Page 167 of On His Mind

He goes. The lights go off, and I stand there in the dark for a while with my coat still on, looking at the stack of plastic bags against the living room wall.

I don’t get any sleep.

I still don’t know what the plan is.

Chapter 53

Penelope

There’samissedFaceTimefrom Percy at 2:04 in the morning.

I see it when I wake up at five, before the alarm. I’m only grabbing my phone to turn off the alarm and seeing his name on my screen in the dark, from three hours ago, a little green missed-call icon next to it, shocks me to my core. I stare at it, and my heart does a flip.

It’s been a long time of nothing, not one word –– and then he’s calling me on FaceTime that late at night. I don’t understand. I don’t know what it means. I run the possibilities, thinking maybe he was drunk, he was hurt, something happened, someone got news. The worry comes up fast, and I want to call him back.

I don’t.

I put the phone down on the nightstand, and I get up because I have a lot to do today. I’m leaving in a few hours to drive to Chicago for the holidays. It was a last-minute plan because my mom asked, and I immediately caved because I needed to get away. The second I found out that the girls are all going on a ski trip with the Hawthorne house, I sat on the couch and pretended to care. The girls kept insisting that I tag along, and I kept declining without telling them why.

So I’m going to Chicago instead. To the city I despise, to the mother who disapproves of my every move, to the audience she’ll have because I’m in town, and to my father’s back where he’ll pretend that none of it is happening. But I’d rather be miserable there than watch everyone I love be happy in pairs for Christmas.

I get to the bathroom and wash my face. I do my hair with the curling iron. I lay the travel clothes out on the bed, and then I pack everything I need for the two weeks. I think I might cut it down to ten days. I neatly fold everything, zip my suitcase, and I’m going to do Pilates in the living room before I eat, and then I’ll go. I set my suitcase at my door and grab my mat and my little pink weights.

I open the door and Melly’s standing in the hallway.

She’s fully dressed. It’s six in the morning, so I’m utterly confused.

“Sorry,” she whispers.

“For what?” I ask, confused.

And then I hear movement in the apartment.

I walk towards the end of the hall, and there are people everywhere. It’s a full house. Gianna, Lucy, Mara, Aspen, and behind them, impossibly, Benson, Rowan, Stanley, and Blue. All of them up, all of them dressed, all of them in my apartment at six o’clock in the morning, and they are all wearing the same shirt.

The shirt has Percy’s face on it.

His actual face, his hockey headshot, blown up, and under it in big letters it says something I have to read twice — ASK ME ABOUT MY FEELINGS — and Stanley is standing on my coffee table.

“What,” I say. “What are you––” I look back at Melly and see that she’s wearing the same shirt. “Melly, what are you wearing––”

“I tried to warn you.” Melly’s already grinning. “I said sorry.”

“Good morning, Penelope!” Stanley shouts from my coffee table.

Gianna’s shoving something into my hand. I stare at everyone, and then I glance down at what I’m holding. It’s a wine glass, at six a.m., that is bedazzled with my initials in pink rhinestones down the side. Looking at it makes me notice the red rug that I’m stepping on, and it leads to the front door. I look around at my apartment. There’s a poster. A banner.

What gets me is that everyone looks so happy to see me.

“We have a presentation,” Stanley announces.

“You have a—”

“Sit her down. Somebody sit her down.”

Mara steers me into a kitchen chair someone has moved into the living room and turned to face the room like a throne, and I sit, because I think my knees are going to give out.

Someone starts singing, and I don’t know who because suddenly all four of the hockey players are snapping their fingers and singing a song of their own lyrics.