CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

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2022

          Savannah didn't notice our departure from the party, too busy mingling to even glance at the front door, and, before I knew it, Ingrid and I were both out of the apartment complex.

          I could hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears, even louder than the music, and wondered how many times I'd find myself in similar situations—somehow unable to ignore the most prevalent sound and stimuli in my immediate environment and focusing exclusively on myself and my body because I couldn't deal with stress properly. Not like a normal person would, anyway; I knew pregnancy scares had that name for a reason and no one who definitely wasn't ready to have a child would be relaxed under these circumstances, but I couldn't help but feel like part of me was blowing everything out of proportion.

          The irony of being joined by Ingrid tonight wasn't lost on me. Out of the two of them, I'd expected Savannah to tag along, as I was eerily reminded of that party we had to cut short because Ingrid had nearly died in our bathroom, but I was still jittery from our conversation from that morning and didn't trust the person I'd be around her when all my emotions were on the verge of both collapsing and exploding. My whole life was in its messiest state, and I'd never been well equipped to healthily handle things that broke my routines, anxiety and all.

          Sweat pooled in the hollows of my collarbones, in spite of the cold weather. In the peak of winter, my body temperature had shot up—I could tell it wasn't cold sweat, especially with the way I'd peeled off my jacket on the way to the parking lot, feeling feverish—and, if that wasn't a sign my body wasn't well, a sign my body couldn't house a child under the current circumstances, I didn't know what was. After the stress, after the lack of sleep, after all the drinking—how could I ever expect anything different? Why would I even bother to hope for a positive outcome, when it would never work? Not now, at least, and, if the result of the test came back positive, I was certain it would be the final nail in the coffin.

          Deep down, I was certain it was impossible. It was an idea Ingrid had stupidly ingrained in my brain to make me question everything I thought to be real, passing it off as a mere joke we'd laugh about in a few weeks once the dust had settled, but I knew her. I knew her better than she thought I did, and was certain there were things she'd say and do with the sole purpose of hurting me, hidden under the guise of a joke. No one could get away with nasty stuff by laughing it off, not forever, at least, and I found some sick pleasure in realizing she'd been underestimating me all along.

          Old Penn maybe would've let it slide just because she oh so desperately wanted to stay on Powerful Ingrid Vogel's good side, ever so obsessed with the perfect friendships and perfect interactions, but I'd grown older and wiser with time. The present version of myself appreciated the way she'd dropped everything she was doing to join me tonight (though I hadn't forgotten they had thrown this party for them and not to celebrate my birthday as advertised), but she also wasn't willing to let her guard down just yet. I couldn't have this be yet something else she'd hang over my head whenever she needed to emotionally blackmail me.

          In my wildest dreams, I never would've thought this was how my twenty-third birthday would begin, let alone how I imagined my life would turn out. I would never imagine I'd have such a massive argument with my parents—about Chase, out of all things, when I'd been so spectacular at keeping everything in separate drawers of my life and only letting them meet when strictly necessary—and having to leave my birthday party (that I hadn't asked for) early because a seemingly innocent joke had convinced me I was pregnant was simply the cherry on top. Realistically, I was overreacting, all the stressful factors of the past three and a half years culminating in me reaching my breaking point, and everything about my current situation was simply mortifying.

          I was supposed to be able to trust my parents. I was supposed to be able to trust my best friends. I was supposed to trust myself. Somewhere along the way, I'd started believing everyone would betray me and, in one way or another, all of them had, even myself. All my life, I'd been so sheltered I had no skills to deal with the real world and its hardships, and that was becoming clearer with every obstacle in my way. I couldn't deal with everything the way I'd done with Sav, by throwing her under the bus so she wouldn't be a problem and I'd still get what I wanted, and not everything would be that easy. Some issues would destroy me harder, deepen the guilt even more.

          Thus, as I sat right outside of the nearest CVS to campus, plastic stick on my hand as Ingrid and I occupied the littlest space possible on the sidewalk, I realized I'd truly hit rock bottom. That was it—the end of the line. It had only taken me twenty-three years to get there, but I felt miserable—I was miserable and could no longer ignore that fact—and words couldn't begin to describe just how truly humiliated I was feeling, like all my wounds were open to the world.

          If the results came back positive, I'd have no one to blame but myself, but I'd also need to push away my panic just enough to come up with one single rational thought and find a plausible justification for that scenario. I couldn't name drop Marco even if I had the courage to, not when both he and Sarah were still at our apartment and were close to Ingrid and when the lie would easily be unraveled.

          And yet, even though I knew I looked like a trainwreck and was highly aware it hadn't taken me reaching my breaking point in distress for Ingrid to reach out to me, I kept ignoring and rejecting all her attempts to comfort or even help me. Savannah, too, but my relationships with the two of them were different and complicated for a plethora of reasons, some of them overlapping, some of them being entirely unique. Even when I could no longer bring myself to shed a tear over the earthquake shattering the ground beneath my feet, even when all the oxygen had been sucked out of my lungs, I couldn't turn to them and admit I needed them to be there for me. I'd never needed them during the past three years, and I hadn't needed my parents either; every challenge, I'd overcome by myself. Chase had been there through all of it, with varying degrees of distance and involvement, and I'd had an appointed state attorney, sure, but it had just been me—me on my own against the world. Why would I give that up now?

          "It's negative," Ingrid informed me, arms wrapped around the knees she'd brought close to her chest. She hadn't brought a jacket, which made goosebumps rise all over her uncovered skin, and she looked so pale under the streetlights she could be glowing like a firefly. "So have been the other three ones you've taken."

          "Yeah." I closed the now empty bottle of Sunny D I'd been chugging. "Guess it is."

          She took a deep breath, inching closer to me. "Look, Penn, I was just joking. I'm really sorry to have freaked you out; you really don't look pregnant, and, even if intentions mean nothing here, I truly meant no harm. If anything, I was trying to lighten up the mood because I'm genuinely worried about you. You haven't felt like yourself, the Penn I know, in a long time."

          I lowered my head, glad she couldn't see my face through my hair, which was significantly helpful in getting me to not scoff or roll my eyes at her. All this worry, both from her and Savannah, was unwarranted, and I hadn't asked her for anything. She'd chosen to tag along with me out of her own volition and, if I'd known we'd be having this conversation, after the day I'd had, I would've asked her to let me do this alone.

          Hell, what even made her think she knew me? What made her think she'd ever known me at all?

          "You don't need to worry about me," I half-whispered, my body so tense I feared I'd shatter the second I moved an inch. We were outside in the cold, the gelid gusts of wind blasting my face, and I still felt suffocated. How would I even begin to explain this to someone, especially someone like Ingrid, who expected me to cry to my parents about it so they'd solve it for me? Wasn't that what she had told me a while back in the bathroom? To her, all my problems meant nothing—I was beautiful, I was rich, and I was untouchable. "I'm just stressed out and tired. Hair-trigger temper."

          "I see you, you know. I can tell when you're not okay."

         "Did Savannah make you do this?"

          "Penn, no one makes me do anything. You know that. Even if you think I hate you or that I'm the enemy, you're my best friend, and I love you. I want you to be okay and I don't want to pry into your personal life"—like she hadn't done so countless times, invading my privacy repeatedly and ignoring all my requests to stop—"but I can't close my eyes and look the other way. It's okay to try and help people even when they're not outwardly asking for it because, sometimes, they're just not able to do so. The loudest cries for help can be the quietest things you've ever heard." Her hand stopped on my wrist, the one ending on the same hand that wore the diamond ring. "If you want me to back off—"

          "—I'd quite like that, actually." I shoved her hand away, then rested my head against the heel of mine, ignoring the sharp pain on the flesh of my inner knee right where my elbow dug into it. "I freaked out because a pregnancy is not something I'd be able to handle right now, and it's never been about looking pregnant. I just couldn't do it because I'm not in a stage of my life where that could be a possibility, money and privilege aside. After everything I've been doing—the drinking, the not sleeping—there's just no way this could end on a positive note. I will be okay, though, but I need space and time, and neither you nor Sav nor my parents are giving me any of it, so all this concern you two think you're showing is just making me feel suffocated and muzzled instead of comforted."

          Ingrid pressed her lips together, but what shocked me the most was the way she stopped pressing me for answers or begging me to let her in like my parents had done. I wasn't sure what to think of it, especially when I realized all the stories I'd made up in my head until now where I'd be trying to explain why I considered the possibility of being pregnant, who the father could be, when it would have happened hadn't even been needed. I wasn't sure whether she believed me or if I'd have to keep dealing with the sickening anxiety that came with uncertainty, of never knowing if I was in the clear or if it would come back to haunt me.

          Either way, I knew one day I'd have to stop wincing whenever she walked into a room. I just wasn't sure when that would be.

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          There was that saying about not trusting a survivor until you had full knowledge of everything they'd done, the extent they'd gone through to ensure they'd made it out, but I wasn't that great of a menace to make anyone fear me. That didn't make me the ideal candidate for the role of the most trustworthy person out there, not when my life for the past three and a half years had been nothing but a myriad of lies, deception, and ommission.

          Overall, morally speaking, I wasn't that great of a person, but I'd survived everything my college years and my twenties had thrown at me so far, dodged every brick, jumped over every crack on the ground. Whether that would ever amount to anything in a few months or a few years, whether I'd look back on those hardships and be proud of my past self, that was still debatable.

          Three weeks passed since my birthday, the disaster that day had been, and I was desperate to put it all behind me, but I quickly discovered I was fighting in an army of one.

          My parents' incessant attempts to contact me hadn't gone by unnoticed, though I kept ignoring them, rejecting calls and letting texts rot in their unread state. I couldn't face them, not even for dinners at the manor with Stephen, especially when I knew exactly what they were doing—they wanted me and Chase to be in the same room simultaneously so they could gauge our reactions and body language and prove the veracity of their theories. I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of trapping me, and I wouldn't place Chase in that situation, even though my absence and refusal to attend the dinner parties was possibly suspicious enough by itself.

          The extensive cost-benefit analysis I'd gone through in my head had determined that simply not attending would be the best decision, both for me and for Chase. He'd know how to navigate the situation, whereas I'd get overwhelmed by my thoughts and emotions.

          Not that I would know if he'd been invited.

          The distance between us had widened considerably, making those no-contact days from early on the school year after Madrid look like child's play, something I never thought I'd end up missing. At least then I would still be summoned to the library or to his office, even if his apartment had been temporarily off-limits for a reason unbeknownst to me, and I knew I still had some of him. He was still mine then, even if he kept me at arm's length, but I was all alone now, and there was nowhere and no one I could turn to without him.

          The fact that I knew about Los Angeles and he didn't know about that knowledge was eating me alive. I'd never kept a secret from him, as far as I could recall (I usually kept them for him), and there was no rush of adrenaline electrifying my bloodstream, not like our secrecy and private moments. That was something I felt like I wasn't supposed to know, at least not that soon, and there had to be a reason he hadn't told me anything about it. It could be a surprise, a trip for two, or it could be his way of officially leaving me behind (a possibility I hated I had to consider after a long relationship). Overall, I didn't know what was going on, and I felt like dying.

          Panic had been building and sizzling in the pit of my stomach and I couldn't figure out whether I could fully blame it on anxiety or not. It sickened me to realize I always tried to blame external factors for the way I was feeling following a refusal to deal with the consequences of my actions and choices simply because I could never take accountability. Though most of the time the things I feared the most never really happened, at least not to the catastrophic level I'd attempted to prepare myself for beforehand, I couldn't fully trust that explanation to work every time.

          There was an evil, nagging feeling in the distance that wanted—and needed—me to brace myself for impending doom, but I didn't know what that impending doom was about. Granted, there weren't many things in the world I'd be devastated to lose or witness it be harmed in any capacity, so I could limit the options, but anticipatory mourning and grief were damaging enough. Suffering as an immediate response and suffering long after the initial pain subsided drained me, so I found myself wondering if I deserved to agonize early on, even when I wasn't sure whether there was a reason to be feeling that shipwrecked or not.

          Avoiding Savannah and Ingrid when I lived with them was harder. The solution wasn't as easy as it seemed initially, when I'd considered either moving out completely or temporarily hiding in my loft until I felt better, and I had the strength of spirit to consider how loud the sirens would scream if I left right after everything that had happened between us lately. They'd give me space in theory, but I'd still know they were speculating and planning a masterplan to take me down behind my back, so I would never feel better even if there was some physical distance between us. The only thing I could do was isolate myself even further, finding excuses to make myself busier than I already was just so I wouldn't be bothered, and dedicated myself to my studies harder than ever before.

          My senior project remained untouched, though, and the piles of overdue library books on my desk grew by the hour. Working on papers and essays proved to be an escape from everything else that was troubling me on the rare occasions I managed to remain focused on what I was doing, but that also involved copious amounts of caffeine, which I had to complement with a better diet. I was a lousy cook, but had the Internet at my disposal, and had recently started speedrunning through every video by the Barefoot Contessa so I could fool myself into thinking I could sustain myself.

          I could now make a killer spaghetti aglio e olio, though, but I could hear my grandmother's scolding voice in my head as she admonished me for betraying my roots by going Italian.

          Savannah and Ingrid lingered in the apartment for longer than they usually did whenever I was there, like they were either watching me or wanting to say something, maybe both, but I never stayed in the communal areas long enough for anyone to be brave enough to strike up a conversation. In the kitchen, I'd prepare my food—if I was having a tolerable day, sometimes I even prepared extra servings so they could have some if they wanted—then left immediately. I had everything else I needed in my room.

          Then, one day, well into February, things shifted.

          When even my bedroom became unbearable, the air in there unbreathable, I'd decided to find study nooks by the large windows of the campus buildings, where I could comfortably sit on the window sill. It provided me with back support, though the marble stone beneath me chilled my bones down to the core, and I was shielded enough from curious glances. With my long coat and heavy scarf, I could be anyone. I could almost be no one.

          My phone buzzed just as I finished typing the concluding paragraph for my Short Film course's paper, due the next day (a terrible habit I had yet to kick, so close to graduation). My first instinct was to ignore it, believing it to be a notification from my parents, but my curiosity won the battle against my desire for self-preservation and I felt compelled to check it regardless.

          SYLVIA, 3:15 PM: Meet me in my office when you can. We need to talk.

          My breath froze. Those four words were the words no one ever wanted to hear, as nothing good ever followed them, but I also knew I couldn't leave him hanging.

          The conversation could be about virtually anything, even the most innocent of topics, and it would do me no good to let my growing panic ruin everything for me, but my hands were shaking so wildly as I gathered my belongings that I couldn't bear to think about how I'd look when I got to his office. I couldn't even hold on to anything I needed to carry, hyper aware I was probably being watched and mocked while I had my back turned to the hallway and let out one ragged breath after the other, and I knew it would only get worse.

          I got to Chase's office out of breath, all disheveled from the fast pace I'd forced my leg muscles to move at, and I was so close to cracking and exploding I feared what would happen if he tried to touch me. It was all I wanted—to feel his warmth, to melt into his embrace—but my terror spoke louder, which I suspected was written all over my face. My heart thumped like a freight train smashing into a wall and I prayed and prayed I hadn't done something wrong, even unwillingly, that could've warranted this—all of this, his silence, his distance.

          He stood behind his desk, lights out, only illuminated by the faint gray hue coming from outside. It was ominous enough, but the contrast in lights and shadows made him look even more beautiful than usual, more unapproachable. Usually, I'd revel in the knowledge that, even under all that armor, he was still mine. Now, I wasn't so certain.

          "You wanted to see me?" I croaked out, mouth so dry I barely got any words out.

          "Sit," he asked. I immediately did so, hunched forward, while he remained upright, so tense I could feel it emanating off him. He was always like that, always on guard, but something felt different—in what way, I still couldn't tell.

          I pressed my closed fists against my legs. "Did I do something wrong? I haven't seen you outside of class in—"

          Chase raised a hand to cut me off. "Please. Let me. It's easier if I just say it."

          "I'm sorry."

          We both inhaled. Even then, we were still so in sync.

          When he spoke again, there was a chill to his voice that made my bones ache, something he hadn't ever used with me. "I think it's best if we move on from"—he gestured towards the space between us, where my heart was splattered and smashed into pieces—"this. Move on with our lives."

END OF ACT ONE

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just ended a three and a half-year-long relationship. it's okay, it wasn't my relationship.

(though do keep in mind i a) am not actually viola davis and b) don't drink anymore, so take this gif with a grain of salt)

girlies, we did it. we finally did it. we're headed off towards the finish line (8 more chapters to go, to be precise) but there's still a lot that needs to happen before this book is marked complete. for my exit wounds readers, don't forget about harley. hint hint