Chapter Text
Two hours of traffic, four wayward curves up the road, one long dead end road and she had made it. Penelope took a moment to let her nerves settle, grabbed her purse and reluctantly got out. None of her many excuses had worked. She had let her mother talk her into coming. It will be fun, she said, everyone will be here, just like old times. Once again her precious few days of paid leave were being sucked up by her family and the loud next door neighbors.
Penelope heaved her bag from the trunk of her ancient Toyota Corolla and slammed the lid, the sound loud enough that she heard a bird fly away above her. Everyone else had already arrived at the old lake house hours beforehand and she was the last in a line of oversized SUVs. The loud chorus of her sisters as they yelled at their kids could be heard from an acre away.
The gravel crunched under her sandals and she tried to not trip in the potholes along the drive. She couldn’t remember how she used to run barefoot when she was a kid. Her feet must have had one giant callus. As Penelope made it closer, step by step, her bag kicking up the dirt on her heels, her heart started beating faster. She paused to adjust her shoulder tote and right her roller bag. The lights were on in the kitchen and she could see her mothers outline at the sink.
Thank god no one had come to help her. It wasn’t the exertion. Her sisters might not believe her, but she was currently cycling forty miles a week, outside of a gym no less. No, she needed these last moments to brace herself before hearing all the comments, all the backhanded compliments, all the helpful suggestions for her life. She did not want to talk about him. Or anything. She just wanted to be left alone and have no one offer helpful advice or hear comments that started with “if you just”. They can just keep it to themselves, please and thank you.
Penelope’s hopes for the week hinged on whether her mother had set aside her quiet room up in the attic. She was loath to survive the week on the pull out in the den, pulling things out of her suitcase and shoving everything in the corner in the morning. It was her room and she was quite sure that one of her sisters could also survive on a pull out sofa. But of course, the husbands and kids. Phillipa and Prudence always pretended everything was all happy families and still kept secrets between the two of them. At least she had her little sister Felicity.
The day before, Phillipa had texted that the neighbors were around, and that it looked like everyone had come. Penelope had grown up with them, deep down loved them, but the group of them along with her family was more than she could cope with currently. She had sent a thumbs up as a response and went along dazed packing for the week, throwing at least six different face creams, three paperbacks, and an unnecessary amount of socks for June in her bag.
The next door summer houses of the Featheringtons and Bridgertons had the folklore of a damn stupid Capulet and Montegue dramedy. Four daughters one one side, constantly best friends or enemies of the four daughters and four sons next door. Twelve children who had spent their entire summers entwined all because Violet Bridgerton had mentioned to Portia Featherington during Penelope’s first grade drop off, that the house next door was for sale.
The tug of war between the two broods lasted every summer from the first week of Summer until the school schedules came calling. Kids would come and go. Camps and Aunts and Grandparents would be visited. A steady stream of activity rumbled across the patchy grass between. Over the years, every laughing kid had at one point become another heartbroken teen. A lifetime of emotion felt over summers of popsicles, dirt paths, swimming, and not so secret activities.
Penelope had lived her favorite memories here with her best friends, and had kept those moments alive in the stories she wrote in her off hours. She had met herself and decided who she would become and plotted with the one person who taught her never to doubt herself.
Penelope kicked her sandals off just inside the door and braced herself to make it through the evening by keeping a smile on her face for her mom and sisters, saying as little as humanly possible, which was difficult to say the least, until she could escape.
It had taken all her remaining energy, but Penelope plastered a smile on her face and made it through the first evening back with her mom and sisters. It was just easier, she could be herself in the morning.
Hours passed by and in the chaos of bedtime, Penelope stepped out the side door unnoticed by her PJ clad nieces running away from their mothers. The sound of the screen door behind her almost gave her away. She walked across the concrete patio, only the single bulb of the patio light behind her, until her bare feet touched the damp grass and she could finally take a deep breath. She wrapped her green cardigan tight around her and took in the branches of the great oaks crawling toward the open lake, the millions of bugs humming along in the moonlit sky.
The clink of a bottle broke her out of her haze. Across the expanse of grass between her and the blue clapboard house next door, a man stood on the wraparound porch, a hum vibrating from the walls behind him, lit by the warm glow emitted from the tall double hung windows and a single jam jar lamp.
Penelope knew who it was even in the shadows. She could spot him across a field, six rows apart in a lecture hall, or across a terminal if she had to. She didn’t have to guess who it was. Of the eight siblings, he was always the one waiting for her.
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The house was stuffed to the brim with brothers and sisters and children and helpful inlaws and a nosy mother to the point that Colin was going to scream at the next person to ask how he was doing. After dinner he waded through the crowd of his family surrounding the kitchen island and worked his way toward the side porch, grabbing a beer from the fridge along the way. He had managed to break away without anyone noticing, before one of his nephews could tackle him again, and he slipped out the screen door, careful to not let it slam. He leaned on the railing and downed his beer in two gulps and set the bottle on the floor boards at his feet.
Across the way he could see that the Featherington house was as busy as his. It seemed that some traditions never die and the families always spent the first week of summer on the lake if they could. It had been that way since they were kids, but the long summers had shifted to scattered weeks when each of them could manage to get time off from school or work. But the first week of the summer was sacred and his family all moved mountains to make sure they were together, except for the last few years when he managed to be too busy to attend.
The memories of this place were buried deep within him, sometimes much more than his childhood home. The two families ran wild together in the summers, in good years like Swiss Family Robinson, in off years like Lord of the Flies.
This place was where Colin had figured out what he wanted most in life and that it had little to do with being the best and making the most money. He had learned to be alone here, he had learned to explore. Mostly, he had learned what it was like to have a true best friend, someone who never judged and only seemed to care for him, just as he was.
Colin had arrived only a couple of hours before. There was so much to update them about and he didn’t have the energy to do it without a good night’s sleep. Not that he was likely to get it at the house as he had lost his room to his nephews long ago. But he would make due with the bunk bed he shared with Greg, even though he was 29 years old. That’s what ear plugs were for. He had hoped that the busyness of the first night would spare him from too many questions that hopefully could wait until the morning.
The evening was chillier than usual and he pulled his blue and grey flannel tight around him. Most of the lights around the yard were off for the evening, his mom said it was better for the birds.
He was staring off towards the lake in a daze, but he couldn’t help but drift to watch the commotion of the house next door. The place was buzzing as much as his and he knew he just had to wait. Her family was as consuming as his but he knew she would make an escape.
Jolted by the loud creak of the screen door that seemed to echo between, he watched her slip outside and walk across the patio until she was out of the view of her house's big windows. The night light behind her made her red hair glow.
He watched every step, hoping she would look over. He knew he was being silly, he could call out, he should call out. He went to move down the porch towards her and knocked over his bottle. He knelt and picked it up and then as he stood, across the lawn, the glow of the bare bulbs cutting across the grass, she turned his way and he could finally breathe.
She was the only one Colin ever hoped to see.