“Good progress,” I say.
“No comeback? Really? Things that dire?” He steps fully through, into my apartment. The place looks so small now. And darker. And there’s this feeling that, although Jack’s crowding the remaining space with his height right now, the second that last panel goes up, he’ll disappear behind it forever. Ridiculous, but… I try and swallow past a throat that feels coated in sawdust.
Jack frowns. “Is it the tabloid stuff?” He sounds caring. He sounds like he’d hug me if I let him. It’s too much.
The air between us grows tense and heavy. A fairly recent version of me would have thrown herself at Jack right now, letting the dam break over us both.
But the Penny of today knows better. I am not ready for this. Wendy may have said I can work on myself while in a relationship, but I know it’s a recipe for disaster. I need to leave things alone until I’m ready.
I take three giant steps backward, putting much-needed space between us.
“I’m a mess. I told you how my dad left me and my mom, and it’s fucked me up worse than I thought. I sabotage relationships. I’m no good at them. The wall’s almost done, so just whatever you spent so far and whatever it costs with Gence, I’ll pay you my share and we can just go our separate ways.”
This confession is like lancing an infected wound: painful, but bringing relief at the same time. I snatch up a long strip of paper. It’s from the drywall and still has gravelly bits of the gypsum plaster stuck to it. I twist it around my index finger, letting the rocky fragments bite into my skin.
“Separate ways? You said you were in therapy. Working on things.”
“Yes,” I say miserably. “But I don’t know how long that’ll take. Okay?” I spit out the last word. “Maybe I’ll never be normal.”
He closes the space I just put between us. “Do you or do you not want—”
The paper I’m winding around my finger rips, snaps really, sending a once-in-a-lifetime shot of shrapnel directly at Jack’s face. He slaps his hand over his eye and half turns, half bends.
“What the fuck!”
“I’m so sorry! It was the drywall! Oh no, did it get in your eye? I’m sorry!”
Jack walks over to my mirror and blinks rapidly, pulling at his bottom lid. His eye is a vicious red.
“Maybe wash it out with water?”
He looks at me in the mirror. “I’m going to wash my eye and then we’re going totalkabout all of this. Understand?”
He storms through the narrow space that remains to be drywalled, and I spring into action, grabbing my purse and keys and running out the door.
Because I’m a coward.
28
Avery found me sitting on his stoop when he got home from work, and he didn’t press me for details as to why I was there. He just fed me snacks and waited with a sympathetic ear if I needed one. But after a few hours of him looking down at his phone uneasily, he finally confessed I was making him late for a date.
Anna was a mess at last check, so I’m assuming she wasn’t who he was going out with, but I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to bring her to mind just before he dined with someone else. Still, the prospect of being at his place if he decided to bring any date back after dinner was bleh, so off to Margie’s I went.
I found La there, though I shouldn’t have been surprised. Margie and La fed me properly, La making an osso buco so delicious, with a sauce so flavorful and complex, it had me wondering if that’s not what won Margie over. But gracious as they were, letting me loiter there for hours and even offering to let me sleep over, the loaded looks they were sending one another forced me to accept that I was interfering with amorous plans left and right today.
It’s obscenely late when I get home. I open the door as quietly as I can and curse my decision not to sleep at Margie’s when the hinges squeak. Why have I never WD-40’d these things?
There are no lights on in my apartment. I shine my cell light on the room and slip off my shoes. My heart dive-bombs to my heels when I see that the last open space between our apartments has been covered with drywall, the last sliver of a connection between our places severed. I set my bag down and suddenly feel like crying.
I run my hand along the wall, feeling like Fortunato from “The Cask of Amontillado.” That single panel of drywall has sucked all the air out of my lungs, out of the room. I want to expire from loneliness.
I let myself into my bedroom and scream.
Jack is lounging in my bed. His feet are crossed, his back propped against my headboard and all the pillows I own. He’s reading. He looks up. I gasp.
Not only is Jack Craig in my bed, flipping through my new copy ofThePirate Duke’s Revenge, but he’s also wearing an eye patch.
“Your eye,” I say.
