No matter how many times I mess up, my friends are still there. We figure it out. And I don’t even worry about it too much, because I know they love me.
Maybe Avery could love me too.
“Thanks, Grandpa,” I whisper as I turn away from the sketch. “Matt, I’m gonna need more than an hour.”
I rip a piece of cardboard off the paint box in front of me and jog to my truck.
“And tell your brother I’m going to need a vacation!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
AVERY
You’re awfully quiet today,” Lorene says.
I give her the best smile I can. “I know. I’m sorry. Long night.”
“Oh, I remember those days,” she says wistfully. “What I wouldn’t give to be young again. Getting old is hard. Your brain is the same as it always was, but your body just won’t work anymore.”
“You get around pretty good, though.” Harper looks at me over Lorene’s hair. “There are days when I feel like you get around better than me.”
“I do,” Lorene says. “But I’m not going to if I keep pretending I’m not almost a hundred years old.”
I press on the small of my back. It’s tight from sleeping on the couch last night, or trying to. I didn’t even go to bed. Having slept in Penn’s for the last few nights, I didn’t want to imagine him behind me. Or on top of me. Or whispering in my ear when he thinks I’m asleep.
“I feel like crap, and I’m not even thirty,” I say.
Yawning, I inspect the speaker in my hand. I found it in the last box of my things I hadn’t unpacked. It’s not as heavy as the other one, and I figure some double-sided tape will keep it on the wall.
Fuck studs.
All of them.
I took the long route to work this morning so I wouldn’t have to go by the turnoff for the library. I don’t want to see Penn for a while. It’ll take some strategizing, and I’ll probably starve to death since I’ll have to avoid the café and Mucker’s, but I can do it. Here and Harper’s house will be my safe places for now.
My eyes look bloodshot in the mirror as I turn to the ladder. I’m embarrassed and have blamed it on allergies to Lorene and a man named Gary Rambis, who was my first customer of the day. He was adorable, asking me for tips on proposing to a woman. I gave him my best advice and tried not to cry.
He tipped me twenty dollars and told me to take care of myself. I’ll have to find him when I’m emotionally stable again and thank him for being so kind.
That might take a while.
“Thirty is still young,” Lorene says. “Enjoy it. Don’t waste a minute of it. If I had back the minutes of my life that I wasted worrying about silly things or about things that never happened, I could’ve lived a whole other life.”
“This life is enough to keep me busy,” I say, cutting four strips of tape.
There’s something about the silence that makes me look at her. She’s eyeing me in the way only a woman of nearly ten decades can. It’s a look of wisdom and experience, but also of concern.
“A busy life means a full life,” she says.
“Well, right now, I’d rather it be more full of fun, happy things than what I’m dealing with.”
“Let me tell you something,” she says, scooting around in her chair. “Some of my best memories in life started out as some of the worst. I was distraught at times, just devastated by different things. But if I think back to it now, I wonder if that’s what it took to push me the other way so I’d go where I was supposed to be heading.”
I nod but have to look away. My eyes burn with tears I refuse to let fall.
She’s right. The pain of my life in Los Angeles pushed me here. Despite everything that’s happened with Penn, this is where I belong. This is where my soul is supposed to be. I’m more accepted here in a month than I ever was on the West Coast, and I finally know what it feels like to have real family and even friends. Matt and Claire have been so kind to me, and Jake even called to check on me this morning.
Even Penn. The man who loved me more than any man ever has. He just won’t accept it.
If I have to hurt like this to find a greater happiness someday, I can make peace with that. I just hope it hurries.
I take the tape and the speaker and climb the ladder. I remember the last time I climbed a ladder in here and had a speaker bracket in my hand. Penn came through the door and ended up catching me.
I fight back the burn in my chest as I lay each strip of tape along an edge of the speaker.
“Hey, Harper,” I say, trying to distract myself. “Did I tell you Meredith offered me another job?”
“No. She did? That’s great.”
“I’m excited.” I toss the extra tape to the floor. “It’s the animal sanctuary next, but she has all sorts of ideas. I think she’s going to keep me busy for a while.”
“Great news, sweet pea.”
“It really is. Getting to do this every day is a dream.”
The door chimes ring and my head whips around. The air moves in a way it only does when one thing happens: Penn’s here.
The burn in my chest grows hotter, so hot that I think I might catch fire. I’m afraid to turn around. I’m afraid not to.
My fingers tremble around the cord in my hand as Lorene says hello. I don’t know what he says back, but I feel the ripple of his voice through my body. It lands right on my heart.
Damn it.
“Hey,” he says.
I look down. He’s standing at the base of the ladder. His eyes display an anxiety I haven’t seen in them before. I hate it because it makes me want to hold him. But friends don’t hold friends like that.
“Why are you here?” My words are caught on a load of emotion.
He takes a deep breath. “I’m here because you’re not at the library.”
“I’m not at the library to avoid you.”
“I know.”
My jaw sets. This is hard enough without him shoving it in my face. Maybe we can’t be friends until I figure this out.
“Please go,” I say, turning back to the wall.
He doesn’t. He stands there like I didn’t say a word. The longer he watches me fix the last bit of tape to the speaker, the madder I get.
I slam the speaker to the wall. It rattles a little basket of fake flowers that Harper has just above the magazine rack. I let go, praying the speaker holds. It does.
“Interesting way of doing that,” he says.
“No one asked you.”
Lorene and Harper choose this moment to stop chatting. Of course they’re listening. I’d listen too. But I’ve had enough public embarrassment to last me a few days.
“Will you leave?” I ask.
“No.”
“Then please move so I can get down from here.”
“I’m glad you got a new ladder.”
“Move.”
“No.”
His face is impassive. It’s only his eyes that show what he’s feeling, and if I had to guess, I’d venture to say he’s feeling about as happy as I am right now. The problem is he won’t admit it. Or fix it.
“I’m not doing this with you in front of people,” I say.