Penelope pouts her lips and squeezes her eyeballs shut, scrunching her nose.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"I'm thinking."
"Looks like a lot of effort to think."
~~
Penelope is a local sunshine girl trying to get through life and make friends. S...
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"Can i hold your hand?"
My lips can't help but curl into a smile.
I take my hand off the steering wheel and wrap it on her upper thigh rubbing it gently.
She wraps the tips of her fingers around mine and her thumb rubs my rough hands.
She calms all the anxiety in my body. Whenever i'm touching her, whenever she's touching me. I feel calm.
There's nothing else in my mind but our skin touching.
"Do you ever think about how everyone complains the years are too short, but why don't they just make it longer. Like, as a world we can just add extra months in the year and bam, problem fixed."
"What else can you fix, hm, sweetheart?"
"Uhmmmm i can fix poverty. The government could just give the poor people money."
"Money would have no value then, P."
"But everyone would be happy and healthy."
I nod. All she wants is everyone to be happy.
"Wait, i left my bike at the garage."
"Just stay at my house."
I want her stay. I haven't slept properly since she last came over.
I haven't wanted to sleep in my bed because it smells like her in there. And i don't want that smell to ever fade, so i've been sleeping in the spare bedroom.
But my bed is so much more comfortable.
"I can't stay over." She whispers fiddling with my ring.
"Why not?"
"I have to go home to mama and papa."
"Can you ask to stay out? It's fucked you should even have to ask."
"But i live with them, and that's how it works."
"I want you to stay."
"I really want to stay too."
"Then stay."
She pulls her phone out her bum pocket and begins typing on her phone before putting it between her thighs.
She exhales a breathe of air and her legs bounce up and down, "It will be fine. Yeah. Fine."
She's getting so worked up over asking to sleep at someone's house. My house.
She's twenty, she shouldn't have to ask to sleepover.
Her phone vibrates and she quickly responds.
She gulps, "I can stay."
I smile, "Good."
"I like it when you smile." She says as i pull up to the carpark of my apartment building.
