeping out their curtains. The house is sleeping.
“Everything good?” she asks.
I nod. “Yeah.”
I let her in the back and take her up through the dark house. I don’t touch her this time. Once we’re in my bedroom, I close my door behind us and lock it.
I watch her walk to my bed and sit on the edge. She’s completely comfortable in here, I realize. I take the three steps to my desk and sit in the chair.
After a while, she whispers, “Are you okay?”
“I’m tired.” It’s a shit reply because I can’t tell her the truth, which is that my heart’s in my throat and I can barely breathe. And that it’s worse when she’s not around. I don’t know what the hell’s happening to me. I lean back in the chair and think about the text message. Please.
She watches me for a long moment. “I heard about practice.”
The thought swims through me, but it doesn’t land. What happened at practice is unimportant. I don’t respond.
“You ran Theo into the boards,” she whispers.
I mutter, “It was a drill.”
“Percy.”
“Guys get hit in drills.”
She’s quiet with those curious eyes staring straight through me. My heart kicks up in speed, and I refuse to look at her because tonight there’s something in me that I never had before, and I don’t trust myself right now, so I’m studying the floor.
“I’m not with Theo,” she says.
It comes out of nowhere, so I don’t know how to respond.
“I don’t know what you heard, or what you think, or what Drew’s been saying, but — I’m not.
” She stops, but her composure is still there.
“I’m done with him. I have been for weeks.
The night I called you, the night I came here — I had him in my car, and I couldn’t do it.
I took him home, and I called you instead.
” Her hands are folded too tight in her lap.
“I don’t know why I never told you that.
But I’m telling you now because I can’t––” She breaks off.
“You’ve been cold since the game, and I didn’t understand it, and then I heard what you did, and I think I understand now, and I need you to know you’ve got it wrong. ”
I don’t say anything, because if I open my mouth I don’t know what comes out.
“Say something,” she whispers.
I’m still staring at the floor. “Why are you telling me this?” Then my eyes flick up, and when our eyes meet, it feels like blood rushes to every nerve ending in my body.
“Because it’s true,” she says, brows meeting.
“That’s not what I asked.”
She’s quiet a second and says, “Okay. Because I don’t want you thinking I’m with him.” She pauses. “Because it matters what you think of me.”
“It shouldn’t,” I say it to the floor. My heart’s in a panic. “What I think doesn’t change anything.”
“That’s not for you to decide.”
I don’t know why she would say that. I barely understand what she means.
I search the floor again like it’s going to give me answers.
Deep down, I feel the pang. She’s telling me that it matters to her.
That I matter to her. I look at her because I don’t get it.
I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that her text to me this morning was about this, about it matters what I think.
I can’t remember the last time it mattered what I thought about anything.
I don’t have a reply for that, so I don’t give one.
She shifts on the edge of the bed, and I feel the whole room change with it. She’s inching near me, and I try my hardest not to move. I don’t know what she’s doing, but I’m aware that the space between us just cut in half.
“I want to know things about you,” she says. “You never tell me anything.”
I look at her. “There’s not much to know.”
She says softly, “I don’t believe that, Percy.”
“Believe it,” I say back, and I hear the way it sounds. My words, my tone, my voice linger in the air when she doesn’t respond right away. I’m being short. I’m being a dick. And for what? I swallow it down and look at her.
She’s beautiful. Always has been since the moment I saw her. She looks back at me like she doesn’t believe it at all.
“Why won’t you talk to me?” she asks.
I inhale. “I talk to you.”
“You barely talk.”
I keep my voice soft and my tone easy. “I talk to you more than I talk to anyone.” It’s the truth. Out of everyone in my life, this girl is the only one I’ve ever talked to. It’s surprising that she doesn’t think so.
“Is it the French?” she says, and there’s the smallest tease in it.
I look at her, wondering where that came from. “It’s not the French.”
“Then what is it?” she shoots back, and I feel it hit me square in the chest.
She’s the only person in this world that I’ve spent time with, that I’ve let my guard down around, and I don’t know what to tell her. I don’t know how to say what I feel. I never have.
“Penelope,” I whisper, and she waits for me to continue.
I stare at her as my heart races so completely out of control. I want to tell her the truth. I want to tell her everything, but I can’t. The words are somewhere I can’t get to, and she can see it. She pats the bed beside her.
“Come here,” she whispers.
I watch her hand do it, but I don’t move. The chair’s got four feet of room between us, and that four feet is the only thing keeping me level.
“Percy.” Her hand’s still on the blanket. “Trust me.”
Trust me.