Why did you leave?
“It’s…complicated.” Her sentence drawls out slowly.
“Everything is complicated. This isn’t Facebook. You don’t get to tick a blanket statement box to explain it away.”
I realize I sound pissed—because I am—so I take a few deep, steadying breaths to cool my nerves. I’m flustered and frustrated, and she’s not explaining herself at all.
Lucky for her, she’s saved from answering by the server delivering the starters to our meal, easing directly into taking our dinner orders.
Penelope serves herself some appetizers, taking some calamari out of the bowl and placing it on her plate, then cutting off a fraction of the crab cake and doing the same. There’s only one sauce available, and she spoons a small heap of that, too. Once she’s completed the task, she looks up at me.
“I have made a lot of mistakes, Jack. Mistakes I am not proud of making with you. And I know it sounds like I’m making excuses, but it was a very difficult time for me, and I didn’t want to bur—”
“Mr. Jennings? Sorry to interrupt your meal.” A man stands next to the table, interrupting Penelope, holding out a cocktail napkin. His wife hovers behind him with her phone, looking embarrassed. “My son is a huge fan, and well, we were wondering if you would autograph this napkin for him?”
Typical fan behavior? Absolutely.
Am I used to it? One-hundred percent.
Convenient? Not at all.
I take the napkin with a smile and scrawl my name on it with the pen he’s also handed me, then my eyes go to the phone in the woman’s hand. “Did you want to take a picture?”
Might as well get it out of the way so they’ll go back to their table or leave, and Penelope can be left in peace.
“Would you?” the wife enthuses loudly. “Oh my gosh, we’re so sorry to interrupt, but we figured we would never get this chance again. How often do you bump into celebrities? And we know this happens to you all the time—” She gestures with her arms toward Penelope in an “I’m so sorry” manner. “Miss, I am so, so sorry,” she gushes. “Our son loves him so, so much.”
So, so sorry.
So, so much.
Still, Penelope nods with a pleasant smile glued to her face as if these people weren’t imposing on us and our appetizers weren’t getting cold. “The things we won’t do for our kids.”
I pose for pictures with the husband while the wife snaps the photograph—a dozen of them, judging by the way she’s snapping this way and that and moving the phone around to different angles. Penelope sits patiently as she waits for them to finish.
The couple leaves us with a chorus of thank-yous and handshakes, disbelieving their good fortune for having bumped into me. They walk out with their heads bent together, no doubt poring over their photo gallery.
“Where were we?” I try to loop around to the conversation we were having before we were interrupted by my fans. But Penelope just smiles again. It’s the beautiful, lovely smile that made me weak in the knees as a kid. I remember the first time she smiled at me at that college party and how it made me feel like I was the only guy in the room.
I’ve never been the type of guy who thought he could have any woman. So many of my buddies are conceited assholes who think their shit doesn’t stink. They think they can have any woman they want.
That is not me. It never was.
When Penelope first set eyes on me in college—when she returned my feelings, and we started dating—I felt like the luckiest bastard in the whole wide world.
Like I could take on the world.
She’s giving me that same look now, but this time, it’s one only a person from your past could give you. One of friendship and camaraderie.
I’m curious about her personal life and wonder how I can dig without being nosy or sounding jealous. It’s hard not to when we have a history. Obviously, I’m going to want to know a bit about what her life is like now, yeah?
We might have only spent a few years together, but like I said, I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this person.
“What have you been up to lately?” I ask as I run the crab cake through the hollandaise sauce it was served with.
She considers this question, tilting her head and staring off into the distance before replying. She swallows the bite she’s just taken and wipes her fingers on the napkin. “Well, I work a lot. Does that count?”
“Tell me about your job. What’s it like?”
“Um. I’m pretty sure my boss can’t stand me. I think I irritate her, which sucks because I’d like to be in her position one day, but I don’t think she’s going to promote me anytime soon. It’s safe to say I don’t love my job, but I really want to love my job?”