Page 121 of One More Chapter

As understanding washes over my brother, I let Penelope’s words, the ones that are still there along the edges of my aching heart, worm their way back in.

It’s how you get back up again that determines if you’re meant to do great things. And I think you are.

Back then, she’d been talking about my ability to succeed in the workplace. She had no idea I was vying for her heart, for the job of holding her up in case the world fell down around her.

“But youdo,” Ian says, finally breaking the silence with his fractured tone that offsets me a little. “Ant, you put on a mask of insecurities when what’s beneath your surface is more than enough.Noneof us are perfect. We all fail. You’ve just decided that it’s all that you’re allowed to do. When are you going to put the mask down and let yourself be vulnerable? I think now, with your girl, seems like the perfect time.”

Your girl.

I can’t fathom Penelope being mine because I’m not sure if she still wants me in the first place. But my brother is right. I can’t fail if I don’t try; but if I never try, I’ll never even have the chance to tell if we could’ve made it.

“You’re saying we need to fight the problem?”

“Fight the problem,” Ian nods. “Not each other.”

I nod thoughtfully, staring out over the home that is void of everything I built it for in the first place.

Ian stands, taking with him the empty pizza boxes and beer bottles, leaving me alone to mull over what exactly the problem even is.

On the surface is my pain at her secret—she wrote an entire book based on her heartache, splitting my chest wide open for all of her readers to see. But so much deeper than that is the way that I’ve left her with no other choice. In my absence, she put her heartache into her work. I can’t fault her for that. I can only fault myself for not being there for her in the first place.

I think of all the ways I said I was going to be her solid ground only to crumble beneath her, and then of all of the ways I’ve been patching up the pot holes over the past several months. I don’tknow where to begin, but I know that right now, the only thing on my mind is going to her.

I picked Ian up from Mom and Dad’s place, where he and Dad were working over some business things, so I head in that direction, intending to drop him off at the front door.

“Mom’ll be pissed if you don’t stop in and say hi,” he says, unbuckling with a Cheshire smile and one brow raised. He reminds me of Pen, and my heart aches with my gear shift in reverse. I hang my head and exhale, knowing he’s right.

Ian heads straight for Dad’s office, and I toe my shoes off. I might be in a hurry, but no one walks on Debbie Ellis’s clean wood floors with dirty shoes and doesn’t pay the price. Sawdust kicks up and I leave behind a cloud of it to find not my mom, but mydadin the kitchen.

“Sweetie, you know I’ll drop everything to be there for you… Okay, just let me know what I can do… Anything… Of course, sweetheart… Give Margie my best… Yep, buh-bye.”

“Margie?” I ask, tilting my head in question at the sound of Pen’s mom’s name. The grave face my own father wears does nothing to quell the twist of my gut. “What’s going on? Who was that?”

“That was your mom. Margie was in an accident. She’s?—”

I don’t even give him a chance to explain. The sawdust hasn’t even settled around my shoes as I slide my feet back into my unlaced work boots. I’m halfway out the door when I hear him calling after me.

“Anthony!”

I turn around, and that’s when I notice.

My dad is wearing my mom’s apron, and the hand not holding tightly to the phone is cased in an oven mitt. As if on cue, the oven timer dings loudly, and the panicked look on his face tells me he doesn’t want me to leave, but also doesn’t want the house to burn down. I have to fight every nerve ending in mybody as I follow him back to the kitchen instead of hopping into my cab and speeding down the driveway to… I don’t even know.Her.

By the time I’m back in the kitchen, Dad is sitting at the table with what looks like tonight’s dinner balanced on a hot plate. The heavenly smell of Mom’s lasagna fills the kitchen as my dad, hands clasped loosely over the kitchen tabletop, asks, “Did I ever tell you about the time I almost lost your mother?”

My heart thuds. I know that he wasn’t in my life for two years, but after they found one another again, I didn’t question it. I’ve never actually heard the story. He shakes his head and chuckles humorlessly.

“I shouldn’t say ‘almost’ so recklessly. Ididlose her, Anthony. And I had to fight like hell to get her back.”

It’s then that I see the absolute terror in his eyes. No matter that they’ve been together for three decades now. No matter that I’ve never seen two people more head over heels for each other, more with every single day. That time in his life still haunts him. In this moment, I’ve never felt him more.

“We met when your mom was in college. When I was a punk. I was finishing up trade school, deciding what I was going to do next, and your mother and I had a lot of fun together. But when my program was coming to an end, I had a decision to make: Work for your grandpa, or make a ton more money down in Miami. A bunch of guys from my program were heading down for work, and I was invited. Your mom asked what our future looked like, and I panicked. I was young. I didn’t want to be tied down yet. So I told her thanks for the memories, I packed up my truck, and I spent the next three years of my life living in regret.”

My chest is tight, my skin warm to the touch. Part of me wants to reach across the table and grab him by the collar for what he did to us, but when I realize there are tears in his eyes, every part of me softens—not only because I did the same thing,and can feel all of his feelings trying to burst right through me, but because I canfeelthe regret wafting over him, thirty years later.

“Why are you telling me this?” I croak, only now realizing how choked up my old man has me.

“Because, son.” His gaze tilts back to mine, and I feel every word that comes next. “I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did.”

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