Emergency Contact(33)

Mark was already seated when she arrived. The way his eyes lit up as she opened the door sent a small wave of revulsion through her.

“Hi, baby.” He stood from the booth, hugged her, and—horror—handed her a single red rose. It was wrapped in cellophane. And it appeared as if it had spent some time living in a Circle K.

Penny smiled, took the flower—hesitated—then drew her nose to it.

It smelled of printer cartridges.

“It’s stupid,” said Mark tenderly. He was wearing a powder-blue dress shirt and silver basketball shorts with flip-flops. “But I wanted to get you something.”

He was nervous, which made her nervous. Any established couple within stone’s throw would’ve cringed in sympathy.

“You hate it, don’t you?” he asked tentatively.

“No, it’s great.” Penny thought of the box of chocolates that the mailman had given her mom.

“You look beautiful,” he said, admiring her dress. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you not wearing black.”

Penny smiled stiffly. “Uh, yeah. Thanks.”

They ordered: tortilla soup for her, biscuits with sausage gravy for him.

“Not that I don’t love you in black,” he said quickly, handing his plastic menu to their server. “I love you in anything.”

Penny prayed he didn’t follow with, “I’d love you out of anything.” Heh heh.

On their first night sharing a room, at the mention of a “boyfriend,” Jude had set up a system. She would sleep at Mal’s if Penny needed, in Jude’s words, “a conjugal visit.” Jude had rabbited the air quotes wearing this ridiculous smirk. Penny threw a pillow at her.

She could imagine such a visit.

First, she pictured Mark naked. That part was easy. Not entirely unpleasant.

Then she imagined his pressure on top of her, mashing her, grinding away, with that well-meaning smile, calling her babybabybaby while she became catatonic and wanted to drown.

See, she could imagine it; she just couldn’t imagine wanting it.

Penny wanted to be normal. She was eighteen, for Christ’s sake, a respectable age to start having healthy consensual sex. Sexy sex with someone sexy.

Penny’s mind went to Sam. Tattoos. Scowl. Crinkly eyed laugh. She thought about how his veiny, inked arms would feel encircling her body. The heat emanating from his chest. How he would smell. It was the most pornographic scenario her mind had mustered in public.

Still, she wasn’t breaking up with Mark because of Sam. At least not in the sense that Mark was the only thing standing in the way of her and Sam being together. That was nuts. It was more that Sam was a type of human Penny couldn’t have previously fathomed. Sam was proof of life on other planets. If a Sam existed, she couldn’t be with a Mark. Not even if she couldn’t be with a Sam. To Penny it made perfect sense.

Their food came.

They’d both ordered wet food. It was a tactical error. Penny wasn’t in the mood for wet food. Eating it or observing it.

Mark’s plate glistened under a thick blanket of creamy, greasy, white gravy. Penny thought about how it would form a skin if left to cool. Penny watched Mark use the back of his fork to mash the bits of sausage into the biscuit and the sauce into a kind of paste.

Her small bowl of watery broth with chips floating on top and sprigs of green didn’t look so great either.

“Oh, no baby,” he lamented. “You forgot to ask for no cilantro. Want me to send it back? We’ll tell them you’re allergic.”

Penny peered down at the offending frond. Did Mark hate cilantro? She had no idea. His deep concern about the situation was written on his features, his thin upper lip lending an air of determination to his childlike face. Penny wondered if Mark was capable of physically hurting her. Or if he’d cry. She wondered how mad his mad could get.

Penny couldn’t take it anymore.

“We should break up,” she said.

He stared at her uncomprehending for a moment, then recoiled as if he’d been struck. His eyebrows scrambled skyward to his hairline. They didn’t watch Avengers.

? ? ?

“You’re back early.” Jude barely looked up from her laptop. She was sprawled on the floor with an apple core lying on the carpet beside her.

“Did he like your dress?”

“Yeah,” said Penny, walking into the bathroom. Jude followed, continuing to talk to her from the other side of the door.

“I called my dad.”

“Yeah?”

“I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about changing my major though.”

Penny sighed and washed her face. She unzipped the dress and pulled on her robe.

“You know,” said Jude, repositioning herself on Penny’s bed, “for the record, I think you could absolutely look slutty if you wanted to.”

Penny laughed.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Penny said.

“Did Mark get mad?”

“Yeah.”

Mark had been enraged. In fact, he’d been so angry that it was the first time Penny had thought he seemed truly . . . masculine. Penny didn’t need Dr. Greene to tell her how messed up that was. When Mark let her have it, she zoned out. He’d called her a freak, which hardly qualified as observant. Penny yawned.