“There’s not much to say,” Arden started, then caught herself.
The same automatic response she always gave.
Penny made a sound somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. “Yeah, okay. Try again.”
Arden released a slow breath, tipping her head against the couch.
Studying the ceiling was easier than meeting Penny’s eyes—keen, insatiable in their curiosity, and entirely unwilling to let this go.
“I didn’t have a great childhood,” she admitted, keeping her voice level.
“We… money was… tight. What we did have, my dad spent on things that weren’t keeping the fridge stocked. And my mom didn’t work, so we relied on government assistance. Some months, it was enough. Some months, it wasn’t.”
Her thumb traced the rim of her glass, absently, the motion grounding.
“I learned young that food wasn’t guaranteed,” she continued, her voice measured as though recounting someone else’s story.
“We had stretches where dinner was whatever could be scraped together from the back of the pantry. And stretches where there was nothing to scrape together at all.”
A pause.
“I knew real hunger.”
The words settled in the space between them, quiet but weighted.
“Not the kind where you forget to eat lunch and feel a little shaky after. The kind that sits in your stomach for days until it stops feeling like an ache and starts feeling like… nothing.”
Penny stayed silent, but Arden felt the weight of her attention, not just hearing, but absorbing every word.
A slow breath escaped Arden, her throat constricting around memories that refused to stay buried.
“My grandparents were good people,” she added after a moment, steering the conversation toward something easier to hold. “They tried. But I wasn’t allowed to go to their house—my dad made sure of that. So they came to me when they could. Sometimes when he was at work, sometimes when… he wasn’t around.”
Her fingers traced the rim of her glass again.
Penny didn’t ask what that meant. She just waited.
“They’d bring us groceries, tell me stories, try to make me feel safe in a house that never was. I used to beg my mom to leave him. I thought maybe… while he was gone, she’d see a way out. That we could start over without him.”
She let out a slow breath, eyes flicking toward the window as if she could see that younger version of herself, waiting for a decision that never came.
“But she never did,” Arden said, voice steady but quiet. “By the time I hit my teens, my grandparents were already gone.”
Gone.
The word was too small for something so earth-shattering.
Penny adjusted the blanket, curling her legs under herself with a sleepy sigh. “And after that?”
Arden forced a smile, one that barely reached the surface. “After that, I figured it out on my own.”
Silence settled between them.
Penny didn’t push.
Didn’t prod for more.
Just sat with it—the way real friends do.
