Wasted Time (The Steel City #1)

1. Penny

CHAPTER ONE

penny

The best therapy for a sad girl is their happy place.

Everyone has a happy place. It could be a bookstore, a city, or for the lucky people—a person. I have one. You do, too. Everyone on this Earth has a place that makes them the happiest version of themselves, a place where they feel safe and comfortable, a place that feels like home—even if it isn’t home, even if they don’t realize the gravity of that place at all. What it means. The power it holds.

I love my happy place, but some pitfalls about being here make me want to throw myself out of my car going full speed down the highway.

I wish that I was kidding.

There are very few negatives about coming home, but the absolute worst part is my little habit of plastering a smile on my face and acting like I’m fine. Very rarely am I fine anymore. That word seems so mediocre. So phony.

Fine.

So bland, isn’t it? But, for some reason, I’d prefer that my closest friends and family don’t know that I’m teetering on the edge of being very unfine. So ‘fine’ will suffice.

When I come home, my people are happy to see me. My friends celebrate the fact that I’m here to visit like spending time with me is some kind of gift in itself. It would be terribly unfair to bring down the mood with all of my bullshit.

Yes, that includes explaining why I don’t feel fine .

It’s not that I’m unhappy with the path my life has taken. On the contrary, I have more than enough to be happy about. My partner and I are both decently successful. I’m in marketing. He’s in finance. We have been together for nearly ten years and somehow managed to obtain everything we’ve ever wanted. All those whispered dreams that were uttered in my crappy little bedroom in my first-ever apartment, they’re ours now.

Seventeen-year-old me dreamed of this life.

But when you boil it down to the guts and the bones, what we have are material things and enviable freedom. It’s all the other stuff that seems to be lacking. I don’t think you understand the importance of all the other stuff until you realize you’re missing it.

These are the shortcomings that I am only capable of admitting to myself. Even then, I only acknowledge them when I’m feeling particularly brave. After a few glasses of wine, maybe. Or, on the loneliest of nights, when I allow myself to be vulnerable enough to confront those secrets that lay in wait in the depths of my head.

Nobody likes considering that they might be wasting their time.

I may have been wasting mine for almost a decade.

I’d tell any person who asks me that I think Gavin and I will stay together until we’re old and gray and that we’ll have the white picket fence, the porch swing, and everything else that comes with it. Kids? Maybe. If we did, their names wouldn’t be boring, but not too abstract either. We’d have dogs. Multiple. Maybe even a cat or two, but the dogs are a certainty.

I would try to mean it. I did at one point. Every single word. But for the last couple of years, there has been that nagging prickle of doubt in the back of my mind. It has lived there, quiet and growing day by day. Years is a long time to have a prickle like that. It’s a long time to let that abscess fester.

It sounds simple if I lay it out clearly, right here and now. But life isn’t simple.

So, I’ll just come out and say it. When I envision a future with Gavin Dumont, one longer than the immediate one before us, I feel like a swinging axe is hanging above my head.

That’s the cold, hard truth of it.

I love him. I really do. Loving him has never been the problem. The real issue is that I have begun to doubt that he loves me in return every single day. Can you comprehend how hard that is to stomach in a long-term relationship? I can’t even pick a specific point or narrow it down to a particular year when I realized that he might just be tolerating me while I expected him to be loving me.

The beginning was a whirlwind. I’d never felt love like that. He was enthralled by me, couldn’t keep his hands off me, and was desperate to spend every moment of his time with me. I was possessed by the way he loved me. I fell—hard and fast and so deep that I could no longer see the surface.

At some point, I think he reached the bottom alongside me and kicked himself back up to the surface without me realizing. I can still see his body, his feet kicking to stay afloat, but his head has been above water for quite some time.

That’s not a normal way to feel, right?

The self-help books I’ve purchased quietly throughout the last year and the ridiculous inspirational YouTube videos I watch when I am home alone pretty much say outright that it isn’t. They keep telling me that it might be time to start looking for the exit. To start knowing my worth.

They preach about the same few things in terms of a healthy relationship: I should feel respected, I should feel valued by my partner, and most importantly, I should feel a sense of safety and security.

I haven’t felt safe and secure in my relationship for a long, long time.

This rollercoaster ride that he’s taken me on has my emotional reactions out of whack. Every single fight feels like the end of the world. Every change in attitude feels like he’s tired of me. I spend my life holding my breath, always waiting for him to walk out of the door. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. But most painfully, I seem to be waiting for him to become the person he used to be.

I can’t imagine being fifty and still feeling like this. I don’t even think I can visualize fifty with him by my side anymore. When that realization first struck, it was like a blade straight to the heart. It shook the foundation of my life, the one that I thought I had planted roots in the soil of.

How can I no longer see a future with my partner but still love him just as deeply?

It’s a vicious cycle that’s been slowly killing me.

I don’t want to regret giving my all to somebody. If I do that, it should be to someone who deserves it, and I’m not sure that Gavin does anymore.

It’s gotten to the point where I fear that I have given him all of me and then some. I’m empty. My glass doesn’t have a single drop left. I can’t keep watering our relationship and hope that those roots still have some life left—not when I don’t even have enough in the jar to water myself.

I definitely got that analogy from a YouTube video.

So, here lies my predicament. I only come home a couple of times a year. I refuse to spend those days in that dark place, in that place where I question everything. So, I don’t. I plaster on a smile and tell everyone, including myself, that I’m fine.

Like every other day for the last few years, I push those thoughts aside and neglect the importance of them. Instead, I focus on what matters now. I’m kidding myself; I know that. I’m just scared of the alternative. I’m scared of what happens if I think about what comes next for too long.

I have a sinking feeling that admitting these truths out loud is the first step toward the end, and I don’t know if I’m ready to face the ending quite yet.

I knock on the bright, red door. Today of all days, is not the time to be having a personal crisis. I have more important things to do for the next two weeks than get stuck in my own head and die there.

I’m home.

Home is my very favourite place to be.

Home is my happy place.