Page 41 of On His Mind

“Why didn’t you go back to Maine?” she asks, both hands around her cup.

My eyes stay on the TV, but my mind travels back to two weeks ago when Mary called and asked me to come back for the holidays. I told her no.

Last Christmas, I watched Mary’s hand rest softly on the back of some boy’s head who’d only been there for a week. The other kids tore through their ‘gifts’ from Santa and cried when it wasn’t what they wanted. Mary gifted me a thrifted book in French, but I couldn’t help but feel like a burden. I swore it would be my last Christmas being a burden.

“There’s nothing for me there,” I say.

Penelope lifts a brow and says, “You and me both. My mother lost her mind that I’m not coming home. I invented a dinner with my boss to get out of it.” She looks at the tree. “There’s nothing in Chicago for me. I never want to go back.”

She tips her cup all the way back before I notice she’s finished. Mine’s been gone a while.

“More?”

“No. Thank you.” She shifts under the blanket. “Is it finally warm enough to come out of this thing?”

“Feel for yourself.”

She pushes the blanket off and stands and shrugs out of her coat, and I’ve got my hand out for it before I’ve thought about it. She hesitates to hand it over.

“I’ll hang it up,” I offer.

She lets me take it. I carry the mugs to the counter and hang her coat by the front door, and when I come back, she’s already burrowed under my blanket again.

I walk around the couch and ask, “Movie? Stanley bought Elf. I never really watched it.”

She says, “I don’t think I’ve seen it.”

I sit down and put it on.

Every few minutes, she says something at the screen, and I answer, but I couldn’t tell you what either of us just said. There’s a foot of couch between us, and I’m more aware of that foot than I’ve been of anything in weeks. A girl is sitting in the first house that’s ever felt like it might be mine, wrapped in my blanket. I keep my eyes on Will Ferrell and my whole attention on the sound of her breathing slowing down.

I know the exact moment she’s asleep, and the movie isn’t even halfway through. I stare at the screen, thinking about how I’ve never had this before. And there’s no rule for it in my head. Should I wake her? Should I grab her a pillow?

I don’t wake her. I go completely still at the realization that I don’t want her to leave. It comes up out of nowhere, bigger than it has any business being, and it scares me worse than anything else ever has. Because there’s a girl who could be anywhere in the world right now, but she’s asleep on this couch on Christmas Eve –– a couch she would say is mine because I live here.

I don’t sleep, but that’s not new. I never sleep. The thing that’s tortured me since I’ve gotten here, lying awake in the dark with nothing to do but listen to my own head, turns, for one night, into the best hours I’ve had in a long time. The movie ends, so I put the fireplace back on, and it loops on the screen. The Christmas tree lights brighten then soften on the ceiling, and I watch it for a long time.

This is the turning point that Josh always talked about, so I stay awake to live in it. Because I know how this works. I know what I am. Things like this don’t stay. So I’ll be awake for every minute of it while it’s here, and I’ll live off it a long time after it’s gone.

She stirs when the sun slightly shines through the windows. She lifts her head slowly, and I wait for the moment she realizes where she is and regrets it. Her eyes stay closed, and then she peeks through one when she looks down the couch, right at me. Then the corner of her mouth lifts.

“Merry Christmas, Percy.”

My heart races as I watch her drop her head sleepily. No one has ever woken up happy to see me. It steals my breath, and for a second too long, I can’t find my voice.

She blinks and then looks at me again.

I say back, “Merry Christmas, Penelope.”

Benson got me the job at the Camerie before he left for break. He said they needed a busboy over the holidays. He talked up the place because he worked there over breaks, and he said the manager is a cool guy who loves hockey. He said they offeredhim the job, but he couldn’t take it, so he asked if I wanted it — like it was nothing, like teammates just do that. I said yeah without hesitation. A job. A real job. Josh told me I had the rest of my life to work, and he wanted me on the ice. So the fact that my college teammate is the first guy to get me a job means the world.

I work every day of the break, because there’s nothing else to do and the money is nice. I walk to work in the snow in Blue’s snow boots. Some days, I bus tables for twelve hours if they’ll let me. I learn the closing side-work — flipping the chairs, rolling the silver, mopping myself out the back door into the cold. My feet ache in a way that follows me home. I count my tips on the walk back and fold them into my pocket. As a busboy, it’s never much, but it’s mine, and I earned it. It feels damn good to live this life.

Penelope starts to text me daily, and I always answer. It’s sporadic and never has a true ending, but I reply because it’d be rude not to. I never once text first. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing, but she doesn’t seem to care.

We hang out a few times. She comes to Hawthorne, or I go to Linden. It’s easy. She talks, and I listen. It’s not complicated. There hasn’t been another sleepover since Christmas Eve.

By New Year’s Eve, it feels like we’re in our own bubble. The town’s still pretty empty. The guys have a group chat going that blows up nonstop, but this keeps me updated on their whereabouts, and none of them are returning until the new year.