“We’d better. When does yours expire?”
“March.”
“So. Tell them you want to stay.”
Ellen scrubbed at her face with her hand. “I don’t want to—”
“Ellen.”
“It’s career suicide.”
“Do you really want to leave? Tell me true, now,” Penny insisted, her face uncharacteristically serious.
Ellen looked at Penny, who was so important to her. She’d made a few other friends at work, also ex-pats, but Penny was the only one who was Boston-born and -bred. Even Francesca was due to be transferred around the same time as Ellen. Penny was part of the reason that Boston had begun to feel like home.
She felt tears starting at the back of her eyes. “It’s not that simple. I want to make good money. I want to be management. I want to follow Jon up the ladder if I can, but I have to go away for at least four more years before I can do it.” Her throat tightened. “So you see,” she continued when she could speak, “there’s not much point in helping Kane through the fires, when I have to leave soon anyway.”
“Well,” said Penny, patting herself with her towel even though there wasn’t a drop of perspiration on her, “I think you’ll find your priorities have changed. I’m pooped. Let’s get a smoothie, and I’ll tell you what I see.”
Ellen didn’t have the mental energy to protest. At the smoothie counter, Penny continued. “I see the ‘career’ Ellen. She lived in her own little cocooned world, where she went from work to home to work to home, never did anything fun, never so much as looked at a man, let alone let him flirt with her or even say something nice, and where the most exciting thing that happened was getting a new instructor at the gym.”
Ellen’s mouth fell open. “Shit, Penny.”
“And then, there’s the Ellen I see before me, the one I knew was hiding under there all along. Who smiles more at silly old farts like Bill Cohen, who’s doing a better job at work because she doesn’t bark orders so often—yeah, you did—and who’s stopped dressing as though the Puritans are still in charge.”
It was impossible not to be insulted. “Bloody hell, Pen. I didn’t know I was so hard to be around.”
“You’re not, you idiot. That’s what I’m saying. He’s brought out the best in you. Don’t even think of going back.”
Ellen didn’t know what to say. She sucked on her smoothie, a delicious concoction of mango and passion fruit that hid the taste of the protein powder.
“Besides,” said Penny, with the air of pulling a rabbit out of a hat, “you can’t go back. Your accent’s changed.”
“Okay, now I shall have to summon a policeman.”
“Nice try, Ms. Poppins. You called me ‘honey’ before. When has that word every been part of your vocabulary? You just said, ‘How ahh ya?’ to our server here. Don’t try and kid a linguist. Those ‘r’s aren’t going away ’cos you’re English; it’s because you’re falling for a chowdahead.”
“I’ll tell him you said that.” But she could feel her cheeks heating up and knew that Penny was right. She was digging herself further and further into this life, this city, and Kane, even as she should be breaking away.
“So now,” said Penny, taking the lid off her smoothie and drinking it as if it were a frozen margarita, “the only thing left to complete your transformation is some mind-blowing sex.”
Some of Ellen’s smoothie went up her nose. “Shh!” she gasped, looking around her. The gym was full, and the smoothie bar was right next to reception.
Penny wasn’t concerned. “How the hell you let him walk out of your apartment on Friday morning without jumping his bones is beyond me.”
“I told you,” Ellen hissed. “He was tired.”
“You really don’t know anything about men, do you? No man has ever been that tired.”
“Well, he was.” All Penny knew was that Kane had fallen asleep at Ellen’s apartment after his long flight. Ellen had never told her about Edward, just that she’d had bad luck with men back in England, and that was why she had steered clear until now.
Before telling Kane, Ellen had almost convinced herself that Edward and that last horrific hour of their relationship hadn’t happened, so it had been easy to keep the story from Penny. But in the quiet hours she’d had while Kane helped his family, she’d gone back over what she’d told Kane, and his reaction. What it meant, and what she’d been hiding from herself. By allowing herself to pretend that Edward hadn’t “really” raped her, she’d absolved him of much of his culpability for the assault and put that blame on herself.
“Call it what it was,” she’d said to herself in the mirror the night after Kane left. “It was... rape.” She squinted at her reflection, finding the word as hard to say as it had been to think. “Edward raped you. It wasn’t your fault you couldn’t fight him off at first.”
And she’d cried some more and made herself a cup of tea and more beans on toast, and felt a little better. Relieving herself of all of the guilt would take more time, but she was closer.
She was also closer to telling Penny what had happened, because it explained so much that had puzzled Penny.
