Chapter Text
Penelope Featherington has been in Colin’s life for as long as he can remember.
He remembers her as a little kid, red faced and excitable with some tattered old teddy under her arm like it was surgically attached there. He remembers how Anthony would carry her around on his shoulders, and how her laugh was always the loudest laugh in the room, and how if he was having a bad day, her smile could always make it better. He remembers her following Eloise around like a shadow until one day, she started following him too.
Looking back, he thinks that was probably the best day of his life.
He remembers how close they grew over the years, navigating that awkward space between being a child and a teenager. He remembers standing in the kitchen after his dad died, trying to be brave for little Gregory and his sister who wasn’t even born yet, until Penelope held him in her arms, and told him it was okay to cry, and finally, he did. He remembers how he promised to look after her, to care for her, to love her when her own dad died, and maybe it wasn’t the sort of love he was used to — not a sibling, not a lover, somewhere in-between — but it was love all the same and he’s never forgotten that promise.
Since he was a child, Colin thought his friendship, his relationship, with Penelope was simple.
And then, on her 20th birthday, she drinks half a bottle of wine, five cocktails and twice as many tequila shots, and she tells him she loves him.
At first, he grins.
He’s standing on the step of the apartment she shares with Eloise, having walked (or, more accurately, carried) her home from the club, and he has to dart his hand out to catch her elbow when she stumbles against the door.
“Love ya too, kid,” he says because that’s what he always says — but this time, she shakes her head a little maniacally.
“No, you don’t get it,” she moans, words a little slurred, “you’re so pretty, and you’re so kind, and you look after me, and I love you.”
His eyes search hers, confused.
Wait.
She can’t possibly mean…
“It’s my birthday,” she declares.
He blinks at the sudden change of subject.
“Ah, so that’s why you were drinking everything in sight tonight,” he smiles, uneasy but also unable to keep from teasing her.
She leans in a little closer.
“Do you wanna know what I wished for?”
“Well, it won’t come true if you tell—”
“I wished for you to love me back,” the words float on a rushed breath, quick and a little resigned, “that’s all I’ve ever wanted. I really, really love you, Colin. I am so in love with you. Always have been, really. Always will be. I’m also really hungry. Do you have any chips?”
Colin stares, his brain short-circuiting.
He can’t speak, can’t think, can’t breathe.
Because he’s standing on Penelope Featherington’s doorstep, and she’s still holding her keys in the door, and her eyes are glazed over, and she can’t possibly know what she’s saying because she’s saying she’s in love with him.
In love.
With him.
Penelope Featherington in love with Colin Bridgerton.
His mind races with how’s, what’s, why’s, and when’s.
He doesn’t know what to say.
He doesn’t know what to do.
He doesn’t know how to even process it.
All he can do is lamely mutter—
“We’re at your house. You probably have chips, yeah.”
She nods, seemingly very pleased with this — and then she promptly throws up all over his shoes.
One month later, Colin is losing his mind.
She won’t talk to him.
She hasn’t talked to him since that night.
On the rare occasions she allows herself to be around him, she won’t even look at him.
If he had thought maybe she was too drunk to know what she was saying, that she didn’t mean it, her reaction just confirms that she did.
He’s in a perpetual state of confusion, frustration and depressing desperation. He fluctuates between all the emotions, so many he can’t even begin to sort through them. He doesn’t understand any of it. He lays awake at night, combing through their history, looking for signs.
Signs that Penelope Featherington is in love with him.
It still doesn’t feel real.
He looks through his phone one night, scrolling through WhatsApp messages with two blue ticks, staring at all the messages she hasn’t answered.
The ones where he pretends nothing happened, the ones where he acts like he doesn’t remember, the ones where he tells her things about his day and invites her places as though nothing has changed. As though his entire world hasn’t been turned upside down.
On a random Thursday, he gets almost as drunk as she did that night.
“i know u dont want to talk to me,” he types with miserable, trembling fingers, “but i miss u”
She doesn’t reply to that either.
He dreams about her.
He’s dreamt about her before, of course. If there’s a day where she’s made him laugh, or made him think, or pissed him off, he often dreams about her that night. When she stole the last lemon cake at his mother’s 50th, he actually dreamt about her turning into one.
But these dreams are different.
It’s as though her confession unlocked something in his mind, something he can only access when he’s unconscious. In the light of day, he still can’t understand his feelings, still insists nothing has changed and she’s like a sister to him… but there is nothing sisterly in the way he dreams about her.
In his dreams, he kisses her.
In his dreams, that night didn’t end with him putting her to bed, losing his mind as he paced the living room and waited for Eloise to get home so he could bolt. In his dreams, she still confesses, but she isn’t drunk, and he sees clearly, and he tugs her closer with that hand he has wrapped around her elbow and he kisses her.
In his dreams, he does more than kiss her.
He always wakes up in a cold sweat, face flushed and sheets sticky, every morning more confused than the night before.
Six weeks later, she gets a boyfriend.
“Is it serious?” he practically barks at Eloise, who recoils in surprise.
“What the hell is going on with you two?” she fires back, probably as frustrated as he is with the sudden change, their sudden inability to be around each other.
But it’s not my fault, he thinks sourly, how can I fix things if she won't bloody talk to me?
“Nothing,” he lies, “now answer the question.”
“I don’t know,” she sighs, exasperated, “I guess. He’s stayed the night a few times.”
There are a lot of things Colin doesn’t understand.
He doesn’t understand taxes, or any sort of maths really, or how the most important person in your life can suddenly die from something as stupid as a bee sting. He doesn’t understand why Francesca is so obsessed with the piano, or Benedict with art, or why Anthony wasted so much time pretending he wasn’t in love with Kate. He doesn’t know what he’s doing with his life, or what his purpose is, and he doesn’t understand his place in the world.
But what he does understand… with a depressing, sickening sort of clarity… is that uneasy feeling churning in the pit of his stomach when he thinks about Alfie Debling touching Pen.
His chest feels too tight. Suddenly every beat of his heart is painful.
Great, he thinks dryly.
Just great.
Absolutely fan-fucking-tastic.
I’m jealous.
I’m so jealous, I can’t fucking see straight.
Two months later, it’s the Bridgerton’s annual weekend away to Aubrey Hall.
He almost thinks she won’t come. In the days leading up to it, he has to bite his tongue to stop himself from asking Eloise if she’ll be there, feeling a little like an obsessed stalker.
But she does come, as she always comes, even if she seems different.
Moody. On edge. Glum.
Kate thinks she’s tired.
Eloise thinks she’s stressed about university and all the assignments she has, though Colin knows without a doubt she’s smashing it (even if she still won’t talk to him).
Anthony thinks her irritation is hilarious, teases her and laughs when she huffs and swats him away like a fly.
Gregory has just learned what a period is, so he thinks it’s that.
Colin thinks it’s probably a mixture of all of the above (minus the period thing).
He also thinks she’s trying to kill him by bringing Debling.
Colin has never thought of himself as a dramatic person… but when Penelope refuses to meet his eye and hugs him like a stranger, his chest hurts as though she’s stabbed him.
He thinks he’d prefer it if she did.
Penelope had joined the Bridgertons at Aubrey Hall every year since she was ten years old and Colin was twelve.
Every year, she would choose the room next to his.
It was just an unspoken thing.
They would race up the stairs and Daphne would choose the room with the biggest bathroom, where she would leave her makeup strewn all over the counter to their mother’s annoyance. Eloise would choose the room that connected to the library. Benedict would choose the one with the best lighting, the best view of the lake which he would paint every year without fail.
And Penelope would choose the room next to Colin’s.
Only this year, there’s someone else standing beside her. There’s someone other than Colin to open the car door for her, and carry her case up the stairs, and remind her to wear suncream.
So this time, when he tips his head in the direction of his room and says, “we’re over here”, she purses her lips and shifts awkwardly from one foot to the other.
“Oh, I, um…” she stutters, her cheeks blooming red, “actually, we’re going to take one of the rooms on the other side of the house. Alfie prefers the view to the gardens.”
A muscle in Colin’s jaw twitches.
Alfie can go fuck himself, he wants to say.
“Oh sure, no problem!” he settles for instead.
Colin paces his room — the one decidedly not next to Penelope’s — as the others settle in for welcome drinks downstairs.
He knows it’s stupid, but he can feel her absence, the jarring silence coming from the other side of the wall.
He feels on edge, his entire body buzzing with the change. He feels sad, and confused, and he’s a little angry at her too. He’s angry at her for telling him she loves him and not giving him a chance to understand it. He doesn’t know how to navigate this change, but he knows it is a change. He knows her words have unlocked something that has perhaps laid dormant for a very long time. He knows he’s not looking at her like he used to.
He rolls his shoulders. Cracks his neck. Tells himself to get a grip.
He leaves his room and heads downstairs, turning a corner and—
“Oh!”
He grunts in surprise as something very quick and very small barges into his chest.
For a moment, he freezes.
And then, because the situation is so predictable, he fights the urge to roll his eyes.
Because of course the small thing that has barrelled into him smells like strawberries and the perfume he bought her for her birthday, and of course that scent is now apparently the only thing that turns him on, and of course the person is wearing a tiny sundress when tiny sundresses have always been his kryptonite, and of course that person is Penelope.
She takes a step back, putting some space between them, her cheeks flushing. She clears her throat awkwardly and then she does it again, more pointedly this time, as her eyes flash to her elbow. He follows her gaze to find his fingers are curled gently around it.
He’s touching her. Just like that night. The flashback makes him dizzy.
“Sorry,” he mumbles and lets go. His fingers inexplicably ache from the loss.
She shakes her head, the movement of her heavy swallow obvious.
“No, no, I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
It grows silent between them.
Colin hates it.
Penelope is never silent — especially not around him. He remembers long nights chatting about movies, and music, and politics, and nothing at all. He remembers birthdays, and special occasions, and trips like this one where she would light up the room with her infectious personality. He remembers how she even talks in her sleep.
Penelope is never, ever silent.
He desperately wants her to say something.
“You look well,” she says eventually, and it’s so detached, so emotionless, he wishes she’d stayed silent after-all, “are you well?”
He blinks.
“I’m… good.”
“Good,” she fires back quickly, “that’s… good.”
He bites the inside of his cheek, uneasy in a way he’s never been around her.
“Deb—Alfie seems nice,” he blurts out, “I’d love to hear all about him.”
Actually, he’d rather set himself on fire, but he figures he should be polite. She’s had this whole other life for weeks, one he’s not a part of, and the absolute last thing he wants to do is hear about it. But he’s trying to be nice, damn it.
“Yeah, sorry I haven’t been in touch,” she says, but the words drift off awkwardly as she neglects to give an actual reason.
They both know the reason.
The air feels heavy with the weight of everything left unsaid. It blisters and burns between them.
It kills him, how uncomfortable she seems. How she keeps shifting from one foot to the other, and how she keeps wringing her hands, and how she can’t even look at him. She’s been his best friend for as long as he can remember, and if one drunken confession bothers her this much, maybe he can just pretend it never happened.
He can do that.
For her.
...he thinks he can.
“Hey, you’re wearing the perfume I got you for your birthday,” he tries to break the tension.
Her eyes flicker with surprise.
“You noticed that?”
The corner of his lips twitch into a gentle smile.
“I always notice you, Pen.”
He means for the words to be breezy, casual, but her eyes flicker again and he realises maybe he doesn’t. Maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe he’s bumbled through most of his life as an oblivious, blind idiot. Maybe she knows it.
She obviously isn’t going to say anything else, so he speaks again, desperately trying to prolong the conversation.
“That was a crazy night, huh? Your birthday? God, I was so pissed, I don’t remember a thing.”
He watches the movement of her throat as she swallows. The flash of panic that passes over her face before she calms herself. He watches it turn into something akin to unspoken understanding. She knows as well as he does that he wasn’t pissed. That he has a freakishly high alcohol tolerance, and it would take enough booze to take down an elephant to take him out.
That kills him too, how he can read her every expression like a book.
He wonders if Debling can do that.
“Right,” she plays along, a nervous laugh falling from her lips.
“So, you really don’t have to be embarrassed,” he says one more time, “like, at all. Nothing to be embarrassed about.”
Saying that too much now.
He can practically feel the desperation rolling off him in waves.
God, he’s pathetic.
“I got it,” Penelope says quietly, a little curt, and then she moves to brush past him, “we’re cool. I’ll see you downstairs?”
He nods, turning as she does, his gaze following her like one of those creepy paintings where the eyes follow the viewer.
“Yeah. Downstairs.”
“I’ll make sure Greg doesn’t eat all the biscuits.”
She’s joking, but the words come out a little flat. Her smile is forced.
“Thanks," he manages.
And then she’s gone, and Colin wishes again that things could go back to normal… but then his eyes drop like an anchor to her ass in that short sundress and he realises.
Normal doesn’t exist anymore.