Page 106 of Love is a Game

There’s nothing to be gained by talking this through tonight. Whatever Raquel’s unwelcome take on things is.

“Yep. And she’s savvy, you know,” Pen assures me. “Do you know how much her jewelry company is worth?”

“No idea.”

“No, I can’t remember now either. But it’s shit tons. Like, it really surprised me. Shit tons, Tuck. Maybe not like you, but a lot!”

“Shit tons,” I echo, dragging her off the couch and steering her toward the bedroom. “Got it.”

As soon as we reach our destination, she flops onto the bed.

“I like accomplished people,” she muses. “I wanna be accomplished.”

“You are accomplished, Pen.”

“But better accomplished.” She stretches as I tug off her shoes. “Like, multi-accomplished. Not just doing fashion lines every day. But contributing to something. Even my mom contributed to something bigger, and I thought she had no life at all. Meanwhile—” She gestures vaguely. “She had a better life than me.”

I lean over her to undo her dress. “Lift your arms.”

She does, and I tug the fabric over her head.

“Like, who do I even wannabe, Tuck?”

I glance at her frowny face. “I don’t know, Pen. Maybe…yourself? Instead of comparing yourself to everyone else?”

She snorts. “Wow. That’s deep.”

I sniff. “It’s really not.”

She sits up slightly, reaching behind her back to undo her bra. She tosses it to the floor, then collapses onto the pillows.

“They’re all hooked up. Our friends. They’re all gonna have babies. Vivian’s going to have a new baby with Brady. She will, you know. Then next thing, Mia’s gonna have a baby. And where am I? My business is going broke and—”

“What?” My head jerks up. “Your business isn’t going broke.”

“Oh, yes, it is, Tuck.” She rolls onto her stomach, muffling her voice into the pillow before flipping back over. “I’m totally in the red. A hundred percent in the red.”

“Pen, serious? Your business is in trouble?”

“Oh yeah. It’s pretty fucked, that’s for sure,” she mumbles, thumping the pillow.

I stare at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She flings an arm out, exasperated. “Because then you’d just want to fix it. Like you wanna fix everything!”

She turns her head, blinking at me blearily. “Fix my mom’s funeral. Fix this house. Fix the fact I want a baby. Like…” She shakes her head as if seeing me clearly for the first time. “You’re a fixer. And I’m a…” She pauses, searching for the words. “What do they call it? A…‘renovator’s dream.’”

My chest tightens.

She gives a loose, defeated shrug. “Broken. Messed up. But you don’t realize I’m not like an old house or car or something. You think you can shine me up and make me better. But you can’t, Tuck,” her voice turns quiet, fragile.

“I’m unfixable. A giant, unfixable mess,” she mutters, her eyes heavy-lidded, her breath uneven. “And when you finally figure that out…”

She lifts her hands, slowly dusting them off.

A final, dismissive action—before face-planting the pillow.

Chapter 32

---