The Long Winter #92
On Again Off Again part two
“Well, I said before I was prepared to be single, neh?”
“You’re right, babe. Just be single. You’ll be fine. Still, I really wish I was still up there, you know? To be there for you.”
Penny smiled down at her phone and Sandra smiled back.
“You are, though. I appreciate it. I feel kind of bad for taking up your Saturday morning like this.”
“Oh, I have nothing else going on. I’ve just been doing schoolwork and rehab. My dad’s been more receptive to the idea of me coming back up for next year, you know, after the summer's over. ”
“That would be so great!”
“It's going to go fast! We'll be together again soon. And of course in class, too!”
Penny laughed with her and then Sandra had to go. Penny drew a long, deep breath and stepped out of her room. Maddie stood in her own doorway staring down at her phone.
“Hi Maddie.”
“Oh, Penny!” Maddie rushed towards her. “Hey, do you have any free time tonight?” Then she paused and frowned and spoke again before Penny could get her voice to work. “Wait, weren’t you supposed to be out with Becca last night?”
“Becca, neh? I was, but we had a… a fight. We’re broken up.”
“Oh, that’s so sad! I’m totally sorry! Do you need any time? Do you need to cry on my shoulder? I’ll hold you while you cry. I’ll cry with you, if it’ll make you feel better.”
Penny laughed. “Thank you, Maddie. I cried all last night. I feel okay right now, but I’m sure something will happen to make me cry later, so if you’re available tonight I might need that shoulder!”
“Of course! We can get ice cream, we can watch a sad movie, like something really, super sad, something like Requiem for a Dream where everyone dies and no one gets what they want or even what they need and it’s super sad and depressing!”
Penny laughed again but her heart turned into blubber and she had to swallow a sob.
“So anyways, look,” Maddie said, leading Penny to their shoes and then out into the hallway. “Leah wants us to tell her where we want to go for spring break. We only have a couple of weeks to decide. Leah and Nagisa and I, we were talking about going to Europe. Leah’s family has that estate or chateau or whatever in the south of France, we could spend the week there.”
“South of France? That sounds expensive…”
“Yeah, and we could go shopping, and eat and drink at sidewalk cafes, and maybe we could stick our toes into the Mediterranean.”
“I don’t have money for that.”
“Well, Leah invited you…”
“I know…”
They walked down the stairs. The common area was empty except for a campus worker poking the fire. They stayed quiet until they were seated near a window in the dining hall.
“I don’t want to just mooch off my rich friends while I’m here. Maybe this summer after my internship I’ll have some money saved—“
She felt Maddie looking at her, waiting for her to continue, but she felt her throat close and tears well up (again) and she could not.
“Aw. You’re really broken up inside, aren’t you?”
“Becca got me the internship,” Penny said, hating the pathetic way her voice squeaked. “Maybe since we’re broken up I’m going to lose it.”
“There there,” Maddie said, reaching across the table to squeeze Penny’s arm. “Why don’t you talk to your professor? I’ll bet she could help you find a different internship. Any of your professors, right? Leah says you do a good job, and you’ve talked before about how some of the older students like your work.”
“I know, but…” Penny pulled back from Maddie and put her face in her hands and cried. “I’m sorry…” She picked up one of the fine cloth napkins and held it to her eyes. “I’ll get better. I’ll be better…”
“No, don’t put pressure on yourself. Just take your time. We’re all here for you.”
“Penny, here’s a fresh napkin.”
They both looked up and Penny nodded and accepted the napkin from one of the pretty young waitresses she always said “hello” or “thank you” to.
“I’m sorry, Emma. I don’t mean to…”
“It’s okay. Are you ready for breakfast? Or would you just like some tea?”
“Breakfast, please. Maddie? Are you ready to eat?”
“Yes, of course.” Maddie smiled up at Emma. “Thank you.”
Emma nodded and left, letting her sympathetic smile linger on Penny as she turned away. Maddie leaned across the table again and touched Penny’s arm.
“You really have a magic way about you, you know that?”
“I’m just nice to them. I like to talk to Emma when I’m here by myself, she says she hates it and she could get in trouble for it, but she always talks to me anyway.”
“See? You’re magical. Magical girl Penny Stark.”
“Sou neh…” Penny frowned, glad that her eyes were clearing up once again.
“What’s she like? Does she know why there are no guys waiting tables here?”
“She goes to the University, she’s from here. I never asked about why all the waitresses were girls.”
Maddie laughed. “Of course, you wouldn’t give that a second thought!”
Penny snickered and looked away.
“Seriously, though, Leah invited you on our trip. You should come. We can work something out.”
Penny sighed and nodded. She thanked Emma when their food arrived and she poked at it as Maddie ate like a starving girl rescued from a desert isle.
“I might just go down to see my grandparents. Maybe I could borrow a car and drive up to see Sandra.”
“Drive?”
“Yes.”
“You have a license?”
“Of course. My parents made me get one when I decided to come here for school.”
Again her memory lit up with images of Ayumi in her driver’s ed class, sitting there so near in all her magnificent aloofness. She remembered Kellen, and remembered their first drive together after Christmas when they got lost in the mountains in Ayumi’s fancy German car.
“My girlfriend was in those classes with me.”
“The one from—“ Maddie swallowed her words and laughed awkwardly. “The one you broke up with before you came up here?”
“Yes. The one from the videos everyone saw. When we were in the class together she pretended not to like me. That was fine. I pretended I didn’t like her, too. But then we started a secret relationship.”
“That sounds incredibly exciting.”
“It was. We used to dress up in costumes, like I remember once we dressed up like we were from a hundred years ago, but I interpreted it wrong and showed up in an old kimono and she looked like she was from an old black-and-white detective movie. She was so beautiful. I miss her a lot.”
“Yeah…”
“Maybe like you miss your boyfriend from the way he was before you got engaged.”
Maddie nodded.
“If I’m sad, it feels fair that you’re sad, too.”
Maddie laughed. “It is fair! Like I said, tonight we’re going to cuddle up together and watch the saddest movies we can think of. Then tomorrow, after we’ve cried all we can cry, maybe things will be better. Maybe I’ll be able to convince you to come with us to France. Or wherever.”
“Hm. Maybe…” Penny ate another bite of her breakfast. “But first, I want to cry all night again. Then we’ll see.”
***
Penny stared at the message on her phone.
We need to talk.
She pondered just what Becca wanted to talk about. Their relationship (such as it was at that point)? The internship? The clothes Penny left at her place?
“Text her back.”
Penny glanced at Leah.
“You’re not going to know what she wants unless you do.”
“How long ago did she text you?” Ash leaned over Leah’s shoulder and peered down at Penny’s phone. “I still say ignore it. Leave that bitch out in the cold. She’s no good for you.”
“She was good for me. We had fun together and we were going to live in Miami together this summer…”
They all looked down at Penny’s phone. Ash sighed and flopped backwards into her own chair and rolled back to her computer. Penny set her phone down. Leah looked over at her.
“Text her back,” she said again. “Then we can move forward with our plans for spring break. There’s still time for you to decide to come with us.”
“I feel so guilty. I still feel guilty about going with Sandra to San Mateo over winter break. I just don’t have money for a fancy European vacation.”
“I’ll pay for everything. My mother is interested in meeting you.”
Penny frowned at her. “Your mother?”
“Yeah, your mother?” Ash echoed from behind Penny.
“She enjoys meeting new people, and she is intensely curious as to what my friends are like.”
“And she won’t be satisfied with just Maddie and Nagisa who can totally pay their own way?”
“No. I had no close friends in school. I only dated Tyler because he was friends with Tommy. They’re not friends anymore.”
“What’s your brother like?” Penny asked.
“He’s something else. Noisy. Outgoing. My opposite, I suppose. We look almost exactly alike, so if you were wondering what I would look like as a male it’s him.”
“I wasn’t,” Penny said.
“I wasn’t either.”
Penny giggled at Ash.
“You’re going with her for spring break,” Ash then said. “I mean, shit, you’re going to go with her roommate on a sexy-ass tropical vacation and then turn down the Rainbow Brigade there on their Euro-trip? I mean seriously, what the fuck? Take the free trip! Take these rich bitches for all they’re worth if they’re offering!”
Leah frowned at Ash, but before she could retort a shadow darkened their corner.
“Are you ladies working?” Lyle scowled down at them. “Because it sounds like you are socializing.”
“We’re working,” Penny answered without being able to meet his gaze.
“We’re definitely not, but you could stand to chill out,” Ash said, hammering him back with a scowl of her own.
“I have a question for you,” Leah said. Lyle’s eyebrow raised but it did little to soften his expression. “I invited Penny to come with me for spring break. We’re planning to visit my family’s chateau in France. She doesn’t want to come because she has no money saved for such an event. I have promised to subsidize her trip, but she is uncomfortable with the idea, especially after having gone through a similar thing with another friend for the winter. Do you think she is wrong to refuse?”
Lyle’s expression turned thoughtful and he tapped the point of his triangular chin. His gaze swung towards Ash to express his annoyance with the ridiculous smile on her face, then frowned down at Penny.
“It’s not logical to turn down a gratis vacation if she who is offering it to you is offering out of the kindness of her heart.” He glanced at Leah. “I’m assuming, of course, you are not trying to buy friendship from this… person.”
“No. We are already friends.”
He looked down his nose at Penny.
“Go with her. Be grateful. But first you have the rest of this week and all of the next to finish your work—“
“Rawls, is there a reason you’re pestering these girls?” Bridget Morrison came up beside him.
“I am not pestering them. They asked me a question.”
Morrison looked down at Ash. “Is this true?”
“He did come up to pester us, but then Leah had a question for him and he was actually being helpful for once.”
“For once? Please, this lab is only as organized as it is because I keep it that way—“
“Relax—“
“No, Morrison, I’ve been tired of being told to relax. For years now, especially by the likes of you. These girls and all their classmates will appreciate my way of doing things when I am gone at the end of the year.”
“The end can’t come soon enough,” Ash muttered at Penny. Leah rolled her eyes.
“Fine. I’ll return to my work.” He looked down at Penny. “Go.” Then he glowered at Bridget. “Come. We have something to discuss.”
“Lead the way.”
Bridget smiled at the younger girls as she left and then Penny opened her phone and texted Becca back.
“What are you doing?” Ash hissed at her.
“I’m going to find out what she wants?”
“Why? She’s bad for you!”
“She’s not.”
Ash made a disgusted sound and turned back to her work, hammering away at the keyboard with a cloud darkening her features. Penny ignored her and sent Becca a message.
What about?
A few moments later:
The future. Meet me tonight.
I have homework. I have to study. And I have to work out.
Skip your workout. Please meet me. I know it’s Tuesday. Please.
The second “please” made Penny suck in a deep breath. She agreed. Becca did not text back.
Well, I guess I’ll wait until tonight…
Just be smart about this. Ash isn’t completely wrong. Becca was irrational on Friday night.
I know. I’ll be smart about it.
“Idiot.”
Penny shot a glare at Ash.
“She’s just jealous,” Leah said.
“Am not.”
Leah ignored Ash and returned her eyes to her computer. Penny flashed another quick glare at Ash and soon they were all working once again. Penny wished she had stayed single again. It would be so much easier to focus on her work without the distraction of her tumultuous relationship with Becca. So much easier just to enjoy her free time with Leah and Maddie and Ash and Nagisa. Penny stopped for a moment and glanced around. Where had the Japanese girl gone? She had not been in class that day, Penny realized.
“Nagisa is in bed with a fever,” Leah said before Penny could ask.
“Wow, are you like, psychic?”
“You are easier to read than any person I’ve ever met.”
“She has the hots for you worse than you have for Gwen,” Ash said with a snicker.
“She does not—“
“Why do you think she invited you to France with her?”
“Yes, me and two of our friends, plus she’s trying to get me to go back out with Becca.”
“She is not. She’s trying to get you to end it once and for all.”
Penny stuck her tongue out at Ash and glanced back at Leah.
“Ash is not entirely right.”
“So I’m not entirely wrong, either!”
Leah showed no annoyance, merely looked at Penny with half a smirk and spoke.
“Who’s Gwen?”
“Gwen Fairchild, department head who changes Penny’s diapers and and is a close, close family friend.”
“Shut up, Ash! I don’t wear diapers!”
Ash laughed at Penny’s expense and stood.
“Well, ladies, I’ve been antagonistic enough. Penny? You be careful with Becca. Leah? It’s been grand, let’s do this again someday. Ciao.”
“Bye, Ash.”
“So long.”
Ash hopped away to attend her next class and Penny and Leah returned to their work. It was a long way to the evening, but at least Penny had plenty to do to distract her. Distraction after distraction.
Follow The Long Winter into #93 On Again Off Again part three here.