by Rachel Del
“You could say that. Writing is an art.”
My smile threatened to take over my entire face. “You’re a writer.”
It seemed so obvious now that was the case. Something in the way she carried herself, perhaps.
She nodded. “And you? What do you do?”
“Penny,” I said. I reached out and grasped her cool hand. “And nothing really … yet. I start my senior year of college in the Fall…” I trailed off, not knowing what else to say. The way she looked at me made me feel uneasy, like she could see right through me. See everything inside of me and out.
“I’m P.J.,” she said. “It’s lovely to meet you.”
“What kind of stuff do you write?”
I didn’t know if that was a silly question or not.
“Novels.”
“Have you written anything that I would know?”
She seemed to brush off my question. “Oh, this and that.”
She began to walk away and I found myself following her. When she sat down on a bench near the back of the store, I followed suit. There was just something about her.
“What are you going to do after you finish college, Penny?”
I bristled. “I’ve got a job lined up at my dad’s marketing firm.”
“Well that’s nice, hmm? Not having to worry about scrambling for a job like so many of your classmates will have to do?”
She seemed to be challenging me.
“Mm hmm.”
Her hazel eyes bore into mine.
“But—”
Her face broke out into a smile. “I knew there was a but coming.”
I smirked. “But what I really want to do is write.”
P.J. clapped her hands together. “Then you’ve come to the right person.”
I didn’t have the heart to correct her mistake.
“Listen, Penny. I’m only stopping in town on my way out of California. Every summer I choose a different city to write in for a few months. I find it helps me stay fresh. I’m going to be in Vegas for the next little while, so if you should find yourself in the city, you should give me a call.”
She handed me a simple, white business card. From what I could tell it included only a phone number and nothing else.
“Actually, I’m from Vegas — not initially, I mean — but it’s where I live now.”
“Well, isn’t that lovely. You must look me up, then. I love to help aspiring writers in any way I can. But I warn you that if your writing is crap, I will tell you as much.”
Gulp.
“Thank you,” I said, not knowing what to say. “I’ll give you a call.”
“Please do,” she said, standing.
I glanced back down at the card and when I lifted my head she was reaching deep into her oversized purse. I watched as she pulled out an old, torn up paperback and handed it to me.
“Here. You asked if I’ve written anything you might have heard of.”
I took the book. The cover was the most beautiful shade of red, like a poppy, and the title and author name— The Second Time Around by P.J. Hawthorne, written in gold — was raised from the cover.
I ran my fingers over the letters, my lips mouthing the words. “I’ve never heard of it.”
She smiled kindly. “Have it. It’s yours.”
“Oh I couldn’t possibly.”
Her small hand landed on top of mine. “When you call me, I want to know what you think.”
She tugged at the hem of her shirt, straightening it. Something about the gesture seemed oddly familiar.
“Wait, before you go … Actually, what are you doing right now? Are you busy?”
I didn’t know what I was doing, really. I just knew that I didn’t want her to go just yet.
Her eyebrows jumped up. “Absolutely nothing.”
I looked down at my hands, suddenly nervous. “Could I buy you a cup of coffee? I mean, if you don’t have anywhere to be.”
Her eyes softened. “Absolutely. I know a great place. Come on.”
In the same way I’d known that Alex and I would be best friends the moment I met him, I knew, without a doubt, that P.J. was destined to be in my life in a big way from this day forward.
It was fate.
Chapter 12
Alex
The physical pull I felt towards the bookstore was astonishing, if I really thought about it. But since I’d promised Penny I’d give her some space to think, I let Talon take the lead. So far that meant we’d had a couple beers (his treat) and set up shop on a bench that gave us a clear view of the beach — and all the bikini clad bodies we could handle.
Even with the plethora of eye candy in front of me, my thoughts drifted back to Penny. It was the look on her face before she walked off that had me on high alert, that had me resisting the urge to text her every ten minutes. It had been two hours since we parted ways, but it felt like much longer.
“Look at you; you’re practically crawling out of your skin without her.”
I sighed loudly. “It’s not like that, man.”
“Whatever.” He jumped to his feet and ran a hand through his mess of red hair. “I don’t know what happened to you, but you’ve been a total buzz kill lately. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go down there and see if I can’t turn this joke of a road trip around.”
I didn’t stop him, though I know I should have.
What had I been thinking suggesting a road trip with the three of us? I’d spent the three years I’d known Talon trying and failing to push the two of them together, in the hopes that they could learn to be somewhat friendly to each other. But I knew now that it was a lost cause. They were two people from two completely separate parts of my life. It wouldn’t do any good to try and force them together, they were oil and water.
My phone rang from deep in my pocket. I’d been ignoring it all day, knowing what was waiting for me if I answered it. I knew that by not answering it, by ignoring the problem that I was only making matters worse, but I didn’t care. If only for two days, I was away from it all. I was free. And I was damn well going to enjoy it.
Penny
“Tell me everything there is to know about you, Penny Williams.”
It was so strange a request that I found myself laughing. At first. But then, after I’d quieted, after I saw the look in P.J.’s eyes that told me she could be trusted, I started talking. She listened patiently as I told her everything. I started with my dad. I told her about how, growing up, his approval was all that mattered. That I never wanted to let him down. Even from an early age I knew that he had done well in life, that if I could model my behavior after him, then I too could reach his level of success. I left out the bad things about him, like the people he had stepped on to get where he was, and the way that no matter how big his house, or nice his car, or how much money he had in the bank, it was never enough. He always wanted more.
I didn’t tell her that I was realizing that we had that in common.
She made no comments when I spoke of him, asked no questions, but visibly lit up when I began talking about Alex.
“Now there’s a real life hero,” she said. But I was confused. “The hero, the star of your story.”
I could feel myself flush. “Nah, we’re just friends.”
Her smile was warm and comforting … and called bull shit on the whole “friends” thing.
“If there’s one thing I know, Penny, it’s that life is too short to not go after what you want. I’ve made that mistake far more times than I care to admit. When you get to my age, there’s a lot more looking backwards than forwards. It leaves you a lot of time to wish you’d done things a whole lot differently.”
I licked my lip and bit down on it gently. “What would you have done differently?”
If I hadn’t been looking, I might have missed it. The look that crossed her face, disappearing as quickly as it had come. Regret. Sadness. Loneliness. Desperation. It was all there. And then it had all gone.
“Everything,” sh
e said in a whisper. I couldn’t bring myself to press any further.
We sat in comfortable silence for a few moments.
“Are you seeing anyone, Penny?”
She looked as though she already knew the answer.
I nodded. “His name is Matt. I’ve known him for what seems like forever.”
“And you’re happy?”
It was such an odd question, but then again it fit so perfectly into the afternoon we were having. I debated how much I should tell her. How much was too much to tell someone you’d just met? Then again, I’d already bent her ear about my parents and their marriage, so we were well past playing coy. “I was for a long time, but lately…”
P.J. looked down at her hands and then back up at me. “But lately you’ve been questioning everything, even the smallest decisions, to the point that you’re seriously wondering if you’ve gone crazy.”
I felt as though the wind had been knocked out of me. “Yes,” I croaked. “How did you know?”
Her smile was so kind, so reassuring, so knowing. “I’ve been there more times than I can count, especially around your age. And if there’s one thing I know, it’s that most adults don’t get it. They’ve long ago forgotten what it feels like to be so young and confused that they have no patience for it.” She extended her arm and placed her hand softly on top of mine. “I know we’ve only just met, Penny, but I see so much of myself in you, in good ways and bad. And if you’ll have me, I think that we could help each other become the best version of ourselves that we can be.”
I felt it again; the shift. The knowledge that my life was taking a new direction.
And maybe Penny had something to do with it.
Chapter 13
Alex
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”
I glanced through the darkness of the car at Talon, asleep in the passenger seat. “You have to go back and face them sometime, Pen.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Says you.”
“Come on. People go through this kind of stuff all the time. Parents get divorced, it happens. The sooner you deal with it all, the better.”
“Again, says you.”
I shot a look at her in the rearview mirror, but it was too dark to make out her expression. “Someone’s being awful cranky.”
“Because you’re making me leave before I’m ready!”
“Well, I’m sorry, princess, but some of us have jobs we have to get back to. We don’t all have trust funds to fall back on.”
“I do not have a —”
I held up my hand to stop her. “I know, I know. I’m just playing with you.”
She may as well have had a trust fund. My parents did very well, but they were nothing when pitted against the Williamses. Our two families would never run in the same circle. I was surprised we existed on the same planet. You wouldn’t know it though, from looking at Penny. Or even from her mother. But one look at Tony Williams and you knew. I wondered constantly how someone like him had ended up with someone like Jill. She was one of the nicest women I’d met, and wore her age well, but she was unfocused and flighty. To a man who wore his compulsion and perfectionism like a badge of honor, I just couldn’t figure out how the two of them fit together.
As it turned out, they didn’t. Not anymore at least.
“Hey.” The sound of Penny’s voice broke me from my thoughts. “Do you believe in fate?”
I considered this. “I believe in coincidences. Why do you ask?”
She gripped the back of her neck. “Don’t laugh, okay? Because I know it sounds crazy, but I need you to be supportive right now. I can’t shake the feeling that there was a reason I met P.J. this weekend. Like it’s all part of a bigger plan.”
I counted to three in my head before responding. “I don’t think that’s crazy at all.”
“Liar.”
I smiled. “Hey, you told me to be supportive.”
After that she was quiet for so long that I thought she may have fallen asleep. When she spoke again, her voice was laced with exhaustion. “Seriously, what am I going to do?”
I sighed. “I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out, okay? Together.”
She never did acknowledge that she’d heard me, and when I finally got a look at her from the blinding lights of a passing semi, she was asleep. I drove the remaining ninety miles in silence.
I found myself sitting in traffic the next morning, my conversation with Penny the night before running on repeat in my head. I reached for my phone and dialed her number. If I was going to be stuck in traffic, the least I could do was find something to help pass the time.
Penny answered on the first ring. “If you’re calling to complain about your job again, I’m going to hang up.”
I chuckled. “Not this time, I promise.”
“Good.”
“Have you talked to Matt yet? He must be going out of his mind right now.” I pinned the phone between my cheek and shoulder to free up my hands.
“I haven’t called him yet,” she admitted.
I was happy she couldn’t see me; it would have been impossible to hide the smug look on my face. “He’s going to freak out when he finds out I was with you.”
“He will not.”
“Will too.”
She knew I was right. Matt was a sticky subject between the two of us. The truth was I never liked the guy. He was boring and humorless, and certainly undeserving of Penny.
They began dating in her senior year of high school, but had known each other for many years before that. He, like the program she had chosen to study in college and the job with her dad she had always thought she would take thereafter, was safe, easy. She told me once that Matt loved her and was kind to her, and what else could she possibly want? She thought she’d hit the jackpot with him.
She didn’t yet know that she was supposed to want more.
I found myself laughing awkwardly, needing a change of subject. “So, have you called up that author yet?”
She seemed to perk up. “I can’t believe I haven’t told you. I called her a couple nights ago.”
“And?”
“We’re going to meet up tomorrow. There’s this place downtown where she writes and she told me to come by. She wants to read some of my stuff, which makes me nervous as hell because you’re the only one who’s ever read anything I’ve written, but—”
“You’ll be fine, Pen.”
She exhaled loudly. “I know, I’m just feeling anxious.”
“You, anxious? Never.”
If we were speaking in person there was no doubt in my mind that she would have reached out and slapped me playfully. “Seriously though, you’re a good writer. I think she’ll see that.”
She thanked me, but I could hear in her voice that she didn’t quite believe me.
I couldn’t help but wonder when she was finally going to start seeing herself the way I did.
Chapter 14
Penny
P.J. looked so different than when I last saw her that I almost didn’t recognize her. She had seemed so excitable and intriguing when I met her in La Jolla, but the version of her that sat in front of me now seemed wildly different. I contemplated turning around and walking away before she could see me.
She motioned for me to take a seat but I nodded towards the counter, my mouth already salivating over the thought of a steaming hot vanilla latte. Plus, I needed a little more time to wrap my head around the situation.
The barista that took my order was tall and handsome in a way that you didn’t often see in guys my age. I could feel his eyes on me as I waited. And then he was calling my name. His deep voice matched the way he looked and I smiled as I retrieved my drink from him.
“Thank you.”
“Come back soon, Penny,” he said.
I approached P.J. slowly. My heart was hammering in my chest, my grip on my coffee so tight that I’m surprised it didn’t collapse. I stopped in front of her table, my mouth openin
g and closing. Finally, her hazel eyes fell on mine.
“I was beginning to wonder if I scared you off in California.”
She pushed out the chair opposite her with a flick of her sandaled foot and I sat down. Before then I had so many questions I wanted to ask her. But now I couldn’t think of a single one of them.
She cocked her head to the side and brought a poorly manicured hand to her cheek. She glanced down at the open laptop in front of her and then looked back up at me. “Did you read The Second Time Around?
I nodded.
“And?”
“Life is just so hard some days, you know? You think you’ve figured out who you are and what you want to be and then you wake up one morning and someone has stomped all over your dreams.”
I had found my voice, it seemed.
P.J. stared at me, amused.
“The first time I read it I was so intrigued by the concept of being able to go back and change parts of your life that were no good. I wanted Elena to be able to fix herself little by little. And when she couldn’t, I felt heart broken. The second time I read it, I was able to focus more on why she wanted to change what she did. When she found out that she could go back in time, she wasn’t necessarily unhappy with how things turned out, she just seemed greedy to me. She wanted things to be different … to be better. And so she kept going back and trying to do things differently, trying to right what she felt were all the wrong turns she made as a young adult. But when nothing seemed to change no matter what she changed in her past, I didn’t feel sorry for her the way I did the first time I’d read it.”
P.J. sat back in her chair. “How many times have you read it?”
I considered lying, but what good would that do? “Three.”
“Okay, two things,” P.J. said, clapping her hands together. “First, we’re going to have to get you something new to read because if you want to write anything worth reading, you must read everything.”
