Then I brought up the idea of Penny moving in, and it all went to shit from there.
We’re not really together,she said.
I’m not sure if I’m ready for more.
Two years of friendship. Six months of seeing each other every week. Of holding hands and kissing and more recently, peeling off her clothes and touching her everywhere. Of texting nearly every day, sharing updates about our days and sending funny videos to each other.
And after all that, she still doesn’t see a future with me.
She didn’t come out and say it, but her silence made it just as clear.
Penny isn’t interested in the same things I am. Or, at least, she’s not interested in them with me.
It’s ironic, really. All through my twenties, and even into my early thirties, commitment was the last thing I thought I wanted. Being single was easier. Less pressure. I could concentrate on work, on my shifts at Station 4, fixing up my house, and hanging out with my friends. There were women, of course, but nothing serious—just mutually agreed upon no-strings hookups.
And isn’tthatironic?
With another heavy sigh, I reach for the remote and flick on the TV. I scroll through the options, rejecting each one almost as quickly as I see it.
A stand-up special? Nope. Not in the mood for laughing. A docuseries about cold crimes from the eighties? No thanks. Too depressing. An action movie that just hit streaming last week? Penny and I had talked about ordering pizza and watching it together, and now it doesn’t feel right watching it alone.
“Shit,” I say out loud to myself. “Let it go.”
Duke jolts from his half-doze and lifts his head from my leg. He looks around, decides there’s nothing of concern going on, and settles back down again.
I finally pick a show about the history of baseball, hopeful it’ll either be interesting enough to take my mind off things with Penny or be boring enough to put me to sleep.
But it’s neither.
Instead of focusing on baseball, I keep seeing Penny’s face in front of me—her big blue eyes almost pleading when she asked if we could keep things the same as they were, her teeth digging into her full lower lip and her delicate brows pulling into an unhappy V as we talked. And I’d bet anything she was twistingher hands together beneath the table like she does whenever she gets nervous.
“Shit,” I mutter. “She was scared. And I was too wrapped up in my own feelings to realize.”
Shit.
She wasscared. Because of me.
My heart rolls over with a heavy thunk.
My gut twists.
I know what Penny went through with her ex. After she broke up with him for lying and cheating on her, he forced his way into her apartment and held her and three friends at gunpoint while demanding she find the drugs he’d allegedly hidden there. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but it was incredibly frightening for all four women. And Penny blamed herself for it, no matter how many times everyone reassured her it wasn’t her fault.
“It’s why she doesn’t date,”my good friend Cash’s wife, Ari, explained to me. It was before Penny and I started dating—or not dating, depending on who you ask—and we were all at a fundraiser for the first responders of Sleepy Hollow. Ari busted me watching Penny from across the room and came over to talk.
“She’s had bad luck with men,”Ari told me,“and after what Mark did, Penny’s afraid she’ll end up with the wrong guy and get hurt again. Or one of us will. Which is silly. The right man is out there for her. One who won’t hurt her.”
That’s when I decided I was going to prove to Penny thatIwas the right man. And a few months later, I finally convinced her to go on a date with me, promising we could take things as slow as she wanted.
And what did I do?
I pushed her.
I asked her tomove inwith me.
Shit, I should have known it would freak her out.
But it just seemed like such a great solution. Penny’s going to be out of an apartment, I have the space, we like each other…
