He stayed quiet for a long, wrenching moment, so Penny rushed ahead, ready to end everything.
"So I've given it a lot of thought and I've decided we shouldn't see each other anymore."
More silence resonated through the phone until he said, "For now, you mean. Or for … ?"
Her chest grew impossibly tight. "For good," she said, her heart crumbling. "I know how important your job is to you, Ryan, and I really think you'll lose it one way or another if we stay together. And I've figured out something else, too, something I've just avoided thinking about. Martin is a good man, and I've been very unfair to him in all this. I think if you and I tried to see each other, even after I turn down his proposal, I'd still always feel like I was sneaking around behind his back, committing some crime. He trusted me to be loyal to him while he was away, and I betrayed that trust with you. I can't keep doing it. For both your sakes, this is the right thing to do."
Again, silence pervaded when she finished, and it gave her the chance to go on and say everything she needed to.
"It couldn't last forever, right?" She forced a small, surprisingly convincing laugh. "I mean, it was wonderful, really wonderful, and I wouldn't trade the time we've spent together for anything. But it was just a fling. And you were probably right all along. We're in different places right now, me wanting to have fun, you being so dedicated to your work, so all in all, it's best to let it end."
She heard his heavy swallow. "What about the project? Your system?"
"Well, I was thinking maybe Patti could start working with you on it. After all, everything important is in my notes. Or maybe you could talk Martin into shifting the project to someone else for some reason. Either way, I'm confident we can get around that some way."
Silence returned once more and Penny wasn't sure what else to say. She wanted to get off the phone, end this torture. "Ryan, are you still there?"
"Yeah, I'm here." He sounded tired.
"Thank you," she said on impulse.
"For what?"
"For last week. And last night." She drew in another deep breath. "Well, I should go now. Bye."
"Penny, I-"
She hung up the phone, pretending she hadn't heard him say her name. Whatever he had to tell her, she couldn't listen to it. She had to be finished with this or she'd never get through the pain.
What now? she thought, suddenly feeling at loose ends. Her mind raced back to past relationships that had ended, and how months after a breakup, she always reached a point where she took the momentos that still remained in her life from the guy in question and threw them away. It signified the real end of things for her, the real letting go.
Biting her lip to crush her emotions, she decided she should just go ahead and do that with Ryan now. After all, they'd been together for a week, two if you counted generously-it had been brief, so why let memories linger on? The sooner she got rid of them, the sooner her heart would be rid of him. She had a hard time trying to convince herself she wanted that, but she attempted it anyway.
Heading to her bedroom, she opened her sock drawer and drew out the red handcuffs, then walked to the wastebasket.
Yet, just as she was about to drop them inside, she stopped, hugging them tightly to her chest. The heart-shaped cuffs were a keepsake of what they'd shared, a keepsake of the love she'd let go-the love that might have been the love of her life-but she'd done the right thing, for him and for Martin. And that's what life and love were about sometimes, weren't they? Doing the right thing.
Then Penny looked down at them, a pair of red-velvet, heart-shaped handcuffs, and started laughing. What a crazy, silly, insane thing to hold on to as a keepsake!
Penny kept on laughing then, couldn't stop laughing, in fact, until she realized that somewhere along the way she'd started crying.
* * *
11
« ^
Ryan sat in his office the next morning, watching the digital clock on his desk. 8:07 flicked to 8:08. He'd come in early in order to beat Grace and so far, had avoided seeing her. However, Martin should arrive any minute now. And God only knew what would happen then. He suspected the rest of the day would be interesting, to say the least.
It was 8:09 when he thought of Penny. Wow, two whole minutes had passed without his dwelling on her. He remained as dumbfounded over her call as he'd been last night. He still couldn't believe it. One minute they were teasing and flirting and planning dinner; the next, she was not only standing him up, but giving him the boot, too.
He'd wanted to protest, to stop her, to say, If our time together was so damn special, why are you throwing it away? He'd even started to say something, but when she'd hung up, her feelings had been pretty clear. It was hard to believe he'd misread her so badly, but maybe she was even more complicated than he knew. Maybe she hadn't been as crazy about him as he'd thought. Maybe, as he'd feared just yesterday, this was just one big wild affair to her.
And besides, he couldn't argue with her about his job. He'd been telling himself his priorities were a mess, that maybe the job wasn't the most important thing, but just what did he think he was going to do without it? No matter how he stacked it up, his career mattered.
So he hadn't called her back. He'd let the only woman he'd ever really fallen in love with walk out of his life for a second time in a few short, agonizing days. He shook his head. Talk about a whirlwind relationship-he felt as if a tornado had just swept through his life, leaving little bits of his heart scattered everywhere.
By 8:11, his mind had drifted to the other call he'd received last night, which had also left him reeling. It hadn't been surprising to answer the phone and hear Dan's voice; after all, he'd never gotten around to returning his brother's call. But the shocking part had been when they'd started talking about Ryan's new job and his condo, and Dan had said, "You've got the life, Ryan. What I wouldn't give … "
"What?" The words simply hadn't computed in Ryan's head.
On the other end of the line, Dan had sighed. "Oh, don't get me wrong. I love Carol and the kids are great. Life is good. But sometimes I envy you, and I think about how much guts it took to leave behind everything you know and go someplace new."
Ryan hadn't known what to say, still in a state of heartbreak over Penny, yet trying to absorb his brother's words. "I … never felt I had any other choice," he finally explained. "It's what I'd always wanted."
"Well, it still takes courage," Dan said, then his voice turned uncharacteristically cynical. "Something Mom never stops reminding me."
Okay, wait just a minute here. "What are you talking about?"
Dan hesitated. "The truth is … Mom and Dad never stop singing your praises. Ryan's doing so well in the city. Ryan's got such a good job. I don't know what we'd do without the money Ryan sends us. I never hear the end of it."
Ryan sat astonished for a long moment, just breathing into the phone, until finally he burst into laughter, not the least of which was due to Dan's imitation of their mother.
"What's so funny?" Dan asked.
"They do the same thing to me about you!"
The brothers had shared a good laugh and a long talk that made Ryan want to get to know Dan better, so much that he'd even invited him to bring his family to Cincinnati for a weekend sometime soon. They'd eventually concluded that their parents must be proud of both of them, just in different ways, and that they simply had the bad habit of touting each son's achievements to the other, instead of doing the opposite. All of which meant, of course, that Penny had been right, despite what he'd so strongly believed.
At 8:15, the elevator bell dinged, and lo and behold, Martin's voice finally boomed through the office.
"Hello, Grace! I'm back, as promised. Things seem awfully quiet around here-everyone have their noses to the grindstone already? They must be working too hard!"
Ryan flinched. Martin sounded a little too … enthusiastic. Not that he knew his boss very well, but the Martin who'd hired him had been much more staid and serious. Pleasant enough, but as Grace had confirmed, Martin was a workaholic and Ryan had seen that in his personality right away.
And this business about them all working too hard! What was that about?
Then it hit him. Martin had come home expecting Penny to say yes. He'd probably wheeled and dealed Schuster Systems into a lot of business at the conference, and now he thought he was on a roll, that things would continue going his way. He thought he was getting married.