Page 67 of One More Chapter
“Why do you have all of this stuff?” I ask, popping the silence.
“I think the better question is, why don’t you?” she chuckles, lifting a brow.
“I’m sure I have a flashlight somewhere.”
I watch as she stares at the flicker of the fireplace, following the shadows dancing across the walls as she contemplates her words.
“Mom was late on a lot of bills. When we were little, she got away with calling them ‘candle parties.’ I think I was in fifth grade when I finally realized what a load of shit it was. I guess, if I look on the bright side, I know how to prepare for a disaster.”
She turns on a flashlight, perching it on the coffee table we’re currently using for dinner, and turns her hands into a complicated shape to make a shadow dinosaur on the wall.
“Damn,” I whisper. It takes the place of the bowling ball that just returned to my throat. I’m not sure what to say. My mom never told me her childhood best friend was that downtrodden. Then again, it was never my place to know. Still, to see how resilient Penelope has become in spite of what she went through makes my chest ache with pride. Instead of unloading all of the questions I want to ask, I settle on, “How’d you do that?”
She grins, then reaches for my hands, guiding them into the right position until there are two T-rexes dancing in the firelight on our living room wall. I won’t admit that the second she touched me, even through the brace on her left wrist, my skin ignited. The last time I had my hands on her, she’d been letting my name echo off the shower walls. She must feel the way my skin heats beneath her touch, because she pulls back sharply. I watch as her own shadow-dinosaur transforms into a bunny, then a bird, then a dog.
In the flicker of the fireplace and the glow of the flashlights, I can see the faint purple beneath her eyes. Bags she’s trying to hide. Weakness she’s trying to keep from everybody else.
I stand, and rifle through one of my doom-boxes in the hall closet, coming up with exactly what I was looking for.
“Wanna play?”
“Uno?” she guffaws, taking the box from me. “Doesn’t this game end marriages? Haven’t we doneenoughfighting?”
“We have,” I say with utter seriousness. I sit cross-legged on one side of the coffee table and deal us both in.
The game is convoluted from the beginning, with only two of us playing, an endless cycle of pick-fours and reverse-skipping each other. But somehow, with this silent, seemingly endless game between us, we find the space to talk.
“I need to be better,” I say softly.
“You just triple-stacked the Draw 4. Maybe start there?” she laughs, lifting a brow at me.
“I’m being serious. I feel like we keep getting closer to maybe almost fixing things, and then they come crashing down again.”
I shake my head, giving her what’s on my heart while I pick up cards until I have a blue that I can toss on top of the pile.
“You aren’t the only one that needs to be better.”
Flicking my eyes across the table, I see the candor in hers, ringed with a little remorse.
“I’ve been short with you. Snippy. You’re trying to be better, and then I put up the roadblocks. I’m sorry I’ve been that way, Ant.”
I swallow a block of cement, still not quite understanding what it means to me that she’s asking for forgiveness.
“I’m sorry too.”
We lay down cards in silence for a few turns when she swallows audibly, her cheeks pinking as she speaks again.
“And then, in the middle of it all, I had to go and confuse us even more when I asked you to… When we?—”
“I’m not sorry about that.”
Her eyes widen as she blinks up through my bluntness. It’s my turn to swallow.
“It’s going to be hard as hell to keep my hands off you from now on, P, but I’m not sorry about what happened last week, and I’m sure as hell not sorry about what happened on that beach.”
She nods slowly. I reflect on how the lift of her head with the firelight in the background makes her look like a phoenix rising from the ashes. She gets a saucy little glint in her eye and smirks. I know exactly what’s coming.
“You’re not sorry enough to show mercy though?” Itsk, shaking my head as she slaps down a Draw 4.