Chapter Seventeen
Darren
After we’d finished, we put on our clothes and left the hotel. I had only paid for a couple hours; we could have extended our stay if we had wanted, but Penny was eager to get home. I think she had enjoyed it at the moment, but when she stopped to think it over, she began to worry about her performance and whether she had been good enough.
We were both in a gloomy mood by the time I dropped her back off in the parking lot of the auto parts store. She stared pensively out the window at the twilight landscape. I could tell she was replaying every moment of the night in her head with a mixture of guilt and embarrassment. I knew I had to reassure her before she sank into the slough of despond.
“Listen, you were great tonight.” I reached over and grabbed her knee firmly. “It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed myself so much.”
“I don’t feel like I was great,” she said sadly. “I feel like I probably wasted your time. You ought to be dating a hot girl who actually fills out her bra and knows more than one position. I can’t believe you would choose to go out with someone like me who has zero experience in bed and is just a weird, pear-shaped girl who spends most of her time hanging out with her dad.”
Not being able to think of an adequate response to this, I leaned over and kissed her on the lips. “Pen, you were perfect.”
Reaching up and wrapping her arms around my neck, Penny pulled me back into a kiss. After I had overcome my initial surprise, I unbuckled and reached around her, pulling her toward me. It was impossible to say how much time passed, but we remained in that position, passionately kissing, while the sky grew dark and the stars winked on one by one.
When we finally broke away, I sat beaming at her for some time while she smiled shyly. She didn’t seem to be feeling so badly now.
“Good night, Darren,” she said quietly as she got out of the car. “Thank you for everything.”
“Guess I’ll see you again next week when I come into the store.”
Something in this statement must have pleased her, for she un-tensed her shoulders and breathed deeply. “What for? I thought your car was working fine now.”
“Just give me a few days,” I said with a mischievous smile. “I’ll find somethin’ wrong.”
She was still laughing as she climbed into her car and drove off.
***
When I came into work on Monday carrying a couple bags filled with sausage egg biscuits and greasy hash browns, Dickie immediately gave me a look of suspicion. I ignored him and went on whistling cheerfully as I set the bags down on the counter.
“You alright, man?” he inquired. “Somethin’ seems different about you this morning.”
“I started using a different conditioner in my hair,” I said coyly. “According to the package, it’s the perfect conditioner for dark, naturally greasy hair. Other than that, I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, I bet you don’t. What did you do this weekend?”
I smiled. “Me and Penny went sky-diving Saturday and…hung out afterward.”
“How intense was this ‘hanging out,’ on a scale of one to twelve?”
“One being what? Twelve being what?”
“One being ‘we had tea with her granny’ and twelve being ‘we’re not allowed back in the Marriott ever again.’”
“Closer to twelve, honestly.” I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling oddly shy. These weren’t the sort of things I was used to talking about with other guys. “Maybe a nine.”
“Oh, yeah? Did anyone get arrested?”
“Not this time, but she’s a lot wilder’n I expected. We booked a hotel, but we didn’t stay long, if you know what I mean.”
“I believe I do,” said Dickie. “I’m guessing it was her first time?”
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“I’d be very surprised if I found out Penny had ever taken her top off in front of a guy. She’s the sort of girl who lives with her parents into her mid-thirties and still has posters of boy bands hanging up on her wall. If you dug around on Facebook—and I’m not saying I’ve ever done this, mind you—I’m sure you would find pictures of her cosplaying as various Doctor Who companions at Comic-Con.”
This was such a painfully accurate portrait of Penny that I began to wonder whether he also liked her. Certainly, he had given her a great deal of thought.
I sat down in the swivel chair and flung my hat down on the counter. “She’s just so different from any other girl I’ve been with—any girl I’ve met, really. She makes up her own holidays to celebrate random events in her life, like the time she drank hot chocolate at a bed and breakfast in Florida. Every year on that date she wakes up in the morning and makes herself a big steaming mug of hot chocolate.”
“I suppose there are worse things one could do with one’s time,” said Dickie.
“I suppose. It’s just sometimes I wonder whether she’s entirely right in the head. Do you remember on Arrested Development when Michael was dating this gorgeous woman played by Charlize Theron, and they were about to get married until he found out she was mentally handicapped? That feels like the sort of thing that would happen to me.”
“That would totally happen to you,” Dickie said with a laugh. “You don’t have a very good track record of dating intelligent women. I could point out some pretty painful examples.”
“I’m sure you could.” There were a couple steel balls lying on the desk; I picked them up and turned them over and over in my hands, thinking. “Last night I was at home alone grilling some fish when I heard a knock on the door. At first, I thought maybe it was you, because who else would come over? But when I opened the door, Carlotta was standing there. She was wearing her designer glasses, a neon pink top, and a denim skirt that stopped mid-thigh.
“After I’d overcome my surprise, I asked her what she wanted. She scoffed at me and said she had just come over to hang out. She hadn’t seen me in a few days, and she missed me. And then she tried to invite herself in, but I stood in the doorway blocking her way. Apparently, she was under the mistaken impression that we were still going out.”
“What about that whole thing where you broke up with her? Or had she forgotten?”
I leaned forward and said in a whisper, “I think she actually might have. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t get it through to her that we were no longer seeing each other. She seems to have thought we were on a break.” I thumped myself hard in the forehead and shook my head. “I mean, how thick do you have to be?”
“Of all the dumb girlfriends you’ve had,” said Dickie, “Carlotta is definitely the dumbest. She makes Penny look like a nuclear physicist. Did you eventually get rid of her?”
“I did, but only after we had stood there arguing in the doorway for about twenty minutes. I have to figure she was lying about not remembering the argument we had the other day. Nobody can be that stupid.”
“I don’t know…” he said slowly. “Remember the time we played Trivial Pursuit?”
“Yeah, and she had never heard of the Titanic! That should’ve been my first clue that this relationship wasn’t going to end well. How do you grow up in America without knowing about the Titanic?”
“It’s pretty weird, I admit.” Dickie came over and sat down on the counter, his face scrunched up in concentration. “See, for me, it wasn’t so much the fact that she didn’t know anything, but that she had no interest in learning. I can deal with a dumb girl; I can’t deal with a girl who’s totally incurious and proud of her own ignorance.”
“Exactly!” I banged my hand lightly on the desk. “She even got mad at me when I made fun of her for thinking JFK was a rock band. I remember her saying, ‘Why should I care who that is? He’s probably dead. It doesn't affect my life in any way.’ But whatever, it’s over now. I’ve closed down our joint account and moved on with my life.”
“I’m so, so glad you broke up with her.” Dickie shook his head in disgust. “God, what a dumb bimbo.”
“Anyway,” I said, and I threw my feet up on the desk, “I can do, and have done, a lot worse than Penny.”
“Point taken. If you end up marrying her, you’re the one getting the better end of that deal.”
“Hey, I like to think I’m okay.”
He reached over and tousled my hair with an affectionate grin. “Yeah, you are, Darren. You’re okay.”