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Penny had moved to Hollywood to make a name for herself. Yet here she was, toiling away at a job that barely classified as legal. She showed up to work at a casting company every day and sat behind a miniscule desk in a grody room with carpet that looked as if it’d been molding since the eighties.
The man in charge—Jack Hardy—hadn’t bothered to learn her name. On her first day of work, Jack had listed her duties (check people in and ignore phone calls), then punctuated it with a grunt and a tilt of his chin. His partner, a petite woman who probably weighed eighty pounds soaking wet—with about twelve of those pounds being foundation and mascara—had introduced herself as the casting director. Together, they cast extras for obscure reality TV shows that nobody had heard of. It was an ugly business.
“If you’re not happy out there,” Amy Sands said after a pause, “then why don’t you move home?”
Penny warmed with the idea of her old job, her old life. Her cozy little existence in a cozy little town. She missed every inch of it. She missed the smell of the small local newspaper office where she worked. She missed her daily lavender latte from the café down the street, a place where she didn’t need to order because they knew her by her approaching footsteps.
She missed the short drive home to be with her family for every little holiday. She even missed the sporadic blind dates her friends would set her up on—dates with insanely average men whose biggest crime was that they still called their mothers once a day for advice on clothing choices.
A huge part of her, most of her, in fact, wanted to turn tail and return to Iowa. Pretend the last month or two of her life had never happened and start fresh. There, she knew which way was up and which was down. Out here, there was no road map. Her life was an unfinished script waiting to be finalized. The possibilities were both equally thrilling and terrifying. Would she fly? Or would she fall?
“I miss home,” Penny admitted. “But I can’t come back.”
“Why?”
Penny tapped the pen harder and harder against her leg in agitation. The question was a simple one, but her mother’s tone was layered and complex, a kaleidoscope of questions all balled into one. Penny tried to put her feelings into words, but for someone who claimed to be creative, she hopelessly failed.
Finally, she whispered, “I don’t know.”
Her mother heaved a guttural breath, and Penny could practically see her nodding in their tiny little kitchen in their tiny little house in their tiny little town. Amy would be sitting at the table with her hands wrapped around a cup of peppermint tea, staring at the dusty pink curtains draped across the window over the sink.
There would be clutter from a day’s worth of homemade cooking, the smell of something sweet hanging in the air from her latest bake. The linoleum floor would be cracked with age but tidy and swept, the dishes put away, and the herb pots near the sink freshly watered. Penny longed for home so much that it hurt.
She wouldn’t mind heading back for a visit, but her bank account couldn’t handle a foot-long sub for lunch, let alone the cost of a cross-country plane ticket. Not to mention if she went home, there was the legitimate fear that she’d never leave again. She’d stick there, like a fruit fly to a trap, dying a slow death because she’d chosen a life that wasn’t hers to live.
Somewhere, deep down, Penny believed she was different. She had to believe it, or there’d be no reason for her to suffer in an apartment complex that served as home to more rats than humans or to work a crappy job when she’d held a perfectly respectable position at a perfectly respectable newspaper in a perfectly respectable town.
Penny vaguely wondered if it was all an illusion. If she was as deluded as Ryan, claiming his way to fame from a dandruff commercial. Did he feel the same way, that he was special? Did everyone? Or was there a reason behind Penny’s belief? It was imperative she believe that she was one in a million or nothing else made sense. But what if she was wrong?
“I’ll be home for Christmas,” Penny said. “Anyway, I should let you go. I just wanted to hear your voice.”
As Penny lay on her secondhand mattress, she stared up at the stars through her window. If she couldn’t have Roman Tate, she’d have to start taking drastic measures to forget about him, at least until she could swim. As it was, the cloudy waters soared around her, roared in her ears, blurred her vision. It was with a touch of anger that Penny realized the situation was anything but fair to her.
She had been ready to give Roman everything. And he’d led her to believe it might be possible. With that kiss, he’d crossed a line—a line that had sent Penny’s heart into tachyarrhythmia with the thought that they might be possible. Together might be possible. Then Roman had all but ignored her in the following weeks, sending Penny into a dangerous spiral that left her motivation weak and her heart frayed.
Penny was anything but weak. When people stole from Penny, she stole back. Next week, she would take a stand. She’d go into Roman’s office after class and cancel her remaining sessions. See what he had to say about that. If he let her go, then her answer would be sparkling clear, and she would be free to lick her wounds, regroup, and focus on Penny Sands.
She perused her emails, stopping when one caught her eye.
[email protected] glared at her from the screen, the simple subject line taunting her as if he’d somehow read her mind: Class Next Week.
Her finger hovered over the Delete button. It would be so easy to say she hadn’t gotten it. That the message had been trapped in her spam filters, and she’d missed it completely.
But Penny knew from the moment she laid eyes on the name that she was weak. Her finger twitched, clicked. Her resolve to be rid of Roman—so strong just seconds before—crumbled like dust.
TRANSCRIPT
Defense: Why did you fire Olivia Moore as your babysitter?
Anne Wilkes: I, er, I didn’t fire her.
Defense: Ms. Moore testified yesterday that you fired her in June 2018.
Anne Wilkes: Okay, well, I did fire her. But I later apologized. She’s not…fired. She just didn’t want to come back after I accidentally fired her.
Defense: Why did you fire her in the first place?
Anne Wilkes: She overstepped her bounds. She and Mark were ganging up on me, and I didn’t like it.
