There were thankfully no reporters hanging out in front of our door that day. The guys headed for their own rooms, and Timothy and I walked inside ours, then slumped down into a couple of comfy leather chairs. I think we were too tired to move. I glanced over at him. His face was lined, pallid and almost sickly. Had he gotten too much sun? Had the ocean cruise depleted his energy? Or was he tired of me, ready to go home, eager to do so, in fact.
Perhaps Timothy was ready for someone more vivacious, more model-like, more sophisticated. I’d been afraid of that before. Now the feelings swept over me once again. Insecurities rushed in.
I felt like a sagging helium balloon, my buoyancy almost touching the ground.
Timothy
It was all I could do not to focus on her words: She wanted to go home, to move back into her apartment, and to return to her job. Penelope’s words were barbed tips of arrows piercing my skin. Didn’t she realize that? Yet, she’d only stated the truth, the way she saw it.
All I desired was for Penelope to stay with me, to be with me in a relationship that lasted the rest of our lives — while she longed only to return to her tiny apartment . . . and her simple life. That was the essence of it. She favored a life separate from mine.
It wasn’t that I was a pooka. I think Penelope had accepted that part of my existence. But she wasn’t ready to exchange her life for what I envisioned. Could I deal with that? Could I let her go? And what choice did I have? I had given it my best, but I’d failed.
As I sat in the chair, too shattered by the catastrophe, I tried not to show my feelings. I needed to carry on, to give Penelope the independence she so craved, but I felt sick inside. I felt exactly as Andrew must have felt when his wife turned on him, desolation.
Penelope was eying the table where the hotel staff had left our usual platter of delectables, all of it sitting on ice. Today’s bounty held red-waxed cheeses, some grapes and strawberries without chocolate, and some fresh slices of melon. In a bowl where her favorite Red Delicious apples had been, there was a fruit basket filled with greenish-yellow bananas, apples, pears, kiwi, and plums. Beside that bowl sat a platter of cookies, the pretty kind that usually tasted like cardboard with a bit of sugar. Each cookie looked to be individually sealed in plastic.