Chapter Text
Pal.
When he called her that, she just smiled. It was one of those empty smiles that don’t reach the eyes.
Pal.
Like a knife plunged into her stomach. No. That’s not right. Straight into her heart with a wicked twist.
Pal.
One would think it would hurt less than meeting his fiancée. The woman’s hair is warm, melted chocolate waves around her face, not frizzy red ringlets. Deep brown orbs of amber whisky in a glass tumbler next to the roaring fire, and not a frozen glacier blue the reflects instead of drawing one in. A body that is slim and tall, like a teenage boy’s dream, and not curvy and short, which no one notices as it stands against the wall. The wedding was to take place quickly. In four months. Penelope glanced at the woman’s stomach. Still flat as a pancake. Maybe she was pregnant. Maybe she was not. Maybe they were just blissfully in love and couldn’t wait. The thought made Penelope want to vomit.
Pal.
At first, she thought he said, “Best gal”. It wasn’t that at all. She was such an idiot.
“Clara, let me introduce you to my best pal Penelope,” he announced proudly. “Pen, my fiancée Clara.”
All puffed up like a peacock, he is. Introducing them like this was an important meeting between two of the most important people in his life. What a lie. It felt more like a royal introduction between the beautiful princess and the dingy scullery maid. She could feel the rot of being undesirable fill her insides. Poisoning all that was left that was good inside her. Pink insides turning black. She didn’t want this. It would kill her. It was killing her.
“Lovely to meet you.” As she said this, it felt flat in her ears. Not the sparkly fakeness that normally bubbles out of her, pretending that she is fine with always being last picked. Her normal fizziness is going flat like a soda pop left out too long. She looked at her watch. “I really need to go. Early day tomorrow.”
A lie. She is going to weep the rest of the night and wallow the next day. Decide how to survive.
He notices this. The flatness and the lie. She can tell. The first time ever that he might have finally seen her. Ever. His mouth tightens. Eyes bore into her. Seeing the fractures of this friendship in name only. A method to get under his younger sister’s skin by stealing her best friend away.
“Pen.” He hesitated for a moment before licking his lips. Reading the room but still choosing the path of destruction. Her destruction. “I... we...were wondering if you would stand up with me at the ceremony. Like a best man. There are no rules that it has to be a man, you know, so....”
The fiancée nodded her agreement as he spoke, still not uttering a word.
She had never met this woman before. Never knew that he wanted to marry a woman that he had just met. Never thought he would break her heart into millions of pieces. A fool because she should have realized it was shattering slowly for years. That they were always heading in this direction of him taking a sledgehammer to what was left of her hope.
“I can’t.” Two simple words that tumbled out without hesitation. “Moving overseas.”
The letter sat on her desk next to the window, where a little brown bird sang to her from its branch. A letter that was read once. A letter that could be a new beginning. A beginning away from him.
“What are you talking about?” His face is flushed red. Anger? Embarrassment? Shock that she is breaking out of the glass box he put her in.
“The opportunity came up quickly.” She just shrugged, looked at her watch. “I really must go.”
And go she did. Fled. Past her real best friend, who was pouring a drink at the bar.
“Penelope!” Eloise called out. “Where are you going?”
Away. Over the ocean to a place where she might be able to breathe again.
Pal.
🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀
The City That Reads.
It was written on a bench near her new apartment. The paint was peeling off, but the message to her remained the same. It was a sign. This was the place to find out who Penelope Featherington truly was.
She stared at the old wooden bench as she tightened her grip on the grocery bag in her hands. Tried to focus on the words. This was the right choice. A new land, in a way. A place to find new stories as inspiration. A new internship that might help her find a purpose that can strengthen her writing and not suffocate it.
Colin was the one who traveled. The one who went on quests for a purpose. He found it with that Clara woman. Now it was Penelope’s turn. Adventure. Romance. Finding the confidence to dance in the rain. Sing in the parks full of people. Kiss strangers in dark alleyways.
The life of a heroine in a romantic comedy, tripping into the arms of a handsome doctor who flirts shamelessly. Never again the tragic wallflower wallowing dramatically by the moors for a man who looks over her.
“Love, that bench isn’t going to disappear. It might need to. It bloody looks like it’s going to fall into pieces.”
John. His arms were full of a couple of cases of beer. Only Penelope would come to a place like Baltimore, Maryland, and find herself with a fellow Londoner as a roommate. A handsome and cheeky one with his hazel eyes so big that he always looks as if he were seeing the world as a wonder. Even when he looked at her.
Like the old Disney song. It’s a small world after all.
“Just got lost in some thoughts,” she told him with a shrug.
Her phone started vibrating in the pocket of her coat.
“Are we finally going to answer that?”
“No. It’s just El. I’ll text her when we get back to the apartment.” She told him as she started walking to their building. Their apartment was on the top floor of a bar, King George’s Tavern. Another Englishman named George was the owner. Cheap rent for his compatriots from the old land. Kingly airs even as the owner of a bar filled with billiard tables and pinball machines. “Those beers are probably getting heavy. We should hurry up.”
Changing the subject seemed prudent. The Bridgertons had been blowing up her phone almost obsessively since she disappeared from England. Her simple texts not enough to reassure them. Even her mother didn’t bother her this much, which sadly wasn’t a surprise.
“Brush my hair out of my eyes, love,” John asked as he tried to blow his hair up and, at the same time, to shake it into place. Love. When John called her, it was just a sweet endearment between new friends, at least on her end. It must be on his end, too, she hoped, because he calls all ladies that. If Colin called her love, then...
Best not to ponder those thoughts. Colin was the reason she was here.
Penelope put the grocery bags down at her feet and brushed John’s sandy hair out of his eyes. “You need a haircut, sir.”
“A bloody rock star needs to keep the hair for the ladies, Penny.” He winked at her. Always so cheeky. “You need to come to the gig. No, trying to wiggle out of it.”
Penelope glared and continued to walk a little faster. John had the longer legs, but the cases of National Bohemian Beer were slowing him down. It tasted like water, but Natty Boh was a Baltimore institution like steamed crabs covered in Old Bay seasoning and Black-eyed Susans.
“I was going to write,” she said as they reached the back entrance of the pub. Put the bags down again to pull out the keys to the apartment and unlocked the door with a visible sigh. Weekly shopping was always such a chore.
“No, Penny. You will listen to my hypnotic voice, then have Fife flirt and buy you drinks, so the rest of the blokes and I can laugh when you break his heart,” he declared as they headed up the stairs. “It’s funny.”
It wasn’t funny in the least to Penelope. Another cosmic joke at her expense. A school acquaintance of the Bridgertons was John’s bandmate. Here. Another speed bump in her quest to move on. The most surprising was how Reginald Fife flirted with her. A girl he would barely notice before, except to tease Colin about.
“Eloise’s friend. The short redhead.” Reginald Fife leaned against the billiard table in the Bridgerton game room. A place that Violet stuffed as many of her children and their friends into to get some much needed quiet. Penelope could see him motion to her as she sat with Eloise on a nearby couch. “Your girl?”
Colin looked up from where he was about to take a shot. “Pen? What?”
Penelope watched as Reginald leaned against the table. They thought they were speaking quietly. They most certainly were not. Her whole body felt tense as she tried to focus her attention on the magazine in her lap. One of Daphne’s fashion ones that had tips about pleasing your man, mixed with the best new eyeshadows. Both things that Penelope still felt were far out of her grasp. Mysteries that still alluded her. She flipped the page roughly, just waiting for words that were going to wound her.
“This is the dumbest shit,” Eloise snarked, looking over Penelope’s shoulder. “How could you ever want to put that on...”
“Uh-huh,” Penelope barely registered Eloise’s criticism over whatever was on the page. Instead, she watched as Colin straightened up to pay more attention to Reginald.
Reginald smirked. He was always smirking. “I don’t know, mate. You’re always talking to her. Sweet on her?”
“She’s a baby. Seriously, what is wrong with you?” Colin scoffed, but before that, as he glanced at her, a look flashed like he was finally seeing her. A softness was there that she had never seen previously. It quickly hardened to a mask of nonchalance. He leaned back down with the pool stick and chuckled. Penelope’s mind was a mess. She was delusional. Seeing something that wasn’t really there. His words hurt, and she wanted to hide under a blanket. At the same time, the way he was bent her eyes kept going to his butt. It was perfect. His words about her weren’t. “She plays with dolls with my sisters. Pen is practically my sister.”
Dolls? She was babysitting Hyacinth. What was she supposed to do? Ignore a third grader who wanted to play Barbies? Play stupid games on her phone?
Penelope wanted to rage at him, but she bit her lip instead. She knew that to Colin, she was just that girl who was always at his house. It was just that in some moments, when it was just the two of them, that made her wonder and made her dream.
There was another beep from her cellphone as she placed the grocery bags on the kitchen table. She pulled it out of her pocket and saw that it was a text thread. Tossed the phone on the table and proceeded to empty the shopping bags, ignoring the increasing number of beeps. It almost sounded like a song. A terrible one. Before John can say anything, Penelope throws a bag of chips at his head.
“The Old Bay ones. I wish they had these in England. Can you grab me a beer?” She was babbling nonsense as a distraction, because he was staring at her phone. “I think teenage me would have died if Reggie flirted with me at all. We would have never met because my rotting corpse would still be reeling from it in my crypt. I know too much about him to consider it.”
“Penny, if he makes you uncomfortable, then he’s out of the band. You’re cuter. We’ll keep you. There was a guitarist I saw over at that little spot near the harbor who was good. Fife can be replaced.” John passed her a beer. Then grabbed the bag of chips to open them and looked down at the phone. “You going to look at those?”
Penelope rolled her eyes and put the milk in the fridge. “Hush and eat your crab chips, Johnny Boy. The wedding is this weekend. My RSVP is a no, and it is not being respected.”
The wedding. In some ways, she had forgotten about it. The thing about moving to a new country and making a new life was that it made one very busy. Penelope had no place to live when she arrived. Imagined her life would always be in that shady motel she stayed at when she arrived, until she met George, who introduced her to John. John, who then took her by the hand gently like a scared little lamb, pushed her into the chaos of new friends and new experiences. Then there was work at the museum. It had been busy getting ready for the next fundraiser. The good kind of busy in Maryland, the type that made her feel the light of this new life filling her with new energy. It was a deep contrast to the shadows she had been living under during her formative years in London.
There were exceptions, however: the calls she sent to voicemail and the texts left on read. The worst ones were from Colin, not because he was mean, but because he was confused. Penelope thought about blocking his and the rest of the family members’ calls, but decided to keep them in case of an emergency. She did block them on social media because seeing the wedding preparations and then the big event would wreck her. She liked her new life and didn’t want to ruin it. But occasionally, there was a depressing temptation to peek and live with the misery of unrequited love.
Penelope Featherington was always a glutton for punishment.
“Hey Penny love...” As John said this, she turned to face him, and her phone was pointed in her eyes. “Let’s see what these loons want, shall we?”
It was an impulse of violence that caused Penelope to launch herself at John. Her smaller body hit his straight on, causing him to laugh hysterically. One arm around her waist and the other holding the phone up in the air. She was trying to kick him, but began to laugh too. It was fun being John’s roommate with his complete lack of stress and ability to make her forget about being sad. She should be mad at him, but instead, she is enjoying a moment of levity.
“You are such a bloody knob, Johnny!” Penelope exclaimed, giggling, which promptly stopped as she heard a voice.
“Penelope?”
Eloise. The phone came down, and with John’s arm still wrapped around her waist, she saw Eloise looking at her. Penelope’s face flushed in embarrassment. She was comfy in her Johns Hopkins University sweatshirt covered in coffee stains. In contrast, her best friend looked beautiful in a sleek black pantsuit, but her expression was one of surprise. Eloise didn’t expect her to answer.
“Oh, hullo,” she squeaked back. Then noticed her friend was surrounded by a plethora of fancily dressed Bridgertons just like Eloise.
The rehearsal dinner.
“I didn’t think you were going to answer,” Eloise said. “I’m glad you did. Listen, Pen... Wait! Who is the guy? I need an... For fuck’s sake, Ben!”
Suddenly, Benedict’s face filled the screen. The second son had never learned boundaries. John was quite a bit like Benedict, Penelope realized. “Nel, the prodigal daughter, fancy seeing you here finally. And for once, you answered the phone! You shouldn’t have one if you don’t plan on using it.”
“It was an accident. The answering. I was planning on ignoring. Sorry about that,” she said quietly. Penelope could feel herself slipping back into the shell. Then she stiffened up. This was Benedict. She was his Nel. In truth, she was closest to him after Eloise, even more than Colin in many ways. Be brave. “I needed to get settled, Ben. You need to be focusing on the wedding, which I’m sure will be lovely. I’ll reach out next week.”
Benedict started moving with the phone. She could hear Eloise yelling at him in the background, as he gently tried to reason with her. Penelope could hear the plea in his voice. “Listen, Nel. I know this is hard. I, of everyone here, can understand why you don’t want to be at this wedding, but not letting us know where you are is upsetting. If you got hurt...”
“You sound like Anthony. That is a very older brother statement,” she stated with a sneer. John let her go and handed her a beer. “Wait... what do you think you know? I got a job offer at the same time as the wedding. I need to focus on my future.”
A future away from Colin Bridgerton and his soon-to-be fetching new wife.
“I know, Nel. The way you feel about him. It’s all over face. I’m an artist. I have been observing you, as you have been observing Colin for years.” She heard a bunch of people rush toward him as he told her this. Penelope took a drink out of her beer can. “Wait? Detective Benedict is on the case. You, Miss, are drinking beer! Oh god... a canned beer. It must be night. In a slum?”
“Practically happy hour,” she mumbled.
“Oh! What does that beer say...National Bohem...what? Is that German? Swiss? Greg! I need the magical Google! I see the sun coming in from the window! Where the hell are...” Benedict called out to the youngest brother. “Mother, no.”
Violet’s face came into view. “Darling, where are you? We’ve been worried, young lady!”
“She’s like a scared kitten. Don’t spook her, Mama,” Benedict announced as he swatted family members away. All clamoring for her attention. “I know it’s your phone, El, but Nel loves me best.”
As he stood nearby, John watched the chaos almost clinically. Ate more potato chips out of the bag. “Are they always insane?”
“Yes...oh god...put the chip bag down, Johnny!” She attempted to grab the bag away from John, making him laugh. Loudly.
“Oh god! Who is Penelope’s boyfriend? He’s mad fit.” Hyacinth. The youngest daughter. She could pick out a good looking man effortlessly, like she had a radar in her brain focused on finding attractive people in a crowd.
This only made John laugh more.
“Are there crab images on that bag? That’s disgusting!” Benedict said as Anthony grabbed the phone away.
“Penelope, we have been worried. Do you have enough money...”
Then she froze as Colin came into frame. Even on the screen of her phone, Colin was so handsome in his black suit, no tie, and the buttons open a little too far down, making her breath hitch. She wanted to hate him for being so beautiful. She wanted to feel distaste for the husky way he said to his brother, “Give me the phone, Ant.”
“Or don’t,” Penelope muttered.
Anthony, of course, ignored her before flashing a smug smile and giving Colin the phone. This was her punishment for going silent on the family. As punishments go, for most people, it would mean nothing. Yet, for Penelope, it was a nightmare. She was not ready to talk to him. Just wanted to drink her beer and try to forget. Which she does as she drinks some more beer, with her eyes darting away from the phone.
“You are supposed to be here.” It was simply stated. His expression was stone-faced.
“I had an opportunity that I couldn’t pass on.” Penelope mimicked her expression to mirror his. She needed to be strong. She would not cry. “It was a decision that I thought very carefully about. My intention was not to hurt anyone’s feelings.”
This was the truth. Hurting others was just an unfortunate repercussion. She was finally trying to choose herself. Protect her heart.
Colin closed his eyes. Opened them slowly, then stared at her as if he was trying to figure her out through the phone. “But you did hurt people. Made them frightened. Eloise. My whole family...Me, Pen. I was terrified that you were hurt. And now I see you drinking a beer! You don’t drink beer! That’s not like you.”
The only thing hurting her was him. He never knew her. She drank beer at the pubs, but to know that he would have to see her, and she knew, he never bothered to look. Would he be terrified of his power to break her if he ever opened his eyes and realized what he did to her? Penelope doubted it. All his words seemed performative to her now.
The image of him started bouncing as he walked into a coat closet. “I just don’t understand why you couldn’t be here for the wedding. It’s one weekend.”
“Not all of us have unlimited Bridgerton funds, Colin. Prices for flights...” Her hand flew up in front of her mouth.
“Answer this one question? Is there any way for you to get here tomorrow to be at the wedding? If I pay for a flight?” He stared at the screen. “I need you here to be with me. I can’t do this without you. My best...”
“Pal? I know.” Penelope’s hand was shaking now. “You are going to have a wife tomorrow. You’re happy. With her. I need to find my own happiness.”
An expression of realization came over Colin’s face. Penelope had seen that look before. It was the same look he had when he discovered that Daphne, the sister he was closest to, was secretly dating Anthony’s best friend Simon. It was the look that flashed across his face when he discovered that Penelope’s cousin, whom he had been dating, was cheating on him with her ex-boyfriend. It was the look that Colin had when his Reginald had been teasing him about her that was quickly erased.
“You’re happy with me, Pen. We’re best...”
“I love you.” The words escaped her as she shook harder. There was a hand on her back, rubbing soothing circles. John. A single tear leisurely traveled down her face. Now that her true feelings rose to the surface, there was no way to stop them. “Not as a friend. I can’t watch you marry her. I want you to have the perfect day, and I promise that I’m not trying to ruin it for you. You need to do it without me and...”
“Pen...” Colin started to breathe heavier. “I....”
John gently took the phone from her hand, angling her body so she could hide her face in his chest as more tears started to fall. “Listen, mate. Congratulations on the wedding. Penny and I have plans tonight, so I am going to hang up.”
“No, mate,” Colin said with a dangerous edge to his voice. “I need to talk to her about this.”
John shook his head. “Not a good time. She’ll talk to you when she’s ready, Pal.”
As John ended the call, Penelope wept as her heart finished breaking.
🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀
Penelope Featherington was drunk.
Not a little tipsy, which wasn’t much of a change from sober Penelope. No. This was the vibrant, shiny Penelope who hides away before getting plastered on hard seltzers.
This Penelope is a flirt. A flirt who is dazzling two handsome doctors from Chicago visiting Johns Hopkins for a medical conference, as John’s band played covers of nineties alternative standards.
“I can’t believe you aren’t one of my people,” the older doctor said with a grin. His own red hair was streaked with a distinguished gray. He had been regaling her with tales of when he was an army medic. “I was expecting an Irish lilt, not an upper class English princess.”
“My mother tells me that I don’t have a drop of Irish blood in me,” she told him with a smirk. Then added, “But Mama was always a known liar.”
Penelope reached into the container that held George’s cherries and popped one into her mouth, ignoring the loud snicker coming out of her landlord. This was a needed distraction. If Colin ever saw sparkly Penelope, then...
It didn’t matter. He never did, and he never will.
“Well then, Princess, what do you think of having a little Irish in you?” The older doctor leaned in and licked his lips. She didn’t remember his name, but tonight she didn’t want any. For once, Penelope wanted it easy. Not obsessively worrying about a certain groom’s micro expression. Attempts to read every sigh or blink as if they were a detailed research paper about Colin’s actual feelings for her.
Men didn’t flirt with her like this. It was thrilling. It was terrifying. It wasn’t Colin. This was good. She just needed to remind herself of that.
The younger doctor with the dark hair placed his hand on the older one’s shoulder. “Calm down there, Romeo. We have an early session tomorrow, and you don’t want to scare the pretty lady.”
He didn’t drink, the younger one. Instead, he was sipping on the horrible coffee that George always had at the ready for sobering up patrons or helping the designated drivers stay alert for the drive home. The man brushed his hair out of his eyes. It was the type of haircut where the locks in the front are a tad bit too long. Just like...
“Don’t worry about me.” Her voice was light and teasing. Gave them both a wink. “I think I can control myself around little Irish over there.”
The older man howled with laughter, and the younger smirked. Penelope felt a power flowing through her. It might have been brought on by strawberry flavored seltzer heavily spiked with vodka, but still thrilling.
The music from the band had stopped behind them, replaced by George’s ancient iPod connected to the stereo system. Sounds of the Sex Pistols filled the room. Penelope played with her straw.
“You going to sing again?” The older doctor asked. “That was something else.”
She chuckled. “That is a way to put it. Kind of you.”
Penelope was tone deaf. She couldn’t carry a tune to save her life. The song John talked her into singing with the band was more of a battle cry. No beautiful melody needed. It was an exorcism of her despair over Colin’s upcoming marriage. A way to free her from the tendrils of him that was attached to her. And she was just drunk enough to agree that that was the best idea that she had ever heard.
“I thought you had presence up there,” the dark one said generously. “A secret star power.”
A snort came out of her in response.
“Oi. What is happening over here?” John came up with a worried look on his face as he approached with Reginald. Reginald’s expression was a mirror of John’s.
The older man smiled somewhat innocently. “Just sitting here enjoying the company of the Princess here. She’s quite the spitfire.”
John’s hand went on Penelope’s shoulder. Not quite possessive, maybe more protective. Her head was feeling floaty, so it was hard to judge.
“Penny had a hard day. I am taking her home soon.” He told them sternly, which rang odd to her. John was not stern. John was silly.
“Your girl has been kindly keeping us company,” the younger one announced. The one to keep things calm.
She brushed off John’s hand with an eyeroll. “No one’s girl. Not anymore. He’s marrying someone else tomorrow. But...it’s fine. You know what they say, right?”
“That Colin is a clueless wanker, and you can do better,” Reginald chimed in.
“That the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else,” she said this brightly, but even she knew that it rang false.
“Too tempting, too young, and we do have an early morning. You are correct, Frank.” The older man stands up and puts a large amount of money on the bar. Motions to George. “Hey. This should cover her tab tonight, too.”
Penelope looked at him in confusion. “I can...”
The man took her hand and placed a kiss on the back of it like a knight in shining armor. “If some guy can’t see how special you are, then he isn’t worth it. Be happy, Princess.”
The other man, Frank, gave her a gentle smile and patted her shoulder. “If you are ever in Chicago and need a good emergency doctor...”
“I’ll be certain to look you both up, Frank,” Penelope said with a smile.
As the men waved goodbye and walked out of the bar, John and Reginald sat on either side of her. George placed two pints in front of them and just shook his head at the trio. John looked at his beer. “George, why are you serving me piss?”
“Because I had to make sure our little cardinal here didn’t fly off with those Americans,” George announced. “I was doing your job.”
“I was tonight’s entertainment!” John scoffed.
“Same,” Reginald chimed in.
Penelope grabbed an orange slice from George. “You didn’t say a damn thing except to try to make them buy more drinks.”
Her word made them focus their attention solely on her. Penelope sighed, “What?”
“You weren’t actually thinking about having a quick fuck with one of those blokes?” Reginald asked incredulously as he took out his phone. “There are so many other options.”
John nodded. “They were too old for you.”
“They were doctors. Hot doctors, you ageists. I bet their hands were very skilled when handling...bodies,” she huffed. Both men groaned at her joke.
Reginald placed his phone in front of her face. Started scrolling through images from the camera roll in front of her. “Can I add these to my socials? A video of you on stage?”
“Whatever.” Barely registering what Reginald was saying, Penelope waved her hand at him to do whatever he wanted. She was beyond caring except for one thing. “Oh god, I told him I loved him.”
Reginald gasped, “Not the old one! I saw gray in his hair!”
“Shut up, Fife!” John admonished as he took Penelope’s hand in his. “You are a strong, vibrant woman. This is just a small rip in the fabric of your life. Your tapestry is destined to be woven into something beautiful and more sustaining. You have friends here who will mend you.”
Penelope erupted into laughter. Tears in her eyes. “Do we consider ourselves a poet, John? You going to start writing greeting cards?”
“I’m a songwriter, Penny!” John took a swig of beer. “My lyrics make the birds swoon.”
Reginald had just taken a drink of beer and promptly spit it out as he laughed.
“Sure, they do. Actual birds like those pigeons that leave droppings all over the pavement outside the bar as tribute to your lyrics. Is your mending any better? I have a sock with a hole in it that needs to be fixed,” Penelope snarked, as she wobbled a bit on her stool. “Oh! I’m going to feel this tomorrow, aren’t I?”
“You’d better stop teasing me about my mending, love,” John told her with a smirk. “You are going to need plenty of it tomorrow.”
🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀
It had been a couple of days of sadness. Penelope sat on the couch in the apartment and looked at the drivel she wrote late into the previous night. A manuscript of pathetic longing for a boy with sapphire eyes and a bewitching smile. She hit delete on whole passages, and as she started changing the romantic hero of her story into a blond with brown eyes, Penelope couldn’t help reflecting on the past couple of days that had led her to this moment of a reset.
The day of the wedding, Penelope indeed had a hangover from her night at the bar. The type that lingered all day, even after the two mimosas that John made her have at a little restaurant in Fell’s Point. A hipster type of establishment that loudly played punk rock while providing generous portions of blueberry pancakes. Delicious to be certain. But the perfect blueberry pancake couldn’t magically cure the hangover that stemmed not only from copious amounts of sugary alcoholic drinks, but the residual embarrassment of admitting her feelings to her longtime crush. It was the wedding day. A day she wished to hide under blankets and weep.
It then continued to the next day, but worse. A headache. A weariness. A sadness that clung to her like a shroud. With moments of forgetting, of fleeting joy when John was able to distract her from thoughts of honeymoons to exotic places. Their beautiful, tanned bodies frolicking on white sand beaches. Picture-perfect specimens that would make gorgeous images for tourism advertisements. The type of place that the intense rays of the sun would make Penelope Featherington into a human lobster.
The knowledge that Colin’s marriage was the end of her dreams. Dreams that were now dead and to be buried deep in a crypt of her childhood devotion to a boy with a charming smile.
For his part, like a true friend, John continued to keep her busy with her phone hidden somewhere in the kitchen. There were no calls or texts because he refused to have her suffer any reminders of what was happening in London. Instead, since the days were lovely, the weather was now spring perfection, they visited vintage shops, watched street musicians play jazz on street corners, and sat on a dock by the water to eat ice cream. Days that were reminiscent of the type she would occasionally have with Colin. The type of day her delusional brain would pretend that meant that he was falling in love with her. What a fool she was.
As they wandered to different distractions, Penelope wondered about moving on. Romantically. The possibilities of finally opening her heart to something real and not just the mirage of feelings that weren’t actually there. Colin liked her. The type that meant friendship. But she couldn’t ever fully be his friend, because the hope for more was always clinging to her. She turned down dates, just in case, he finally saw her as something more. That waiting wasn’t a life. In this city, she could be the girl who now seized the opportunities before her.
This was her time of freedom. From Colin Bridgerton.
“We should check out the aquarium,” John announced from the kitchen where he was making spaghetti. “Go after you get off work for the evening hours. It’s right there. I bet it’s cooler at night.”
“You going to buy me a stuffed seal?” Penelope asked as she changed more text in her manuscript. The hero now hated travel and social media. She pushed up her glasses that were falling down her nose. “You know...I don’t think I’ve ever been to an aquarium.”
He hummed a little. “Then this is the perfect time to go, love. I can get discounted passes from the library.”
“I love the library,” she said wistfully, as she got up and joined him in the kitchen.
“Of course, you do. You are an adorable nerd,” John told her, as he stirred the sauce. “I think I need to add more garlic to the jar sauce. It’s bland.”
“Whatever. You’re the chef.” She grabbed her phone from the charger where she had John attach it that morning. “Don’t overcook the pasta.”
John did an overdramatic eye roll. “Whatever you say, Mother. Wait! You know you don’t have to check that yet. Are you ready?”
As she stared at the phone as it turned back on, Penelope wondered if she was truly ready.
Perhaps yes. Perhaps not. But at that moment, she felt strong. Ready.
This place is where the new, brave Penelope can bloom, so it was time to take the first step.
The phone lit up with voicemails and text messages. An insane amount of both. Penelope wandered out of the kitchen and back into the living room, trying to make sense of the madness before her.
“Holy shit.”
John’s head poked out of the kitchen. “What? Is someone dead? Did one of the Bridgertons fall down a well?”
Not bothering with the voicemails, Penelope stared at one of the four family text threads to which she had been added. Another soft whisper of, “Holy shit.”
“I think you already said that, Penny.” He wiped his hands on a dish towel. “What?”
“They know I’m in Baltimore.” She sighed. “Reggie posted a video of me singing. Some photos of us all getting pissed on Instagram. Location on.”
John sat on the arm of the couch. “You told him it was fine to post.”
“Did I?”
“Indeed, you did, drunky,” John teased. “Fife has a crush on you. He is surprisingly thoughtful about your opinion. I think his asking for your permission is a sign of growth.”
Penelope kept reading through the different text chains with her eyes widening. “I was still drunk, John.”
“We all were smashed, Penny. The fact that we didn’t steal a boat to do a pleasure cruise to the Eastern Shore is still a mystery, as pissed as all of us were. Fife was the one who talked us out of it.”
Penelope nodded at him as she read countless questions about whether she was safe in a dirty pub, why she was in America, and what the hell she was doing with Fife. Eloise and Benedict had a spirited debate about whether Reginald had kidnapped her and caused her to suffer from Stockholm syndrome. Daphne pointed out that Reginald might have had a personality transplant and was quite handsome. Gregory, the youngest of the boys, offered to save her and deprogram her with his “love” after Anthony proposed a plan to extract her from a dangerous country because the United States didn’t believe in gun control. Hyacinth told Gregory that he should be neutered. Only Francesca, the quiet sibling, was trying to maintain some semblance of order.
It was pure Bridgerton crazy. Missing Colin, of course. He was probably too busy seducing his comely bride. Penelope attempted not to gag at the thought.
“Fife is a work in progress, though. By next year, we’ll have him trained to be a very good boy,” John continued with a snort. Then he jumped up quickly in a panic and called out as he ran back to the kitchen, “My noodles!”
“He’s not a dog,” Penelope muttered as she opened a different text thread. As she read, she clutched the phone tightly. Then let out a very drawn out, “Fuck.”
John ran back into the room with a strand of spaghetti in his fingers. “You upgraded from holy shit. What happened?”
Quietly, possibly in shock, Penelope told him as her phone dropped on the floor, “There was no wedding.”
“Penny.” John dropped the noodle on the floor. Went to her and took her hand. “What did they say?”
As soon as she read that the wedding was cancelled, it was as if Penelope’s brain froze. The reasons for which she was certain had nothing to do with her or the FaceTime conversation during his rehearsal dinner. She was always second to whatever flight of fancy distracted Colin, and when that ended, he knew she would always be ready to take him back. Penelope was never the first on his mind, and as she looked down at the phone and back up into John’s worried face, the fog lifted, and she was filled with a very new emotion. Not sadness. That was now gone. Penelope Featherington was angry. At Colin. At herself for ignoring the truth for so long.
“It doesn’t matter.” Penelope took a deep breath and then motioned to the pasta on the floor. “I hope that’s al dente.”
There was a banging on the door. Loud and relentless.
Penelope stood slowly. “Finish dinner. If this is one of your groupies, I’ll send her on her way.”
“It might be Doug. He was going to drop off some song he was working on.”
The knocking was very persistent for being the normally chill drummer of John’s band, but Penelope thought maybe he was just excited about what he was working on.
“Hey Doug, what’s...”
It was not Doug. It was not one of John’s groupies. It was a disheveled Colin Bridgerton, still in his tux, standing before her. A backpack over his shoulder.
“Hey, Pen.”
Oh no.
“Hey, Pal,” Penelope whispered to him.
And closed the door in his face.