Lie Until You Laugh

32- Surprises

“Good morning,” I chirp on Monday morning as I walk into the studio an hour before practice actually starts. Penn is in there already like I knew he would be, and he’s setting up cones which usually means we’re going to do suicides today.

He looks up at me and smiles a little bit. “Morning. You’re a bit early.”

“I decided to be spontaneous,” I tell him with a small giggle as I walk over to him. “Do you want some help with the cones?”

“I’m almost done,” Penn tells me, placing the last two small orange cones on the ground. “So there’s no specific reason that you’re here so early?”

I shake my head at him innocently. “Just wanted to spend some time with you.”

“We spent all weekend together,” He reminds me with a laugh. “You aren’t sick of me yet?”

“Surprisingly, I’m not,” I say. “But if you’re sick of me, I can just go eat a second breakfast or something.”

“I’m definitely not sick of you either,” My boyfriend assures me before wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me into him. He presses his lips to mine for a short kiss and I giggle against his mouth.

“So, are we still going on Friday?” I wonder, referring to the trip to Georgia we’re going to take to rescue Jo and my mom. We haven’t talked about it in a while, so I just want to make sure that he didn’t change his mind or forget or anything.

He nods. “Of course.”

“Okay. When do you think we’ll get there? I need to tell Jo and Mom when to be ready,” I explain a little nervously.

“Well, the plane leaves here at midnight and it’s a four and a half hour flight, so we’ll be there by five in the morning but with the time difference, it’ll be around eight in the morning there,” He explains. “Why do you seem nervous?”

“We’ll have to wait until 8:30 because that’s when he leaves for work. And I’m not nervous… that much. I just don’t want anything to go wrong, you know?” I breathe.

He pulls me into a hug and I accidently melt into his warm chest. “I’m going to be right there with you the whole time, babe. Nothing’s going to go wrong.”

“You do realize that the only reason I came here was to get them out of that house, right? I mean, with my family safe, I really don’t have a reason to stay here at the school. You’re basically like, financing me to leave,” I say, looking up at him.

“Okay, well first off, I don’t think that you’ll leave because you absolutely love it here,” He jokes with a small smile. “But even if you did leave, we’d stay together and even if that didn’t happen, I’d rather you and your family be safe than for you to be here with me.”

“That’s very selfless of you,” I giggle. “But you’re right, I do love it here so I’ll stay. I’m not going to let Gianna win that competition.”

“Are you saying that you think you can win?” He wonders.

I shrug. “I’m going to try.”

“I think you’ll win,” He tells me.

“How much longer do we have until class starts?” I ask him.

He looks up at the clock and then replies with, “Forty minutes. Why?”

I lean up on my tippy toes and kiss him. “Let’s go hang out in your office for a little while.”

“You said that very suggestively,” Penn jokes softly.