“Hey. You’re going to be okay. I’m going to feed you,” she says in a reassuringly firm way. Margie offers me her guest room. She and La bustle me back to the apartment.
I pour my heart out, with La running her hand up and down my back in comfort—she’s surprisingly like a pack of Mentos, her hard shell shielding a super-soft and sympathetic minty-fresh heart. They flank me on the sofa, sentinels against heartbreak, letting me cry it all out for ages.
Later, Margie pets my hair and feeds me popcorn. La prepares a dinner that looks incredible and that I don’t remember tasting.
A commercial comes on for a legal show, and it snaps me out of my misery enough to remember that I haven’t asked poor Margie about work.
“The show’s still in limbo,” she says, waving away my concern, “but a meeting with the showrunner is coming any day now.”
I nod wearily and shuffle to the guest room, sniffling and clutching a fistful of tissues.
The next morning, a rainy, miserable Monday, I find myself sitting in my cubicle, wearing Margie’s borrowed clothes, staring at my swollen eyes on a Zoom video call. The call ends, and I pull off my headset, glancing up at Rochelle when she stops at my desk with a smile.
“Penny, did you see the request that came in on Friday? Did you send me your feedback on the lead scoring model—”
“Sorry. No. I’ll get that to you. What’s happening with my raise, by the way?” I drop the last bit with all the subtlety of an Acme anvil crushing a cartoon coyote.
Rochelle’s smile is the same one she gives me every time I ask, and I think I read in it everything I missed all the other times. It’s uncomfortable, pacifying… It suddenly occurs to me that I’m not sure she ever asked for a raise for me at all.
“I’m going to keep trying—”
I start packing up my stuff, throwing odds and ends into my handbag.
“Penny…” Rochelle laughs nervously. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, I quit.” I smile at her, feeling liberated. That light-in-the-heart feeling I only really get when I’m around Jack. At the thought of him, the light dims, but I grit my teeth and press on. I don’t have an apartment anymore anyway, without the raise. I can crash at Margie’s in that tiny extra room for a while until I find a new apartment and a new gig. I’m just…over this. All of this. I don’t want chicken slop. I want my damn chicken sandwich.
Rochelle’s shock is gratifying. As is the desperation on her face. “No. Wait. Right there. I’m going to talk to HR right now and…”
“How about I leave, and you talk to HR after I’m gone, and instead of me waiting around for you tosee what you can do, you find out what you can do and just tell me? It’s been three years and a lot of promises, Roch. I’ve always really admired you and enjoyed working with you, but I’m done. I know my worth, and I deserve a raise. If you can’t give it to me, I need to find somebody who will.”
I stand, and Rochelle stares after me. In the elevator, I shake off the fear and the inner doubting voice that sounds an awful lot like my mom’s. And for once? I just do what makes me fucking happy.
I walk out into the rain and look around, exulting in my newfound freedom but not at all sure where I want to go. The rain plasters my shirt to me as I wander a few blocks, peering into storefronts. A thought occurs, and I hail a cab.
“Hi. Short trip,” I tell the cabbie, shivering in the air-conditioned space. “Can you take me to Rizzoli? It’s the bookstore on Broadway. Between Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth.”
That night, I feel less fragile about everything. Turns out that demanding your worth for the first time in your life will do that to you. And spending the afternoon wandering a bookshop, eating your feelings, and getting a pedicure helps, too. There isn’t a repeat of yesterday’s outpouring of misery, but seeing Margie and La so deeply in love, on the heels of Avery and Anna’s wedding, has me feeling like I’m cradling a glass heart in my chest. One that’s taken way too many hits over the years, too many of them self-inflicted.
I miss Jack’s crisp, piney smell, his dumb humor, his sharp retorts. I miss ripping down a wall with him, building one back up, getting him over to my side of it. I miss feeling him holding me. I misshim. Everything about him. The thought of rebuilding the hole he’s left inside me leaves me exhausted.
That night, when I’m tucked up in Margie’s guest room, reading my newly purchased replacement copy ofThe Pirate Duke’s Revenge—my first copy forgotten in my dash out of the apartment—and fighting the urge to check my phone every few seconds, a text finally comes through. But it’s from Avery.
“Ugh… Margie?” I yell.
Margie appears at the threshold, her hair frazzled, her eyes wider than I’ve ever seen them. For once, she’s not trying to be the actor and is allowing pure concern and desperation to wash over her face. “Get dressed. We need to get over there.”
33
Avery is in bad shape when we get to his place. His hair is disheveled, his emerald eyes bloodshot.
“Oh, Avery.” I enfold him in a hug.
“She broke up with me in a text, Penny. A fucking text! After being married a day?”
“What did she say?” I ask.
Margie ushers us to Avery’s living room and heads to the kitchen.
