Clay

I wake up before her, with memories tugging me out of my dream. Did that just happen? I piece it back together: the gig, the blonde, the cold spaghetti, the pain behind her eyes.

Penny has always had this effect on me since the first day I met her, when she was late to register for classes. She came in with an armful of textbooks and her hair streaming out behind her in dark, shining waves. I had just finished registration and she didn’t even really see me when I stepped aside to let her through to beg for the last spot in management class. I watched her profile with her freckles dancing across her cheeks as she grimaced and pouted until the registration guy penciled her in at the bottom of a long printout of names. She basically bullied him into it.

As soon as she was victorious, she turned to me, her eyes focusing on mine as though this had all just been a brief interruption of a conversation already in progress. As though we were already friends.

“Thank you so much!” she breathes happily, even though I had nothing to do with it. “I’m starved. You want to get a cappuccino or something?”

That was it. I like to think she found me, like a lost puppy or something. Like a pet abandoned at a highway rest stop. She just came along and lured me into the safety of her presence with well-placed treats. Since we are both majoring in project management, we have had lots of classes together. We have shared textbooks to save money. And we have shared this apartment for two years.

But nothing like this has ever happened before. Never like this.

Her lips are pale as she breathes peacefully through her mouth, snoring softly. Her hair spills over the pillow and down to cover bare shoulders. The unmatched sheets beneath us are wrinkled and musty now, a smell that billows up in waves as she shifts to her side, smacking her lips together lightly. She rolls into a shaft of morning light and squints reflexively.

Fascinated, I watch as consciousness overtakes her little by little. Her delicate eyebrows push together in the invading light and I see her eyes move underneath the lids. Inhaling deeply, she draws a hand up to rub her cheek. Her eyes open just the tiniest bit, just slits. They focus on me dreamily, slowly widening until she’s looking right at me.

“Hey, good morning, Penny.”

She opens her mouth to reply, then flinches back and clamps her lips closed again. I can almost read her thoughts: the dawning realization of where we are, together, and what we’ve just done.

What I wasn’t expecting was the look of shock on her face.

“Hang on, what’s going on?” she asks in a rush, drawing back and fisting the floral sheet against her naked collarbones.

Protectively, I hold my hands up in the air like I’m surrendering.

“It’s all good, Pen. Everything is okay.”

“Everything is not okay!” she hisses, alarmed. “I’m naked! You’re naked! This is my room!”

“This is where you wanted to be,” I explain simply, rolling to the side of the bed and drawing on my boxer shorts before standing up.

Her room is a mess, like always. Penny seems to fling things around instead of ever just putting them away. Not sure why. Seems like a waste of energy.

I pick her fluffy pink robe off the hook at the back of the door and drape it over her side of the bed.

“Why don’t I make you some coffee?” I offer reasonably, suddenly eager for an escape route anyway.

Not waiting for her to answer, I make my way to the kitchen and start a pot of coffee in the drip brewer. The kitchen is still sort of a mess. While I’m waiting for the coffee, I drop the congealed mass of dried-out spaghetti noodles into the garbage and follow that with the crusty remains of the sauce.

By the time the coffee is done, I have the kitchen mostly back to order. Everything is where it should be, but I can’t find the cookie sheet. It’s not in the fridge, and not in the sink so…

When I open the oven door, and acrid wave of burnt garlic fills the kitchen. I slide the cookie sheet out of the cold oven, knocking what used to be bread loose from the surface with my knuckle, spraying black crumbs to the floor.

“Oh… I forgot about that,” she admits meekly as she shuffles into the kitchen.

“No big deal,” I shrug as I deposit the black masses in the garbage. “Unless you needed to save them for something? You want to start a construction company? I think they would make good bricks.”

“Har har har,” she drawls, plopping into the kitchen chair with a groan. “You’re hilarious this morning. Feeling good, are you?”

Taking the coffee pot off its hot plate, I pour her a cup and slide it on the table, shrugging. As she pulls it toward her, her robe slips off her shoulder and reveals that kissable corner of her neck again.

“Frankly, I feel amazing,” I admit as I sit across from her. “You don’t feel amazing?”

She shrugs shyly, casting her eyes away. “Should I? I did just get dumped.”

Her words rock me back a little like an ocean wave picking a shell up off the sand. There are a thousand things I want to say. Yes, you should feel amazing. That was amazing. We are amazing, don’t you see that?

“He didn’t deserve you,” I say simply.

Unlike me, who does deserve you, obviously. Hello?

Her eyelashes flutter as she forces herself to look up at me. She frowns sadly, clearly guilty and confused. I know I should sympathize with her, but I don’t know why she’s being so stubborn about this. If she would just take a moment to think about it, she’d see this is actually perfect.

“Clay, I’m so sorry,” she murmurs. “I don’t know what came over me. The wine, maybe? You were being so sweet to me. We never should have—”

“—oh, of course not. Don’t worry about it.”

The words fall out of my mouth before I even have time to think them. Just reflexive instincts, just saying man things to man up the situation. No big deal. Who cares? Not this man.

“Really?” she replies hopefully. “Because you mean the world to me, Clay, you really do. I would hate to mess this all up right before graduation and everything.”

I wave my hand in the air dismissively. “It was just sex, Penny. No big deal.”

She bites her lower lip, her chin trembling slightly. I vividly remember kissing her the last time that happened, taking all that pain away by holding her in my arms. She should let me do that again.

“Because you are literally the best thing in my life,” she continues, clearly unaware that she’s stomping all over my heart, marching back and forth like she’s doing military drill moves.

“Back at you, Pen,” I smile confidently.

“No, seriously!” she insists with a wide smile. “I seem to be able to screw up every other relationship. But not this. We are just too perfect.”

“Absolutely,” I agree, hoping she will just let it go.

She sighs deeply, settling back with the mug cradled between her fingertips, drinking the coffee slowly. It’s just black now. Two years ago, we might have had half-and-half and sugar. Now we hardly ever have either, and we just got used to it that way.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever find anybody as awesome as you, Clay,” she says into the mug. “And to be totally honest, the sex was… Amazing?”

She looks at me directly, her cheeks going bright pink as she stomps gleefully all over my heart. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

“Pretty good, yes,” I nod tensely.

She rolls her eyes. “Pretty good? Are you kidding me? It was outstanding, Clay, and you know it! That thing you did with your fingers? When you—”

My hands go up automatically. Stop.

“Not allowed to talk about it!” I object, joking thinly. “Trademarked move, you know. Has to stay a secret.”

“Mmmmm, yes,” she sighs deeply, her breath opening her robe even further. I can smell her from where I’m sitting. I feel my cock dripping against my leg. I need to get out of here and begin to stand, mumbling something about going to the grocery store. Her fingers reach out and catch my wrist gently, stopping me in my tracks.

“We should make a pact,” she says hurriedly, smiling shyly.

I’m not pulling too hard to get away, but I am rooted to the spot by her gentle touch.

“A pact? What kind of pact?”

“Oh, you know,” she grins as she rises, clutching her robe closed over her chest as she moves to drop her used coffee cup in the sink. “Like… If we don’t find someone else. If things don’t work out.”

I can still see her hips moving underneath that fluffy thick pink fabric. How did it go by so fast?

“What are you talking about? We still have got finals… Next semester…”

She turns around, pressing her lips together apologetically.

“Well, see, I got a job offer. In Albany.”

I shake my head. “What are you talking about? You didn’t even graduate yet.”

“Oh, I’ve only got this semester,” she shrugs. “I did all that AP work in high school, so… I’m graduating at the end of this term. And Buckminster Engineering got my resume. Offered me a position…”

My thoughts are all confused, swirling around each other, making a hell of a noise between my ears.

“You’ve been sending out resumes? Why didn’t you tell me? To New York?”

“You should probably be happy for me,” she smirks. “You should probably be telling me congratulations.”

She breezes past me toward the bedroom, leaving me to follow behind, confused and sputtering with my hard-on bouncing inside my boxer shorts like some kind of cartoon character.

“Well, congratulations, yeah,” I mumble. “That’s great. That’s amazing. Project manager?”

She opens the closet door and stands behind it demurely, but my dick knows that she is undressing. I fold my hands over my crotch, shoving my dick out of the way so it doesn’t manage to poke out of the fly. That would just be perfect.

“Well… Account manager? But it’s a start. It’s a good job. I’m excited.”

She sweeps out from behind the closet door in a blue T-shirt and cutoff shorts that expose the bottom of her derrière when she leans over to hunt for her tennis shoes behind the nightstand. Why are they behind the nightstand? No one will ever know. That’s just part of the mystery of Penny.

“That’s amazing,” I agree grudgingly. “So you’re leaving. At the end of the semester. In the middle of winter.”

She pulls out the shoes and bounces on the edge of the rumpled bedsheets to slip one onto her bare foot.

“You’ll find a new roommate in a heartbeat,” she assures me. “Actually, why don’t you start posting signs now? Get ahead of the rush. Or even start sending out resumes? If it worked for me it is certainly going to work for you, Mr. 4.0.”

“Yeah… I suppose it could all work out for me too,” I answer distractedly. I’m not convinced, but it seems like the right thing to say.

She stands up from the bed and walks over to me carefully, slipping her fingers into my hands and staring up into my face. It’s hard to look at her right now.

“Of course it’s all going to work out for you,” she murmurs gently. “You’re amazing. One in a million, Clay. That’s why we should have a pact.”

“A pact.”

“Right! Like… in fifteen years, if we don’t find our perfect true love, we will find each other.”

“In fifteen years? Who knows where we are going to be?”

She widens her eyes dramatically. “Right? You could be in Japan. I could be the queen of Czechoslovakia. The future is limitless.”

“Limitless, but… lonely? Is that what you are telling me?”

She shrugs. “Well, maybe not! Maybe we will both find absolute fairytale endings with 2.5 kids and assorted pets and supermodel spouses and all that.”

“Okay, I like supermodels,” I admit.

“Or, maybe not!” she continues dramatically. “Maybe our lives are a string of disappointments that plunge us into unrelenting despair.”

“Jesus.”

“So if we have unrelenting despair, in fifteen years, we will look each other up. Deal?”

I shake my head helplessly. “How can I disagree if you’re offering me a way out of my future unrelenting despair?”

She nods sweetly. “Yeah… When we’re old and just about to give up, we will have each other. You’re my emergency parachute.”

“Well, despite the mishmash of metaphors, I guess it sounds like a plan,” I shrug.

Grinning wildly, she flings her arms around my shoulders and hoists herself up to kiss me on the cheek. As she slides back down my body, she has to feel my hard-on, but she just pretends she doesn’t, I guess. She skips out of the room, picking up a laundry basket on the way. Just before she leaves, she leans back and winks at me.

“I’m so glad we got this,” she smiles earnestly. “I can’t think of a better plan, Clay. I really can’t.”

“Happy to be of service,” I joke, pointing a finger gun at her for no reason other than it’s another pointless macho gesture. “In the future, I mean. Maybe. Happy to be hypothetical escape hatch in a hypothetical future of despair.”

After the front door closes, I look around and fight the urge to clean up after her. Somehow, she took a basket of clothes out to head toward the laundry room but there are still clothes everywhere. The kitchen is still in disarray. The living room could use a vacuum.

Maybe later. I’ll get to it later.