Chapter Text
AN ACCOUNT OF UNREQUITED LOVE by P. A. F.
day 227 - the dirty laundry edition (extract)
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As it turns out, the most marvellous men in the world can be felled by something as mundane as missing their favourite sock.
It has a hole over the big toe. It has been to more countries than I have. It used to be grey-blue, now it's grey-brown. It used to be a privilege to wash, but now a part of me wants to lose it for real rather than just under the sofa cushions, because I hate it with a passion.
C, sometimes I think I know more about your dirty laundry than you.
Hands on his hips, wearing nothing but blue pyjama pants and charity shop socks from Cyprus, Colin extended a hand to Penelope. “Care to dance?”
“No,” she said, swallowing as she glanced at the hard lines of Colin’s torso. His hair was rumpled with the echoes of a good night’s sleep, falling across his brow.
With renewed vigour, Penelope chewed the pen between her teeth and angled her body further away from him to hide her notebook. The term notebook itself was generous, as the spine had long since pulled apart from the clump of pages, but she was nostalgic, and nothing if not pragmatic.
Besides, the kitchen window seat was meant to ensure that all Colin-concentrated thoughts belonged on her blog and not in her brain, even if Colin himself was making a convincing argument for the cause. She was pressed so far into the corner between wall and window that the pigeons could probably read every foolish word.
Outside, London was typically dull and grey for February, so pigeons and all other suspects were attracted to the gentle glow of the jar lights scattered across the kitchen alongside their other curiosities: postcards pinned against a map spread out above the sink, glittering wine glasses from glassblowers in Venice, and Colin himself with his stretched grin as he tried to calculate how to best change her opinion.
“I don’t smell, Pen,” he tried, flexing his fingers as if his hand was cramping. His cheeks probably were too, with the effort of his million watt smile.
Colin was a charmer, and therefore prone to scrambling for the affections of those in his orbit, which was a shallow habit. But there was comfort in the familiar, and Penelope knew Colin and the mild-mannered facade he never quite seemed to shake. His attention, particularly before noon, was always reliant on his impulsivity, or his guilt.
That idiosyncratic smile was not borne of his fickle tendency to chase his stray thoughts, like a dog chasing his tail, suddenly abandoning the warpath because he became hungry. It was wide enough to hide a tall secret, as well as worm its way into your heart, which was the ultimate clue. Thus remained only one interpretation: he was about to do something which would put her feelings through the wringer.
Just because Penelope knew that any coming compliments were meant to ease a blow that was yet to strike, didn’t mean she wasn’t going to let Colin spin her about the kitchen until they were dizzy and their touch lingered a second too long.
She sighed, and said amicably, “Who am I to waste the years we spent in classical dance lessons for our mothers’ amusement?” Rising, she allowed him to tug her into hold, before adjusting his grip on her hand so their fingers were perfectly entwined. He cocked his head to the side, but she didn’t allow him the satisfaction of getting to lead, driving forwards and spinning him away from her.
Uncowed, Colin said evenly, “That’s the spirit.” His toes knocked against the side of her foot in the awkward lull before muscle memory prevailed, and his smile slipped slightly with concentration. Following her lead, he ducked under her arm and moved in clumsy circles around the kitchen to an imaginary song, fingers ghosting across her back as his arms maintained the correct shape. “If there are people born into this world as dancers, Penelope, you’re one of them.”
She laughed as a reflex, then snorted with more honesty. “Nobody is a dancer without a partner, Colin, not even me.” They traded steps, the mechanics of their footwork leaving them perfectly in sync with each other: she was breathing in time with him, dual heartbeats thundering across the quiet morning and fooling her into a sense of peace. There was an art to dancing, to the lack of clarity it afforded you and the disorientation that would follow, and it challenged her like a dare.
Her secret didn’t really feel like a secret when they were dancing. It was not looming over her, threatening to crush her, it was enveloping her like the sweetness of coming home, like Colin collapsing his hold into an awkward one-armed hug as his movements became too sloppy to maintain the charade.
“I’ll try not to miss you too much,” she informed him, words light on his shoulder as she halted her steps and returned his hug. Her pressure was delicate on his back, and she felt his sigh pass through him.
“I’m not going to ask how you knew,” Colin said, pulling away so he could meet her eye. He waved his hands enthusiastically as he spoke, one bouncing off her chest. “It's Germany this time. Just imagine Black Forest gateau from the Black Forest.”
“You’ll have to bring me some,” she said, in a tone that sounded too soft, like an overripe fruit.
“I’d bring you the whole forest if I could,” Colin returned, having caught the change in her voice, “you know that, Pen?”
Her throat tightened. The cords in her chest were suddenly taut, as she shifted reproachfully under Colin’s searching stare. She was all too aware of the stiffness in his chest, sticky with exertion, and muscles pulled into place by his posture.
With concentration, she said, “It would never fit in our flat. Besides, you’re my friend. It’s your sworn duty to at least try.”
“Of course,” he proclaimed, tension stretching from thin to nonexistent as he sidestepped from his position in front of her, straining to open the fridge even as momentum betrayed him, the heavy duty door making a thunk against his arm. Colin winced, and so did Penelope, quick to swat him away and hold the door open long enough to recover his breakfast sandwich.
“On second thoughts,” Penelope declared, “bring me a new fridge.” She deposited the clingfilm parcel on the counter and examined the red welt on his inner arm. “Do you need a plaster?”
He was shivering away from her cool touch, dramatising what would probably disappear with his attention span, but she was insistent with her judgement of it, mapping it with her fingers.
“You’re too good to me, Pen, you know that?” he said light-heartedly, in what was probably (most definitely) a joke.
“I know.” She retracted her hand, her fingers tingling, and avoided his gaze because it really wasn’t (in his wildest dreams) a joke at all.
—
AN ACCOUNT OF UNREQUITED LOVE by P. A. F.
day 255 - the homecoming edition (extract)
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I can’t remember seeing the Mona Lisa.
In a room full of secondhand emotions, blood and tears on canvases, C had been the real work of art. There was a story in the arch of his eyebrow, a token of the charm which painted him as nothing more than a mild-mannered heartbreaker, and in the scruff of his summer beard, an attempt to differentiate him from his brothers which made him look like their uncle. The flash of his eyes was either a warning sign of his temper, or an indication of the next whim he was going to chase across the continent. The writing on his arm was a small library of phrases he was itching to illustrate later in his travel journal.
C could never be an artist’s muse, because he is so desperately alive. No painting could ever capture his smooth boarding school accent, or his tendency to leave all the plates in the sink.
That trip to Paris had been the first time I had run away from existence with C, when I’d still believed the glow of the Eiffel Tower at night would light up my face and he’d kiss me slowly like we were drinking in the moonlight, but really I’d be drinking in him.
For all that he’s a charmer, he’s never tried to charm me. In Italy, we ate thousand euro meals and the waitress slipped C her number on a napkin, after he insisted I was closer to his sister than several of his actual sisters. In Portugal, I turned red with mosquito bites while he racked up a bar tab that had made me choke. In Greece, I’d sat in the hotel room listening to break-up songs and used not a single tissue from the box next to my bed.
C could never be an artist’s muse, because then the narrative would be something tragic about falling out of love, or a bed of broken promises. And while C isn’t interested in suffering any casualties of the heart, he also clearly isn’t interested in being anything more than he already is to me.
He is C, and he is the one person I'd follow off the edge of a cliff.
Centuries ago, men went to sea and their lovers waited for them.
There was something decidedly less poetic about Penelope in an airport, sticky with sweat, listening to the announcement that Colin’s flight had been delayed.
Chewing her pen, she rolled up the pages of her draft, and looked around the small, crowded room for something to catch her attention.
“Hello, I’m right here! And I don’t only exist in your head,” her sister Felicity huffed, folding her arms and sinking further down the plastic bench. Her bucket hat had fallen at a perfect angle for a spy movie over her eyes, probably saving her from a classic younger sister eye roll.
Penelope bit the inside of her cheek. “You have no idea what I write about, Felicity.”
“Right,” she said, tapping her nails dutifully against the armrest between them, electing to ignore the ugly stains on the floor and the general lingering atmosphere of germs. “There’s nothing remotely tall, dark and handsome in there.”
“I prefer brunettes,” she returned steadily, filing away her papers inside the front pocket of her backpack for protection. The hum of humidity was making her skittish.
Sticking out her tongue, Felicity said, “Speaking of brunettes, why is Colin Charming worth this much anyway?” As if anticipating her sister’s reply, she said stubbornly, “Honestly, Pen, nobody cares if he hates being called a charmer. We all do it regardless. It's his thing, like how Benedict is the arty one, otherwise nobody can tell them apart.”
“I can,” she said loyally, sitting up straighter to prompt her sister to do the same, although more reluctantly.
With a groan, Felicity said, “He’s conditioned you. You could probably find his shirts in a blind smell test.” She wrinkled up her own nose at that. “I know you could, so what's the deal? Why haven’t you gone crazy and killed him yet?”
“You never used to be so nosey,” Penelope said in a last-ditch attempt to talk about anything else. A man with a cat nestled to his chest sunk into the third seat in their row, to the left of Felicity.
“I grew up, and then I grew a spine.” As if to exaggerate this, she corrected her posture for the second time that minute.
“You got grounded,” her older sister’s pointed response was, then with more dignity, “and you spent your childhood in close proximity to Hyacinth Bridgerton. If Benedict is the artist, Hyacinth is the meddler.” Penelope smoothed down the front of her dress, eyes flickering between Felicity and the yawning cat, whose coat matched their signature red hair. “Just because your life is on pause, doesn’t mean you need to reinvent mine.”
“I just want to understand,” Felicity blurted, before running out of steam mid-sentence. She bashfully relaxed in her seat, blush spreading across her freckled cheeks. “I just want to understand why you put up with the guy, Pen.”
Every possible answer chased across Penelope’s features, each shot stronger with lies and false confidence than the next.
Felicity cocked her head to the side, still reigning in herself after her outburst. “I mean, when I was younger-“
“You are younger, Felicity,” interrupted Penelope, because if Felicity was as much of a veteran of life as she claimed, she would not be here with her sister as her babysitter while her mother went shopping. She would be making out with Geoffrey Albansdale on the couch, which is how she ended up here in the first place. That was certainly a problem Portia Fearherington could trust Penelope never to cause her.
The cat, who had moved on to licking its paw, looked like it caused significantly more problems than even Portia herself.
“I’m younger than you. But when I was really young, I always thought you and Colin would get married.” Penelope’s breath hitched, and the lies felt they were slipping out of reach. Felicity, however, continued her explanation at full power. “Obviously, I grew out of that. But it means there has to have been another reason you didn’t stay clear of his mess.”
It was at that exact second, as Penelope tried to grasp at a single half-truth to tell her sister, that the cat saved her.
With an angry screech, it sunk teeth into its owner’s hand, and used the confusion to skilfully launch itself from his chest and make an escape across the airport.
Penelope, apparently the cat whisperer amongst her fellow travellers, propelled herself after it at breakneck speed. The sticky drone of her flip-flops echoed across the expansive chamber, which appeared to her as a blur of grey punctuated by seemingly endless rows of plastic blue benches. As she ran, she gained on the cat- who seemed to react despairingly to each new stimulus the unfamiliar territory presented- and the commotion around her grew louder. A stray cheer buzzed through her ears as she stumbled into the hind legs of the cat, flopping like its limbs had turned to jelly onto the floor to lick itself.
Sparing no time in scooping it up, Penelope breathed heavily through her mouth as she cradled the fidgeting cat to her chest, one paw digging into her skin to steady itself, and another batting mournfully after the moth it had paused to observe. It looked at her with one fang unsheathed over its lower lip, as if to tell her it’d had the situation under control and was successfully luring the moth into a false sense of security.
Several feet behind her, and disadvantaged by the crowds, the arrival of the owner was heralded by a series of groaning huffs. He reached over to claim his cat, who struggled in the changeover much to his annoyance, and gave Penelope a slightly dazed but thankful smile. “You saved my guts. This is my nephew’s cat, he’s coming back from Germany today and couldn’t bear to be apart from her any longer.” Carefully, he rubbed the cat’s stomach. “Avocado, say sorry to this nice friend of ours.”
After she had purred and wriggled for a few moments, Avocado the tabby cat yawned, exposing a full set of canines and a long pink tongue. Penelope brushed a knuckle against the top of her head in admiration. “Hey there. You and your person will be home soon, and the world will go quiet again. Until then, try not to stake another territorial claim on the airport.”
“She hates travel,” admitted the uncle, and Penelope fought not to respond with the obvious. “How about you? I didn’t catch your name.”
“Penelope!” yelled someone, wading through the departing crowd, and she elected to ignore Felicity and the incessant demands which had made her such a flight risk.
She gave her most common smile, lips slightly turned up. “I’m Penelope. And I’m not a traveller. It never quite lived up to my expectations, so I gave it up.”
“Don’t make it sound so soul-crushing, Pen,” said another someone, rather briskly, and she turned on her heel to face him with a smile that was much wider and more genuine.
“Colin!” she gasped, her body language curling towards him as he gave her an artful grin. “I thought your flight was delayed.”
“He caught an earlier one because he was missing everybody in London so much,” Felicity said in a rush, dizzy from a moment’s exposure to Colin. Something told Penelope her sister now understood that you didn’t endure Colin, he endured you.
“Everybody in London, you say?” She looked at him squarely, fired up with determination. “Where do I rank on the list?”
Colin rolled his eyes. His skin was barely touched with a tan, so that it looked like a mistake, and his shirt was unbuttoned down most of his chest. As he opened his arms to give her a hug, he whispered into her hair whilst gripping tight, “If I tell you, don’t tell my mother.”
—
AN ACCOUNT OF UNREQUITED LOVE by P. A. F.
day 262 - e’s eureka moment edition (extract)
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Your enemy’s enemy is your friend, and the object of your affection’s sister is your friend too.
It's like a riddle: how many years does it take your best friend, with whom you pinky swore to grow old together by the coast, to realise that you not only knew her brother first, but loved him first too?
In the interest of science, I can tell you that it took E ten years. There were many unknown variables, including that E is notoriously meddlesome and single-minded, but the hypothesis was that she’d give me a hug and donate to my late night ice-cream fund.
Hand on heart, I would very much like to tell you that this is what she did. Alas, she did not.
C knows I am in love with him, and E believed this would have an outcome that was not polite rejection. I am calm in a crisis (unrequited love is a wonder for emotional control) so that was not the worst part.
My friend, my reader, the person who suffers alongside me and my army of metaphors, the worst part is I did not once tell him those three little words myself.
When she was single, Eloise was persistently bored- and in want of company- so Penelope was required to suffer the London which existed outside of her and Colin’s flat.
“A little bird told me,” Eloise said, in an appropriately unhinged fashion for a bottomless brunch with Penelope, “that Colin is, and don’t laugh at me because my source is Kate, looking to settle down.” She gave Penelope a sideways look, and nodded in satisfaction after a few seconds of silence. “I know, bugger that. Now we’re the family disappointments. Even Gregory met someone at university.”
In lieu of a number of disastrous comments she might have made- ranging from squealing to bemoaning Colin’s taste in women- Penelope bit her tongue and said nonplussed, “Francesca is still single until proven otherwise.”
Eloise snorted, rocking back on her chair slightly. They were by the edge of the canal, at an innocent little table with a white tablecloth and white cushions, wiping their mouths with white napkins and surveying a scene of carnage (Eloise’s opinion), or an example of life with young children (as put by Penelope). The restaurant was the pride and joy of an industrial architect, although the décor choices clashed with the exposed brick and hanging plants hiding light bulbs.
“This is not a court of law, Pen,” Eloise said dryly. Her poison of choice was a shandy to Penelope’s mimosa. “The eye sex she has with Michael Stirling proves otherwise.”
“You also said Hyacinth was stringing Gareth St. Clair along to prove a point, and they ran off to Vegas.” Stabbing her poached egg with her fork and watching it bubble over in a sea of yellow yolk, Penelope tried not to reveal how much of a kindred spirit she found Michael Stirling, who had been having interactions with Francesca only someone truly oblivious would call platonic.
Penelope brought a forkful of egg to her mouth. Bridgertons were a special brand of oblivious in affairs of the heart.
“Your mother is not disappointed in you,” she tried, with her mouth full. “And it is certainly not her responsibility to be disappointed in me.”
Her friend groaned animatedly. “Never marry, Penelope. I need you and your refusal to accept the facts with me in my old age.”
“Isn’t that what love is? Refusal to accept the facts?” She said it with a clenched determination that made Eloise tilt her head in thought. “So you will have it one way or another, because you are not getting rid of me, even if I protest at your assessment of my marriage prospects.”
“Marriage prospects,” Eloise said, like it was funny in her mouth. “I do believe you couldn’t have made it sound less romantic.” She narrowed her eyes, head still held at an angle. “Since you and Colin suddenly both want someone to be buried with, maybe I should set you up.”
Penelope choked on her egg. She lowered her fork very slowly, and her blood rushed to her cheeks, her heartbeat thunderous in her ears. “Eloise,” she said, with the pretence of finding her behaviour tedious, but her voice fractured between vowels.
“You’re a terrible liar,” Eloise breathed, her voice low.
Penelope had the makings of a great liar: she was witty, observant and knew where to sink her teeth for blood. But so did Eloise, and it was a beautiful lie in itself.
She was tired, undeniably, of the act. Years had been wasted stealing careful looks across society functions and crying into a pillow instead of a shoulder.
It was her burden, her love, and nobody knew. Nobody, except Eloise’s eyes- which were widening with every second Penelope failed to pick up the pieces of this accusation- and it had always been that way.
“Eloise,” she repeated, this time smooth because she was indeed an excellent liar, “I can’t believe it’s taken you this long.” Deeply, she sighed. “What was it? Did everything dawn on you like-“
“Like a bucket of cold water?” Eloise shook her head in spite of herself. A curled lock had fallen across her face. “I’m sure it will. It was how protective you looked when I said Michael Stirling.” Her eyebrow quirked itself. “There it is again. It made me remember how you’d always tell Francesca to dance with him, and how you wrote to him in India even when she wouldn’t. It’s-“ She broke off, a myriad of emotions struggling on her face. “It’s like that with you and Colin, isn’t it? Our mother elbowing him towards you at all those parties, all the letters you exchanged with him at boarding school without fail. You love him.”
“Yes, I do.”
The words scratched her throat, and they felt nothing like all the times she’d whispered the confession to herself. They did nothing to make Eloise understand the years of torment and duress her heart had endured.
Why should they? Those years belonged to Penelope, and the piece of Colin in her heart.
They did not belong to the headstrong look that was winning the battle of Eloise’s features.
It was no use, but she said anyway, as a plea rather than a request, “Eloise.”
Her friend’s jaw twitched, but she said, “He’s my brother, and you’re… Penelope. I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t tell him.”
A strong gust of wind blew Penelope’s napkin across the table, tumbling down the railing of the canal before being claimed by the murky depths.
Penelope stood up and began to run in the direction of her and Colin’s apartment. It was building in her chest, the irrational hope that Eloise would stop and be confronted with her actions, or that she’d get to him first and finally be free of…
Well, him.
Minutes passed, Penelope’s pace slowing as her head launched a tirade of doubts against the pain in her ribcage, and before she’d constructed any form of plan, she was face-to-face with the entrance to their flat, and her fate.
The door swung open, Colin putting too much weight on the doorknob. “Hi,” he said with a distracting grin. “I heard you coming.”
It hurt so much to see him right then, as she was still overwhelmed with potential choices like spiderwebs in her head. “Hi, Colin.”
He stood to the side to let her in, and then he passed her to sit on the sofa, patting the seat next to him in a way which made her bones feel leaden.
“Have you heard from Eloise?” she asked him confrontationally, bursting the bubble of pleasantries, and immediately chewing on her lip. Every stray thought went into analysing the tense lines on Colin’s face, in contrast to his upturned lips.
He uncrossed his leg from across his body, standing up and moving until he was facing her, a few feet taller but angling his body into her. “I have, and Pen I’m sorry if there’s been a misunderstanding-”
Colin’s throat was bobbing like the words were difficult, and Penelope felt so pale with the past pressure of hidden feelings that she had to stop him before the knife twisted too deep. “No, I’m sorry. I love her, but Eloise had no right to say anything.” Something swelled in her as she spoke, a certainty that she was allowed to be angry, and to decide how their friendship recovered from this. “I don’t want things to change, Colin. There has been a misunderstanding, and it's that I expect something from you. While there have certainly been… ideas in my head about this, I value our friendship more than anything, and that is what I would always like us to be. The best of friends.” Inside, she felt the soreness in her heart becoming numb. “Is that agreeable?”
For a moment she saw protest flicker on his face, his nerves twisting into something like reluctance, even as she refused to believe he’d been spoiling for a fight. “Of course. Where would I find another roommate willing to put up with me?”
“Thank you,” she said gently, the two of them still close enough for her to not have to reach when she hugged him.
If the bones in his arms seemed to reach far enough to pierce her heart, she didn’t show it.