Page 70 of Lucky Penny
She doesn’t know about the ring Jesse gave me, the one I lost somewhere in this house, like so much else. Or the old black shirt I stole from his room before I left for college four months ago, worn thin from time and sleep, the one I still pull over my head on the nights the sadness won’t loosen its grip.
She thinks I’m just angry that they’re gone, locked away from us.
But it’s more than that.
I can’t live in this in-between—half holding on, half trying to breathe.
Most days, letting them go feels like breaking my own heart, but if I don’t, I know I’ll drown in the weight of what could’ve been.
27
Jesse
NOW
The thing I love most about riding my motorcycle is that it’s just me and the open road. A place to let my thoughts sort themselves out.
Some people do that in the shower. I do it on my bike.
After Penny dropped me off at the cemetery, I didn’t go straight home. I kept riding.
How else was I going to process what she said?
“I didn’t get everything I wanted… I didn’t get you.”
God, it just keeps replaying in my mind.
So I ride.
Straight past the tiny urban grocery store I spent my summers working at just to save enough to get out of this town. Past the gas station we’d walk to get 99-cent slushies together as kids.
The cold air numbs my face. She was right, itistoo cold for a ride, but I needed it. I needed to feel something other than the chaos in my head.
Today was more than I expected, though every day has been since she arrived.
The apology for not telling me about Nan’s death caught me off guard. Not because I was seeking it, but because it was a breakthrough. A mending of the past, and because it meant she saw me. The version of me that still misses Nan, who is still lost in some ways without a family.
And then there was lunch at the café.
The way she smiled at strangers, warmer than her normal self. The way she played with her straw wrapper, a nervous habit, as she talked to me. The way she looked at me when I laughed at one of her jokes about my gray wardrobe—like maybe she remembered the boy I used to be. The boy she loved once.
It didn’t feel forced. Not today.
It felt so natural to be there with Penny. Like we were just two people who’d figured out life together, like we skipped all the heartbreak in between. I let myself imagine that life for a second while I sat there at the café.
I pictured her curling up against me on the sofa, take-out dinner on the way. Because I know Penny hates cooking. Sunday mornings in bed, her golden hair tangled in the sheets.
But that’s a dangerous daydream.
Because the reality is, I broke something in her ten years ago. She said it herself. She wanted me, and I left her.
I didn’t know the extent of how much I broke her until this week. And that kills me. But it’s not something I can quickly patch, at least not all of it, not at once.
There’s no instruction manual on how to rebuild trust from scratch. If it were as simple as saying“I won’t hurt you again,”those words would’ve been out of my mouth already, when I kissed her a few nights ago.
But even if I had said it, would she have believed me?
Trust takes time.
