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Chapter Twenty Four
Carter
SHELAIDBACKINTHE CHAIR OPPOSITE MINE, the fire roaring between us as she took another bite of her pizza. “I just don’t understand.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Idon’t understand, Pep. It is disgusting.”
“But you’re Hawaiian!Thisis in your blood, Carter.” She held up the pizza above her head, tilting it at me so I’d have to look at it. I watched a piece of pineapple fall off the tip of the slice and splatter on the ground in front of her.
My face twisted into something that spelt disgust. I shook my head as she inhaled another mouthful. Penelope now was absolutely glowing in comparison to the person I’d come home to a few months ago. Gone is the woman who hid herself from the world. Who punished herself for every mistake she ever made. Who believed she wasn’t lovable. She was lighter, and brighter. She was excited about her future, but content in her present. She was painting, she was drawing, she was reading. She was loving herself, loving others. Lovingme.
I fucking love her.
I’d caught her painting a couple of weeks ago when I found her in the art room after work one afternoon. She wouldn’t show me the canvas she was working on, but she had green paint smeared across her face and hands. Sometimes she did show me her sketches, though. I wasn’t surprised by that. Drawing was her natural talent, but painting was a skill she had to build. She was still the same in that she liked to be the best at something, or she didn’t want to do it at all. So painting for her, I believe, was a much bigger deal than she even realized. I wouldn’t push her to show me her work until she was ready to. She liked to sit on the couch in the pool house and draw while I sat at my desk and edited photos. Or sometimes she’d come with me on trips to shoot locations, and she’d bring her sketch book. Content to draw while I took pictures of the world around us. And of her, too. She was incredibly distracting.
The girl staring at me now, picking the grilled pineapple off her pizza and eating it by itself, was a stark contrast to the hollow shell I’d found when I moved home. She’d done all the hard work of putting herself back together. She was the one who worked her ass off to get into UCLA, she was the one who chose to start seeing a therapist several weeks ago, she was the one who continued to get back up every single time the Universe knocked her down. Yet, she liked to try and give me the credit. I think that maybe I helped. Maybe I helped teach her how to accept herself, how to love herself, how to have a little more fun in life.
But at the end of the day, it was her. It was all her.
She dropped the half-eaten piece of pizza onto the box next to us and clapped her hands together before rubbing the grease down her leggings. Walking around the firepit to the bench I was sitting on, she picked up my arm and ducked underneath it, snuggling into my side.
We sat in silence for a while, watching the flames pop and blaze in front of us. My parents were out of town for the night, staying in Portland, and my sister was staying with Penelope’s parents. Early June provided pleasant enough weather that I thought we could light a fire and have take-out in the backyard rather than huddling in my bed and hiding like we normally do. Do something that was more out in the open, for once.
It was glaringly obvious to her parents she was seeing someone. Whether or not it was obvious that she was seeingmeremained unknown. They had never asked her about who the man in question was, so she was convinced that they must not assume we were together. I thought the opposite. They assumed it was me, but since she hadn’t said anything, they wouldn’t either. But we kept it a secret regardless. Penelope decided we’d tell our families once we moved.
It was harder to hide from her parents than mine since I lived in a separate building. Though the hardest challenge of all was to hide it from our sisters. I first disagreed with keeping things secret until I caught our sisters trying to install a doorbell camera outside the pool house last week. They were trying to catch whomever it wasIhad coming in and out of the pool house.
Whether because they thought it was Penelope or someone else, I didn’t ask.
After that, I thought it may not be a bad idea after all to lay low until we move. With the way our families operated, it may be news best served over a phone call than a family dinner.
Luckily, within the next three weeks, both of us would become residents of Southern California. We were technically moving down separately. Penelope was getting an apartment near the UCLA campus, which was, thankfully, only ten minutes from Dom’s apartment in Culver City, where I’d be staying. My dad bought the building in Venice, and I was waiting until he closed on it to move down there. Penelope would be moving a week before I did. We had months of work to get done on the apartments before they were ready to rent, so I’d live with Dom in the meantime. Once we finished them, Dom and I would move into one (and Penelope, if I can convince her by then).
“You sure you still want to move for me?” she asked.
I sighed. She still appeared unsure at times of how much I actually wanted to be with her. Like she wasn't entirely convinced I’d chosen her yet. “I told you, Pep. I go where you go.” I had told her that after what felt like a thousand times since the first time I said it to her a couple months ago. She brought it up again and again. At one point, I finally told her about my own opportunities there. I told her I had thought about moving to California long before I even knew she’d walk back into my life. Before I knew she would end up there too. I reminded her of Dom. Of all the reasons I had for moving outside of just her. Though none of them mattered as much as she did, and if I was honest with both of us, I knew I’d move to goddamn Nebraska to be with her (not that there was anything inherently wrong with Nebraska, but I couldn’t think of a place farther away from the ocean, and that made me claustrophobic).
She shook her head against my shoulder. Without looking at me, she asked, “What about your family? Didn’t you move back to be closer to them?”
I chuckled. “I think they’re more than fine without me.” The one reason I hadn’t entirely disclosed to her, though I wasn’t sure why, was that I just felt like I wasn’t needed here. I had never felt like I was needed here. Or in Hawaii either. I always felt a little like a house guest. Like my father had a complete family with Marlena and Charlie, and I was kind of just… there. Living with my mother felt the same sometimes.
If our soulmate theories prove correct, I think my mom is one of those people who lives in a different lifetime than her soulmate. She appears perfectly content with that, though. My mom has been alone for so long, and she’s so used to it that living with her almost felt like being in her way. She’d spent my entire childhood on the other side of the ocean, traveling around the world for work, and though I understood why she had to, it sometimes felt like my moving in with her was more of a favor to me. I think that feeling was more a reflection on me than her, but it didn’t make it difficult for me to leave again. Feeling a similar way around my father wasn’t giving me a ton of motivation to stay here in Oregon either.
She pulled away and looked up at me. “What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “My mom lived without me for fifteen years and was just fine. Then, I went to go live with her and my dad, Charlie, and Lena fared just fine too. They have no problem living without me. Sometimes I’m not even sure they miss me when I’m gone.”
Those words sounded ridiculous as they came from my mouth.
“Carter.”
I shook my head. “It’s nothing.” I was quiet for a beat. “Plus, you know I have opportunities down there too, Pep. I’ll be plenty busy.” Penelope knows about the apartments my father bought and how I’ll be managing them, but she doesn’t know about the studio space on the bottom floor. Mostly because I haven’t entirely decided what I wanted to do with it. Though, seeing her interest in painting grow over the last six weeks has certainly given me hope.
“You think your family didn’t miss you when you moved away?”
I shrugged again.
“Carter.” She wiggled out of my arms and sat up on her knees, making her face level with mine. I looked down to find her hands brace on my forearms. “Your spontaneity and care-free spirit are the best qualities about you. Your ability to just go wherever life takes you is something that everyone loves about you. Nobody would want to hold you back from that. If you told me tomorrow that you had to go spend six months in the Himalayas to photograph mountain goats, or whatever it is you do, the last thing I could ever ask of you was to not go.
