Page 153 of Loved

But she’d sure fucked up a bunch of stuff before leaving.

“I can’t believe that after all these years, Isabella still doesn’t think I’m funny.” Rob shrugged. “What a troll.”

She knew what would hurt Rob’s feelings. She knew one of my friends saying they were going to bang Penny would make me furious. She knew Mason was strugglingwith his parents and feeling insecure. And Matt…she knew how to rip his heart out. And pinning it all on each other? Evil genius. She was definitely off her meds. But she wasn’t my problem anymore. Hopefully her father would get her the help she needed. I just wanted to pretend the last few years with her had never happened. I was done punishing myself. And no one deserved living with Isabella as a punishment.

“Well, at least her retaliation is done,” I said. I’d been a little worried about being back in the same city as Isabella. It was good to get whatever that was out of the way.

“It does seem like that’s the end of it,” Ian said.

Rob nodded. “She’ll surely find someone else to sink her claws into.”

Yeah. Hopefully.I felt bad for whoever her next victim was.

“Well that was another eventful evening,” Ian said. “I think I’m going to cut out early.”

“Good night, Ian.”

As soon as he left, Rob shook his head. “I bet he’s going to go bang our sister.”

“Would you stop it? Ian’s not sleeping with Jen.”

Rob shrugged. “If you say so.”

Penny’s footsteps on the stairs made me look up. She’d changed out of her sexy red dress and into a tank top and a pair of yoga pants. She looked great. Especially because she was smiling now. But I would have rather peeled that red dress off her. I guess getting into a fight with my friends and not listening to her meant no sexy red dress.

She handed Rob and me our phones back and then plopped down onto the couch between us.

“Why do you look so happy?” I asked.

“No reason.”

I stared at her.

“I get to pick the movie tonight, right? Because you two were both terrible?”

Rob groaned. “Not another rom-com. I’m all rom-commed out, Penny.”

“Then next time don’t punch your friend in the nose when he’s clearly upset about his parents.” She grabbed the remote and selected exactly what Rob didn’t want.

He groaned again.

I spaced out during the beginning of the movie, trying to think of how I could possibly apologize to Matt and Mason. Yeah, I didn’t send those notes. But we were all upset because clearly we believed we’d say this fucked up shit to each other. And I wasn’t sure how we were going to move past it when we were all still fucked up from high school.

First I needed to fix things with Penny though. Despite what Rob said about the movie, he was totally engrossed.

“Come with me,” I whispered in Penny’s ear. “I need to show you something real quick.” I grabbed her hand before she could protest, and led her up the stairs to our room.

“I got you something. Well, a few somethings.”

“James. I told you to stop buying me things.”

“These barely cost anything.” I pulled out a box from under the bed and set it on the covers. “And one of them I didn’t even buy.” I opened my wallet and handed her a black Amex card with her name on it.

She stared at the card and then back at me. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

I laughed. “Buy whatever you want.”

“I don’t need anything.”

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