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“I hope so.” I check my watch. It’s an hour until visiting time. I feel like we’ve been waiting for days already.
“Tell me about you two. All I’ve seen of you is a short FaceTime before today.”
“How long do you have?” I ask.
“You have my full attention.”
Penelope listens while I tell her everything, only reacting with a laugh, smile, the turn of her nose, a slack jaw… or to add insight into several situations.
“I wassoangry when he told me he had you arrested,” she says.
“He told you that?”
“We talk a lot.”
“I wish I understood him better. He doesn’t explain things properly and it leaves me sort of resenting him. So, when things like last night happen, I have to get the hell away from him. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going or what to expect. It makes me question his intentions and what else he’s hiding. I kind of hate it because I just want us to be happy.”
She bites her lip as though she’s struggling with something. “All right, come on. I’m going to show you why he didn’t want you in the house.”
“What?”
“If this is what you need so that you can move forward and trust him, let’s go.”
“But… I can’t leave.”
“We’ll be back on time, and you certainly can’t stay here avoiding food and stressing. I can feel the anxiety radiating from you. It’ll be all right; we won’t be away for long.”
“Um… okay.” I think I might go out of my mind if I have to wait around here for another fifty minutes. Casper’s parents only live twenty minutes away. If we’re only there for twenty, we’ll make it back here on time.
Penelope and I pay the bill, and I assure the server that there was nothing wrong with the food before we leave.
She drives to the house she grew up with Casper in. It looks different today. Smaller. Or perhaps that’s just my world shrinking.
“What was Casper like as a child?” I ask as she pulls up outside the house.
“He was a little shit. The youngest, which made him the nanny’s favourite. A boy, so my dad had his future scotch drinking partner. Jokes on him, though. Casper likes whiskey, and I like scotch. We were happy growing up, despite our parents being gone a lot of the time.”
“Casper said the same. He never spoke about you, though.”
“Did you ask if he has siblings?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“There you go, then. He told me he was reserved with what to tell you about himself.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t explain. I suspect he was worried about telling you too much about himself. Everything you learnt, you seemed to hate.”
“He thought I’d hate you?”
“He didn’t want to be vulnerable and open up to you, so he didn’t tell you anything about his personal life. I did tell him that if he showed you who he really is then maybe you’d see more than who he was pretending to be.”
“I wish he didn’t pretend.”
“He was protecting himself. He’s had casual girlfriends before, but he wasn’t serious about any of them. Not until you.”
“I’ve never seen him with a girlfriend.” I’ve only heard the conquests through the wall.
