by Sophia Sharp
“She has a dog?” I ask Rich.
“I guess.” Rich shrugs, then sticks his hands in his pockets and starts rocking on the balls of his feet. For the first time since I’ve met him, he actually looks a little… uncertain.
“Rich?” I ask. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah.” He grunts. “It should be. I just didn’t mention that’s I’d be—” he looks me up and down, “—bringing a friend. You being here wasn’t part of the original plan.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No. But I should mention, this girl has a tendency to be—how can I put this—possessive.”
“Over what?”
“Well,” Rich lowers his voice, “me, for instance—”
Without warning the barking cuts off and the door swings open. A tall, slender figure appears in the doorway.
Tall compared to me, at least. If she were in heels, she’d still only reach up to Rich’s nose. She has dark, tanned skin, and slightly-tilted, bright green eyes. They look stunning above her elegant cheekbones. Her hair is the same shade as mine, but much longer, and straight. She wears it in an elaborate braid that flows down to her hips. A few solitary strands are cut shorter and fall around her cheeks, framing her face.
Her eyes light up when she sees Rich. She jumps to wrap both arms around him and holds him tight. Even though he doesn’t really reciprocate, I find an unexpected bit of jealousy building in my gut. I try to ignore it.
Using both hands, Rich gently eases the girl off. When he sets her down, she smiles widely, revealing a row of stunning white teeth. How is it fair that somebody can look so flawless?
“Richard!” she exclaims. Even her voice is perfect—high and clear like the notes of a magnificent harp. “You look exactly the same as the last time I saw you.” She puts a finger to pursed lips. “That’s a compliment, you know.”
Rich chuckles. “Thanks.” He reaches out to touch her braid. “Your hair’s longer.”
The girl beams like it’s the greatest compliment in the world. “I haven’t cut it since we broke up.”
My breath catches in my throat. Rich had never said we’d be staying with his ex!
I must have made a sound, because the girl cuts off and turns her attention to me. The smile is wiped off her face as if it had never been there. “Richard,” she intones, low and threatening. “Who is that?”
I can feel the hostility radiate from her. The retriever at her feet must have picked up on his owner’s mood, because he starts to growl. Uncomfortable, I take a small step toward Rich.
“Amanda,” Rich says in what I imagine is his most conciliatory tone, “this is Penelope. Penelope, Amanda.”
“Hi,” I say. Not wanting to make a bad first impression, I force myself to smile and hold out my hand. The girl in the doorway stares at it as if it’s dripping with raw sewage. I let it fall to my side.
“Richard,” the girl says, not once taking her eyes off me, “you didn’t mention you’d be bringing one of your whores.”
Anger jolts through me. I take an aggressive step forward. By the crooked smile on Amanda’s face, that’s exactly the reaction she was going for. The retriever moves closer and bares its teeth, its growl becoming more menacing.
Before I can do anything stupid, Rich steps between the two of us. “Hey, hey now,” he says, raising his arms to separate us. “Let’s not get off on the wrong foot here. Amanda—” he glances at her, “—call off your dog.” Amanda sniffs and stares daggers at Rich. He stares back at her. I’m seething at the side, trying hard to bite down my tongue.
Finally, she grimaces and looks down at her dog. “Fine.” She motions with one hand. “Down.”
The retriever obeys, settling on its haunches. A little bit of tension seeps away. Amanda crosses her arms, looking like a petulant child. “Who is she, Richard?”
“A friend.” Rich stresses the word. “No more. And, I assure you, quite harmless.”
“Hey!” I protest, stepping around Rich. He bars my way with an outstretched arm. His hand lands right on my chest. My eyes widen for a moment, then narrow. I glare at his hand, then at him, waiting.
“Oh,” he says, as if he didn’t realize what he’d done. “Sorry.” Yet he takes his sweet time taking his hand away from my breasts! “She can be a little feisty, though,” he confides to Amanda.
Amanda’s arms are still crossed, but at least she’s not looking at me as if she’d just caught me sleeping with her fiancé. “I can appreciate that,” she admits grudgingly.
Rich relaxes. “There, see? You two are on the fast track to becoming friends.” He grins at Amanda, then at me, as if nothing is wrong. “Now, are you going to invite us in? Or are we going to stand on your doorstep all night?”
Amanda shakes her head in disbelief, and then mutters something that sounds a lot like, “Presumptuous bastard.” But, she steps aside. “Come on in,” she announces with mock sincerity.
Rich takes her up on the offer straight away. When I don’t follow, he looks back and waves me in. “Come on.”
I don’t move. “You heard what she called me. I’m not coming in there before I get an apology.”
Our hostess is wearing a fake, heavy smile on her lips. “I don’t normally take in strays,” she tells me with perfect sincerity. “Even if they do arrive with welcome company.”
“Bitch!” I cry out. Again, Rich moves as fast as a flash of lightning. He has me by the shoulders and is pushing me to the side of the house before I can blink.
When we’re out of earshot of Amanda, he scowls. “Penny,” he tells me, “you need to behave.”
I sputter, aghast. “Me? You heard what she called me!”
“I told you she can be possessive.”
“You never said you were her former lover!” I spit accusingly.
“A minor detail,” Rich says, “and irrelevant right now.”
I scoff. “Irrelevant? Are you blind? The girl obviously still has feelings for you!”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Don’t be blind!”
Rich shakes his head. “Okay, whatever. Look, that doesn’t matter now. All that matters is that she’s giving us a place to stay.”
“Giving you a place to stay, maybe,” I counter. “She wants nothing to do with me.”
“And still, she welcomed you into her house,” he points out.
“You call that a welcome?”
“If you keep this up, I’m going to call you a pouting brat. Can’t you get it through your thick skull? We need her!” Rich lowers his voice. “Look, I know Amanda might not have given off the best first impression—”
“You can say that again,” I mutter.
Rich holds his hand up to silence me. “But I need you to get along. This is the only safe place we have to stay right now. I don’t want to lose it because you can’t hold your tongue.”
“She started it!” I protest.
“I don’t care who started it. You’re going to finish it.” He looks up and exhales at the night sky. “I swear to God, Penny, you can be such a child sometimes.”
I shove him in the chest, hard. One, to get him to look down at me, but two, to let him know my displeasure. He grunts in surprise. “What was that for?”
“To prove I’m not harmless.”
“I know that,” he says testily. “I just said it so Amanda wouldn’t see you as a threat.”
“A threat?” I laugh. “Come on. Who am I possibly a threat to?”
“To her,” Rich stresses. “She doesn’t like having other females around.”
“If she treats them like she did me, she should have no problem with that. What’s she doing living all the way out here, anyway? And how on earth does she know you?”
“Maybe those are questions you can ask her yourself,” Rich suggests. “Bond a little.”
I roll my eyes. “I very much doubt that.”
Rich glares at me again. “Listen, Penny. You have to get along. Both of us need Amanda ri
ght now. We need her a hell of a lot more than she needs us. We have nowhere else to go! Now, can we both walk back to the house like responsible adults and not cause a fuss?”
I square my shoulders. “I want her to apologize, first.”
“And I want the moon in my pocket. Neither of us is going to get those things.” Rich looks at me intensely. “Can I have your word that you two won’t claw at each other like two starving cats when we get inside?”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Realistically, what other option do I have? “Fine.”
Rich breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank God.”
We start back toward the house. Amanda’s silhouette fills the doorway, one hand on her hip.
“By the way,” Rich says to me about halfway there, “you’re going to need to apologize.”
I freeze. “What?”
He turns back to me. “Don’t start, Penny. You heard me. You’re going to swallow your pride this time.” Suddenly his solemn expression becomes a grin. “I remember you complaining about mine last night. Not so fun when the shoe’s on the other foot, is it?”
I frown at him, knowing he’s right. It doesn’t make things any easier, though. “All right,” I concede. “Fine. I’ll do it. Damn you, Rich, but I’ll do it.”
“Good.” He smiles. “That’s all I ever asked.”
--
I give Amanda a big, ingratiating smile as I approach her. I make my voice sickly sweet. “I’m sorry for calling you a bitch. I should have never lost my temper. And I’m grateful for you letting me stay.”
Amanda eyes me up and down critically. “Better,” she says after a moment. “Though I would have preferred more fawning. Still, I guess I shouldn’t come to expect much from you.”
I clench my jaw tight to avoid saying anything I would regret. I know she’s trying to goad me into another confrontation. I won’t bite.
I show my teeth in a fake smile that I desperately hope she won’t take for a scowl. “I would have never hoped to meet such a gracious hostess,” I simper.
Amanda laughs at that, closes the door, and takes Rich’s arm. “Where did you find that one, Richard? You simply must tell me.” She leads him into the house without looking at me, reducing me to follow them like… like a stray.
I keep my displeasure to myself, though. Rich said this was important. I believe him. I try to focus my attention on my surroundings. The wooden interior of the house is sparsely decorated, with only a few rugs on the floors. There’s a certain rustic charm to the place. The furniture looks mostly second-hand, from the dark-green couch in one corner to the white recliner on the other side. There are some curious trinkets here and there: a marble vase serving as a flower pot, a stone sculpture of a meditating Buddha. But mostly, nothing stands out. I follow Amanda and Rich down another hallway.
“You can sleep in here,” she tells Rich, gesturing through an open door. “I prepared an extra bed for you. Unless, of course, you’ve changed your mind…” she trails off, the implication of her suggestion made obvious by the way she lilts her voice and brushes his chest.
“No,” Rich says resolutely, stepping away. For some reason, I feel a curious sense of relief on hearing that one simple word. “What about Penny?”
“Her?” Amanda grimaces and spares a dismissive glance my way. “There’s plenty of room in the house. I’ll give her an extra blanket and she can find a corner somewhere.”
“No, Amanda.” Rich turns on her. His face is stern. “Penny came here with me, and she’s done nothing wrong to you. We might need to stay for a few days. I told you before it’s important. You’re doing us a huge favor, but I will not have you treating her like dirt.” He pauses and looks her in the eye. “Understood?”
“Men,” Amanda mutters. “Give them a roof and warm food and it’s still not enough. Bring them into your home and it’s still not enough. This is my house, Richard. You know that?” She sighs. “Fine, though. As long as she behaves, I’ll be the perfect hostess. But the minute she does something wrong—” She gives me a pointed look, “—all bets are off. Do you understand that, Richard?”
“I do. Thanks. She’ll behave.”
I roll my eyes. They’re talking about me as if I’m not even there! Though if, as Rich said, we’re to stay here a few days, I can understand the need to make peace with Amanda. I can be the bigger woman and swallow my pride—and damn all her insults! They’ll roll off me like water off a duck’s back.
Rich continues speaking. “I’ll take the blankets,” he says. He motions me over. “Penny, come here. You can have the bed.”
“Thank you, Richard ,” I say in my sweetest voice as I walk toward him. Amanda snorts audibly as I pass.
The room she’d set up for Rich is spacious and cozy. A big, if somewhat old, queen bed sits in the middle. “You know, Rich,” I add innocently, trailing one finger down his forearm over the tattoos, “it looks like there’s easily enough room for two on that bed.”
Rich makes a choking sound, and Amanda’s face scrunches up like she’d just taken a bite of a bad plum.
“Kidding!” I sing out as I plop down on the bed. I pluck at a piece of lint that has caught at my waist. “I wouldn’t want to do anything Amanda doesn’t approve of.” I offer them both a radiant smile.
“Yes, well…” Amanda trails off, then frowns. “Anyway. I was just making dinner.” She looks at Rich. “I assume you’re hungry?”
“Both of us are famished,” Rich says. “Thanks.”
Amanda turns away and starts down the hall. Her retriever trails at her heels. “I’ll call when the table’s set.”
Rich comes in and closes the door. He waits until Amanda’s footsteps fade from hearing. Then he turns to me, wearing the hugest grin. “That was brilliant!” he exclaims, laughing. “I’ve never seen Amanda try so hard to control her temper! And you knew she had to do it after her promise to us.” He leans back against the doorframe. “You’re something, Penny, you know that?”
“Thanks,” I beam. “It takes a lot of practice.”
Rich grins. “I’d say. Anybody who can throw Amanda off like that deserves my fullest praise.”
“So what is it with you two, anyway? If you don’t mind me asking. How long ago were you together?”
“A long time ago,” Rich stresses. “I met her right around the time I moved to Oregon from New York.”
“She didn’t really invite you to sleep with her, did she? I’m not sure I heard that right.”
“You did.” Rich sighs. “She was always very forward like that. I’m not sure if she would have agreed to let me stay if she didn’t think she had a chance.”
My eyebrows go up. “She’s that fond of you?”
Rich runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know if ‘fond’ is the right word. If she wants something, she does all she can to get it. Especially if she feels she’d been slighted in the past.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I was the one to break things off with her. She was too possessive, too… jealous. We didn’t make a good pair.”
“How long did you date?”
“Just a few months. But you should have seen her when I told her we shouldn’t be together. She went ballistic. She threw glasses and plates at me, even tried stabbing me with a fork. When I came to my apartment the next day, I found all my clothes shredded to pieces. She left the scissors on top of the pile. I had to change my locks after that.”
“Wow.” I feel a little less easy about staying in a house with someone like that. “She doesn’t sound particularly stable.”
“She can be histrionic at times,” Rich admits. “But she’s got a good heart. She was only doing what she thought was best.”
“How is cutting up your clothes ‘doing what’s best?’” I ask, the disagreement clear in my voice.
“What’s best for her,” Rich amends. “But as long as you don’t provoke that side of her, she’s usually a sweetheart.”
“I can tell,�
� I say dryly. “And she obviously still has a thing for you, huh?”
Rich tilts his head forward in the barest nod. “Can you keep a secret?”
“I’ve come this far with you, haven’t I? Without telling anyone? I’d say I’m pretty good at that type of thing.”
Rich smiles. “Good point. Like I was saying, when we broke up, she felt cheated. Like she got the short end of the stick. She told me that she loved me…” Rich sighs, “…but I never said the words back. The truth is, I’ve never had feelings strong enough about anyone to feel that way. I take those types of things very seriously, and don’t just profess my love to whoever is the flavor of the month—” He stops and grimaces. “Wait. That came out wrong.”
“No, no, I get it,” I say. “After my first boyfriend—who I thought I loved—I feel the same way. Saying you love someone isn’t something that should be taken lightly.” My mind flashes back to that scene I’d found in my teacher’s classroom. “Ever.”
“Right,” Rich nods. “You’re smarter than I gave you credit for.”
“Well, who said I wasn’t smart?”
“I did,” Rich smiles, “when you decided to stick with me instead of running away.”
I throw a pillow at him playfully. He ducks out of the way and laughs. “Don’t get too cocky,” I warn. “After everything that’s happened, it’s not like you left me with many options.”
Rich’s good humor dies. “You’re right,” he says solemnly. “I’m sorry for that. In the end, I will make this right. I promise.”
“That’s a hefty promise to keep,” I say. I consider things for a moment. “Although I think you’ll do your best to try.”
“I will.”
The conversation lulls for a bit. Then I speak up. “So, you were saying? About Amanda?”
“Oh. Right. Well, the truth is…” Rich lowers his voice, “…I took her virginity.”
I’m taken aback by the nonchalant way he says it. “I don’t know if that was your secret to tell.”
Rich shrugs. “I didn’t like the way she treated you. Knowing that, maybe it will help you understand some of her behaviors toward me. Toward you.”
