Chapter Text
Colin told Benedict he would pick up the wine himself.
That was… before. Before the fights and the couples’ therapy and the slow, inevitable drift. Before the night he came home from work to find Marina on the sofa, pale and drawn, already knowing every word that was about to come out of her mouth (because the words were already on his tongue, weren’t they?). Before the thousands spent on divorce lawyers and moving into the sad flat Anthony found for him and having to tell the fucking kids (worst bit – Oliver had gotten so quiet and Amanda had cried silently; wouldn’t let either of them touch her).
He could have gotten out of it. Ben had called him and said we can find someone else in a way that made it very clear they probably couldn’t, and Colin being Colin (reliable; helpful – a dope, maybe), had said no, no, I’ll do it.
Which is how he ends up in Bari, parked in a service station in a cramped hire car; forty-five; divorced; and about to embark on a two-week trip across Italy he had booked in an attempt to save his marriage. Without, you know, his wife.
A stupid fucking idea in the first place. It is Colin who always wanted to travel; Colin who likes food and wine and long drives. He thought he was being romantic at the time but now he is here, staring down the barrel of the coming weeks, he sees it for what it is: a symptom of Colin’s checked-outedness, and he sees also that Marina was maybe right about him. You do nice things for me and the kids but it’s not because you want to make us happy. It’s because you’ve got this romantic ideal of yourself in your head, and you’re always trying to live up to him. What we want doesn’t matter. You just need to be the good guy.
It had enraged him at the time. Twenty-four years of marriage; of school-runs and packed lunches and sick days and foot rubs after her night shifts at the hospital. Of giving up his dreams – of giving up everything – and he didn’t want to make them happy? It had made him want to scream and tear his clothes and punch himself in the face with the unfairness of it all. Made him want to lift up his shirt to show her the chicken pox scars he got when Amanda and Oliver were two (somehow he had never had it before – he almost died); show her the X-ray of his fucked knee from a lifetime of holding two sturdy children at once. His body was a fucking road-map of his love for them. How much they mattered was carved into him like the notches on the door-frame measuring the kids’ heights in the house he was no longer allowed to live in.
But now, he thinks… Well, Marina would have hated this trip. And he thinks that maybe, actually, she might have been right. And that maybe, actually, he has spent a lot of the past two decades sublimating his own needs and feeling very, very resentful about it.
The realisation cloys and clings, claggy in his throat. He taps his fingers against the steering wheel and tries to choke down the bitterness. Because isn’t that exactly what this trip is for? Shaking off the resentment? Doing exactly what he wants to do? He has to pick up the stupid fucking wine for the wedding, sure; but other than that, these two weeks are all about him.
He rolls down the window and lifts up and out, so his head and half his torso is poking out of the car. “Pen!” he hollers, startling the Italian trucker who is smoking a cigarette against the wall of the service station. He waves apologetically at the man, who glares and stubs out his cigarette.
She appears from within, and she’s holding about seven brown paper bags in her arms like she’s cradling some hideous, papery baby. Intriguing spots of grease bloom on the packages, and she has a large plastic bottle wedged under each armpit. He worries, vaguely, about the nice green linen dress she is wearing. He doesn’t want her to stain it – he doesn’t know much about these sorts of things but it looks expensive. Everything Penelope owns looks expensive these days – he supposes she can afford it. He looks down at his shitty white T-shirt and shorts and almost laughs.
“You were meant to be peeing,” he says, unclipping his seatbelt. He almost tries to clamber out of the window in his haste to help her but then remembers there is a perfectly good door attached to this hire car, so he uses that instead. He jogs to her side and takes some of the stuff off her hands. “What is all this?”
“They had so many types of paninis, Colin. And arancini,” she says, as if this is explanation enough.
It is. “Of course, of course,” he says, nodding solemnly. He holds up a bottle and sloshes around the brown liquid inside, squinting at the label. “Chinotto. What the fuck is this?”
“I have no idea,” she says happily, climbing into the car with her pile of treats. “The guy said it is bitter and fizzy and it tastes nice in red wine.”
“Sounds disgusting,” Colin beams. “Can’t wait to try it.”
And when they get back on the road and Penelope starts tearing off bits of warm arancini – melty with cheese and tangy with ragu – and stuffing it in Colin’s mouth so he can concentrate on the driving, he is desperately, vividly glad that he brought her along.
He’s known Pen forever. Like, forever forever; like the kind of forever where he genuinely doesn’t remember when or how they first met. She was just always there: Eloise’s sweet, red-headed best friend who would blush nicely when Colin looked at her (so he did it a lot). Then somehow, when they were a little older, she became his friend too.
That part – her becoming his friend – happened just after his dad died. Eloise was so furious (at the world; at their dad for dying and at the rest of them for being unable to prevent it) and it rolled off her in tsunami-like waves (Eloise’s feelings have always been terrifyingly powerful and he knows she still struggles to wield them, even at the age of forty).
Eloise had all this anger and nowhere for it to go. It spilled out of her in slammed doors and frustrated yells and Penelope bore the brunt of it. Colin couldn’t figure it out, because she kept coming over anyway, kept putting her tiny, helpless body in the path of his sister’s destruction whilst the rest of them hid (Fran) or cringed (Ben) or tried to scold her out of it (Anthony; Daph).
Colin found Penelope in the hallway one day standing in front of a closed door with a pink notebook and a bunch of glitter gel pens strewn around her – obviously thrown by his sister in a fit of rage. She was blinking quickly, her crystal blue eyes turning silver with tears, and Colin had swiftly picked up her pens and the notebook and guided her carefully into the kitchen so she could sit and watch while he made dinner for everyone. Their mum was often too sad to do it those days, and Colin enjoyed cooking, so he didn’t mind too much – a small way he could be helpful (he has that sticky, sinking feeling again – Marina was, perhaps, right about him, about his inability to exist outside of what other people need from him).
“You shouldn’t let her treat you like that,” Colin said, his eyes on the pepper he was slicing. He felt tears in his throat – grief made Eloise angry, but it made Colin soft. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“It’s okay,” Penelope said, and even as a tiny, pink-eared eight-year-old she spoke with a kind of certainty, a conviction that Colin is not sure he’s ever been able to summon. There was – is – a weight to her words that made thirteen-year-old Colin want to sob and makes forty-five-year-old Colin astonished and impressed and a little jealous. “She’s just not used to being sad. None of you are.” And the way she said it had conveyed an intimacy with sadness that no eight-year-old should have (if he thinks about it now, imagines Oliver or Amanda ever feeling that way, he can very easily bring himself to tears).
Colin’s eyes had begun to sting and he had blamed the onions even though there weren’t any, and Penelope had been so nice about it that from that day he counted her as his friend, too.
The way she had looked at him on that day was the same way she had when he told her about the divorce, and though their friendship has ebbed and flowed over the years (natural, he thinks; he had kids and she didn’t), he’s really fucking glad they are currently in a flow.
“Do you want me to start reading chapter one?” Penelope asks through a mouthful of something Colin can’t identify, pulling out her phone at the same time. Her acrylic nails clack satisfyingly against her matte-blue phone case, and though Colin thinks it might be a bit juvenile for a forty-year-old woman to have fake nails (he and Oliver had teased Amanda mercilessly for hers as a teenager – until she had sunk them into Oliver’s arm and made him cry and Colin had to ground her), he thinks they suit Pen. She has always looked young for her age, anyway. He thinks it’s because she is delightfully plump: soft cheeks and arms that seem to be impervious to the wrinkles that worry his eyes and mouth and forehead.
“Finish your mouthful first.”
“Fuck off,” she says lightly, and takes another bite of panini. “I’m not one of your fucking kids.”
“I don’t know. Keep up that attitude and I might put you over my knee,” he says mildly, distracted by changing lanes. Since they left the airport he is doing fair to middling in his attempts to blend in with the erratic Italian drivers. Puglia seems to be bisected by a single, very straight motorway that runs alongside the coast. Which seems like it should be easy to navigate but the other drivers are testing him.
She rolls her eyes and swallows her mouthful. “I’d like to see you try. You’d put your back out. Don’t embarrass yourself.”
“Sometimes talking to you is like talking to Amanda when she was a teenager,” he says, narrowly avoiding a yellow Fiat that has crawled up his arse. “You’re meaner than a teenage girl, Pen. How does that feel?”
“Great. Shall I start reading, or –”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“I mean, that’s why I’m here, right?”
The sun hits the ocean on their left, throwing sparkling diamonds of light into Colin’s eyes that almost blind him. He frowns and pulls down the visor. His vision prickles and throbs with light and he shifts in his seat, a weird knot in his belly. Because, yeah, technically he suggested they might edit his first draft on the road but that wasn’t why he asked her.
“No, actually. You’re here because you’re my friend.” And he really, really didn’t want to do this alone. Colin is trying to find himself – a New Colin, or perhaps the Old one – but there is no version of Colin Bridgerton that enjoys being by himself for long stretches of time.
“I’m here because I was worried if you did this trip alone you would drive into the Mediterranean.”
“Hey.”
“And then there’d be no stupid fucking wine for Ben and Sophie’s wedding.” Stupid fucking wine – that’s what he called it when he had messaged her about the trip and it has stuck.
“Right.” The Fiat is still up his arse. He is filled with the absurd urge to slam his foot on the brake, just to show the fucker for being so reckless.
“We’d all be so sad.”
“Oh, God, please start reading. I beg of you.”
He chances a glance in her direction (almost clocks the car next to him — he really needs to focus on the road here) and is pleased to see she’s grinning as she opens up Google Docs on her phone and starts reading aloud from chapter one.
Hearing his own thoughts in her voice is weirdly nice, makes his skin and belly feel warm, like the windscreen is magnifying the July sun and heating him up like a plant in a greenhouse. Especially as she seems to be reading the words in the exact intonation he heard in his head when he wrote them. Spookily similar, actually, and Colin thinks for the kajillionth time how glad he is that he reached out to her when he decided to start writing again.
It started when Oliver finally got a job and moved out just under two years ago. Amanda had already been gone for years at that point – she went to Brighton for uni and stayed there afterwards, only coming home on holidays. But then she had always been the more independent of the two, fighting constantly for individuality – rejecting matching outfits with her brother from the moment she was old enough, jealously guarding her books and toys and friends so she would not have to share them with him. He knows she drove Marina to the brink as a teen, because her relentless pursuit of difference led to all sorts of stupidity – nose piercings and Mandarin lessons that cost a fortune. She even learned to sew her own clothes and had spent three years dressed like a sort of insane Lilith Fair escapee.
But Colin worried more about Oliver’s sweetness (still does; will always), because he is far too like his father – ever-desperate to be loved and useful. He would follow Amanda around like a kicked puppy, begging for scraps of attention, and when she left home a lot of that got transferred onto Colin and Marina.
So he was twenty-three when he finally got a proper job (at the studio where Frannie recorded her albums – like his aunt, Oliver is obsessed with music) and left the house, and practically overnight Colin had a full mental breakdown.
His mum had warned him it would happen, but he and Marina had been so eager for Oliver to stand on his own two feet that he had batted her away (it was amazing how he had still, at forty-three, not learned the lesson of listening to his fucking mother).
For twenty-three years, Colin had been a stay-at-home dad. He looked after the twins whilst Marina finished her undergrad then foundation degree and then three years specialty training as an anaesthesiologist. It had made perfect sense when Marina got pregnant – because she had this whole, shining future ahead of her and Colin had what, exactly? An abortive attempt at an English Lit degree and vague plans to see the world. So Marina did her thing and Colin did his, and for twenty-three years his children had occupied his every thought and breath and movement (this is still true now, he thinks – when he eats the speck and gorgonzola panini he thinks how Amanda hates blue cheese, and when they pass a billboard on the road for a local concert pianist, he wonders if Oliver has heard of him. No reason why he would have, really, some random Italian concert pianist, but still, it is his first thought).
And overnight, that was all gone.
Not gone – he carries them with him everywhere, always, gorgonzola and concert pianists – but suddenly all the day-to-day stuff evaporated (where’s my other trainer and can I borrow fifty quid and I hate raisins I’ve always hated raisins I can’t believe you would make me eat a raisin you hate me don’t you), and Colin was left with all this terrifying, bewildering space yawning in his skull and chest cavity. Each breath he took felt like it rattled around inside of him, clattering and whistling through so much empty space.
Sort of embarrassing, actually, how little substance there was to him without his kids. Like when he had bought Amanda and Oliver matching teddy-bears for their sixth birthday and she got so furious at having to share (there are shades of Eloise in her that frighten him) that she had ripped the poor fucker open at the arse and torn all the stuffing out. Colin remembers the way its beady glass eyes had stared up at him mournfully.
So he had pulled some old boxes of shite out of the attic and gone to His Studio (which is really A Shed at the bottom of the garden that he had converted into a sort of library when the kids turned fourteen – but he mostly used to sit and stare at his phone and disassociate in peace). He tipped the boxes onto the floor and started to sort through them – diaries and journals and endless photos. He felt like he was putting together a puzzle like he and Oliver used to do together (Amanda’s brain worked too impatiently for puzzles), a timeline of his life thus far.
He spent days in there piecing things together, trying to work out who Colin Bridgerton was before his insides had been scooped out and replaced entirely with fatherhood. He came to the following conclusions:
Colin Bridgerton loved food
Colin Bridgerton wanted to travel
Colin Bridgerton smoked cigarettes
Colin Bridgerton was good at writing
He looked at a picture of him at eighteen (gorgeous and lithe and cheekboned in a way he would never be again) with a cigarette in one hand and Pen in the other. Photo Colin was sucking his cheeks in and pouting and – God, there she was: tiny, thirteen-year-old Pen, standing on the lawn outside Aubrey Hall in the dark, the flash making her face look extra-blushy as Colin tugged on her upper arm.
His first thought was god, why did anyone let this eighteen-year-old ponce anywhere near that miniature angel, with her round baby cheeks and frizzy halo of hair? Where was the parental supervision? He looked more closely at the photo and saw Benedict throwing up in the bushes in the background and thought, right, yeah (and he felt a little twinge of grief for his dad — because that was how it went, little gulps of it, tiny drops of poison under his tongue from time to time, swallowed down dutifully).
Still. If anyone touched Amanda or Ollie on the arm like that at thirteen he would have chased them away with a broom. But then he reasoned it was fine, actually, because Pen was basically his little sister (he loved her better than some of his little sisters, actually) and really he was just touching her arm. And then he felt guilty because if he recalled correctly that had been the night of his eighteenth birthday, when Penelope and Eloise had snuck their first proper drinks, and he had spent an hour in the downstairs loo holding Penelope’s hair back whilst she threw up Midori green (it was the sweetest thing they could find, she explained afterwards, miserable and shivering, her tongue a vivid lime-green).
Colin looked at the photo and he looked at other photos and he looked at the pink notebook filled with glitter gel pen scribbles (the one Eloise had thrown at Penelope that day — he had no memory of taking it) and he added another thing to the list:
Colin Bridgerton liked Penelope Featherington
He started with the cigarettes. Only smoked them in His Studio because he knew Marina would kill him (like, cut-his-trachea-out-with-a-scalpel kill him) if she found out. He thinks now that there’s no way she didn’t know — the smell of smoke clings to all his clothes, an olfactory reminder of this mid-life crisis he is driving his way through, one straight motorway all the way up and down — and the fact that he is still alive now is perhaps an indication that she had already given up on him. On them.
He does not like this thought; winds the window down and lights a cigarette. Pen, it turns out, does not mind the smell of smoke.
Next, he thought about the writing. And as he looked at the photos and the letters and the diaries, his childhood – his family – fragmented and fractalled across the floor of his mid-life crisis Shed, he had this thought: if he ever wrote a book, he would want it to be about them.
And he became kind of obsessed with the concept, spending day after day in The Shed moving pictures around and tearing out pages of his diaries to try to create some sort of order to the chaos. He chain-smoked and bought himself a type-writer that sat untouched in the corner and after a month of this, he realised he needed help.
“I need help, I think,” he told Marina over their morning coffee.
Her shoulders slumped. “Oh, thank God,” she said, and she squeezed his arm. “I’ll ask Agatha if she can recommend someone.”
“No – what?” he squinted at her. Agatha was Marina’s therapist. He shook his head. “No, no. Not that, not a therapist – I need help with the book.”
Marina’s shoulders unslumped. She swallowed then, over and over, and now Colin wonders if this was the moment things began to unravel. He wonders if he watched her try to swallow another disappointment and have it stick in her throat; choke her. If this was the moment she decided she had swallowed too many and could not stomach any more.
She took a sip of her coffee. “Ask Penelope,” was all she said.
Penelope has now stopped reading to take a swig of the brown drink she bought. She grimaces; then tilts her head to the side, contemplating. “Hm. I don’t hate it.”
“A glowing recommendation,” he smirks.
“No, I mean, it’s gross – but it’s pleasingly bitter. Sort of like Amaro or something. But without the alcohol.”
“Alright. You’ve convinced me. Hit me with it.”
“No. You will actually crash the car.”
Colin shakes his head. “No, because you’re going to be so, so careful, aren’t you?”
She sighs and unscrews the lid. Holds the bottle to his lips – the plastic is sharp on his mouth and tastes vaguely like Penelope’s lip-stick, wax and honey. The bottle is big enough that she needs to hold it with both hands as she carefully tips some of the liquid into his mouth.
She is right – it does taste like Amaro. Like orange peel and herbs and something caramel-y that sets his teeth on edge. He decides that he doesn’t hate it either, and he is enjoying the luke-warm fizz on his tongue when a red Alfa Romeo cuts him up and he has to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision.
Brown liquid everywhere. The fizz comes shooting out of his nose and all over his white T-shirt as Penelope squeals and yanks the bottle back, one hand on the dashboard to steady herself.
“You okay?” he asks instantly, chinotto dripping down his chin. The drink tastes a lot worse after it’s been through a person’s nostrils, he reckons, as he splutters and gets the car going again, the sound of car horns chiming around them.
“Totally fine,” Penelope says, and he can hear suppressed laughter in her voice. “You?”
“Never better. Got any tissues?”
“Um.” She hunts around and comes up with some brown napkins, the ones that came with the paninis and arancini; they are stained with grease and cheese. Colin grimaces and grabs one, dabbing at his face.
“Any water?”
Penelope wrinkles up her nose and Colin barks out a laugh.
“You bought two litres of mysterious brown fizzy stuff and no water?” he croaks, his throat and nose burning with the chinotto. “That is so irresponsible.”
“Well, yes, but you said that was the point of this trip. How Colin Got His Groove Back, you said.”
Colin grins. “I did say that.” He looks down at the stain on his white T-shirt. “Regretting it a little now, though.”
“I bet.”
He shakes his head and slams his hands on the steering wheel, dancing in his seat a little. “No, no, you’re right. You’re so right. I’m being irresponsible. I’m grooving.”
“Oh, God.”
He ignores this, bobbing his head to music that isn’t playing. “Anything could happen, Pen. Anything. Two whole weeks of food and wine and book stuff. Yeah. Yeah!” He slaps the wheel again and accidentally hits the horn. “Fuck,” he mumbles, and Pen laughs.
“Anything, huh? Like dying of dehydration because your friend forgot to buy water?”
“Exactly. Anything!”
Penelope turns to look at him. “Like taking off your ring?”
Colin’s hums, his stomach dropping instantly into his arse. He taps his ring finger against the steering wheel and it chimes, metal on plastic. “Well. Eventually. Yep.”
“Right,” she says, and he can feel her gaze burning into him. Flaying him, actually, like her eyes are a knife she is using to peel off his skin. God. Colin grimaces, searching his brain blindly for a change of subject.
“Maybe I’ll kiss a man.”
“Colin, what,” Penelope says flatly.
“I don’t know! I could be bisexual. No-one knows yet. I’ll have to try it and see.” He darts a glance at her and smiles at her exasperated frown.
“You’re too old.”
“What does that mean?” he asks in only semi-mock outrage.
She tosses her hair. “Forty-five is a ridiculous age to decide to be bi.”
“It’s not a decision, Penelope. God. I’m telling Amanda you said that.”
She ignores this, rightfully. “It’s not dignified.”
“I’m only five years older than you?”
“Yes, well, I am a chic person. You are not.” She slides her sunglasses onto her head and it pushes her abundant, perfect curls away from her face in a way that is, actually, very chic.
“Penelope Featherington, you are absurd.” He sucks in his cheeks in an attempt to counteract the way they ache from grinning.
She looks rather pleased at that pronouncement; folds her arms across her chest. “Sorry. You’ll just have to spend the rest of your life repressed and in the closet, imagining sucking dick whilst you fuck whatever twenty-five year old girl-child you end up with as part of your embarrassing mid-life crisis second marriage.”
“Twenty-five!” he chokes out.
“You heard me.”
He shakes his head, laughter huffing out of him. He feels very light, suddenly, like he is glad of his seatbelt to keep him from floating away. As though he might laugh enough that he drifts out of the car and into the Puglian clouds. “God, I love it when you’re mean to me,” he tells her, as Google Maps instructs him to change lanes.
She snorts. “You really don’t, actually. Or you didn’t use to, anyway.”
“Didn’t I?”
“No. You used to get so hurt if I critiqued your writing. You’d give me these big puppy eyes and pout and act all sad and wounded. You even cried once. Wouldn’t speak to me for days afterwards. I was genuinely amazed when you asked me to help with the book, honestly.”
“Well, I’ve changed. I’m much better at it now, aren’t I? I haven’t cried once during the edit. Not about the writing, anyway.”
“That’s true.”
Marina was a clever woman, and she had been right about calling Penelope. Colin hesitated for a few days, feeling weirdly nervous and jittery, foal-like, about calling her. Ridiculous, because he had known her forever. And maybe they weren’t close anymore, hadn’t been since they were teens, but he saw her all the time at Sunday lunches and weddings and stuff. She was practically family (except maybe not a little sister, not anymore. Maybe like a cousin you only see at funerals, and you get weirdly excited to see them even though you know you should be sombre and grave. That sort of cousin. Right).
But Penelope was a writer. A really successful one, actually. In fact, when he was in The Shed disassociating, he often found himself drawn to her instagram – book launches and parties and cosy shots of her writing nook. His favourites were the TikToks she is occasionally forced to make, because she manages to somehow always seem like she has a gun to her back and also be sort of funny and charming and they really make him laugh.
Sometimes he would scroll back down really far to before the books got big and look at the more normal photos of her for a while. The ones with the filters on them that Amanda makes fun of Colin for using. He would just look for a bit. Just a bit, every now and then. She has a nice face. He has always liked her face.
Colin thinks about his Instagram – just pictures of his kids and dinners. He should probably change that, now that he’s single.
Penelope had agreed to help him right away. And the first thing she had said when she walked into The Shed, her wide blue eyes surveying the chaos, was: “Jesus, Colin. It’s a bit fucking Yellow Wallpaper in here.”
He had laughed so hard he almost inhaled his cigarette, and Penelope had clapped him on the back until his face stopped being so red. And then they got to work.
“It’s why I couldn’t date a twenty-five year old,” Colin says, as he turns off the motorway. “Need someone to slap me around a little.”
Penelope lets out a quiet hum. “You do, actually.”
“You know, I think that’s why me and Rina could never last. She liked it when I was hard on her. Dominant.”
“Colin, Jesus.”
“Sorry!” he exclaims. His mouth still tastes disgustingly of that drink. “I thought we were… I thought this was girl-talk time. Rescinded.”
Penelope shifts in her seat and puts her sunglasses back on her nose. “No. No. It’s fine. Just… Okay. Go on.”
“Well, she always liked when I was tough on her and I liked it too, but sometimes… I don’t know. It felt like another way I had to take care of everyone. Sometimes I wanted to be babygirl, you know? Like, not actually, but… I just want to be – I don’t know. Selfish.”
“Did Amanda teach you about babygirl?”
He grins. “Yes.”
Penelope sighs, and takes a distracted bite of one of the paninis. “Look, I get it. I think… I think you deserve to be a bit selfish, actually.”
“Thank you.” And he means it. “You know, I think it helps me being around you.”
“You think I’m selfish?” she asks, and he can’t quite read her voice. It’s unnerving, because when they were kids she’d been so easy for him to read. Comfortingly, relievingly so, because Colin was (and is, he is learning) a people-pleaser, and Penelope would always so clearly let him know when she was pleased. Now – not so much. There are walls and sunglasses and acryllic nails. There is her, staring evenly out of the front window, her expression completely smooth.
“A little. Not – not in a bad way. In the way of someone who doesn’t have kids and makes their own money and doesn’t have to answer to anyone. It’s admirable.”
“Okay.” Still nothing.
“Have I insulted you?”
She shrugs. “A little. Not in a bad way.”
“Hm.” He is weirdly glad she said that. “If it helps, I think I’m selfish with you.”
“With me?”
“Yeah. With your time. I made you edit my book and come get the stupid fucking wine with me. I’m greedy with you, Pen.”
He says it because it’s true. This past year – through the divorce and everything – Pen and the book have been his only real solace. He has gobbled her up by the handful, greedy and desperate, because he only really feels good when they’re planning out plot points or arguing about his recollections of the past or sitting quietly, Colin toggling his knee anxiously whilst Penelope reads the latest section he has written.
“Huh.”
“It’s nice having a friend that’s all mine. Like, obviously the kids love you –”
They do. Amanda thinks Penelope is Very Cool for never marrying or having kids and instead focusing on her career and Oliver harbours what Colin suspects is a massive crush on her. He is always extra helpful when she’s around, offering to get her a drink or to take her jacket and asking lots of eager questions about her books, which Colin knows for a fact he has not read.
“And El.”
“Right. But – it’s different between us.” He is surprised at the neediness in his voice. The jealousy. He swallows it down and it tastes like fucking chinotto. “I really wish you’d gotten some water,” he mutters.
“Is it different?” Pen asks. He wishes she would take the sunglasses off.
“Isn’t it?” he asks weakly.
“Hm.”
Off the motorway, the roads begin to narrow and spiral, belly-swooping hair-pin turns that make Penelope go fuckfuckfuck under her breath as Colin crawls around them. He ignores the Italian drivers who hammer it up the hill, overtaking him and battering their horns. He focuses instead on the petrified woman gripping the door handle beside him, her knuckles white. He is not sure if she is gripping the door to keep it closed in case it spontaneously opens or falls off or something, or because she is battling the urge to fling it open and hurl herself down the hill. Colin concentrates very hard on ensuring she settles upon the former.
“Almost there, Pen,” he says, as they turn the last corner.
“I’m fine,” she grits out in a voice that is so not fine that Colin chuckles before he can stop himself. “Shut up,” she snaps. “Keep your eyes on the road.”
“Don’t worry, Pen,” he says, as he guides the car up and over the crest of the hill. The road straightens out as they drive away from the hillside and Penelope’s hand goes limp on the door handle. Dark trees line their way, and the car feels suddenly very sweetly cool and dark, like they have driven into some secret green world that is just them and the trees and the splotches of dappled sunlight that speckle Penelope’s skin. “I’ll keep you safe.”
Colin should have remembered. Should have called ahead.
For a really long time he had forgotten about the trip altogether. Because there was the divorce, of course – and even though it was amicable (sort of), mutual (Marina’s idea – but then all the major events of Colin’s adult life had been her idea – keeping the twins; getting married; not trying for another kid; now the divorce – something comforting in it, really), it was still ugly. Anthony was bullish about the money, fiercely protective over Colin’s trust and the house (originally a Bridgerton property) until Colin had called him crying and told him to give Marina whatever she wanted because he couldn’t bear the thought of the kids having their family home taken away. And even though maybe they weren’t in love any more, he still wanted the best for Marina.
And then there had been the moving out and then the hurling himself bodily into writing the book, because it was the only thing that felt real and good and that he could control. He lost days to it, hours on the phone to Penelope, his phone jammed under his cheek and Penelope’s soft breaths in his ear whilst he typed and typed and typed as if somehow he could write it away. As if he might somehow write himself into the New Colin, carve him out of too much coffee and a Google Doc, write his way through his past until the empty cavity left by his children was full again (and if it felt like a false tooth in an empty socket then he would just have to write harder, more, until it felt real, wouldn’t he?).
When Ben called him to enquire, gently, about his plans, it had taken Colin a few moments for his brain to register that he had, indeed, promised to drive from Bari to Sophie and Ben’s house in Beziers with a boot full of stupid fucking wine. That a year earlier he had spent weeks meticulously booking hotels and making reservations with this awful, heavy dread in the pit of his stomach, because Marina had by then stopped bothering to talk to him about much beyond I’m working late tonight and we need more milk and I spoke to Amanda today, and he knew, in his skin and bones and teeth, that it was over (he was right – a month later she asked for the divorce). He told Ben that of course he would get the wine, and then promptly forgot about it again until he got the British Airways email reminding him of his upcoming flight.
He panicked then. Two weeks alone! No company but his own thoughts! Unbearable, actually. So he messaged Penelope frantically and begged her to come with him. Because she’s his friend, but also – and he feels mean for even thinking it – she is the only person in his life who might be able to agree to such a trip at such late notice. No kids; no partner (at least not at the moment, not that he is aware of); no nine-to-five. No-one to answer to other than herself.
For some reason that makes Colin feel sad for her, and then he feels mean again for pitying her. Because she seems happy, doesn’t she? And yet he cannot imagine it; he thinks without his kids and family, he might disappear altogether, dissolve like the sunlight glittering and melting into the ocean. He wonders what this says about him, that he cannot imagine existing without the prism of himself as a father and a son and a brother and a (ex) husband. Maybe in the end, he is just a cobbled-together collection of the needs of other people.
So, there was, you know, a lot going on, and he didn’t call ahead to change the reservations and he didn’t think about what it means that he is turning up to this boutique trullo hotel with his wedding ring on and Penelope at his side. Because of course the nice lady on the desk smiles broadly at him and says “Bienvenuto, Mr and Mrs Bridgerton.” That makes total sense – a reasonable assumption for her to make, surely.
What makes no fucking sense – what he can not wrap his stupid head around – is why he puts his arm around Penelope’s linen-clad waist (nice; soft; warm) and tugs her body against his and bends (really far down – she is so short) to kiss the top of her head. Why he smiles back and says: “Yes. That’s us.”
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