It feels safe.
“I don’t know, after talking to you today about everything that’s happened, I thought that maybe I could talk to him about it, too. That maybe he could give me some sort of insight since he was right there alongside all of us for it.”
“And did you get it?” Her tone is soft. “Insight?”
Yes, no, more than I want to admit but also none of the answers I want.
“I’m not sure yet,” I hedge.
“That’s okay. It’s a lot to process. The fact that you’re even starting is what’s important.”
My hand twitches against the steering wheel with the desire to reach over and place it on her thigh. To feel her warmth, her strength, her skin beneath my own. To give me some sort of tether to her, to this moment, the fact that we both made it out and we’re here together again.
But I keep it firmly in place.
My words are small as I admit, “I think I was happier before any of this, as strange as that sounds.”
“What do you mean?”
I wave my hand around. “I mean all of this. I was happier before all the fame and moving and tours and success. I was happier living in a shithole in Pittsburgh with two people who couldn’t give less of a fuck about me while I finished high school and yet…I don’t know. Maybe it’s rose-colored glasses or some bullshit nostalgia that tastes bitter as hell but also familiar, but I think I was happier then. Before everything…” My throat constricts, choking off my words. “When it was just us against the world.”My brothers, my best friends.
Penny nods in understanding that she might not even possess but is gracing me with now. It’s more kindness than I deserve, more than I’ve gotten from anyone in years without some sort of ulterior motive.
“Isn’t that kinda fucked up?”
“I don’t think so,” she says with no hesitation. “I think happiness is a strange, elusive little thing and if you found it at one point in your life despite everything else, then that’s not fucked up. That’s good for you.”
We pull up in front of her apartment but I don’t want to leave. Don’t want to watch her walk away. “Are you happy?”
She looks up at her building, eyes turning distant in the darkness and her leg begins to bounce. “I’d like to say yes. I’m happier than I was back in Pittsburgh, but would I say I’m happy?” She turns to me and brutal honesty shines on her face, moonlight reflecting off her cheekbones. “I’m not sure. Sometimes I am, and other times I’m not. But I think maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be.”
“Yeah?”
She nods and picks at the loose threads on her jean shorts. “Maybe you’re just in one of those seasons where it’s harder to find. And you just gotta keep going until you get out of it.”
It has felt hard to find, often just within my reach but constantly evading. But when I look at the woman sitting across from me, I realize that maybe I’ve had my pockets of it lately.
That she’s brought it to me.
She bends over to grab her bag and I sneak a quick peek at her exposed cleavage. I’ve been noticing parts of her more and more lately that I probably shouldn’t be.
I hit the locks. But before she swings the door open, she looks at me over her shoulder. “Do you wanna come up?” she asks with a hesitant glint in her eye.
I’m quiet for a moment, shocked that she’s asking, before I turn the car off and grab my keys. She’s never invited me up. In over the month that I’ve been driving her home, she’s never asked me that before.
“Sure,” I say, and the smile she gives me is confirmation that I made the right choice.
She leads the way into her building, and I catch myself staring at her ass as she walks upstairs. Her thighs are tanned and toned as she takes each step. I’m so distracted bythe view that I almost run into her when she stops abruptly on the second flight of stairs.
“Hello!” she says cheerfully.
In an equally excited tone, the two other women coming down the opposite way greet her back. “You’re back early!” one of them says.
I peer around Aspen, and the two women back up enough so we can both stand on the landing between the split levels.
Aspen checks her phone. “No, this is my usual time.”
“Really?”
