Everyone's Problem
The thing about going out with June is that June behaves like a woman who was told once, in 1998, that she was “a lot” and decided to treat it as a legal mandate.
Penelope is not much help.
This becomes obvious roughly fourteen minutes after they get to the bar, when the two of them are already on their second round, shoulder to shoulder at a sticky table, loudly litigating whether karaoke should be understood as performance, confession, or low-grade public crime.
“All three,” June says.
“That’s too broad.”
“It’s a broad medium.”
Across from them, Jack is laughing into his beer.
Not politely. Not even trying to hide it. Just quietly wrecked in the way that means he has already accepted that whatever happens next is not going to be containable.
Cal, beside him, looks between Penelope and June like a man watching a small kitchen fire spread to the curtains and deciding not to interfere because, frankly, this has educational value.
“You two are the same person,” he says.
June points at him without looking over. “Wrong. I’m the deluxe edition.”
Penelope narrows her eyes. “That is so rude.”
“It’s not rude. You’re me with too much life experience.”
“You’re me with lower impulse control.”
June gasps. “I have exquisite impulse control. I simply use it selectively.”
Jack looks down, mouth twitching.
Penelope looks at him. “You are not allowed to enjoy this.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“That’s not true,” Cal says. “You’re thriving.”
That part is true.
Jack has one arm slung across the back of her chair, body angled half toward the table and half toward the stage, watching her and June with that open, helpless fondness that makes Penelope want to perform harder and then immediately lie face down.
It’s one of those bars that only exists in cities with enough middle-aged confidence to support wood paneling, sports on mute, and an aggressively functional karaoke setup three feet from a neon Bud Light sign. There’s a birthday party at the far end. Two women in sequins are butchering Mariah Carey near the stage with so much conviction it has looped back around to excellent. The crowd is exactly the right age to lose its mind over songs from the nineties and old enough not to care who sees them do it.
June is watching the stage like she’s next in a knife fight.
“Oh, we’re doing this,” she says.
“We are not doing this.”
June turns slowly. “What do you mean we?”
Penelope points at herself. “I’m not doing karaoke tonight.”
June blinks once. “That is such an insane thing to say with your actual mouth while I’m looking at you.”
“I’m not.”
Jack glances at Cal. “Write down the time.”
“Already noted,” Cal says.
Penelope glares at both of them. “I am absolutely not getting on a bar stage and letting you assess me.”
June leans in, dead serious. “That’s not what karaoke is.”
“What is it then?”
“It’s volunteering to be beloved for reasons unrelated to quality.”
Penelope stares at her.
“That was upsettingly persuasive.”
“I know.”
June is already reaching for the songbook.
“Absolutely not.”
She flips pages. “I’m hearing fear.”
“I’m hearing divorce, actually, because if I do karaoke in front of Jack I will have to flee the state.”
Jack says, “Interesting.”
Penelope points at him. “You stay out of this.”
He lifts both hands. “I’m fully neutral.”
“Liar,” says Cal.
June finds something in the book and her whole face changes.
“Oh no,” Penelope says.
June looks up slowly. “What if,” she says, already grinning, “we did ‘No Scrubs’?”
Penelope is silent for one beat.
Then: “That would actually be fine.”
So that’s how it starts.
They do “No Scrubs” first, which immediately gets the women at the birthday table involved because June has no understanding of performing below a yell and Penelope, once handed a microphone, apparently has no ability to behave like someone who can still go home after this.
June does full-body commitment. Penelope does the thing where her body has muscle memory but her face stays deadpan through the first verse like she’s testifying before Congress.
By the chorus they’re both gone, pointing accusingly into the room at imaginary scrub populations, harmonizing badly but with such total confidence that the whole bar starts singing with them anyway.
Jack is bent over laughing.
Because June keeps throwing a hand to her chest like she’s in a telenovela. Because every time Penelope gets a line alone, she looks like she’s trying to maintain dignity in a situation specifically designed to destroy it.
By the time they stumble back to the table, flushed and triumphant and carrying the microphones like they won them in litigation, Cal is shaking his head.
“You two together are a public hazard.”
“Public treasure,” June corrects.
Jack reaches for Penelope’s wrist as she drops into her seat, tugging her a little closer just because he can.
“That was disgusting,” he says in a way that absolutely does not mean disgusting.
Penelope hates how much that does to her in a bar that smells like Coors Light and fryer oil.
June is already scanning the room for the next offense.
“No, we need one more.”
“We do not.”
“We do.”
Cal points at Jack with his beer. “You should do one.”
Jack doesn’t even look over. “No.”
“Oh, come on,” June says. “You’ve been laughing at everyone else for an hour.”
“I haven’t laughed at everyone else.”
“You’ve definitely laughed at us,” Penelope says.
“That was earned.”
Cal leans back in his chair and considers him with the loose, dangerous air of a brother about to create a problem for recreational reasons.
“What’s the makeout song?”
Penelope goes still.
Jack’s eyes slide to Cal.
June looks between them. “The what?”
“There’s a song,” Cal says, delighted by the immediate tension at the table. “Apparently.”
“There is not,” Penelope says too fast.
“There absolutely is,” says Jack, at the exact same time.
Penelope turns to him in betrayal. “Jack.”
“What?”
“That was not public information.”
June is incandescent now. “What song?”
Penelope stares at the table.
Cal, because he is a traitor in a human body, says, “Keith Sweat.”
June slaps the table so hard the drinks jump. “OH MY GOD.”
“This is humiliating,” Penelope says.
Jack’s mouth pulls to one side. “You made it a recurring bit.”
“It was funny one time.”
“It was funny several times.”
“It became lore,” Cal says gravely.
Penelope drags both hands over her face. “I hate this family.”
Jack glances at June. “Not your family.”
June lifts her beer. “It is tonight, baby.”
Jack is still sitting there looking calm, one hand around his beer, the faintest smile at the corner of his mouth. He has no intention of getting involved. He would never voluntarily draw attention to himself in a bar just because—
He sets his beer down.
Penelope’s whole body turns toward him. “No.”
He looks at her. “What?”
“You know what.”
“I don’t think I do.”
Cal is already laughing. “Oh my God, he’s going to do it.”
Jack rolls toward the songbook stand with the infuriating composure of a man going to adjust a thermostat.
June looks at Penelope with both hands over her mouth.
“She’s panicking,” Cal says.
“She should be,” says June.
Penelope is panicking.
Not because Jack can’t sing. She actually has no useful information on that front. The closest she’s ever gotten is hearing him do half a line in the car just to mock her when she puts on Keith Sweat with the air of a woman setting down ceremonial objects.
No, she’s panicking because if he really does this—if he really gets up in a crowded bar and does that song, the one that has somehow become shorthand for oh, we’re making out now like irresponsible adults—she may simply evaporate in public.
Jack signs his name down.
He comes back looking maddeningly untroubled.
Penelope leans toward him over the table. “This is a hate crime.”
“Against who?”
“Me.”
He leans back in his chair. “That feels dramatic.”
June actually starts crying laughing.
The current singer is doing a faithful but spiritually exhausted version of “Torn.” The room claps. A man in a Sharks jersey yells “ICONIC” at no one in particular. The karaoke host squints at the slip of paper in his hand.
“Okay,” he says into the mic. “Next up we have—Jack?”
Cal pounds the table once.
June loses the last of her composure entirely.
Penelope sits very still, hand over her mouth.
Jack rolls forward toward the little cleared space by the mic stand with that same easy competence he brings to everything else. The room clocks him in pieces—the chair, the calm, the fact that he looks like he might either absolutely kill this or read a weather alert with inappropriate sensuality.
He takes the mic from the host, thanks him like they’re at a board meeting, and says, “This is for a woman who has made this song everyone’s problem.”
The bar laughs.
Penelope makes a wounded sound into her hand.
June grips her arm hard enough to count as injury.
Then the opening beat starts.
Something in Jack’s face changes.
Not theatrically. Worse than that.
He just commits.
Fully.
He doesn’t wink. He doesn’t soften it with irony.
He sings it straight.
Low at first. Easy. Like he’s just talking to the room in tune.
The first line lands and the whole bar lights up.
It’s exactly right for this crowd, this room full of people old enough to remember when the song was not retro and young enough at heart to lose their minds when the chorus comes around.
And he’s good.
Not secret-professional good. That would be less fun.
Good in the devastating, deeply social way. Good enough to make the birthday table start slamming their palms down. Good enough to make two men by the dartboard point at him with the grave, immediate respect of men witnessing another man make the correct decision.
Cal is doubled over.
June is standing now, both hands over her head like a woman watching a miracle in a strip mall.
Penelope can’t move.
Jack is halfway through the first chorus and the bar is already singing with him.
By the second verse he’s smiling.
Just enough to show that he knows exactly what’s happening, exactly how hard this is landing, exactly what he’s doing to Penelope from thirty feet away.
He looks at her once—just once—on the line that matters most, and Penelope’s soul more or less leaves through the emergency exit.
June sees it happen and starts shrieking.
“Oh my God,” she yells over the song. “LOOK AT HER FACE.”
“Do not,” Penelope says, not taking her eyes off the stage.
“Too late,” Cal says. “She’s fully deceased.”
The chorus hits again and the room comes apart.
Birthday table, dart guys, women in sequins. Someone in the back lifts both arms like they’re in church, which, given the night’s conversational themes, Penelope feels is honestly a little rude.
Jack keeps it just grounded enough to stay hot. Just playful enough to stay Jack. One hand loose around the mic, the other occasionally leaving his wheel to do something small and catastrophic—a palm to the room, a little point toward the birthday table, two fingers catching at his own collar like he was, apparently, born to ruin her in medium-sized bars.
When the final chorus comes around, the room is so loud he barely has to sing it.
He does anyway.
And when he finishes, there is one beat of collective disbelief before the whole place detonates.
Cheering. Whistling. Somebody pounds the bar.
The host comes back laughing. “Okay, JACK.”
Jack hands the mic over, says “thanks, man” like he has not just altered the chemistry of the room, and turns back toward the table.
Penelope is still sitting there with both hands over her face.
June is vibrating beside her. “Penelope. Oh my God, your face right now.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
Cal wipes under one eye. “He did not have to go that hard.”
“Yes he did,” June says. “Actually.”
Jack gets back to the table to the kind of reception generally reserved for soldiers and winning quarterbacks. Cal claps him once on the shoulder. June points at him like she’s filing a formal complaint with the universe.
Jack, bastard that he is, looks only at Penelope.
“Well,” he says, rolling back into his spot. “That escalated.”
Penelope lowers her hands very slowly.
Then, without a word, she comes half out of her chair, grabs his face in both hands, kisses him hard enough that June screams, and says against his mouth, “We’re leaving.”
The table loses its mind.
June lets out a full wounded shriek. “Hello?!”
Jack is laughing too, bright and helpless into the kiss, but Penelope is already reaching for her purse with one hand and the back of his neck with the other like this has been decided at a federal level.
June slaps the table. “Wow. Incredible. Love being abandoned at the site of the miracle.”
Penelope finally looks at her.
“Get a fucking Uber, June.”
And the birthday table, traitors all, applauds.
They make it to the bedroom through a series of choices neither of them would have endorsed sober.
Penelope walks into the wall once.
Jack clips the doorframe with one wheel, backs up, and tries again with the exaggerated care of a person attempting to convince a police officer he has never consumed alcohol.
“Perfect,” he says when he clears it.
“You hit the building.”
“On entry. Exit was flawless.”
“There was no exit.”
“Strong finish, though.”
Penelope leans against the frame, laughing while he rolls toward the bed.
He is very drunk.
Not falling-apart drunk. His words are still all there. They have simply stopped reporting to the same department.
His face is warm and open, hair pushed sideways from her hands in the car, shirt wrinkled where she spent most of the ride holding onto him for reasons unrelated to road safety.
He angles the chair beside the mattress.
Badly.
Penelope watches him look at the gap.
The gap looks back.
Jack frowns.
“That seems farther than usual.”
“The bed?”
“The bed.”
He studies it again.
“Suspicious.”
“Do you want to move closer?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“I’m excellent.”
“I’m excited to see what happens.”
Jack points at her. “That’s the support I need.”
He plants one hand on the mattress and the other beside his hip.
Even drunk, the setup does something to her.
His head dips. His shoulders tighten beneath his shirt. His arm locks as he gathers his weight forward over his hands.
Then he lifts.
Cleanly, at first.
His hips leave the seat.
His body crosses most of the gap.
Then his palm slides.
The chair rolls backward.
His hip catches the edge of the bed, pauses there as though reconsidering several life decisions, and slips off.
Jack goes down.
Not hard.
One shoulder lands against the mattress.
His ass misses it completely.
His legs fold under him with the leisurely betrayal of luggage falling off a carousel.
The chair continues backward and bumps the dresser.
Jack ends up twisted on the rug with one arm still stretched across the bed, like he has been washed ashore beside it.
Penelope stares.
He stares at the mattress.
A long second passes.
Then Jack pats the sheet twice.
“Almost.”
Penelope’s laugh bursts out so fast she chokes on it.
Jack looks up at her.
“I got a lot of myself there.”
“You got one elbow there.”
“Upper body counts double.”
“You missed the whole bed.”
“Technicality.”
Penelope folds over, one hand gripping the doorframe.
Jack tries to reposition himself, discovers one leg folded beneath him, and gives up halfway through to laugh too.
His head drops against the side of the mattress.
“Fuck.”
“Oh my God.”
“It moved.”
“The bed did not move.”
“We don’t know that.”
That sends her off again.
She drops to her knees beside him, laughing so hard her eyes have started watering.
Jack’s cheeks are flushed. His shirt has dragged up over one side of his stomach. His hair has fallen into his eyes, and every time he tries to blow it away it comes back.
He looks ridiculous.
He looks hot.
The second realization arrives with no meaningful transition.
One moment: boyfriend attacked by stationary furniture.
The next: his mouth still curved from laughing, one arm braced hard behind him, warm skin exposed above his jeans, body twisted into a configuration that has interrupted him without making him any less Jack.
The transfer took the clean command of his body away from him.
Jack himself stayed exactly where he was.
Loose laughter still in his mouth. Instructions gathering behind it.
Penelope watches him reset one palm against the rug.
Then the other against the mattress.
His shoulders tighten as he quietly inventories leverage, weight, angles.
Usually all of this happens too quickly to notice.
Tonight the choreography has come apart into pieces.
Weight.
Arms.
Momentum.
Legs that simply remain wherever gravity leaves them until he decides otherwise.
The authority of him has gone crooked.
Not gone.
Just pulled slightly out of alignment.
Her entire internal committee resigns.
Jack catches her face.
His eyes narrow.
“Pen.”
She climbs onto him.
“No.”
Her knee lands beside his hip. One hand catches his jaw, and she kisses him before he can finish becoming practical.
Jack makes a startled sound against her mouth.
Then laughs.
Their teeth knock together.
“Ow.”
“Sorry.”
“No, come back.”
She does.
His hand comes up behind her neck. The other remains planted against the rug, holding both of them out of a second collapse.
He kisses her harder.
Penelope presses closer, her thigh sliding across the narrow strip of skin where his shirt has ridden above his waistband.
Jack’s breath changes.
His mouth leaves hers for half a second.
“Pen.”
She follows it.
“No.”
“I need to—”
“Jack, shut up.”
She says it against his lips and kisses him again, refusing the inch of space he needs to organize the room.
He makes a low, offended sound that turns into something else when she shifts against him.
His chest lifts beneath her.
“Okay,” he says faintly. “That’s compelling.”
Penelope smiles into his mouth.
Jack catches the back of her neck and tilts her head, mouth moving along her jaw.
He is still laughing in pieces. Small, breathless breaks against her skin because the position remains terrible and apparently that has become part of the evening.
Penelope pushes her hand beneath his shirt.
Warm ribs. Tight stomach. The hard working line of his side while one arm keeps them both upright.
She drags her nails lightly over the place he can feel.
His laugh cuts off.
There.
That is the problem with him. One second, he is sprawled crooked on the floor, defeated by furniture. The next, his body has gone still under her hand in a way that makes the whole room narrow around them.
“Again,” he says.
Not loud.
Not even fully steady.
Penelope does it again.
His hand tightens at the back of her neck.
He kisses her open-mouthed and messy, less careful now, less arranged. The alcohol has taken the fine edge off both of them. Their mouths miss and find each other again. Her teeth catch his lower lip; his laugh turns into a rough breath; her hand slips too low and then returns to the warm, responsive band of his stomach without either of them making a ceremony out of it.
She rocks against him.
Once.
Not even on purpose.
His grip clamps at her waist.
“Jesus, Pen.”
She kisses the rough edge of his jaw.
He turns his face toward her, then seems to remember something.
“My leg.”
Penelope keeps kissing him.
“My—” He laughs when she catches his lower lip again. “My leg is doing something deeply stupid.”
She lifts her head.
“What?”
“It’s under all of this.”
He gestures loosely at their bodies.
Penelope looks down.
His left leg is folded beneath him, knee bent hard and the seam of his jeans dragged halfway around his thigh. His other leg lies across it, foot wedged against the bed frame.
She looks back at him.
Jack’s hair is wrecked. His mouth is swollen from kissing. His eyes have gone pleasantly soft around the edges.
He nods solemnly toward the trapped leg.
“Bad parking.”
Penelope’s mouth curves.
Slowly.
Jack sees it happen.
“Oh, no.”
She sits back.
“Pen.”
“What?”
“That face.”
“I’m fixing it.”
“You’re thrilled.”
“I’m being practical.”
“You look like a cartoon burglar.”
She puts one hand beneath his knee.
Jack watches her.
The laughter in his face quiets but does not disappear. It stays beneath the heat, making him look younger and far less defended than usual.
Her other hand closes around his ankle.
“Ready?”
“For what?”
“I’m pulling it straight.”
“Yeah. I gathered that from the leg-related context.”
Penelope holds his eyes.
Then pulls.
Slowly.
The weight of his leg comes free beneath her hands. Denim drags over the rug. His knee unbends in her palm, his foot loose against her other hand, moving wherever she carries it.
She takes her time.
Not enough to make it a performance.
Enough that Jack knows.
His mouth parts slightly.
He feels none of her hands below the line.
He feels her looking at him.
That reaches him fine.
Penelope extends the leg fully and lowers his heel to the floor.
Her palm moves once over his thigh, smoothing the twist from his jeans.
Jack’s eyes narrow.
“Pen.”
She looks up.
He does not say anything else.
He does not need to.
She knows.
She pounces.
Jack catches her around the waist, the force of her landing pushing him farther against the side of the bed.
“Fuck—”
She kisses him hard.
His laugh breaks into her mouth. His arms tighten around her, dragging her closer.
The position is terrible in increasingly useful ways.
His lower body stays where gravity left it.
Everything above his waist works.
His arms tightening. Shoulders shifting beneath her hands. Breath breaking when she moves.
The interruption and the command inside it.
Penelope, apparently, wants all of it.
Jack kisses down her neck.
His stubble rasps over the same spot twice because the mattress keeps pushing his shoulder forward and ruining his angle.
Penelope shivers anyway.
He smiles against her skin.
“You’re having a very nice time.”
“Shut up.”
His mouth moves lower on her throat, still smiling enough that she can feel it.
“On the floor.”
“I know where we are.”
“My leg in another zip code.”
She bites the side of his jaw.
“You criticized my management.”
Jack’s laugh catches against her cheek.
“You kidnapped it.”
“I returned it in improved condition.”
Jack tips his head back and laughs.
Penelope looks at him.
Flushed face. Open mouth. One hand gripping her thigh. His body arranged badly beneath her, annoyance and amusement sharing the same expression because the alcohol has stopped him from filing either one away before she sees it.
He catches her staring.
“What?”
Nothing guarded in it.
Just amused curiosity.
Penelope kisses him because anything she says is going to become a problem.
He lets her push him down until his shoulder slides from the mattress to the rug.
“Okay,” he says, breathless. “We’re horizontal now.”
“Progress.”
“Wrong destination.”
“You’re being very negative.”
His palm skims over her back.
Penelope’s foot finds his straightened leg behind her.
She drags her toes down the denim.
Then hooks lightly behind his ankle.
Jack notices.
His gaze drops toward her foot.
Then returns to her face.
She pulls.
His leg slides several inches across the rug.
Something in Jack’s expression darkens.
Penelope does it again.
“That seems unnecessary.”
She kisses the corner of his mouth.
He catches her lower lip between his teeth.
Her toes curl behind his ankle and draw the leg closer until it rests against the back of her calf.
Jack’s hand closes harder around her thigh.
“Pen.”
Her name sounds different when he’s drunk.
Not softer, exactly. Less supervised.
Less warning.
More discovery.
She moves over him again.
His breath leaves him.
For a while, the bed ceases to have any official purpose.
There is only the rug burning faintly beneath her knee, the hard edge of the mattress beside Jack’s shoulder, his arms working around her, and the occasional laugh one of them swallows when a limb ends up somewhere neither expected.
His hand gets under her shirt.
Her mouth finds the tendon in his neck.
He makes a sound she immediately wants to hear again.
She gets greedy about it.
Not graceful. Not strategic. Just her mouth on his throat and her hand beneath his shirt and her body pressed over his at an angle that keeps failing and making them laugh until the laughter turns hot again.
Jack’s fingers slide into her hair and hold.
Not guiding, exactly.
Holding on.
Penelope moves her hips against him, slow and then not slow enough, and his breath breaks against her cheek.
“Penelope.”
The whole name.
Ruined and warning and completely useless.
She kisses him harder for it.
His lower body does not answer the movement except where her weight shifts him on the rug. His legs stay loose, dragged into the shape she has made of them. One foot against her calf. One knee fallen outward. The stillness should break the rhythm.
It does not.
It gives the rhythm somewhere to hit.
Jack’s hands are hot and sure on her back, her waist, the back of her thigh. Everything he can control becomes more deliberate because so much of him cannot. His mouth opens under hers. His shoulders work. His stomach tightens beneath her palm when she finds the line again and scratches there, light and mean.
His arm jerks.
“There?”
“Yeah.”
She does it again.
He bites off a groan against her mouth.
The sound undoes her more than the karaoke did.
More than him singing Keith Sweat in front of an entire bar, which feels frankly impossible and also true.
He turns her just enough that her back catches the rug for one second before his hand slides behind her head.
“Careful.”
“You’re saying that to me?”
“You hit a wall thirty feet ago.”
“You missed a bed.”
“We’ve both had setbacks.”
She laughs into his mouth.
He kisses her until the laugh breaks apart.
The room gets smaller.
Her hands stop being funny and start being honest. One in his hair. One under his shirt. Her thigh hooked over his hip, his leg trapped uselessly behind hers because she put it there and neither of them has any interest in fixing it.
Jack’s hand tightens on her thigh.
Penelope rocks against him again and feels his breath stutter.
Not from where her body would expect.
From her doing it.
From the fact that he can see exactly what she wants.
From the fact that she is not hiding it.
He pulls back just enough to look at her.
His mouth is wet.
His eyes are darker than they were a minute ago.
“You’re making a face.”
“Yeah.”
His thumb drags over her ribs.
Whatever she was going to say gets kissed out of her.
Later, when they are both breathing harder and the floor has become less a location than a consequence, Penelope rolls off him and lands flat on her back.
Jack stays crooked beside the bed, arranged less like a person than a decision that had been interrupted.
They stare at the ceiling like it has been assigned to supervise them.
Her hand stays beneath his shirt, palm spread over the warm, working place that had kept answering her. His fingers have become tangled in her hair at some point and show no intention of leaving.
After a minute, Penelope turns her head.
Jack is smiling at nothing.
“You okay?”
“Mm.”
“That sounded medically useless.”
“I’m great.”
“You’re shaped like a comma.”
Jack looks down at himself.
One leg straight. One bent. Shirt twisted. Shoulder wedged against the mattress.
“I’m relaxed.”
“You’re listing.”
“I contain angles.”
Penelope laughs and rolls onto her side.
The bed hovers above them.
She looks at it.
Then at the chair across the room.
Then at Jack.
“How are we doing bed?”
His smile vanishes.
He follows her gaze upward.
The failed transfer returns to him all at once.
Jack huffs.
Long and wounded.
“Oh, fuck off.”
Penelope starts laughing again.
“This is not the bed’s fault.”
“I approached in good faith.”
“You launched yourself at the side.”
“Exactly. Enthusiasm. Punished.”
He looks toward the chair.
Then at the bed.
Then down at himself.
“This is a lot of administration.”
Penelope tucks her hand beneath her cheek.
“I believe in you.”
“Don’t.”
“I’ll sleep here.”
“No.”
Jack glances beneath the nightstand and finds a dust bunny sitting there with them.
“Little pervert.”
Penelope laughs into the rug.
Jack looks toward the chair again.
He could do it.
She knows he could.
He knows she knows.
That seems to remove the need to demonstrate it.
His eyes come back to her.
Penelope stays where she is.
She does not reach for the chair.
Jack looks between her and the bed.
Then: “Can you just help me get on the bed?”
The words come out plain.
No joke attached.
Penelope feels something warm move beneath her ribs and leaves it alone.
“Yeah.”
Jack nods.
“Thanks.”
She pushes herself upright, still loose enough from the floor that her body objects to becoming useful.
“How?”
He squints at the mattress.
A long pause.
“I don’t know.”
Penelope stops. “You don’t know?”
“I know generally.”
“Excellent.”
“I’m drunk, Penelope. Give me a minute.”
“You’ve been extremely authoritative up to now.”
“That was sex.” He nods toward the bed. “Different skill set.”
She presses her lips together.
Jack points.
“Don’t laugh. I’m designing.”
He stares at the bed.
A bed he has successfully transferred into thousands of times has somehow become an engineering problem.
Penelope watches the familiar machinery of his competence running at half speed.
Not gone.
Just pleasantly delayed.
“Okay,” she says. “What’s the design?”
He lifts one hand and makes a vague circling gesture between himself and the mattress.
“You get behind me.”
She does.
“Hook your arms under mine.”
She slides them beneath his.
“Around my ribs.”
Done.
“Then sort of…”
Another useless gesture.
“Participate.”
“Jack.”
“Support my forward journey.”
Penelope folds over, laughing against his back.
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are.”
He leans back against her before either of them has officially started.
Warm through his shirt.
Loose enough to give her the weight without checking what she plans to do with it.
He sighs.
“Yeah.”
“Are we transferring or cuddling?”
“Both can be true.”
“Focus.”
She tightens her arms around him.
Jack plants one palm on the rug and the other on the mattress.
“One, two—wait.”
“What?”
“I forgot three.”
She makes a strangled sound against his shoulder.
Jack dissolves against her, shoulders shaking inside her arms.
“You are useless.”
“I’m so drunk.”
“I know.”
“I’m having a great time.”
“You’re trapped on the floor.”
“Still.”
She nips the side of his neck.
“Come on.”
Jack finds the mattress with both hands.
“One, two, three.”
He pushes hard.
Penelope pulls and keeps him forward.
His chest clears the edge. One shoulder lands on the mattress, then the other. He stretches both arms across the bed and holds on.
“There,” she says. “Look at you.”
“My ass is still downstairs.”
Penelope looks.
It is.
“What do I do?”
“Grab my jeans.”
Her eyebrows go up.
Jack turns his head enough to see her.
“Professionally.”
“That removes all joy.”
“Pen.”
She hooks both hands into the sides of his waistband.
Jack gathers the sheet in his fists.
“Toward the bed when I pull.”
“Okay.”
They pull.
His hips catch against the edge.
“Again.”
This time Penelope pulls harder while Jack hauls himself forward.
His hips slide over the mattress, and the sudden release sends him farther across it than either expected. He ends up facedown diagonally over the bed with one arm hanging off the opposite side.
Penelope stands behind him, still gripping his waistband.
Jack lifts his head.
“I’m on.”
“You are.”
“Fully?”
She looks down.
His torso has made it.
His hips too.
Both legs are still faithfully standing watch on the floor.
“Spiritually.”
“Pen.”
“Right.”
She picks up the bent leg first, one hand beneath his knee and the other supporting his ankle, and lays it on the mattress.
Then the straight one.
Penelope arranges his heel on the sheet and smooths one pant leg without thinking.
Jack rolls onto his back with an extravagant sigh.
She climbs onto the bed after him.
He holds up one hand.
“Wait.”
She pauses over him.
“What?”
“I need to appreciate this.”
“The bed?”
“The bed.”
“You told it to fuck off.”
“We’ve reconciled.”
Penelope drops across his chest.
Jack catches her automatically, laughing when her knee lands between his legs.
She kisses him.
He kisses her back, soft and clumsy and warm.
When she pulls away, he looks pleasantly wrecked.
“Thank you,” he says.
“Of course.”
“For supporting my forward journey.”
Penelope buries her face against his neck and starts laughing.
Jack’s arms tighten around her.
“The language worked.”
“It absolutely did not.”
“I’m in bed.”
She laughs once, sharp and loud. “After several failed—”
Jack groans and palms her face before she can produce evidence.
“Please stop documenting the incident.”
“No.”
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