3. Penelope
three
penelope
“All of them?”
“All of them,” I nod, answering Claire’s question with a curt nod.
“But my babies .”
She whines, her fingers tracing over the spines of the now waterlogged backlog of my collection.
I’ve been an author for the past three years. Unfortunately, the work of my blood, sweat, and tears was one of the many victims of what I’m deeming “The Plagues of Penelope: Chapter Flood.” I had twenty copies of each of my seven titles, which means several hundreds of dollars are currently weighing down the built-in shelves of my office.
“It’s no biggie. They’re insured.”
I shrug. It’s all that can be done. No crying over spilt milk and all that jazz.
“I’m just sad to see them getting tossed. It’s like a crime against the bookish community.”
“Maybe I’ll auction them off. Flash Flood Sale!”
This gets a laugh out of my friend. She seems more sad about the whole situation than I am. Then again, she hasn’t lived a life of disappointment like I have. I guess I’m just used to it.
“I think most of your stuff was saved,” I say, rerouting the conversation.
Claire has been staying with me since last fall, when she finally decided to stand up to her parents, who had been using her as a live-in nanny since she was in elementary school. Without their support of her wanting to live her own life, I opened my doors, gaining a friend, and someone I could confide the secret of my authorship to. It was a breath of fresh air, exactly what I needed. And then, she just had to go and start dating my boss. Well, our boss at the time. Claire and Nathan met while she was long-term subbing at River Valley Middle School, where I teach eighth grade math, and now that she’s pursuing a career of her own, they are free to date more openly.
They sure are, because he built them a house, and she’s free to move in at any time—which might be coming sooner than we thought it would.
“That might be because most of my stuff is at Nathan’s…”
She trails off, biting her bottom lip like they’re still keeping their relationship a secret. I wrap my arm around her shoulder.
“Don’t feel like you need to be ashamed of your adult sleepovers. I knew this day was coming, Claire Bear.”
She sighs, resting her head on my shoulder.
“I think we’re ready to move in together. I just don’t like leaving you by yourself. I kind of love having you as my roomie.”
“I’ll do fine on my own. I always have.”
That truth hangs heavily—my loneliness, and her stark opposite. We only ruminate in our sorrow for a moment before we get to work. I must have done something right to have Claire by my side while I schlep through what can and can’t be salvaged. After the professional crew dried the place out, and it was deemed safe, I sent out an SOS to the only friend that’s still in town. While Nathan has to serve as assistant principal throughout the summer, Claire gets finished with her internship early enough for us to still spend a little time together. God bless her for using her few free minutes to help me clean up this wreck.
We trade mindless chat—books we’ve both read, how things are going with her family, how I’m feeling about the upcoming school year—while we clean.
“Have you made a decision about your contract yet?” she asks.
I sigh, setting the last of my undamaged clothes into the new suitcase I bought. “Yes and no? I want to re-up, but we’re not settled on terms.”
She folds the last hoodie from the back of the closet and plops down on the dry floor next to me.
“Okay. What are they? What’s holding you back?”
“They want six more books over the next two years. While it’s definitely doable , I can’t account for any roadblocks during the school year. It’s one of the reasons I sometimes wish I had stayed indie. When I self-published, I made up my own timeline.”
“Can you go back?”
“No,” I chuckle, eyes wide. Looking around at the home my first author contract bought me, my debt-free status, and the financial freedom I have for the first time in forever, it isn’t a choice. “I just need to fight for what I want. Two years. Three books. An interconnected series. Renegotiate after.”
“And you won’t quit teaching to write full time?”
“Nope. No matter how hard the kids push me, I can’t leave. Teaching’s in my blood.”
Which is true. No matter how much I love writing , I couldn’t ever fathom giving up the stability of the classroom.
“Why won’t your publisher agree to your deal?”
“Because I don’t have a plot for it yet,” I shrug, staring down at my lap where I fidget with a folded hoodie branding some sports logo of a Boston team that I definitely bought to impress a guy. “If I had the plot for the three book series, they’d be more on board. Without it, they want the side characters from my current series that I’ve teased. Except that’s all I’ve done is tease them.”
“Still got writer’s block, huh?”
I lean my head against the wall behind me, and face Claire’s sympathetic gaze, nodding.
“Yep.”
“Ever since…?”
She doesn’t say his name because she knows better. I don’t confirm nor deny because I’m a coward.
“Would it help if you just… talked to him?”
My face heats.
“Absolutely not.” I stand, chucking the hoodie into the suitcase, and start hastily removing hangers from the wire rack. “I tried that. Three times . If he had something to say, he had plenty of opportunities.”
I recognize the movement, the squeak of the floor, as Claire stands and starts helping me with the hangers. But in my mind, I’ve gone back to that hole I’ve done so well at digging myself out of. Too bad the slope is slippery enough that I can very easily fall right back to the bottom in no time.
“Look, for what it’s worth—and please don’t murder me for saying this—Nathan and the guys have talked to him. It sounds like he really wants to talk now—which I know makes it sound terrible, because it wasn’t convenient for him then , but Pen…”
Her silence kills me, because she knows what the carrot of new information does to me, no matter how hard I throw up walls against it. I am the poster child for the What-If Game, and the little gremlins inside me feed on new details about Anthony Ellis like it’s their life source.
I sigh, my head tilting all the way to one side as I give her the eyes that say, Go on. I’ll take another hit . Her gaze softens, and she reaches out for my hand. Begrudgingly, I let her hold it.
“He’s sorry. He wants to tell you , but doesn’t know how.”
“I blocked his number, so it really shouldn’t be that easy,” I deadpan.
She chuckles softly, her shoulders hitching.
“Maybe you try unblocking it?” she offers. “Just to hear him out? At the very least, it’ll give you closure.”
“That’s just it though. I shouldn’t need the closure.” I pull my hand from hers and make my way to the other side of my walk-in closet, getting to work on my shoes. “I asked him if he had anything waiting for him back home, and he said ‘work.’ I asked him if he wanted to leave us on vacation, or if he wanted to keep getting to know each other, and he said, ‘I absolutely want to keep getting to know you after this. I would love to see where we can go.’ He had every chance to pump the brakes, and instead, he led me down a dirt road with a dead end and left me out to dry. So yes, I deserve closure, but you know what I deserved in the first place? The truth .”
It’s a hard pill to swallow, because what I want more than anything is to give in to everything she’s saying. That Ant wants to talk. That he wants to apologize. But in the end…
“I’m not someone’s convenience. I deserve to be put first.”
“You absolutely do,” Claire concedes. “I’m just looking out for you.”
We work for a few hours before two things become apparent: I have filled every bag I own, and I still don’t have a place to put all of my stuff. Claire seems to read my mind. Before I can say anything, she’s on the phone. I hear her hushed end of things, You’re sure? Okay, thank you so much, baby… Yeah, I’ll let you know how it goes… Love you too . I know what she’s going to offer before I even finish zipping my stuffed-to-the-brim duffel.
“You’re staying with us until you find a place. And before you say no!” Ah. She knows me too well already. “You took me in when I didn’t even ask. You’ve been the big sister I never knew I needed. And you’ve become one of the best friends I never thought I’d get to have. Please? At least until you find somewhere else to stay.”
“You little shit. I don’t cry.”
I wrap Claire into a hug, sucking in the tears before they have a chance to even think about falling.
“You can be like our Joey!” she says into my shoulder.
“I never should have introduced you to Friends .”
By the time we have my packed things hauled over to Nathan’s parents’ mansion , a little of the guilt has subsided. You know what hasn’t subsided? The fact that I’ll be crashing with my boss. Or the fact that I’m still getting used to seeing my boss in casual clothing.
Claire and Nathan are more than welcoming on my first night living with them. We’re settled in for another nineties movie that Claire hasn’t seen— 10 Things I Hate About You tonight—as I let my thoughts swallow me.
I have no place to stay for the foreseeable future that I can call my own. It will take months to repair the damage done by the pipes. While I love Claire to death, and I’m immensely appreciative of her for opening her doors, I cannot live with my boss during the school year. While I could move into a hotel for the time being, the cost of storing all of my things and the headache that would ensue this close to the school year would drive me batshit crazy. To divert that line of thinking, I scroll over to the dark side of my phone.
I have one contact in my blocked list. It’s fruitless though, because my math brain committed those ten digits to memory a long time ago. Between this and the first hundred digits of Pi, I could probably win something on a game show.
Curled up on my boss’s couch, I bite my bottom lip and let my thumb hover over the doomsday button. When I pinch my eyes shut, I can’t bring myself to do it.
Instead, I reach for the lesser of two evils.
The last time we spoke, she was encouraging me not to give up on her son. I don’t have the heart to tell her that he’s the one who gave up on me.
Penelope
Hey, Ms. Debbie. Do you still have our old place? I might need somewhere to crash for a while.