“Did he? Did you let him pay for you to fly out here?”
Andrea nodded. “Of course I did. Are you kidding?”
Penny swallowed hard.Brett had done that for her?Not that it was way out of left field for him to be thoughtful, but this was more than bringing flowers home. He’d done something that didn’t benefit him at all on paper.Unless he was hoping it would?
Andrea pointed. “What's in that envelope?”
Penny glanced down at the card in her hands that Tyler had given her. She opened it up. Inside was a cash card with the letters G-A-S written across the front in black Sharpie. Penny grinned. She was guessing that was Tyler's contribution to the gift. On the card itself, Emma had written her a note in neat handwriting.
Andrea craned her neck. “What does it say? Read it to me.”
“Maybe it's personal, Dre.”
Andrea scoffed, and Penny started to read.
Loved getting to know you, Penny. I hope we have many more Sunday Suppers together (or unannounced gambling takeovers). And since you never really get to know somebody until after you sit in the stands for a hockey game, that will be the next step in our relationship. Come back and visit in October?
Love, Emma
“Who's Emma?” Andrea asked.
“She's Sean's younger sister, the captain of their hockey team. She's dating Tyler, Brett's old roommate.”
“How long were you living up there? Only a couple of months, right?”
Penny nodded.
“That's cool. Seems like you made some good friends.”
Penny slipped the card back into the envelope and put the gift card into her wallet. She had made good friends. Surprisingly good friends. As an adult, it felt like it took forever to build relationships, but these ones had fallen into her lap. She only knew the team and their significant others because of Kelty. She only knew Brett because of Kelty.
But once she was in, she hadn’t only seen them at team events. The Snowballs et al. cared about each other. They showed up. They put forth effort for someone who wasjustBrett's roommate.
“So . . .” Andrea tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “Are you ready to talk about Brett? Or should we wait until we pass through Banff?” Penny exhaled, and Andrea jumped back in. “I don't want to wait too long because this is only a ten-and-a-half-hour drive. I think it's going to take a while to unpack, and if we're not finished talking about it by the time we pull into Vancouver, I'm going to be ticked.”
“Because we couldn't just keep talking about it at home.”
Andrea scoffed. “You know you're not going to talk about it when everybody else is there.”
“We're going to have plenty of time to hash things out now that—”
“Not while it's fresh! Road trips bring out the good stuff.”
Penny sighed in defeat and started at the beginning, which for Andrea was before she came into town to visit. She wanted to know everything. What Brett had said when she looked over the apartment. How they’d interacted when they were living together but not living together. How they kissed for the first time.
It was torture, and with every sentence, the ache in her chest grew. She was driving away from him.Why was she driving away from him?
Penny’s lips trembled as she finished. “It just seems like I'm not meant to be somebody who gets a love story right now.”
“How so?” Andrea gave her a skeptical look.
“Because I still have too much of my own stuff to figure out.”
Andrea laughed out loud. “First of all, nobody ‘gets’ a love story. That's a fallacy we all chewed and swallowed from the time we were in diapers.”
“People do, though,” Penny argued. “Look at couples like Theo and Amy, Tyler and Emma, Mom and Dad. They found someone, and it was a match made in heaven.”
“I love how your brain skips over everything hard in those scenarios. I can't think of one person who's been together for a long time who hasn't had to fight for it, Pens.”
