My Calamity

"Penelope, get that dumb look off your face. It's really quite simple, you're going. End of discussion."

As much as I should've been shocked by the tone of my mother's voice, I wasn't. She was still angry at what I had said to her in the car on Saturday, and personally, I didn't blame her. Despite that, I was still angry she was making me go to this wedding, although I shouldn't have been.

Avoiding Patrick had been proven easy…up until now. I hadn't seen him Sunday, mostly because I'd been locked at the Café for work, and I hadn't answered the door all of Monday. A part of me did feel bad withdrawing the way I was, but the other part of me – the stronger part – knew it was better this way.

"If there is anything in life I'd want you to learn from me, it's never break a prior engagement," my mom said finally, trying to console the burn of her previous words. "No matter whom you're avoiding."

That caught my attention.

I whipped my head left, my bedroom wall disappearing for my mother's face to take its place. "What?"

"Adele told me all about Patrick's appearances yesterday. She was worried, thought he was stalking you." I shrugged my shoulders. "Penelope, I hope you understand what you're doing this boy."

My temper flared but I bottled in, not wanting to snap on my mother again. "I don't want to have anything to do with Patrick, romantically," I replied meekly.

"What happened to the Penelope that wanted to fall in love?" my mother asked desperately.

I looked at her.

And looked at her.

And then really looked at her.

"Reality."

Her eyes were the saddest of things I'd ever witnessed.

☼

By four thirty that afternoon, I was seated in a white foldout chair decorated in cream satin bows on the beach watching the sun set in shades of orange and blue while the bride and groom exchanged their nuptials.

Luckily for me there was no sight of Patrick, but I was sure he was there. Everyone in town had turned out. There were over thousands chairs set out and there were still stragglers standing in the sand. Weddings were a huge affair here.

The ceremony ended promptly at five, but we didn't head into the Boat House until six-thirty, giving enough time for the bride and groom to get pictures and for everyone to mingle. This sent me into a frantic rage as I hid behind couples, and in circles of people I couldn't even spark conversation with.

The paranoia had definitely set it.

A lot of people left after the ceremony, though it was still a large crowd around six hundred people. In my acts of avoiding Patrick, whom I'd yet to see – obviously I was doing a good job at this avoiding – I'd failed to see that someone had joined my mother. My father.

I stood in front of the table we'd been given, a table that seated six that we'd share with the Quincy's. My father and mother were in deep conversation, though my mother held her distance and I could see her eyebrows creased so being in his presence obviously wasn't easy for her.

I cleared my throat. My father looked up. A smile broke out on his scruffy face. "Penelly," he said finally.

I blinked. My heart did this thing where it throbbed like a finger would after a paper cut. My mouth fell open but no words emerged, so wordlessly I fell into the seat beside my mother, opting for silence as a reply. I ducked my head and took in an uncanny interest in my French manicured nails.

"How are you?"

I didn't spare him a glance at that one.

"Your father is talking to you, Penelope," my mother snapped, though there was no real bite in her words. I knew that she understood, even if she didn't like the way I was acting.

"You don't have to do that," my dad whispered.

"I'm fine," I answered finally, raising my head to meet both their gazes.

"That's good, that's good," my father said, nodding his head. "Anything interesting happen this summer?"

I shook my head. My mother sighed. The image of my father's sunken eyes, soulless and lost imprinted itself in the front of my mind.

The night was slow at first, beginning with some dancing then stopping for dinner and then the Father-Daughter dance. The bride introduced it by dancing with her father, and I sat with my shoulders slumped unsurely.

The air around my parents and I only grew more awkward as more girls stood with their fathers to dance. I even saw Jessica with her father, though Patrick was nowhere to be found. "I-I'm going to get some air," I decided, standing and leaving the table before my father could choke out a word.

The guilt that wracked my body was like nothing I'd ever felt before. Before it'd been bad, what with avoiding Patrick like I'd been doing, but with the addition of treating my father so coldly the guilt was unbearable.

When the waiter walked around offering dainty glasses half-filled of champagne, I boldly took one, looking out onto the beach while I drank it, unsure of how I'd gotten here. Unsure of what here really was.

The dancing stopped but then it started again, and I assumed that was the mother-son dance, and then it stopped again, and the toasts began, which I heard vaguely. I listened closely to the waves crashing among the sand and the sea gulls in the background, taking myself back to the childhood days where things were simple and boys were people who thought of girls as weirdoes with cooties.

"You missed the cake cutting."

His voice brought on a batch of butterflies in the pit of my empty stomach. My palms immediately grew sweaty, and my tongue tied around my tonsils, hoping some way or another I'd choke and have to be sent to the hospital.

I took a deep breath, and then turned around, forcing a smile to my lips. "Patrick," I acknowledged coolly.

He went to say something, but stopped and then walked up to where I stood leaning against the banister, and looked out onto the sea. I turned around and looked out too.

We sat in a silence that wasn't at all awkward until the song changed abruptly. It was Hero by Enrique Iglesias. Subconsciously, I found myself smiling, a song that no matter how many times you listened to it, could never get old.

To my surprise, Patrick turned to me, and despite myself and the instincts that told me not to, I turned to him to, and he took my hand and led me away from the banister and I let him because I was stupid.

There we were, undoubtedly mistaken as one of the many teen couples in Harbor Springs, but undoubtedly confused about what we were together. It was just a moment in time where breathing wasn't an option and all my other senses were in overdrive and my heart was bound to break through my chest.

It was the feel of his fingers along my waist, and the scent of his cologne. And the way the back of his neck felt under my hands. It was the smoky look in his equally smoky eyes, and everything in between.

But most importantly, it was the way I wanted him to kiss me.

I was actually sure he would kiss me.

As he leaned closer to me, his head dipping to be level with mine, I searched for any logic reason not to kiss him. My mind answered with a picture of my dad. As if that weren’t the grossest thing to think of when you were about to kiss someone, but it was also a good reason not to kiss Patrick.

I pulled away from Patrick, watching his soft expression quickly switch to shock as the realization that I was rejecting him set in. My heart was beating loud in my ears, the music being drowned out momentarily.

"I-I'm sorry."