Page 112 of The Show

I’d called his mom incase he’d gone to lay on the baseball field, but he wasn’t there either.

I’d called him four times, each time going straight to an automated message that said his voicemail was disabled, so I couldn’t even leave one to beg his forgiveness. Each voicemail added another degree to the panic lodged in my throat.

He hadn’t been at my place, where I’d run in to grab my security pass. And I was now at the stadium, rummaging around in my purse for said security pass in order to get into the executive suites. I should have started my search here, because this was the only place left I could think of, and probably the most logical.

“Is Penn Shepherd here?”

“Ma’am?” The guard asked, running my pass across his scanner until it beeped.

“Penn Shepherd, is he here? Has he come in?”

“I haven’t seen him, Ma’am, but I can call up to his office and check. I’ve only just come on duty. Is he expecting you?”

I hesitated for a second. Even if he was up there I wasn’t fully convinced he’d see me, given how angry he’d been when he’d stormed out.

But his staff hadn’t seen him since this morning. He wasn’t in his office, and I just about stopped myself from checking the bathroom and the closet, in case he was hiding. Instead, I slumped down on the couch in the corner; the one he’d been complaining about for being lumpy. I wriggled about trying to get comfy, then gave up. He was right. He was always right.

He'd always been right.

I tried his cell again; this time from the phone on his desk on the off-chance he’d blocked my cell number. The same annoying voice told me he hadn’t, and I still couldn’t leave a message. I wasn’t sure whether that made me feel better.

Where the fuck was he? I’d been so busy worrying about finding him that I’d been too busy to notice that the panic lodged in my throat, the one that had stopping me from bawling all over the city, had been moving further and further up. And now, while I sat on the couch trying to figure out what to do next, it made itself known with a loud sob, followed by me dissolving into tears I couldn’t stop.

I sent him another text, my fifth, begging him to return my call and telling him how sorry I was for everything, then I flopped back, but it wasn’t for long. I shot upright at the sound of the door opening, and drew my arm over my nose with a loud sniff.

“Hey, Penn. I have… Lowe? Lowe! God, what the heck is wrong?”

Beulah was in front of me in a second. She sat down on the coffee table and watched open-mouthed, as I tried to pull myself together.

“Has something happened to Penn? What are you doing here? Where is he?” She looked around the office, just like I had, in case he actually was hiding in the bathroom.

“I don’t…” I hiccupped, “I don’t know.”

“Has something happened to him? He seemed fine this morning.”

I blinked my tears away and took a deep breath. “You saw him?”

She pulled out a tissue from a box I hadn’t noticed and handed it to me. “Yeah, he gave me a pop quiz and a tour round the stadium. He said he’d just come from Lauren’s clinic. Is that why you’re crying?”

I sniffed again. “Lauren? He saw Lauren? What did he say?”

“That he went around there and yelled at her for what she said to you, and that he’d told her to apologize. When he left me going through his quiz, he said he was picking up lunch for the two of you. Didn’t he find you?”

“Yes, he did.” I nodded, feeling worse than I had before Beulah had come in. “But my mom was there…”

Beulah grimaced. Or winced. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

“Oh God, did she start talking marriage and babies? Has Penn run off scared?”

My lip quivered but I managed to hold myself together, even though I’d fucked everything up spectacularly. “No, he’d probably have coped with that. He stormed off angry because I hadn’t told my mom about us.”

Her mouth formed a little ‘O’.

“She’d turned up to bring me lunch and launched straight into her speech about how I wasn’t making time for my future, that I was working too hard, and I was going to end up alone. Then Penn arrived, and my head was all over the place. Then my mom started asking him about hot, single guys working at The Lions, and he stormed out.”

Beulah’s face hadn’t moved, and as I sat there, it hit me how utterly ridiculous this whole situation was. I was a thirty-four-year-old woman whose mother was still running her life. I started giggling until I couldn’t stop, and tears poured down my cheeks.

Then once again I dissolved into rasping sobs at what a mess I’d made of everything.

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