“It was fine,” I reply quickly. “We ate dinner and chatted.” I accidentally slam on the gas too hard as we head toward Fia’s doctor’s office.
“Damn, Penny!” she yells.
The seat belt jerks against my ribcage, and I wince, glancing at Fia.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
Fia reaches for the grab handle, like I’m about to drag race through town. “Just slow down,” she replies, and I roll my eyes. “But seriously, you two used to be so close… What happened?”
“Nothing, we drifted apart. It happens,” I say with as much control in my voice as I can. “Doyoustill keep in touch with your high school friends?” I raise my brows at her, knowing damn well she doesn’t.
Fia lets out a slow sigh, then smirks. “Well, anyway, when I came downstairs, Jesse was whistling.”
“What do you mean he waswhistling?” I scoff.
Fia shrugs, but she’s eyeing me closely now. “I don’t know, he seemed like he was in a good mood. So whatever you did to smooth things over, it must’ve worked,” she adds cheerfully.
I kissed him. That’s what I did. And I shouldn’t have.
It was reckless and stupid. But I couldn’t stop myself. Because standing in front of the fireplace with him brought me right back to that love-sick teenager who would’ve lassoed the moon for him.
I’m terrified by how easy it was to slip back into that version of Penny.
I can’t let it happen again. That’s a dangerous, slippery slope.
I force a smile and wave dismissively. “Well, now that everyone’s happy, maybe we can stop obsessing over Jesse and talk about something else. Please.”
“Fine,” Fia says slowly, but there’s a twinkle in her eye. “We’ll move on. For now.”
There’s no way Fia could know about Jesse and me. She was an oblivious child, but she’s an adultnowand not as naive as I had originally believed, unfortunately. The tension between Jesse and me is thick, and Fia can read me like a book.
Sister intuition, or whatever.
But I can’t afford to even begin to let her guess.
I whip the car into a parking spot in front of an old brown brick building with a sign on the front of a mother and baby. Fia has her twenty-six-week checkup today.
“Alright, let’s get this over with.” I muster up some cheer, because I’m not thrilled about being here, but I wasn’t going to let her go alone. Nothing about pregnancy entices me—in fact, it freaks me out entirely. But I’m trying for my sister.
It’s not until I reach the double glass doors that I realize Fia hasn’t followed me. I turn to see her still sitting in the passenger side of my car, unblinking, staring straight ahead at the row of hedges.
What the hell?
She lowers the window when I knock on it.
“You coming in or what?” My patience wearing thin has nothing to do with her, andeverything to do with my nerves around last night. So I try again, nicely, when she doesn’t answer. “Fi, talk to me, what’s going on?”
Her bottom lip trembles, and for a moment, she looks so young. Sheisyoung, but suddenly she doesn’t look like the twenty-one-year-old who has a lot of big decisions ahead of her—instead, I see the little girl who used to sit on my bed, clutching her Barbies, watching me do my makeup.
She doesn’t answer at first, just blinks hard, shaking her head, green eyes misty.
“I don’t think I can do this.” She sniffles, rubbing her nose with the sleeve of heroversized green sweater.
“They’re just going to measure the baby and check vitals,” I repeat what I read on Google this morning, because I know absolutely nothing about what happens at these appointments. I don’t mention that they will probably do bloodwork, or that I gagged reading about the cervical checks.
My sister bites her lip, and I grip the edge of the door, looking around, because right now, I’m not sure how to handle this.
My famous “Penny Pep Talks” have apparently decided to leave the station today.
