CHAPTER ELEVEN
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2021
I stumbled in the dark towards the elevator.
The lights in the main hall were off, unable to detect my movements, regardless of how hard I waved my arms around me to try and trigger the motion sensors, and I quickly gave up. The walk of shame towards Chase's apartment was mortifying enough already and I certainly didn't need to be caught on camera making a fool out of myself just to see where I was going.
The advantage of moving blindly, in the dark, was that no one ever saw me.
I knew this place by heart now, which made it easier to navigate the dark hallways, and the door to his apartment was slightly ajar, revealing the thinnest strip of light at the end of the tunnel.
I tiptoed inside, closing the door behind me without making any noise, and found him sitting in the living room. I could barely find him there, surrounded by so many stacks of paper and books and cups of coffee, but I still did. It was late, but I knew he wouldn't go to bed early; he never did and, with all the work he had to do, tonight would be no exception. He barely acknowledged my presence when I entered the room, even while I danced around him to gather all the dirty, empty cups to give him some extra space on the table.
With him being so quiet, I wasn't sure where to go or what to do, or even what to say. He'd said we could talk later, but I was here now and we hadn't said a word to each other, a fact I was unfortunately aware of. I didn't want to overthink anything, but the heavy silence, the unbearable quiet was impossible to ignore or brush off.
In the kitchen, I allowed myself to take a deep breath. I caught a glimpse of my distorted reflection on the sink's polished surface, squeezed down it almost looked comical, and wasn't surprised by his hesitance to pay any attention to me. The corners of my eyes were black, covered in smudged, runny mascara and dry speckles glued to my skin. My skin, my skin, usually a healthy golden shade, courtesy of my Spanish heritage and summers spent under the hot sun, was submerged in a greenish tint. Overall, I looked like a made-up creature one would tell horror stories about to their children, not someone they'd invite to enter their house while they should be asleep.
The cold air in the apartment was wet and thick with humidity, leaving me nauseous with the way it clung to me. One of the windows in the kitchen was wide open, allowing the gelid winds from outside to enter, and I rushed to close it with a soft thud before things got any worse. The tips of my fingers were numb to the touch.
I was sipping a glass of water, tasting it slowly, like a bird, when something changed.
"Penn?" he called.
It was a reflex, reacting whenever he called my name. In lectures, I was Penelope, Miss Romero at first, back when we were still treading waters, shyly dipping our toes in the vast, immense ocean of unknown territory ahead of us. Penn was reserved for closed rooms and private moments, but he used Penelope whenever things got serious—too serious. By using Penn, he was trying to say he wasn't mad, but I could deal with anger.
I couldn't deal with disappointment.
I took in a sharp breath and returned to the living room, attempting to steady my feet against the wooden floorboards until I was no longer floating. Every piece of furniture looked closer or further away than they actually were, which culminated in me nearly knocking over a vase and a cabinet filled with his mother's precious china, but I made it towards him in one piece. There, he took off his glasses, looked up at me, and I tried to decipher the look on his face.
"Did I fail?" I stupidly asked.
He blinked, confused, and I pointed towards his laptop, where he was, presumably, reading papers. "Of course not."
"Don't give me a good grade just because it's me."
I couldn't help but think about that one paper I had mentioned the evening he asked me to meet up with him at the campus library. Savannah had forgotten about it ("a paper? Already?"), which could have been used against me had the paper not been real, but I'd consistently gotten good grades in courses he taught since they were the only ones that felt stimulating enough. If I put the same effort into my other courses, my GPA would skyrocket.
"You're supposed to get good grades regardless. You're a Steele 5."
"Is that what we're called now?"
He smiled. "I thought it had a nice ring to it." I closed my fingers around the back of a chair, still uncertain whether I should sit at the table with him or not. It was late and I was exhausted and mentally drained from the emotional strain dinner at my parents' house had put me through, so I could only hope he was planning on going to bed soon. "Do you want to take a shower?"
"Do I smell?"
"That's not what I said." He was no longer looking at me. He flipped to the next page. "Don't get defensive, Penn."
I folded my arms close to my chest. "Okay, wow. Now I'm getting defensive because I made a joke." Chase looked up long enough to shoot me an unimpressed look. I already felt us spiraling out of control once more. "I can't shower here. I don't think there are any of my clothes in here, anyway. I showered before leaving for my parents' house."
"There's wine in the kitchen, if you'd like. It's that Pinot Grigio you kept talking about." He pressed the Enter key harder than he would if he wasn't pissed off. I tightened the hold on the back of the chair, wondering if I could break it if I channeled enough strength and intensity into it. "I know you've had quite a lot to drink tonight, so don't feel pressured. I just thought it would help me focus and remembered you like it too, so I keep some bottles around."
The mere fact that he had remembered one of my favorite wines and kept it around because of one comment I had made years ago was a punch to the heart. I had done nothing but stupidly complain about him and have the nerve to feel hurt over him not showing up for dinner, whereas he held me in much higher regard.
Even so, in spite of all of that, I couldn't ignore the intolerable ache in my chest.
It rippled, echoed in the hollowness of my bones as I staggered towards the kitchen. It was still impossibly cold, as though I hadn't even closed the window moments prior, and I could barely stand up straight, let alone open a bottle of wine. I wasn't sure how I did it, but my trembling fingers wrapped around the bottle of Pinot Grigio and reached out for two clean glasses. The cork was easy to remove, the pop ringing in the silent kitchen, and the gurgling sound of the wine filling the glasses was almost relaxing.
I'd become increasingly concerned with who prepared my drinks ever since that fiasco of a frat party on freshman year. There weren't many people I trusted around anything I drank that wasn't properly sealed before I opened it—Chase, my parents, Ingrid and Savannah, Stephen Delaroux—and even when we went out, the rare times we did, I gravitated towards any bartenders that weren't men. I stood there, watching everything they did around my drink, and most people had the decency to not make any comments about my obsessive behavior. Ingrid and Savannah remembered that night vividly, Savannah in particular, as she still feared I resented her for the way things played out that night, and was usually the first to look up ways to tell whether a drink had been spiked or not. I always had to remind her Ingrid had gone through the exact same thing before I had, which pissed off Ingrid to no extent, and made Savannah feel even worse. Guilt would then proceed to settle in, but it wasn't fair to feel guilty for things I hadn't caused, things that had been completely out of my control.
Regardless, I shouldn't be drinking. I couldn't hold my alcohol that well, even though I was better than Savannah, and I'd already had my fair share during dinner, yet there I was. My alcohol consumption had increased throughout the years, with me switching from the occasional Manhattan cocktail ever since I first tasted it to varying qualities of wine. I was more careful now, limiting my social circle just enough so I wouldn't feel pressured to drink more than I could handle, but also remembered to hold myself accountable.
I brought back two glasses of wine and the bottle, just in case. I kept it far from his papers, books, and laptop, scared to death I'd knock it aside and spill its contents all over something important, and sat down on the chair I was previously concerned about breaking.
I wasn't sure how long I waited for him to say something. I didn't want to be the one to break the silence and make him lose focus, after he had spent hours and hours staring at a laptop grading papers, but my nerves were gnawing at my flesh, devouring me alive. All the while, I sat there, drinking my wine and refilling the cups whenever one of us finished theirs, and waited.
"Have you and Savannah sorted things out?" he eventually asked, without looking at me. I blinked, mentally cursing my alcohol-induced slower reflexes. Everything blurred around me, a sensation I knew all too well, and I pressed my feet against the floor in an attempt to not be thrown off the edge. "Wasn't that why you stayed in?"
"Yeah." I shifted in my seat, staring at my distorted reflection on the glass. "I don't think she suspects anything. She seemed to forget she was upset by the time we were done with the first bottle." I refused to think about how that statement could also apply to me. "Still, um . . . I still feel bad about the whole situation. Savannah has always worked so hard, ever since I first met her, and her GPA is far, far better than mine. It just doesn't feel right to steal a spot that should have been hers, and it doesn't feel right to be entitled to deciding who gets to be part of your advising group. I know you can't take it back, but you could maybe email her and explain—"
"You know I can't explain why she didn't get picked."
"Was I the only reason why? If I hadn't asked you to not choose her, would you have picked her?"
Chase sighed. "I don't know. Probably." He closed his laptop. "We both knew there were sacrifices we would have to make. We understood there would be things we'd have to let go of. If she really is that smart and hardworking as you're making her out to be, I'm sure she won't run into any issues with declaring an advisor. I'd be more than happy to write her a letter of recommendation." He rose from his seat, leaving his laptop, papers, and books exactly where they were, but picked up the glass of wine. "I'm sorry you had to do something you didn't like, but we promised each other we'd do whatever it took to make this work. I don't want to flush the past three years down the drain over something like this."
"She's my best friend. I had to sit there and lie to her face while trying to comfort her, and she had the nerve to comment on how great of a friend I was. Ingrid wanted me to stay in so we could offer her proper support, and all I could think about was how it was my fault. How is any of that fair?"
"The same friend that stood by while one of her friends spiked your drink three years ago?"
My stomach tightened. "So is that what it was all about, then? Revenge? Revenge on my behalf?"
"I don't get involved in petty student drama, Penn. I just find it hard to feel that bad for her when she played a considerable part in what happened to you." He finished his wine. "All I've done so far has been to protect you. That's it. Both of us have had to make sacrifices, especially when different areas of our lives intersect. You're not the only one who has had to lie to people and make excuses to cover for this relationship."
"You're angry, then."
"I'm not angry. I'm frustrated that we're having this conversation again when I've been pretty clear about the risks we were taking and would have to take the minute we decided to go forward with this relationship. I really don't understand why you're trying to make things even harder."
"Right."
That was the whole point, wasn't it?
I was the one creating tidal waves of drama when neither of us needed it, but I understood his frustration because, I, too, felt that way. My frustration, however, came from feeling like I was doing everything on my own, with no one to turn to, and I had no guidelines. I couldn't talk to my friends or to my parents and, whenever I thought I could come to Chase with my concerns and wait for him to find a magical solution for everything, he'd give me the silent treatment.
"I'm going to bed," he eventually said. "You should come. It's late."
"I'll take the couch," I replied.
He huffed. "Penelope, don't be ridiculous. The bed is right there."
"No."
"You're being unreasonable right now. Go lie down."
"I said I'll take the goddamn couch," I insisted, firmer this time, a lot firmer than my voice usually was. The sudden outburst caught him off guard, something I instantly regretted, but the damage was done. He stepped away, hands raised and nostrils flaring, and I pathetically sat there, bottom lip quivering.
"Fine. Do whatever you want to do."
I did.
I stayed in the living room, silently accepting the blankets and pillows he handed me so I wouldn't freeze to death or snap my own neck as I slept. I stayed there, crystals of ice forming in my hair and lashes, and a clock ticked in the distance. It was the kind of cold that clung to my bones, that would fog up my thoughts until they blended together in a hazy mess.
That mess had a name. Chase.
Quietly, I tucked my pillows under my arm and picked up the blankets, like a child carrying a teddy bear around the house, searching for her parents after a nightmare pulled her awake. I'd done it with my own parents when I was little, up until the moment we all collectively decided I was too old to seek refuge with them and had to fight my own battles, so we built up my walls. When I pushed open the door to his bedroom, those walls immediately came crumbling down.
I curled into the empty space next to my mess of a man. It was the kind of mess you couldn't leave.
And you wouldn't.
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I drove myself home in the morning.
Ingrid was awake when I entered the apartment, as expected. She sat in the kitchen, cupping a mug of steaming peppermint tea between her hands, and raised her head once she heard me come in. I was far from being in the mood for conversation, after the terrible night of sleep I'd had thanks to my pounding hangover, and was determined to avoid her for the rest of the day.
Years ago, this would have never happened.
There used to be a time when I was so in awe of her and everything she did I never had the courage to open my mouth whenever she was around. As time went by and we became closer—undoubtedly thanks to the frat party, regardless of whether any of us wanted to admit it—she began to step down from the pedestal I'd placed her on and became more human and flawed in my eyes. That was the kindest way I had of explaining why being in the same room as her for long periods of time made me want to rip out my own hair or even saying I really, really hated her guts. She was the one person I'd never managed to keep a secret from and, if I wanted to protect Chase as much as he was protecting me, I couldn't give her any reasons to suspect there was something going on. I could no longer use Marco as a cover-up, which was more of a blessing in disguise than I'd originally thought, as I wouldn't have to bring another innocent person into my wreckage.
"Rough night?" she asked.
"You could say that," I said. "Lots of wine."
"I can see that." She sipped her tea. "How's Stephen?"
"The same, I guess." I made a move towards the hallway leading to the bedrooms. The longer I stayed around to open a window of opportunity for her to pry into my personal life, the higher the chances of me saying something I shouldn't. It wasn't even just about Chase; I wasn't sure whether I could say anything about Stephen Delaroux's professional life or if what had been said last night had been whispered in confidence. "He's working on something, I guess. He wouldn't get into details."
"And my dress?"
I sighed. "It's back in the manor. I was drunk, Ingrid. I changed clothes so I wouldn't spill wine on it or rip it. I'll go back to pick it up later, but I need to lie down for a minute." Her eyes narrowed into slits. Long gone were the days when I'd let that intimidate me. Now, it was just infuriating how she would never, ever let things go. Maybe it was a way of making up for the distant, aloof tendencies she had back in freshman year. "Am I excused? Or do you want to take me to the police station for questioning?"
She pressed her lips into a thin line. "No, it's fine. I was just asking. Loosen up, Penny, will you? Someone might think you have something to hide."
Oh, you had no idea.
"That's not my fucking name," I muttered, teeth gritted, and retreated towards my bedroom.