Past Lives

February 19th, 2015

The wave of nausea and regret hits Penelope like a freight train. She never wakes up in her own bed, in her own home, with someone curled around her. Certainly not someone who first made that pendant around her neck burn like a wildfire and then calm down seemingly overnight.

When her eyes open, her stomach rolls. His curls have come undone, splayed out across her navy pillowcase, his lips are puffy and parted, quiet snores pouring out. He’s covered up to his chest in matching sheets, dotted with constellations and planets. He looks softer and more at ease than she’s seen him in the past week. She’s terrified of what comes next.

She tries to imagine how he’ll react by mulling over the night before, but she realizes how little she remembers of it. She knows they talked for hours, but she doesn’t feel like she knows him any better. All she remembers is the way her chest felt tight when he agreed with something she said and how her stomach flipped at the feel of his lips, nothing she wants any part of.

So she slips out of bed, desperate to attempt to conceal the most personal parts of her strewn throughout the house.

Her head and heart are racing as she flies down the spiral staircase. She turns around bottles and jars to hide labels, moves knick knacks in front of obvious book titles on the shelves, anything. He’s forced his way into her existence enough, he doesn’t get to see anymore without her consent. And she isn’t ready. She isn’t supposed to ever be ready, it’s nobody’s business but her own.

None of it matters though, not when there’s already heavy footsteps winding down the staircase and Penelope is absolutely panicking. He must’ve felt her slip out of bed, heard her feet down the staircase.

“Penelope?” his accent is thicker, his voice softer.

She looks up at him, jeans pulled back up carelessly and loosely around his hips, the button done up but not the zipper, and his hair a mess. This is not her fate. This is heartbreak.

Her voice is strained and her throat is tight as she looks away, nails digging into her palms as she imagines all the conclusions he’s coming to about her living room, “You should go.”

His tongue swipes across his lips, pink and plump, and she gets the feeling he knows something she doesn’t, “Why’s that?”

She watches his stupid, dopey, sleepy eyes drift around the room, she hopes he thinks she’s just absolutely batshit, “You didn’t sign up for this.”

He didn’t. He couldn’t have possibly imagined his soulmate would be someone like this. Someone with jars of strange liquids and books of handed down words. Someone who has to charm her keys to keep from losing them and talks to her cat more than anyone else in her life. Someone who requests books online because she’s too afraid of what the librarian will say when she asks for them by title. Someone who has more recipes for herbal teas for the soul than actual words of wisdom. A fucking witch who doesn’t believe soulmates are worth it, instead that being solitary is safety. He doesn’t deserve this, he shouldn’t have been given this, her and all her quirks and fucked up-ness. They don’t match up in this lifetime, they can’t.

He shrugs it off, crooked smile adorning his lips, and for a half second she thinks he’s going to say something stupid. Something offensive that he can’t take back, that she’ll never forgive him for, something about liking his girls insane or liking a challenge.

He doesn’t, of course he fucking doesn’t.

“My mum was a witch. Though she much prefered the term enchantress.”

She can’t tell if the world has stopped spinning, or sped up. All she knows is that her skin feels too tight and too hot. She’s realizing just how little she knows of him, how cruel she’s been without ever letting him in an inch. But she still just can’t.

That doesn't change anything, it wouldn’t have for her parents either.

Through a closed throat and gritted teeth, she repeats, “You should go.”

She watches his face fall, his soft, sleepy smile fade, his green eyes dim. She watches him look away, nod the slightest, dash upstairs for his clothes. She watches, standing in a room filled with the deepest parts of her, until the door shuts and she is all alone again.

*

Penelope calls out of work for a week straight. She doesn’t know what else to do, what other choice she has. By Monday, she has a raging cold anyway and certainly that’s a good enough excuse. But when Thursday rolls around again, she’s still got the shakes and the sweats and she wonders if maybe it’s something more.

She’s late, as usual. Maria is on the phone, Gina is sitting around tapping her foot impatiently to hand over that hideous outfit. Harry is nowhere to be seen.

“She’s talking about selling again,” Gina nods back towards the counter when Penelope dumps her bag on the ground.

She can hear their boss talking animatedly, colorful curse words thrown in carelessly, but Penelope shrugs it off and helps her coworker out of the shawl. Maria talks about selling the shop twice a month, at least.

He doesn’t show up. Not after Maria’s rushed out the door, not after Gina’s stayed an extra ten minutes as not to leave her alone.

Penelope hasn’t been alone in the shop at night in a long, long time. She hates it. Everything is tense and she’s on edge constantly, unable to keep up her act very well or stop her hands from shaking.

By the end of the shift her head is pounding and she’s just plain miserable, heart beating with anxiety and keys secured between her knuckles just in case. She has to remind herself she’s seen worse, in this life and the ones before. One foot in front of the other and head down, she’ll be at the train before she knows it.

She hardly makes it out the door.

“I’m sorry,” she doesn’t even have time to register him there, leaning up against the brick wall, waiting.

She knows that should be her, waiting for him just to apologize. She is the one that agreed to drinks, the one that got completely obliterated, the one that took him home to bed. Her guilt triples, nearly buckling her knees.

“Harry…” she trails off, swallowing harshly and forcing herself to turn to lock up.

“I-I am,” his voice is strained, full of emotions she can’t read, doesn’t want to, “Just. Let me apologize, yeah?”

And she knows he deserves more than that, so she nods, unable to speak past the lump in her throat.

“Th-that shouldn’t have been how we started,” he begins with a heavy sigh, “Whether you want this or not, I-I shouldn’t have let it begin like that. I was a massive prick and I’m so sorry, Penelope.”

His words swirl around her head, she vaguely realizes it is no longer pounding, her guilt building yet again.

“You haven’t done anything,” she shakes her head, trying to find the thoughts and feelings she’s buried so deeply, “I-I should’ve just left it. I’m sorry for throwing you out after all that a-and just everything.”

“Do you regret it?” his voice is impossibly softer, timid even.

Penelope swallows, presses her lips together because she already knows his answer, “Which part?”

She looks over at him because she can’t help it. She needs some indicator of how he’s feeling, what he’s thinking, even if she already has a scary feeling that she already knows, that she’s supposed to know.

“Any of it.”

It’s her worst nightmare come to life right in front of her. Him, waiting on an answer, her, forced to confront and confess to everything she’s tried to bury inside of herself in the past week.

Harry’s shuffling his feet in those stupid, ragged boots. His long legs are crossed at the ankle nervously, covered in tight, tight jeans. His eyes are trained on the ground, hidden beneath the brim of the beanie pulled over his hair and ears. He doesn’t look much like heartbreak anymore. It terrifies her.

“Getting that drunk,” her voice is strained and unrecognizable even to herself, “Kicking you out and generally being a shithead. Not apologizing first.”

He glances up, bottom lip caught between his teeth and eyes wide like a deer caught in headlights, “That all?”

She manages a hint of a nod and his chest seems to decompress then.

“I really am sorry,” she manages, forcing herself to look away, “For everything.”

“Don’t,” he shakes his head, “Lemme make it up to you.”

Her stomach twists uncomfortably as she glances at him, she should say no, “No more drinks, Harry.”

He shakes his head, brows furrowed together, “Dinner.”

“Dinner?” she raises her brows, already trying to calculate how much is left in her checking account.

He nods sheepishly, “At mine. I-I just can’t leave things unsettled like this. Then you can ignore me for the rest of ever.”

It’s a bad idea, a stupid, reckless, terrible idea. But she knows she’s already agreed to worse and if she’s honest her stomach feels the best it has in days and she’s starving. She at least owes him this, as an apology or something.

*

Going back to his place is quiet and awkward if Penelope is honest. He lives a train stop away, in the heart of the city, the exact opposite of anything she’d ever want.

His apartment is small, on the seventh floor. The walls are thin and the linoleum is cold. But despite all that, she thinks it might represent who he is better than her own home (though that might have to do more with Penelope as a person than anything else).

“‘S not much,” he shrugs as he holds the door open for her and flicks the lights on, “I’ll put the heat on.”

She notices how his cheeks flush, but lets it go. Sometimes she wishes she were psychic instead of a witch.

He’s right, it isn’t much, but it’s homey and welcoming. Something she envies deeply. It’s a little one bedroom, the front door leads to a small foyer and the kitchen (surprisingly good sized). The living room is crammed with an overstuffed sofa and arm chair but it’s cozy, complete with throw blankets and pillows and unlit candles. She can tell from the open door across the room that the only bedroom is the smallest room. It isn’t at all like the bachelor pad she’d been expecting.

“I-is, um, pasta alright?” he leads her into the kitchen and waves at the small breakfast bar, “Make yourself at home. I’ve had the chicken marinating anyway.”

Penelope raises her brows, he is far more domestic than she is, “Perfect.”

She watches as he pulls out various pots and pans, fiddles with the stove, before finally settling across from her with a cutting board and a few peppers and onions.

His cheeks are pink again as he begins dicing and chopping, “I’m sorry. Again. Even if you still want nothing to do with me, that shouldn’t have been how I let us begin, you know?”

She shakes her head, watching his fingers, careful and trained, “I shouldn’t have either.”

He shakes his head back and glances up nervously, “It was me. A-and I sort of was hoping tonight could be a do over?”

Her stomach knots a little more, but she knows it’s the least she can do after all she put him through, “That sounds nice.”

They get to talking, really, genuinely talking, without her even realizing it. It’s even easier than when they were drunk. Her built up walls and guards never even had a chance this time. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t bring up the prospect of them, of soulmates and former lives together. Maybe it’s because he’s charming and she’s intrigued. Maybe, as much as she hopes it isn’t, it’s fate.

“You’re a chef, aren’t you?” her elbows are resting on the counter, her chin propped up in her hands.

“No,” he laughs, having moved on from chopping to spicing, “Not even close. You’re a terrible psychic.”

Her nose wrinkles as she makes a face, “What’re you then?”

His eyes glisten when he glances up at her with a crooked smirk, “A sociology major.”

She hadn’t been expecting it, but she sees it now. Even with how little she knows about him.

“What’re you?”

She presses her lips together, fiddles with a ring on her left hand as the discovered secret still weighs heavily on her chest, “Anthropology.”

His eyes light up again as he laughs at the irony and she feels a sweeping sense of relief, “That’s incredible!”

She shrugs, “What do you wanna do?”

It sends him off on a tangent, a flurry of pink lips and fluttering hands and red cheeks. He wants to save the world, he tells her. Put as many broken pieces back together with his bare hands as he can. It’s admirable, she’ll admit, but impossible and a bit heartbreaking. She admires it though, that reckless and fearless sense of importance, of wanting to make people happy and the world easier.

When he asks her the same, she tries to shrug it off, it ties in too closely to things she isn’t ready to talk about it. She tells him she wants to travel, that’s the truth. She’s tired of studying people and cultures and places in books and pictures. She wants to meet them, see them, hear their sounds and taste their foods. She wants to have it all, to see and experience and live it all. In just one lifetime.

She learns this time around that they are polar opposites, but not really all that different. He loves the city and she hates it, but they both sleep with their bedroom windows cracked at night. He prefers patterned shirts and she prefers black, but they both like to thrift. He believes everything happens for a reason and she believes if you work hard enough it will all fall into place, but deep down they both just want to be independent and happy. But for now, they’re both stuck in school and that damn little psychic shop, one with an herbal tea for everything and the other a comfort food recipe. She fears they’re like fire and gasoline, completely different but meant to fuel each other just the same (until it all burns down around them).

She also learns that this guilt is heavier and stronger than almost any she’s ever felt before. He’s not at all what she expected, he’s not supposed to be witty and charming and enthralling. That pull in her chest isn’t supposed to be there still, that one urging her to let him in piece by piece.

“C-can I ask you something?” he asks when it’s been quiet for a few minutes as he dishes out the pasta, “Again?”

Her skin tingles with nerves but she nods, short and simple before she loses the nerve to.

“Why don’t you believe in this?” he waves his free hand between the two of them, to clarify what he means, but she already knows.

And for the life of her she can’t remember what she told him that night, buzzing with alcohol. Which means she must be honest, something she’s owed him all along. Worst of all that goddamn pendant is still hanging around his neck, and hers too.

“It’s suffocating,” she admits because it’s the first thing she comes up with and the first thing she thinks about when she wakes up in the morning with the pendant weighing on her chest like a death sentence, “It won’t end well. It never does. Why do you think we had to find each other all over again? I-I can’t need someone that badly, I don’t want to. I don’t want to need you so badly that I spend the rest of forever finding and losing you.”

Her heart is pounding more than it was when she found him outside the shop. She’s terrified of his reaction, she has no idea how to gauge it or what to expect. She doesn’t know him at all, no matter how familiar the way he’s looking at her feels.

“But how do you know it won’t be worth it, if you aren’t even willing to give it a try?” his voice is soft and sincere and for the first time in a long time, she’s left without a retort, “This lifetime isn’t as short as you think it is.”

Instead, for the hundredth time that night, she shrugs it off, her brain still swirling but unable to process his words. He doesn’t know the half of it. And she won’t give it to him. Not yet. Even if that feeling is urging her to. So she drops it.

Penelope hasn’t quite pinned him down yet, she isn’t sure she ever will, but when she bites into the food, she knows there’s a reason his kitchen is bigger than his bedroom.