“Did I have to?” He was choked up again. He took another deep, loud breath and released it like he was trying to blow pain out from the inside of his chest.
“You’re not alone. You’ll always have me.”
“You have your own family,” he said, his voice low and shaky.
It pained me to see him like this. “You’re my best friend. You’re my family, too.”
He sat up and tried to collect himself. “Penny, why isn’t your husband your best friend? Answer me that. I need to know.”
He asked me this often, yet he referred to me as his best friend to everyone, including his girlfriend of three years. He had been calling me his best friend since the day we met. But he was angry and raising his voice at me, calling me out. “And why don’t you have female friends, besides Ling? Why don’t you hang out with your sister more? She lives right here in town.”
“Come here.” I put my legs over his lap and held him to my chest again. “Because I love you, and I’m allowed to love you.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Be quiet.”
A few minutes later, his breathing slowed and he fell asleep on my chest. After five minutes, I shimmied out from underneath him, got up, and covered him with a blanket. He was exhausted.
There’s no way to explain to people what Gavin and I meant to each other. It was socially unacceptable for a woman to share that kind of intimacy with a man after she’d been married for fourteen years to someone else, even if it wasn’t sexual. Your husband is supposed to be your everything: your lover, your best friend, your financial partner, your confidant. I never understood that. How can you put all of that on one person? My relationship with Gavin had nothing to do with a single role my husband personally couldn’t fulfill. Or an emptiness in our marriage. My relationship with Gavin was rooted in love. Maybe a kind of love people would never understand.
After tinkering around for a couple of hours, I left the house at two fifteen to pick up Milo, and when we returned, Gavin was gone. I tried calling him but he didn’t answer.
Two hours later he sent me a text: my bow.
Gavin: I love you, too.
7.Fourteen Years Ago
PENNY
Gavin took his flannel off, tied it around his waist, and popped the hood of my car. He was leaning over it, inspecting the engine parts.
“Lance said I might have flooded the engine.”
Still bent, he turned his head to look at me. There was humor in his expression. “Who’s Lance?”
“A microbiology major my dad introduced me to.”
“A microbiologist said you have a flooded engine?”
“Well, he’s a student, but yes.”
“Sounds like a genius. Can I see your keys?”
When I handed them over, he walked toward the driver’s side to open the door.
“I have a bunch of dance stuff in there. It probably smells bad.”
He looked back at me and smirked. His long legs barely fit in my tiny car. He turned the engine over once and there was nothing.
“It’s your battery. I have jumper cables in my car. Do you want to walk over to the other parking lot with me, and we’ll drive my car back?”
My feet were killing me at the moment. “Do you mind if I just wait here?”
“Actually, I do mind.” He looked down at my slippered feet. “I’m not leaving you alone in a dark parking lot. Come on, I’ll give you a piggyback ride.”
Was he crazy? He bent in front of me. “Jump on.”
