Page 109 of On His Mind

But the wanting is the only thing I still can't afford.

I watch her stop in the same second I do. I see it go through her — the shoulders coming back down, the thing she does. She stops so fast and so cleanly that I know she'd been holding herself there the whole time too, waiting on me, and the fact that she stops for the same reason and won't say it either is somehow worse than everything else in this entire night.

Her hand's on the blanket.

I put mine down next to it.

Not on it. An inch off, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off her skin against the side of my little finger, and I sit there in the dark with my heart going like a fist on a door and I count.

In for four.

Hold for four.

Out for six.

It doesn't work.

Chapter 36

Penelope

Iwakeupalone,lying in my own bed at nine in the morning after four hours of not-quite-sleep.

I feel flayed. Every nerve I own is sitting on the outside of me, and the apartment is too bright and too quiet. I lie there and take the measure of what I did last night, which iseverything. I reached first. I drove to a house I’m forbidden from and I said I like you out loud to a boy in the dark, I told him about my mother, about the drawings, about the parts of me I’ve never admitted to anyone, and then I drove home at two in the morning with none of it closed, because he didn’t cross the inch, and I didn’t either.

I don’t regret it. I meant every word. The problem is the exposure with nothing to show for it. I have spent my whole life making sure no one ever sees me at the depth I let him see me atlast night, and now it’s done, he has all of it. And I have no idea what he’s going to do with it.

Under everything, from the second I open my eyes, if I’m honest, I’m just waiting. Waiting to find out whether I skinned myself alive for a boy who’s about to disappear behind his wall.

I get up. I make tea. I don’t look at my phone, because I don’t want to know.

I sit down at the table with my tea, and I put my hand over a blank paper but nothing comes.

This time, it’s not like summer. I’m not hollow or dead-handed. This is the opposite. There’s too much, and it’s too close to the surface, and when I finally do put the pencil down, it isn’t a building. It’s a room. Dark, small, a bed, the desk to left, the dresser to the right, and the closed bedroom door. The bedroom I was in eight hours ago comes alive in my drawing without my deciding, and I stop when I realize what it is.

I’ve never drawn a room somebody was in. All those houses, all those years, and not one person in any of them. Percy’s back is taking up most of the page, but I drew it like a fish-eyed view of the room. I look at it for a while. I learned things about him that terrify and anger me at the same time. All of these emotions frighten me. I close the sketchbook and move on with my day.

My mom calls at eleven.

“I’m doing the Christmas menu,” she says, no hello. “Are you still being difficult about the twenty-third, or can I tell Linda you’ll be here for the Hendersons?”

Last night I told Percy that I’m not going home for Christmas, but I hadn’t told my mom that yet. I’m sitting on the bed with the package she just sent to me. It’s a beautiful coat that I put on and haven’t taken off since.

“I’m not coming home for Christmas, Mom.”

“Don’t be dramatic. Of course you’re coming home.”

“I’m not.”

“Penelope.” She uses her concerned voice. It’s the worst one. “I know this year has been — you’ve been making some choices I don’t understand, and I’ve tried to be patient. But Christmas is Christmas. Your father hasn’t seen you since August. He asks about you constantly, he just doesn’t say it, you know how he is.”

“I’ll call Dad.”

“You’ll call him.” A small laugh. “You’ll call your father instead of coming home for the holidays because you’d rather stay in that apartment drawing pictures of buildings that will never get built for a firm nobody’s heard of over a hardware store—”

“That’s exactly why,” I say, and my voice is steadier than my hands. “Because I have a life here now. A real one. And every time I come home, I spend a week apologizing for it, and I’m not going to do that this year.”

“Apologizing.” She says the word like it’s foreign. “Is that what you think happens when you come home? You apologize?”