Page 127 of Head Over Heels
“But my time in Revival has always been temporary. I’ve always been clear about that. Six months, tops.”
Penelope patted her leg. “Things happen, and it throws you for a loop. It crystalizes your feelings, and once you know the truth, you can’t go back.”
Sophie twisted her damp tissue. “I don’t understand.”
Penelope sighed. “It’s like when I had that pregnancy scare when I first got back together with Evan. It scared me because deep down it forced me to confront what I really wanted. A life that included Evan. A tie to him that couldn’t break us. It felt ... weak somehow for me to want that. I hated it, but what was even worse was I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t true. So I did everything I could to push him away because I was terrified he didn’t want the same thing, despite all the evidence to the contrary.”
Through her misery, Sophie tried, but it eluded her. “What are you saying?”
Penelope’s expression filled with concern. “I think, maybe, hearing the job offer made Ryder realize the truth.”
Sophie blinked watery eyes at her friend, this woman who’d been her rock for twenty years, hoping she had the answers. “What’s the truth?”
Penelope glanced over Sophie’s shoulder out at the city skyline. “He had hope, Soph.”
“That I was going to stay in Revival?”
Penelope shrugged. “We can’t know what he hoped. But I think he hoped you had a future, or at least the possibility of a future. Who knows what that looked like to him.”
“But that’s impossible. I live here. He lives there. We never had a future. We just have now.”
Penelope tilted her head. “There are always options. He could move, you could move. Look at James and Gracie, they go back and forth. There are plenty of options you could talk about.”
Why didn’t Penelope understand that it didn’t work that way with her? “You don’t get it. I have to take this job, and there’s no way I can ask Ryder to move with me.”
“Why?”
“Because. His life is there. His friends and family and job. He belongs in Revival. I won’t take that from him.” She couldn’t. She’d always been an obligation, and she refused to be that for Ryder.
Penelope’s expression creased with concern. “And that’s why he can’t continue to be with you.”
Sophie started to cry again, feeling hopeless and lost. “I don’t understand!”
Penelope gripped her hand. “Sophie, the man is in love with you. You can’t seem to see it, but it’s obvious to everyone else. He loves you and you’re leaving. In simplest terms, he just can’t take it. Being with you, knowing you’re already gone is worse for him. You’re going to have to accept it and let him go.”
Sophie shook her head. “It can’t be.”
“Why?”
Sophie scoffed. “Because guys don’t fall irrevocably in love with me. That’s how it is with you and Maddie. That’s not how it works for me.”
Penelope raised her eyes to the ceiling. “You’re so stubborn.”
“He left, Pen. Left.” Anger erased some of her grief. “Look me in the eye and tell me when you acted like a complete butthead by pushing Evan away, that he ever left your side.”
Penelope’s gaze lowered. “We had different issues.”
“But the actions are what matter. Ryder chose to leave. Evan wouldn’t have ever left you and you know it. That man is like glue on you, same way Mitch is with Maddie, and Shane with Cecilia, and James with Gracie. Ryder—” She waved a hand in the air. “You get the picture. Ryder bailed over a job I don’t even have yet. How is that love?”
Penelope took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “I don’t know how to make you understand.”
Indignant, and ready to latch onto it instead of the grief, Sophie plopped back against the couch. “That’s because you know I’m right.”
Her friend tilted her head, her mink-like hair swaying over one shoulder. “Do you love Ryder?”
The question made her heart do a strange pitter-patter. “I don’t know. I care about him a lot. I miss him. I want him. I feel horrid. But I don’t even know what love is. Why do I have to define it?”
“You’re scared.”