Page 41 of One More Chapter
If I keep allowing myself to live in the fantasy of what could have been, I’ll start believing it’s attainable again.
“Ian, when do you go back for your follow-up appointment?” Mom asks, sending the first shepherd’s pie around the table. With three growing boys and a husband who gave them their appetite, she learned early on to just make two.
“Tuesday,” Ian huffs at the mention of his ruined shoulder. He’s been grumpier than usual lately, being incapacitated.
“Hopefully it’s good news!” she says cheerfully.
Ian grunts.
“Ant, when do you think your place will be ready?”
“Hopefully livable by Thanksgiving. I want to spend a lot of my break fixing up the inside.”
“It’ll give you a break from playing pretend principal,” Grant chuckles, taking nearly a third of the serving dish onto his platebefore passing it to me. The rest of the table eyes him skeptically, while I eye him in warning. When they all turn their attention onto me, awaiting an answer, I exhale, hyping myself up as I break the news.
“With the way that they had to split the schools, administration was kind of all over the place. River Valley’s principal quit, and, well, I stepped up. Their assistant—Nathan—stepped in as the interim principal, and I’m helping him out in the in between while they wait on our AP to come back from maternity leave.”
I’m usually a little on the jittery side, but this bouncing knee is all nerves. There’s heat in my cheeks and a churn in my stomach, because for once in my life, I want someone to be proud of me from the get-go.
“Aw, that’s nice that they’ll let you step in until the real assistant principal gets back!”
I know she doesn’t mean for it to sound patronizing. My mother is a saint, and she’s just responding to the face value truth of what I’ve said. But that comment alone, and its ability to open up the floodgates for my brothers and my dad to get in their following jabs, is a cannonball to my hot air balloon.
“I mean, I was skeptical when they put you in charge ofanykids, but the guy doing the disciplining?!” Grant laughs. Grant. The brother who already knew this information. I could suck it up and remember that we all like to pile on each other, but I was actually hoping for a different outcome this time.
“Hard to believe, considering you were always the oneintrouble growing up, Ant,” Dad chuckles. “But hey, that’s great, son. Congratulations.”
Dad reaches over and slaps me on the shoulder, and I do my best to focus on that instead of the razzing. I know that my brothers and I have always dogged on each other. I just wonderif I’ll ever stop feeling like the compliments are the afterthought instead of the upfront.
Deep down, I think I might have a lot going on inside my head that I’m not ready to dig through. At least, I wasn’t, until Penelope Barker stole it out of me on that Florida beach—where it then stayed buried.
We make it through the rest of dinner in surface level conversation that mainly consists of my dad’s new gym, my mom’s new charity project, and Grant’s latest string of Tinder dates, that he apparently doesn’t mind sharing about at the family dinner table.
Watching the Sox game is easy. There is a language that is particular to baseball, and it does not at all involve deep down emotions or, really, words other than curses and grunts. By the time I make it to my temporary home, I’m exhausted both from keeping things in and from letting them out. Hopefully that’s what drags me into a deep slumber.
Except, I have a roommate. A roommate who, upon me entering the house, stops me in my tracks.
Entering the kitchen, I see that the table is set for two, and she even bought my favorite beer. And hunched over the table is a bruised and defeated Penelope. She lifts her head when she hears me step into the dining area. The pockets beneath her eyes cut me almost as deeply as the pain spidering over them in red.
“Uh… hey.” It comes out like sandpaper against my windpipe. “What, uh… What’s all this?”
“I made us dinner. I thought we could talk.”
She shrugs, and her cheeks tint in a color I only saw when we both drunkenly confessed that we had been checking each other out all week. A mixture of shy embarrassment that I once thought reminded me of the sunrise on my best days.
I deflate, leaning over onto the kitchen table. It’s well past dinner time. I wonder how long she’s been sitting here waiting for me.
I wonder how much I’ve let her down this time.
At least, this time, I didn’t know I was doing it.
“Pen, look, I’m sorry?—”
“Nope, not your fault. You didn’t know. I’ll leave it in the fridge.”
I stay hovered over the table as she hurriedly puts away dinner, shoves it in the fridge, and rushes off to her room. The door doesn’t quite slam behind her, but I sort of wish it would.
Once the house is quiet, I slide the leftovers of whatever she made into my lunchbox for tomorrow, and call it a night.