42. Penelope
forty-two
penelope
Winter break started early due to a sudden December storm. The roads were too icy, and I’ll be one hundred percent honest, I’m sure the superintendent knew a ton of parents were going to take advantage and start their vacations early anyway, with or without the official call. Either way, we have been blessed with one extra day of our break, which for me means one extra day to prepare for my event.
I am hands down freaking out.
The rest of the world has absolutely no idea who PJ Layne is. I don’t put any identifying information in my bio—for all they know, I could be writing somewhere in Australia. My face has never been on my socials; I use my author logo for everything. New York is a central enough location that I’m hoping to keep most of those things under wraps. I won’t be revealing my real name as it is. But still. Eventually, the secret will get out. Won’t it?
I don’t know if I’m ready. Ready to let go of the reins of PJ Layne and give way to the face behind the mask. It has allowed me to write freely for these past three years. Now, scrutiny has the opportunity to rear its ugly head. People I know in real life might have opinions that I’m not ready to hear just yet. But on the other hand, the secret has been a weight like Atlas’s. Even telling Claire and the others alleviated some of the pressures of only myself and my publishing team knowing my secret. It’s a double edged sword, and I’m not sure which side I want to fight with or fall on just yet.
So, this snow day is both a curse and a blessing.
I’m sifting through my office, trying to decide if I want to bring extra swag just in case my team doesn’t bring enough, when Anthony bursts through the double doors.
“Hey, do you think this?—”
“ Fuck , Anthony!” I exclaim out of sheer shock.
“Whoops! My bad.” He tosses me an awkward looking sorry expression before I realize he’s holding a jar of pickles. “Anyway. Do you think these are okay to eat? They technically expired like two weeks ago, but we also haven’t taken them out of the fridge in that long, and they also don’t look or smell bad.”
He is one hundred percent serious. But if I’ve learned anything in the last few months living with Anthony Ellis, this is just how he rolls. Without missing a beat, I pull up Google.
“Looks like you should be good for a couple months as long as they aren’t moldy.”
“Excellent. I’ll leave you to your… Whatever it is you were doing when I barged in.”
I raise a brow at him.
“I do miss my old office.”
“I’ll bet,” he nods. “What was so good about it?”
“It had a lock,” I blanch, blinking up at him from where I’m kneeling on the floor surrounded by old packs of stickers and bookmarks. Ant scratches the back of his neck with the hand that isn’t holding the jar of pickles.
“Is it uh… Are you remodeling it or anything for the big move-in?”
I hadn’t even thought about it.
In these past weeks, moving back to my waterlogged house hasn’t even cracked the top ten of my priorities. I inhale, holding it in my chest as I glance around the makeshift space of the sunroom that I turned into my office.
“No, I… I love that space. My L-shaped desk for all of my supplies, the built-in shelves for my back-stock, the framed awards and posters… Of course, I’ll do it on a bigger scale once I move into my forever home, but it was perfect until that pipe exploded.”
Ant glances around the space, taking in the boxed up back-stock copies of my books, the supplies in a crate beside the little white desk that Debbie had decorated the place with—the one I’ve been using that is way too small, more akin to a child’s homework desk than anything I can use to do much more than type on my laptop. But I’m making it work.
It’s then that I realize that Anthony hasn’t said anything. His gaze is focused, eyes moving a mile a minute over my space before he turns on his toe and heads out of my office without another word. I shrug it off, then get back to sifting through things to pack. I end up deciding on a few copies of books with their original covers, and some stickers to keep at the table. I move on then to my suitcase. I already decided on the outfit I’ll wear for the event, so it’s mostly just packing pajamas, plane clothes, and other essentials.
I start heading to the garage so I can grab my suitcase, and come across Ant on his computer, typing intently, the pickle jar abandoned over on the kitchen counter. Shaking my head, I snag the pickle jar and put it back in the fridge on my way to the garage. Most of our non-essentials are stocked out here in boxes and plastic storage bins. What I didn’t realize was that, since I moved in first, most of my things are at the bottom. I can see my suitcase, I just can’t get to my suitcase. It’s sandwiched between one of my bins and four of Anthony’s. When I go to move them, there’s no way they’re going to budge.
“Hey, Ant?” I call into the house. He doesn’t respond. “Anthony?”
I shake my head, going back into the house to find him still bent between his tablet and his laptop, a line of intense concentration between his brows.
“Anthony, could you take a second to help me with something?”
“Unfortunately, at this exact moment, no.”
Excuse me?
Crossing my arms, I step closer to the table. His eyes don’t stray from the computer, and his hands don’t stop flying from keyboard to table to Apple Pen.
“Sorry,” he says without pausing his work. “You caught me in the middle of a project. If I stop before I finish it, my brain very well might explode. Can it wait?”
I don’t think his can it wait? was a legitimate question. I sigh, but leave him to it. When Anthony is focused on a task, it’s best not to break it. I should , however, check in to make sure he eats at some point.
While I wait, I make piles of folded clothes, organize everything into packing cubes, and double- and triple-check my packing list. Even still, Ant isn’t finished with whatever he’s working on. I decide to start on dinner. When I realize I’m not going to get an answer out of him as to what he’s hungry for, I decide to go with the food he’s been chowing down this week like it’s going out of style: Dino nuggets.
Sometimes I wonder if the man is actually a five year old, with his dinosaur shaped dinners and the superheroes in his bathroom.
But then, as I’m shoving a pan of comfort food into the oven, I realize how great of a dad he’s going to be one day. That little red headed boy sneaks into the fantasy I allow myself for the twenty-five minutes that our dinner is in the oven. Without saying a word, I slide his plate of shoestring fries, nuggets, and enough ketchup and barbecue sauce to slather both, to the side of his work station.
I’m sifting through a few emails when there’s a knock on my office door. Swiveling my chair to face him, I am not prepared for the look on Anthony’s face.
It’s a mixture of intrigue, confusion, and tentative hope, like he’s sitting on the fence to all three, trying to decide where to tip over for a safe landing.
“You made me dinner?”
“Yeah. You were working so hard, I didn’t want to interrupt.”
His head tilts, and in that moment, I see him make the decision. He doesn’t tip into confusion or even hope, but a beaming light of gratitude. I can’t even move before he’s crossed the room in two giant strides and wrapped me into a bear hug.
“What is this?” I ask into his chest where my face is crushed.
“It’s a hug, boss. Just let it happen.”
I don’t know why it’s happening though. I threw some chicken nuggets into the oven because he was in the middle of one of his fixation stations, and I didn’t want the man to starve.
“Anthony?” I whisper, walking on eggshells of whatever this moment is. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah.” He whispers it back, like he too doesn’t want to be the one to ruin the moment. “Yeah, Pen, it is.”
I don’t know who moves first. Whose hands find purchase and tug faces to the other. But I do know that Anthony and I are kissing. First in small, exploring pecks. Then, open mouths and sighs that are clinging to the edges of desperation. I do know that his tongue darts out first. Experimentally. Like he’s asking a question.
And when I answer back, the floodgates bust wide open.