Penny sighed and rolled over beneath the covers of the king-sized bed. David lay on his left side, with his knees curled up toward his chest and his lips slightly parted in sleep. Those lips.... They looked a little swollen now, but it only served to make them more inviting. She fought the urge to reach out across the bed and touch them. Instead, she traced her index finger along her own two lips, feeling them curve into a secret smile.
She couldn't even count how many times she'd lain in bed just like this. Late at night, unable to sleep. Imagining David's mouth. Imagining what those lips of his might feel like. Of course, it wasn't all in her imagination now. Not anymore. A memory now - not a fantasy. Not a silly schoolgirl crush. And the reality had been so much better than she'd ever dared to imagine.
He'd been a little tentative at first. That much had surprised her. When he first pulled her down to kiss him, he'd kept his lips closed and hardly even moved, as if he were waiting for something - for some signal. As if he'd never kissed a woman before in his life and had no idea what to do.
She'd had no choice but to take the lead. He kept pulling back, and she kept drawing his face back to her again and again. But he kept hesitating. He kept pausing to ask questions, until she could have screamed with frustration. She'd wanted to shake him. She'd pulled his hair and called him names and punched him in the chest, trying to shake him out of it. But none of it had worked until she said the words - those words she'd been holding back for so long, she felt like she'd already said them a million times before. But he must have been waiting for them. He must have needed to hear them:
"Don't you know I've been in love with you the whole time?"
Something in his face had changed after she said it. Something had clicked into place, like a key turning in a lock. His lips had hovered, just inches from her own, and she'd watched them move without making a sound, forming the shape of her name:
"Penelope."
She hadn't needed to lead him any further. He'd taken it from there.
Was that really all he'd been waiting for? For her to say the words? Had he truly not understood how she felt about him until that moment? It seemed impossible to believe. Impossible. She'd been so obvious - especially this past week in his apartment. She'd acted like a lovesick puppy, moping around his place, rummaging through his things, wearing his old clothes.
But he hadn't wanted her. He'd made it clear enough. He hadn't even hugged her goodbye when she left for the airport this morning. Her presence in his apartment had been nothing more to him than a mild nuisance. At least, that's how it had seemed. That was why his letter had come as such a shock.
"I want her to know that I'm in love with her," he'd written. "I want her to know I never said it because I lacked the courage...."
Was it really possible? David Powers? The same David Powers who could meet a woman in a supermarket checkout aisle and extract her phone number in 30 seconds or less? When it came to women, he could take his pick. And he knew it very well. He had his flaws, but lack of confidence had never been one of them. If he'd never made a move on her these past two years, there was only one reason that made any sense at all: because he didn't want her. He had his rules - his criteria - and she didn't meet a single one of them. That was why he'd never said those words to her before. Or if he had, then only over email. Only when he was too drunk to think better of it.
"I want her to know that I'm in love with her. I've written those words to her before, but she thought I was drunk. Sometimes I was. Sometimes I wasn't. I was too much of a coward to say it to her face...."
That was what stopped him? He was afraid of rejection? David Powers, afraid his 22-year-old, Brooklyn-dwelling temp would shoot him down? How was it possible?
She heard him let out a sigh now in his sleep, and she realized she must have spoken those last words aloud.
"Shhhhh," she whispered, but too late. His eyelids fluttered open. He blinked a few times to clear his vision.
"What's the matter?" he asked, his voice still thick with sleep.
"Nothing."
He took her hand and pulled it to his mouth, pressing a kiss against her palm. His other arm closed around her waist and pulled her body against his. Penny let her head come to rest in the curve where his shoulder met his neck. She pressed her face against his collarbone.
"That's your spot, huh?" She felt his breath ruffle her hair as he spoke.
"Is it?" she responded to his collarbone.
"You keep putting your face right there."
"I like your neck."
Penny nuzzled even closer. She closed her eyes and inhaled, pulling in the air as deep into her lungs as it would go. She knew this spot at least. Out of all the unfamiliar contours of his body, the crook of his neck felt like safe harbor - the one place where her face had always come to rest in the past, in those few fleeting instances when he had hugged her.
"What do you like about it?" he asked into her hair.
"I like the way it smells," she whispered.
"What does it smell like?"
"Like the collars of your dirty dress shirts."
She could feel his lips curve into a smile. "My neck smells like a dirty shirt collar?"
"Yes," she smiled back.
"I'm pretty sure you have that backwards."
"Mmmm," she sighed. "I'm not convinced."
She allowed him to pry her face loose and rest his forehead against hers, but she kept her eyes closed. She could feel a flush of color rising to her cheeks, and she was glad the room was too dark for him to see.
"Is this weird?" he asked her softly.
"A little bit."
"It's just me," he whispered. "You know me."
"Do I?"
"You know me better than anyone, Penny."
"I don't understand you."
She pulled her forehead away from his and buried it back into his neck again. He still had one arm clasped around her waist. He lifted his other hand now and gently cradled the back of her head as he pressed a soft kiss against her hair.
"I think I pretty much spelled it out, didn't I?"
"You had two years," she said into his neck. "You could have started something any time you wanted...."
"I'm extremely slow-witted."
She smiled ruefully. "Except you're not. Not at all."
"Slow reflexes," he said. "You saw me on that treadmill. I'm telling you, the reflexes are the first thing to go when you get to be my age-"
"Funny," she replied. "Ha ha." But she wasn't laughing. For some reason, she felt like she might start to cry instead.
"Penny-"
"Two years," she cut him off again. "Two years you spent chasing after anything in a skirt...."
"No," he responded, shaking his head. "I don't chase. I never chase."
"You didn't have to chase. I was right here." She put her hands on each of his shoulders and pushed herself away so she could look into his face. "I mean, literally right here, David. In this bed. In this exact spot, as a matter of fact. Two years ago! All you had to do was kiss me."
"I know," he said. He tried to pull her close again, but she kept her arms rigid. With a sigh, he let go of the arm around her waist and reached up to flick on the bedside lamp instead.
"You know I'm still under 26, right?" she said as he settled back into the bed beside her.
"I know how old you are."
"And I definitely don't make six figures."
He cracked a grin but didn't answer.
"At the moment, I don't make anything," she said.
"It's OK," he shrugged. "I'm making an exception."
"Don't you have a rule against exceptions?"
He chuckled. "I'm making an exception to the rule against exceptions."
"So what other rules are you violating? Let me think, now..."
"Blond," he said. He picked up a piece of her hair and let it curl around his finger.
"It's natural," she added. She looked down for a moment, watching his finger twist her hair around itself. "Natural blond. You know it's natural, right?"
He narrowed his eyes and squinted back at her. "Your eyelashes are blond," he said.
"I hate my eyelashes." She could feel the tears threatening again now. She blinked hard to hold them back, and tried to turn her face, but he stopped her chin with his hand. "They're ugly," she said.
"Penny," he whispered.
"What?" She closed her eyes, but she could feel the tears squeezing their way past, no matter how hard she tried to stop them.
He didn't answer right away. His eyes were on her face, and she longed for nothing more than to pull the covers up over her head and hide. She wished he couldn't see her. Not right now.If only he hadn't turned the lamp on. At the very least, she wished she hadn't scrubbed off the last remnants of her ruined makeup before she came back to his apartment this afternoon. She felt exposed now. Naked. Of course, they'd pulled each other's clothes off hours ago and she hadn't minded it then. It was only now, as she tried and failed to keep the tears from running down her cheeks - only now, for the first time, did she start to feel self-conscious.
She tried again to turn her face away, but he held it in place, cupped between his hands. She felt him trace his thumb along her cheek, brushing away a tear. Then he slowly pressed his lips against her eyelids.
First the left one.
Then the right.
Just as he had once before. Two years ago, in this very bed. In this exact spot. He'd pressed his lips against her lids. And then he'd stopped, and gotten out of bed. And his eyes had looked everywhere else but her. And those lips of his had spoken the words she'd never forget, try as she might - the words that had stood between them like a wall ever since:
"I think it's time we re-established some ground rules."
That's what he had said to her. David, with his endless list of rules. He didn't believe in exceptions. He never had and never would. She braced now as the silence grew, and she could feel his eyes watching her. She could almost hear the sound off his mind working - his sanity reasserting itself. It was only a matter of moments now, she knew, before he pulled away. Before he said those words to her again.
She opened her eyes and blinked. He held her cheeks between his hands. His face was so close that the tips of their noses nearly touched. "It's OK, David," she whispered. "You don't have to say it."
"They're not ugly," he whispered back as if she hadn't even spoken. "Penelope," he said. "I'm in love with your eyelashes."
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