Chapter Thirty-Nine
Darren
By now, I had begun to accept the fact that Penny and I were probably going to be married. One night, we had gone out with Nic and a couple other friends, and she lost her wallet. When she started to panic, I took her aside and stroked her shoulder reassuringly, talking to her in that voice we only used for each other. Then I helped her retrace our steps until she found the wallet.
Afterwards, Nic said to me, “How did you do that?”
“Do what?” I asked.
“Get her to calm down like that. I’ve never been able to calm her when she starts panicking. You’re like the Penny whisperer.”
“Yeah, I guess I am,” I said, smiling. “The Penny whisperer.”
I was still thinking about that conversation on Saturday morning when I woke up with Penny beside me. I loved how her hair looked in the morning before she combed it, and the perfect look of calm on her face in the chilly dawn light. I used to wonder how spouses could bear waking up to the same face every day of their lives. Now I knew.
As I lay there watching her breath rise and fall, she stirred and moaned softly. Before I could ask her how she had slept, she sat up and kissed my upper lip. “Hey, you. How long have you been awake?”
“About half an hour.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes it’s nice just to lay there with you.”
“You’re too good to me, Savery.” Penny tossed her hair back. “I had a dream that you got to the race tonight, and they handed you a broom and told you it was a flying race. And then you and Adam had to fly through the air, but you had never ridden on a broom before, and your broom kept bucking you off. Adam was so glad to have finally won something that he kept flying around you in circles, laughing.”
“That’s a terrible dream,” I said. “You have so little faith in me.”
“I’m very confident in your skills as a driver,” Penny replied. “Not so much in your flying abilities.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry.” I pressed my face close to hers so that my beard tickled her skin and she giggled. “Unless they changed the rules at the last minute, there won’t be any flying tonight.”
“Thank goodness,” said Penny, with wide eyes.
As it turned out, though, we needn’t have worried. When we reached the strip that night, we found only a long row of cars, their headlights blazing in the hazy, mosquito-filled twilight. Adam stood against the door of his Firebird. He glared coolly at me and Penny as we walked past him.
“I can’t wait to wipe that smirk off your face, Savery,” he muttered. “You and your girlfriend both.”
Presumably, Adam had intended this as a threat, but I didn’t feel remotely intimidated. “Keep it up, Jenkins,” I said cheerfully. “Soon your transformation into a cartoon villain will be complete.”
As if to prove my point, Adam continued to fume and snarl as we walked away. “You know, I never thought about it,” said Penny, “but he really does remind me of a cartoon villain. I think he wants to scare us, but mostly I just feel bad for him.”
“That’s because you still have a heart in your breast,” I told her. “I need someone like you in my life to remind me every now and again that guys like him are still human. Otherwise, he’d be totally insufferable.”
“He probably just wishes he had someone to cuddle with,” said Penny. I leaned back against the Mustang and wrapped my arm around her. “I think sometimes loneliness can drive a person crazy. That’s the road I was heading down before I met you.”
“That’s why we need guys like him in our lives: to remind us where we came from and where we could have ended up if things had gone just a little bit different.”
“I’m glad things turned out the way they have.” Penny turned to face me, her eyes shining in the floodlights. “You could be out here tonight making a ton of money and not having anyone to come home to. And I could be sitting in my room crying because my hero and heroine just confessed their love to each other and I’m all alone.”
“So we’d both still be doing the things we love,” I said, “we just wouldn’t have each other. I’d like to think we could have still found happiness and fulfillment even without each other.”
“Maybe, but being with you has made it a lot easier,” said Penny.
By now the announcer’s booming voice was declaring the start of the race. I opened the door and climbed into the car. Penny leaned over and kissed me through the window. “Be safe,” she said, grabbing hold of my wrist. “I don’t want to have to spend the next week in the hospital.”
“This will be over in moments,” I told her as I put on my helmet.
And it was. I had been practicing for so long that the outcome of the race was never in much doubt. Within a few minutes, I had cruised to an easy victory, leaving my next closest competitor in a cloud of exhaust. By the time I emerged from my car at the end of the strip, a small crowd of spectators was racing toward me, Nic and Penny among them. Nic was pushing Dickie, who glowed with a look of triumph as if he had won the race himself.
“That was exceptional,” he said, “really brilliant. What are we doing to celebrate?”
I shrugged with a casual air. “Maybe go out for steak and seafood. Maybe take some champagne and go out to the lake, just the four of us. The weather’s cool, and I’m feeling glad to be alive tonight.”
Penny must have noticed the relative indifference with which I had greeted my win, for she asked, “Aren’t you glad to have won?”
“I guess.” I let out a long sigh. “Racing used to get me worked up like nothing else, but the happiest moment of my whole day was getting out of that car and seeing your shining faces. I don’t know if I want to race anymore. I think tonight might have been my last contest.”
“Do you really mean that?” asked Penny.
“I do. I’ve won so many races that the magic has started to wear off. I don’t feel the same rush I used to feel when I stepped into a car. I’m ready to do something new with my life—devote myself to a career and, maybe one day, starting a family.”
No one knew quite how to respond. Dickie sat frozen with a look of surprise on his face, while Nic stood silent and pensive. Penny, however, ran forward and threw her arms around me, tears filling her eyes. “I didn’t want to say it,” she said low in my ear, “and if you had kept racing, I would’ve still supported you, but I’ve wanted this for you for so long.”
“I don’t know that I would ever have had the strength to do it without you, Pen,” I said. “I needed someone like you to remind me what was really important. If it weren’t for you, I’d probably still be racing, not realizing how dissatisfied I felt.”
Penny pulled back so that she could look me in the face. In spite of her tears, she glowed with a fierce pride. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of you than I am right now,” she said. “Even if you had lost tonight, you still would’ve won.”