8. Penelope
eight
penelope
I learned a lot of things about Anthony Ellis on our Christmas vacation.
For instance, he eats sugary cereal for breakfast with cartoon characters on the boxes.
He tans a warm, bronzy color that most women are envious of, but his nose burns no matter how much sunscreen he applies.
He feels like a mess-up, a mistake, in most areas of his life. He does not feel like he is good enough.
Do you know what I failed to learn?
Anthony Ellis is a seventeen-alarms kind of guy.
And they’re all loud as fuck .
Seriously, when the first one goes off at—oh, fuck me, four-forty-five A.M.— it sounds like an army siren. I pop out of bed thinking there’s an air raid. The world is ending. I will not survive the draft.
But then it’s over. Did I dream it? No. Because by the time my heart rate drops from the speed of a rabbit’s and I finally settle back into my pillow and get to the edge of sleep, it happens again. The house-shaking, Richter Scale alert, bomb sound.
I am up and out of bed, this time with the closest object I can find to use as a weapon. I follow the noise straight into Anthony’s wing of the house. Right as the sound ends abruptly, I push open his bedroom door to see him snuggling back against the pillows. He’s lying on his stomach, both arms wound around the pillows in a hug. He groans, and my body betrays me, because I can’t help but trace his bare back, and the hills and valleys of his shoulders.
It’s totally fine. I snap out of it as soon as his damn alarm goes off again. This time, only one thing is louder than its siren sound.
“ ANTHONY ELLIS WHAT THE FUCK?!? ”
I shake him awake, gripping those shoulders I only felt through his ratty old Red Sox T-shirt the last time I touched him.
“Hmm? What?”
His head pops up like he’s a toddler being woken from a car nap, not a grown man being shaken awake to diffuse the bomb that won’t stop going off. Still, he reaches over—to the opposite side of the bed from which he is sleeping on, might I add—and whacks a camo-colored dome shaped item to silence the sound. He settles back against the pillows, a sleep drunk look pasted on his face as he sighs, then yawns, then blinks up at me and tilts his head sleepily.
“Why do you have my mom’s Elvis squirrel?”
“Why do I…” I look down. Sure enough, I am clutching a weird thrift store statue of a squirrel dressed as Elvis. My weapon of choice when I scurried out of my bedroom. However, that is not the matter at hand. I stomp over to his bedside table and pick up his clock, shrieking, “Because I thought we were being invaded by a foreign country ! What the fuck is that ?”
“My alarm clock.”
“Absolutely not.”
“What do you mean?—”
“Not while you’re living here,” I chuckle, kind of manically.
Ant groans, roll-flops across the bed, and lifts the clock to his eyes.
“Pen, it’s not even five-thirty yet. I still had two more alarms to snooze!”
My jaw drops. The only appropriate reaction.
“You’re telling me that I would have had to endure not one, but two more rounds of this?” My voice has dripped down to a venomous quiet. One step before DEFCON 1.
“It’s the only way I can wake up, and I have to be at the house early today, which means I have to get in my gym timer earlier ,” he whines. Whines . Like a teenager whose mother just told him to get off the PlayStation.
“You have a roommate now, and there is no way I am suffering through this until you move out in…”
“December,” he mumbles, clearly still pissed I woke him up before he had to be. As if he wasn’t doing that to himself .
“It cannot come soon enough. Merry Christmas to me.” I round the foot of his bed, taking my victory in the fact that he’s still pouting, and clearly won’t be getting back to sleep anytime soon. “Get an Apple Watch or something. Or turn the damn thing down. I am not waking up to World War III every morning for the next four months.”
With that, I start a pot of coffee. No way am I functioning normally without it. I’m the type of person that when I’m up, I’m up. I had planned on savoring the next few days of summer freedom, but apparently, living with Ant, that won’t be an option.
Welcome to my early mornings chapter.
With my extra few hours in the morning, I start by taking inventory of the house.
The house that Mom and Debbie had in college is fully furnished—she uses it as a rental property, so that makes sense. It also helped me, since a lot of my furniture was ruined by the Niagara Falls escapade. My bedroom is pretty simple: A monochromatic grey scheme with a King-sized bed centered on the main wall; two bedside tables; and a long, six-drawer dresser on the opposite wall at the foot of the bed. Ant’s is much the same. It’s sleek without the hospital feeling, but still plain enough that you know you’re not at home—which isn’t a reminder I need. I know this is only temporary, and I don’t need to make it any more permanent than necessary.
I unpack the rest of my clothes into the dresser, then tuck my empty suitcases into the walk-in closet where I’m also storing the things I was able to salvage from the flood. My bathroom is mostly unpacked—attached between the bedroom and the master closet, it is easily my favorite part of the house, and the reason I chose this side when I initially moved in. With both a platform tub and a walk-in shower with waterfall and detachable heads, along with two benches, I know me and my Kindle are going to spend a lot of time in here.
The kitchen, dining room, and living room all flow together in an open concept design, separated into three spaces by the half-wall of the kitchen that over looks a dining table, and a couch that faces a massive television mounted over a stone fireplace. There are entertainment chests built into the wall on either side. The only accents I added were my favorite purple throw blanket and a stack of books I’m reading on the end table that sits on what I’ve claimed as “my side” of the couch. Ant’s has a dirty old Red Sox blanket and a PlayStation controller, along with three empty cans of Coke and a pair of his balled up socks on the seat.
The rest of the decorations are all his mother’s touch from when she had her husband’s company gut this place down to the studs and rebuild it entirely. I wish I could say that the Elvis squirrel from the bedside table in my room was the weirdest, but it doesn’t even crack the top three. In the living room alone are three different lamps, including one of a chicken where the lightbulb is coming out like an egg.
I add overhead lighting to my mental list of dream house renovations for when I either gut my own place and renovate, or buy new completely. I haven’t decided yet. I did ask Debbie about having Ed’s crew help with the gutting when I’d first texted her, but with his retirement coming soon, they’re booked well past the new year.
While my destroyed home on the other side of town is great, it’s small. Two bedrooms and a den that I turned into my office won’t exactly fit the dream I’ve always had in my head for the huge family I want to have one day. It was one of the reasons I almost dated Aaron Russo back when we both first started at River Valley—before we figured out that we were more like siblings than romantically compatible.
I want a ton of kids. I want them to be siblings and best friends. I want to have the house where all the neighborhood friends hang out. I want to host backyard pool parties. I want to watch their dad coach them in all the sports and have the Escalade full of snacks for after the game.
I want the family I didn’t have growing up.
Of course, that would require me to put my heart back on the line again, which is easier said than done when every time I do, it ends up costing me. At this point, I wonder if simply writing the happily ever afters I never get will be easier than trying to find one myself.
Instead of dwelling on my perpetual singleness, and whether or not I should download apps again for the billionth time, I set to work on unpacking the last of my necessities and cleaning up the disaster area that Ant and I have made this place since moving in. By the time I’m breaking down the last of my boxes, I hear commotion coming from Ant’s wing of the house—not the dreaded bomb alarm this time, but music. Pop music. Muffled pop music, because Ant is singing along.
Badly. Off key.
I roll my eyes at the same time that my heart pitter-patters and the devil on my shoulder swoons. I flick her off, shake my head, and finish breaking down the boxes with gusto before stomping to the garage. When I return, he is already standing in the kitchen, fully dressed, and guzzling down some cloudy concoction.
“’Mornin’, PJ.”
I scowl.
“You woke me up at the ass crack of dawn, and now you’re going to keep calling me that stupid nickname? Do you have no bedside manner?”
He licks the remains of his drink from his upper lip and smirks.
And now he’s trying to remind me of the one night I do my best to forget?
I stomp around him—apparently that’s my new method of transportation—and eye the mess he’s already made.
“Could you at least make sure your nasty beverage gets into the dishwasher? And clean the cocaine off the countertop?” I run my finger through the powdery substance, bring it to my nose, and sniff. “What even is this?”
“Pre-workout,” he glowers, then makes a big show of rinsing the cup and spoon out in the sink before loading them into the dishwasher. As he sweeps the powder into his hand and then dumps it back into the container— eww —he says, “I’m heading to the gym. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
I want to keep laying it on thick. Reprimand him for the nickname and the mess and for waking me up so early. Instead, I get a full glimpse of the muscles he’s going to continue working on for the next several hours , and my tongue goes fuzzy in my mouth.
His body is built . I absolutely believe that he’s about to spend hours at the gym. Couple that with his wavy blonde hair that’s just long enough to tousle and tangle between your fingers, and the blue of his eyes that I can’t seem to match to a shade, and I suddenly need to get out of here and get him out of my head.
As I grab the pot of coffee to top off my mug, I can hear him muttering under his breath, “Don’t put it down, put it away.”
Like I told him yesterday. Which means he’s been listening to me.
So much for getting him out of my head.
Ant leaves, and I do my best to finish tidying up so that I can savor these last few days of writing freedom. Instead, as I’m putting the more eccentric of Mrs. Ellis’s statues away— Goodbye, goose-head-coming-out-of-a-banana-peel —I come across the one photo I didn’t think I’d ever see again.
We can’t be older than two—he’s definitely still wearing a swim diaper in this photo. We’re sitting on the front porch after running through the sprinkler all day. I’m sticking my tongue out because little Anthony Ellis is kissing my cheek.
I drop the frame.
And somehow, fate doesn’t shatter the glass clear down the center. The old me would take it as a sign that everything remains intact, but the me who has a bunker around her heart can’t handle the vision I saw for us.
Born months apart. Our moms, childhood best friends. Missing each other by a relationship or two for years and years until fate finally decided it was our time.
For that small window of time when I believed us to be true, I always imagined I’d blow up this photo for our wedding, and keep it on our own mantle next to a recreation. Instead, I shove it into a box, deep down where I can’t use it as fodder for the what-if game anymore.
Having all of this extra free time in my day should be a motivator to write. Right?
I wish.
I left writing for the very last task today because I have been avoiding it like the plague. I made it through every single admin task that comes with publishing that I could think of before pulling up my very naked first draft of Finn and Delilah’s book.
I have been staring at the blinking cursor of my Mac for the last fifteen minutes. I know it has been fifteen because my cube timer went off. Fifteen was supposed to be my warm-up, not my stare into the face of existential dread time. And yet, here we sit. I feel like SpongeBob, with a very fancy article written and nothing else. His said “The.” Mine says “A.” And even as I sit and admire the fancy, Times New Roman triangle, I end up deleting it. With my forehead.
Poor Finn and Delilah have had no momentum since I talked with Ant a few nights ago. I hate that he was the only one that could cure my writer’s block. I hate even more that I stole real life moments from Anthony’s strained relationships to do it. But, it did give my characters a little bit of a push, if not something to scratch the surface. However, they sit halted again, like I pulled them out onto the freeway only to hit rush hour traffic. With only a few days left until our first teacher in-service, I really need to get going on typing words or outlining so I’m ready to write or something .
I’m skimming over the notes I’ve made about character intentions, fishing for a nugget that will at least get me the plot for a few more chapters, when Ant comes busting through the door.
“Honey, I’m home!” he shouts.
I save my less-than-edited document, deciding I’ve earned a snack break, and head to the kitchen less to greet him and more to get me out of my office.
Which was a big mistake.
Lord help me, because I am still not used to post-workout-Ant.
He’s a five-inch-inseam kind of guy. A tight-fitting, sweat-stained muscle tee kind of guy. One who smells like deodorant after he clearly just put in some work. I can’t help but stare, even if the tank top has a Captain America shield on the front of him like he’s some Walmart brand Chris Evans when he lifts weights.
Who are you kidding? He could compete for a superhero role and you know it. Especially with that blonde hair .
I swallow, flicking the devil on my shoulder right off as I combat the fact that I just had to clench my thighs at the sight of him. You are not supposed to be turned on by him anymore, Penelope Jayne!
I rifle through the fridge for something to quell the restlessness I’m suddenly feeling, as he finishes making a smoothie.
“You’re going to clean up after yourself when you’re done, right?” I ask, arms folded as milk trickles threateningly down the side of his smoothie cup. He licks it—yes, licks it —off the side of the cup, and my thighs clench again .
“Yeah, why?”
I don’t really have an answer. He cleaned up after himself this morning when I asked. I’m definitely being too snippy with him. I do tend to be blunt. A little edgy. Maybe I’ve been leading with attitude because the sight of him still picks at the scabbed over edges of my heart.
I sigh, toss him a quiet, “Just making sure,” and peel a banana for myself.
We lock eyes, me with my banana, him with his smoothie. It’s when I watch the beverage slide down the long swallow of his throat, when his tongue darts out to lick the smoothie mustache off his upper lip, that I decide I need to get out of here. I’m about to abandon my own banana when I realize I’ll just be contradicting myself, and take it with me, where I toss it haphazardly onto my dresser, unfinished, and start the shower.
I toss my hair into a shower cap, only intending to scrub myself off quickly, except the moment the warm water hits my skin, I close my eyes and am assaulted by my own memories. Ant in a muscle tee after spending the last two hours at the gym. Ant licking his upper lip. Memories from Florida of Ant’s fingers trapped beneath my panties, his tongue doing wicked things inside my mouth. It’s some sick type of torture, living with the guy you thought was your everything, I’ll tell you that.
The water sluices over my body, and with my eyes closed and the scent of him still lingering, I let my hands wander just a little. I can’t help that my head tilts back as soon as the pads of my fingers touch my clit. Can’t help that my mind conjures an image that’s equal parts Ant on the beach tugging the sides of my panties beneath my romper to pull me against him; and Ant in the kitchen, stripping off that tank top before swiping the mess off the counter and lifting me onto it. In my head, it’s the perfect height.
It doesn’t take long at all for me to come, not with the warm water beating on me and my fingers working at the same pace as the Anthony in my head as he does all kinds of things we never got to do. I have to bite the inside of my lip to keep from groaning out loud—from saying his name and letting it echo off the shower walls. God forbid he knows I still think about him .
By the time I actually run a loofah over my body, rinse, and towel off, it’s been fifteen minutes. I throw on a shorts romper over a crop top, finger comb my hair, and start to make my way back toward my office so I can pack up everything I’ll need to go out and write. Maybe a change of scenery will be good inspiration. With my bag packed, I head to the kitchen to fill my water bottle, and realize that something seems off.
The whole kitchen is clean. No traces of his shake, no dishes in the sink. Actually, if I’m not mistaken, the countertops smell like the new tangerine cleaner I bought. Warily, I creep out to the dining room, where the wood grain table smells like Pledge, and there isn’t a trace of balled-up socks anywhere. Following the trail down the hall, I sneak a peek into the parts of the house I don’t venture to. Ant’s bathroom is void of toothpaste stains, water droplets on the mirror, or a questionable looking toilet bowl. Even the Iron Man soap dispenser looks squeaky clean.
“You need something?” he asks.
He has changed. Into joggers and a Red Sox T-shirt. And he smells fresh from the shower?
“Excuse me, I was gone for fifteen minutes . How did you…”
“Clean so fast?” he asks, then scratches beneath his chin. “I can either finish a laundry list of tasks, to military grade standard, in record time, or I play the ‘If You Give A Mouse a Cookie’ game and have to follow the trail afterwards. It’s also the reason I have a billion alarms set. Sorry.”
I hate that I keep finding myself in these miserable situations. Making him apologize for things he doesn’t have to be sorry for. I’m not being fair to him, and I think somewhere deep inside, I know it. I need to be better.
I clear my throat, then say, “No need for the sorry. The house looks nice. Thanks for picking up.”
He nods tensely, and the fixer in me wants to put things back to…
What, normal?
We haven’t been “normal” since Florida. “Livable” might be a better word.
“What’s with the theme?” I ask, plucking his soap dispenser from the countertop.
He flushes scarlet, then looks to the ceiling.
“ WantedtobeanAvenger .”
“What was that?”
“I wanted to be an Avenger as a kid, okay?! Jeez, woman, lay off the third degree! And leave Soap-Tony alone!”
He says it all in jest, stealing the soap dispenser from me as he places it precariously back into its spot on the counter. I can’t help but laugh. For real this time.
For a snap second, I’m back in time to right after Florida, texting him late into the night about everything and nothing. He’d told me about his Marvel obsession. I may have marathoned a bunch of the movies to impress him.
“Well, I’m gonna head out to get some work done on the house. Good luck with your writing.”
“Yeah, good luck on the house.”
He shoves his hands in his pockets and nods, and I have to get out of here. Because my heart is softening at the edges. Where I had once been gutted, these stupid little moments are healing over the scars. I can’t let that happen.
I’m not allowed to have soft spots for Anthony Ellis. Not anymore.