| No Love Attached |
chapter seventeen : how to lose a guy in 10 hours
•••
Saying goodbye to 2017 felt like parting with something much more. It was the last year I would be holding onto Josh. 2018 would be the year I became myself again. Not the shell of the person I once was. This new year felt like saying goodbye to a very dear, problematic friend. All of the comfortability I had in using Josh as an excuse, was getting ripped away from me by my own hands.
It was still New Years Day. After a less than comfortable encounter with the TSA and a brutal flight back to London, I was now back at the hotel, curled up in bed with room service.
In a dark moment of curiosity, I had turned on Fifty Shades of Grey. I had read thousands of manuscripts of stories copying the series but had never seen the infamous movie. No matter how bad I was cringing at the phrase "laters, baby", I couldn't bring myself to change the channel.
As soon as the ice cube scene came on (aka, the one I was waiting for), there were repetitive loud bangs on the door. I knew that knock anywhere. It was Penney's drunk pounding. I had been ignoring her constant apology texts all day. In order to avoid her, I even switched to a earlier flight. I guess I didn't account that that would be impossible, being she's staying a few floors below me.
With a loud sigh, I paused the movie to go get the door. When I finally opened it, she was still banging. Her usually done up face was bare besides some mascara smudged tears, blonde hair tied into a ratty bun, and her mouth was slightly ajar ready to let out some wailing.
"What's going on?" I asked with a tinge of annoyance. Just because she had been crying didn't mean I still didn't want to pull her hair for what she said last night.
Her body immediately trampled mine into a hug. It felt like a ton of bricks, while she then started sobbing wet tears into my hair. My hands stayed at my sides no matter how hard she hugged. Or maybe she was strangling.
"I'm so --" she did some inaudible crying, barely able to catch her breath, "horrible. I'm sorry for what I -- I said to you," some more wails, "he dumped me."
Ah, shit. How could I still be cold if Damon just broke up with her? I let my hands wrap around her into my embrace.
"Wait, what? Why? What happened?" I asked.
She pulled away and threw herself on my couch. I didn't have any tissues, so I gave her a few napkins to wipe her face. After a few sounds that resembled an injured walrus, she had calmed down enough to speak.
"Well, yesterday before the party he had proposed and I just couldn't handle it. I wanted to say yes but I felt too guilty --"
My eyes widened, "He proposed? Penney, why did you tell -- wait, why would you feel guilty?"
Suddenly, I wasn't so confused. There was a pit in my stomach forming and Anthony's menacing "I told ya so" playing in my head.
"Penney, tell me you didn't."
"Cheat?" she paused shamefully, but then shook her head urgently. "No, no! Of course not. Guilty was um -- the wrong word, I guess. I just wasn't ready for a proposal, you know? I went AWOL."
She was stalling. Not really giving the real reason. Something was off.
"What did he say exactly?"
"Just that his friends all told him I was bad news. That I was using him for his money and stupid shit like that. It was probably Leo," Her tears of sadness were now tears of anger. "Because I made that stupid joke in front of him last night about Damon buying me a Cartier bracelet. He probably saw me as some gold digger."
"Are you sure it was him?" I asked, making sure Anthony had nothing to do with this.
She swallowed her tears, "Yeah, I think Damon even said Leo said something about it."
Her story still seemed to have some holes, but she was too distraught for me to inquire further. I found myself bothered by Leo's part in this. He must have said something to him because when I saw Damon last night, he was eager to fix whatever it was with Penney and apparently marry her, I thought to myself.
She then apologized profusely for saying those things to Leo about me. Tears were threatening to spill from her pleading blue eyes if I God forbid didn't forgive her. So, I did. I didn't have the heart to hold a grudge with her in this emotional state. After all, I did cry to her everyday for at least a year about Josh.
To cheer her up I put on Bridesmaids, ordered more room service, and put my humiliation aside by telling her what happened at Aaron's dinner party with our dear old college friend Clare.
I would like to say I willingly took the couch and let her have my bed. But the truth was she fell asleep sprawled out and was too much dead weight to push off.
•••
Mornings had this irritating talent of creeping up on me with their annoying rays of sunshine that disrupted my sleep. My horrible sleep, might I add. Sleeping on the couch was by no means pleasant.
When I was leaving for work, I thought I should wake up Penney. But when I saw her face down, on the wrong side of the bed, with drool on my plush sheets and a bag of sour cream and onion chips in hand, I knew that was a bear best left un-poked.
Since Alec James was back in New York, I was the complete boss of the branch today. There was a light, airy feeling about the office today, knowing that asshole was in another country.
My new assistant, Jenna, had a cup of hot coffee and a pile of edited manuscripts waiting in my office for me to read. Jenna with her tattoos and platinum pixie cut was already better than my last two assistants combined.
"You have a conference call with New York at eleven, a meeting with Sloane Cobb at one-thirty, and --"
"Who's Sloane Cobb, again?" I asked.
"The writer of that psychic book. She's coming in to talk about her final draft and cover art. At three you have a Skype meeting with a potential client from LA. Oh, and Aaron Fitzgerald called wanting to set up a meeting for Friday. Should I confirm?" Jenna said, followed by a harsh smoker's cough.
The thought of getting my hands on those works was making my mouth water.
"Yes, confirm! Thank you!" The words couldn't have spewed out of my mouth faster. She nodded and left me alone in my office.
I sipped my latte, flipping through the stack of novels. In that pile was both the chick lit and psychic books I liked, as well as one that stopped me in my tracks.
It was yellowed compared to the crisp new printed pages of the others. There was even a stain seeped onto the cover that very well could have been whiskey, if I remembered correctly.
Nostalgia got the best of me as I opened the crumbled pages. While I skimmed through, bold black ink in the shapes of words like, "destroyed", "delicate", and "death", leapt off the page and strangled me. I quickly closed the manuscript, not being able to read anymore.
There in faded ink read:
"Permanently Untitled
By Vera Larson"
The words hung in the air like fog, making it difficult to breathe. This book had a daunting way of ending up in my work piles recently. Just staring at me with those cryptic letters that were ready to suffocate me.
Instead of tucking it away into my desk drawer like I usually do, I placed the thick stack of pages into my purse to take back to the hotel. Maybe it was time to revisit this.
•••
Author's Note:
Hey everyone! Thanks so much for reading this far! I'm really excited for the next few chapters for some action to start picking up! What are your thoughts on Penney's current situation? Please comment and vote if you enjoyed!