Page 137 of On His Mind

“Is it the guys?” she says. It isn’t really a question. “Is that it. It’s still the guys.”

“Penelope—”

“Because you know Benson’s got a whole thing with his tutor now.” Her chin lifts. “Lucy. It’s all anyone talks about. The rules are already breaking, Percy, they’re breaking without you, so if that’s the reason—”

“I don’t know anything about that.” And I don’t, not really. I’ve heard Stanley run his mouth about Benson and his tutor, but Stanley runs his mouth about everything, and I stopped listening a long time ago. I’ve kept my head down and minded my own business. “That’s Stanley talk. I don’t get into it.”

“But if it’s true—”

“It’s not about the guys.” And it isn’t. It’s about the fact that she can’t walk a straight line to that room right now, and I won’t say that out loud because she’ll fight me on it, so I just brush the hair off her face. “It’s not about them. Just not tonight.”

She searches me for a second, and then she lets it go. She doesn’t push. She just nods against me and settles back into my chest.

“Can I ask you something?” she says after a while.

“Anything.”

“Is it okay if I come to a Hawthorne House party?” She picks at a thread on my shirt. “Mara won’t shut up about it. She’s very excited.”

I almost laugh. She’s asking permission to walk into my world, like there’s a version of this where I’d ever tell her no.

“You can come to every single one,” I say. “You don’t have to ask me that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Bring Mara. Bring whoever you want.” I tighten my arm around her. “I’ll spend the whole night watching you across the room.”

She smiles against my collarbone. I feel it more than I see it.

After a few quiet minutes, she says, “I kept the apartment empty on purpose.” Her fingers go still on my sleeve. “Ivory left, and I never once looked for anyone to take her room. I told myself I was just too busy. But I think I kept it empty hoping you’d turn up in it. Hoping I’d look over one night and you’d just — be here.”

I don’t have words. I don’t have anything close. So I press my mouth to the top of her head and hold her tighter, and I pray she can feel all the things I can’t figure out how to say.

“I should look for a roommate soon, though,” she says, quieter still. “I can’t keep an empty room forever.”

“Yeah,” I say.

I don’t loosen my hold, and neither of us says a word about the fact that tonight, at least, the room stays empty and I’m the one filling the quiet in it. She burrows in. I hold her there on the couch, her heartbeat slowing against mine, and for the first time since the summer walked out the door, I’m not aching.

I’m just here with her.

And for once — foronce— I let myself know that I’m happy while it’s still happening.

Chapter 47

Penelope

IthinkIdreamedhim.

That’s the thought I surface with — that Percy came here last night, and that I made the whole thing up. My eyes don’t want to open. When they do, the light coming through the curtains is a blade, and it finds the exact spot behind my forehead where the headache’s been waiting. I groan and roll away from it, into the cold half of the bed.

It’s cold. He’s not here. I dreamed him the way I’ve dreamed him a hundred times since summer, and now I’ll get up and shower and the ache of it will fade like all the others.

Then I open my eyes a little wider, and I see the glass of water on the nightstand.

I don’t bring water to my bedroom. I never have. I stare at it for a long moment, and then I look down at the blanket pulledup over me. It’s folded back neat across my chest, tucked just so, and I know I don’t sleep like this. Somebody laid this blanket over me. Somebody set that water where I’d be sure to find it.

Maybe I didn’t make him up.