She was blinking now, hands still over her mouth.
“And then he left us there, and Rodney was being Rodney, so I punched him in the eye.”
“You didn’t!” she said from behind her hands.
I held up my right hand, knuckles out, and rested my head against the headrest, closing my tired eyes.
“Get the fuck out of here. How are you going to work today?”
“I don’t even know.” All that water I’d had to drink hit my stomach and began to reverse direction. “Everything sucks. Literally everything. I just want to go home and die slowly, alone, in my bed.”
“Are you gonna talk to Bodie?”
“I don’t know, Ramona. I don’t think he wants to see me again.”
“You have to try. You can’t just walk away. You can’t just give up.”
I shook my head, heartbroken and exhausted and worn down. “I don’t want to talk about it, not right now.”
“But—”
I held up a hand and burped with my lips closed. “Ramona. I need to get through today. And—” Bile raced up my throat, and I scrambled out of my chair. “I’m gonna puke.”
I ran to the bathroom, hitting the john just in time for the volcano to blow, the mass quantities of alcohol I’d consumed leaving me in a burning rush. And the minute that hell was over, my stomach almost sighed, having exorcised the demon, leaving my body feeling frayed and threadbare but less like it was going to expire.
I only wished the same could be said for my heart.
It was after noon by the time I finally woke. I’d slept like I was dead, a deep, dreamless sleep. But I woke feeling like I hadn’t slept at all.
My stiff body creaked and groaned to life, and when I rolled over and slid my hand under my pillow, pain shot up my forearm and into my heart.
I’d clocked Rodney.
I’d lost Penny.
I flipped onto my back and hooked my arm over my face, sending me into darkness. Images flashed behind my lids like a horror show. Penny watching Rodney, her blue hair foreign, a change I’d known nothing about, a change that had felt like its intention was to isolate me, separating me from her. Penny up on that stage with Rodney’s lips against hers, lips that were mine, lips that had been avoiding me. His hand on her ass and his face buried in her ear — that was the thought that hit me over and over. It had been the thought in my head when I put his face through the meat grinder.
I shouldn’t have left her there with him on the sidewalk. I shouldn’t have left her at all. I shouldn’t have said what I had, but I didn’t want to take it back either. I’d suppressed how I felt for so long that there was no holding it back, not after a fifth of whiskey and Rodney’s hands all over her.
I was wounded, and I didn’t know if I’d get over it.
The cold truth was that, over the span of the last week, since the wedding, I hadn’t seen her. She’d blown me off, leaving my calls and texts largely unanswered, and then, when I’d finally seen her, it had been a nightmare.
The more I thought about it, the more my hope sank.
Penny hadn’t said or done anything to admit that she cared for me, nothing concrete, nothing real. In fact, the way she’d been treating me over the last week only pointed to a simple, undeniable fact.
She just wasn’t that into me.
Everything I’d thought I felt, I’d made up and imagined. I’d read too much into it, and here I was. If she wanted me, I’d know. There would be no cat and mouse, no games to play. No waiting to answer or avoiding each other. And at the end of the day, that had to be my answer.
Operation: Penny Jar was a massive failure after all. I’d knocked the jar off the shelf and it had shattered, leaving broken glass and shiny copper all over the floor of my heart. I was the asshole who had ended up getting hurt after all.
My heart hardened under my sternum, calcifying and shrinking at the realization that it was over. Maybe it had never gotten started. Maybe she’d never cared about me at all.
I flipped off my sheets and climbed out of bed, wanting to leave my thoughts on my pillow but they followed me around like a ghost.
Phil and Jude were already at their computers, and they turned when I shuffled in wearing nothing but sleep pants, rubbing my eyes.
“Morning, sunshine,” Jude sang.
I humphed.
“How’s your head?”
“Fine,” I grumbled as I poured a cup of coffee. “I don’t remember coming home.” I took my mug with me to the island and sat on a stool, facing them, back against the cool counter.