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It's only two months, Colin tells Pen. We have to make the most of it while we can.
He probably shouldn't do it. Maybe it isn't fair on her, not when he suspects she's a little sweet on him, but it seems to make her happy, doesn't it? Makes her cheeks just as pink as the petals.
It started as a joke but it stopped feeling funny to Colin a few years back. Pen had told him, her head dangling off the edge of the sofa and her feet on the wall, her hair trailing onto the floor of her flat (she does this when she has writer's block — says the blood flow to her brain helps), that there was no hope for her in this life because peonies were her favourite flowers. She'd said it with melodramatic sigh and Colin had laughed but he felt weirdly alarmed by the pronouncement.
They only bloom for a couple of months each year. I am doomed to disappointment. I could have tulips as my favourite flowers — you can always find tulips. But no — it has to be peonies, doesn't it? Doomed.
I'll get you peonies, Pen, Colin had said, because he likes to fix things. Whenever you like.
Beyond even your powers, Bridgerton, she said, rolling her eyes. You can't fight nature. Her face had gone magenta — the same colour as the peonies he's clutching in his fist now.
Says you, Colin had said petulantly, but she turned out to be right (she often is). Peonies only bloom between May and July, and so each year during those months, Colin buys every bunch he can get his hands on and brings them to Pen.
Supermarkets and florists and those stalls outside of Tube stations. He only buys one bunch per location, but every time he sees them he has to get them. Some days he doesn't see any; other days he stands on Penelope's doorstop with a huge armful of blooms. The most he bought in one day was six bunches, two years ago, but they both agreed it was a little out of hand and now he limits himself to maximum four per day.
It's maybe not something he should be doing for his friend. It is maybe too much, not normal, but Colin likes how it makes him feel. For two months a year he gets to be a man who has a girl to buy flowers for. Sometimes when the florist says for your girlfriend? he will say yeah, and when they say lucky girl he will say yeah, yeah she is or I'm the lucky one and for a few moments he is another person entirely, a man with a purpose and a life and a warm flat with a pretty girl in it, waiting upside down on the sofa for her peonies with her hair trailing.
Better than the reality, that he is a thirty-two year old loser with no job (which is why he can afford to be loping around the city all day looking for flowers). No job no girlfriend no point.
It is the happiest he is all year.
The rest of the time he's… away. Travelling. Writing. Trying to find himself. But he always makes sure to be home for May and June.
Maybe it's pathetic. Maybe it's unfair on her, playing make-believe like this. Sometimes when he stands on her doorstep he imagines holding the flowers out of her reach until she's given him his hello kiss. It would be easy, wouldn't it, to lean down and press his mouth to the petals of hers; to walk her back into her flat and kiss her surrounded by the flowers he bought her.
He never does. There are reasons — like their friendship, which he doesn't want to fuck up, and her general proximity to his family, which is delicate, and the fact that he has made nothing of himself, and isn't precisely sure what he has to offer her. And he's fairly sure she's got a… something, for him. A crush, maybe, though it feels juvenile to call it that. She likes him, and he sort of knows it, and sometimes he thinks she sort of knows that he knows, but they never really talk about it.
It all boils down to the fact that if he is going to kiss Penelope Featherington, he has to be sure.
In the meantime he does this.
It makes her happy, doesn't it? He thinks so. It makes her smile and roll her eyes affectionately at him, and he watches her cheeks glow as she trims the stems and strips off the leaves and arranges the flowers in a vase or glass or whatever vessel she can find. The light of the flowers sends a pink haze over the tip of her nose, her chin, and she gets a little furrow in her brow when she puts her fingers into the flowers to open them up a little (she's greedy — wants to open them before they're ready). Colin sometimes thinks he could watch Penelope arrange flowers forever.
It turns out that peonies are pretty miraculous things. He thinks if someone asked him his favourite flower now he would say peony without thinking (he hasn't told Penelope this, because she'll accuse him of copying and she really hates when people copy her). They're sort of magic: those odd burgundy-wrapped balls, hard little buds holding tight to their secrets — then opening out into crazy, over-blown chaos. You never know with peonies, is the thing. The buds in his arms seem like they'll be dark pink when they bloom, but you never can tell how they'll turn out. He once got a bunch from a Tesco garage that seemed normal but changed colour so vividly that Pen would send him photos of them every day: Look! Neon pink today! Sometimes she'd be in the picture too, wearing an expression of comedic wonder, and Colin would find himself staring at it for ages, his belly warm and melting.
But they make him kind of sad, too. He gets panicky when the blooms start to wrinkle and brown at the edges, the petals falling in a flurry. Sometimes it looks like it's been snowing pink on Penelope's mantelpiece, the heads dropping all at once and leaving the too-yellow centres blinking brashly.
They die so quickly, Penelope tells him, both matter-of-fact and a little grim. She shrugs. Doomed, like I said.
Colin doesn't like that one bit.
It's mid-June now, and peonies are already getting harder to find. It's a miracle he found the unbloomed ones he's carrying — most of the others are already half-blown and shaggy. He's started seeing sunflowers popping up in the shops, and each time it makes him grimace, their seedy little faces mocking him. He wonders, as he walks down Ladbroke Grove, if he could convince Penelope to change her mind about sunflowers. If maybe she could make them her second favourite flower, and Colin could spend summer here with their strong, sturdy spears in his arms instead, their prickly stalks scraping his hands. He thinks sunflower season lasts til autumn, doesn't it?
But Penelope hates sunflowers, and once she has made her mind up she doesn't change it. It's what he loves about her, how well she knows her own mind. Colin's mind is a stranger to him, fickle and mercurial. He doesn't even have a favourite flower of his own, does he?
He starts to feel desperate and rushing, his heart fast and his feet heavy. He looks at the pink buds in his arms and he feels sick, because by the time these ones have bloomed and died, peony season will probably be over; Colin will stop being the man with the lucky girlfriend, the man with flowers walking through the city, and he will have to go back to being regular Colin, and with a sharp, solid certainty, he knows he doesn't want to do that.
Oh.
He actually says it out loud, right there outside Ladbroke Grove station. "Oh," he says, and then gets a sharp pain in his ankle as a woman rams her buggy into his shins. His fault, he supposes, standing in front of the entrance to the Tube; he apologises and staggers on.
And keeps staggering, until he's sort of running, half-limping with his bashed ankle, through West London, the peonies waving on their stems with his jerking movements. He makes it a few streets before he realises he's not going to be able to run all the way to East London, so then he jumps on a bus and then a Tube and then the Overground (fucking London) and then he's running again, his heart so swollen he can feel it in his throat.
Pen answers the door wearing a white tank top and loose stripey pyjama pants. Her face is all red and her hair is sticking up wildly, and Colin wonders if anyone has been as beautiful as this, actually.
"Upside down time?" he asks, his words sticking in his lungs as he pants and tries to catch his breath.
"Mhm," she nods, rubbing her nose. She peers at him behind her glasses. "Why are you so red, though?"
"Running," he says, his heart beating so hard he can almost see it in his vision, the world throbbing and pulsing around him. "I did some running."
She wrinkles up her nose. "Why —"
But before she can finish, and before he can chicken out, Colin puts his hand on her waist and bends to kiss her cheek.
Like it is nothing. Like it is normal, how a boyfriend kisses his girlfriend when he's been out buying her flowers. He presses his lips against the warm, fragrant silk of her cheek (she smells like peonies all through May and June — how could she not?) as if he does this every day of their lives. The brown paper wrapped around the flowers crinkles and scrunches between their bodies, and as Colin pulls away, his face still inches from hers, he thinks yes. Yes.
Penelope's eyes are wide behind her glasses. She blinks up at him and Colin's fingers tighten in the ribbed cotton of her vest top.
"What are you doing?" she whispers, soft little breaths puffed out against his mouth.
"I'm kissing you," Colin says softly, tilting his head to the side. "Can I kiss you?"
A little crumple appears between her brows, and Colin thinks his heart might burst. But in a nice way, a soft way, like how the peonies burst into existence. Slow slow slow and then all at once.
"Are you sure?" she mouths, her voice barely a croak.
Colin takes a deep breath. Is he? The question fills him like the early summer sunlight, clear and sparkling.
"Yes."
And then his hand spreads over her lower back and he draws her closer, closer, so their hips are matching and the flowers are trapped between them, the heads bumping his chin. He bends and so does she, melting into his touch as carefully, slowly, he eases his mouth against hers.
He is sure, and sure, and sure. In fact, as he kisses her into the hallway, past the flowers in the vestibule and the ones on the kitchen counter and the ones on her coffee table, he is more than sure. It feels laughably obvious that this is what he was meant for: kissing Penelope. Bringing her flowers. No, I'm the lucky one, he'll say to the florists. Another bunch of peonies, please — they're my girlfriend's favourite.
She's a really good kisser, he thinks, as he plants himself onto the sofa and gentles her onto his lap, her thighs spread around his hips. She's soft and pliant, her lips giving gently underneath his. She winds her fingers into his hair as he kisses her, and opens up her mouth obediently when he gets brave enough to use his tongue.
"Colin," she says, when he tilts her face up so he can kiss her jaw and her neck, the soft spot behind her ear.
"Yeah?" he murmurs against her pulse, though everything feels sort of nicely fuzzy, pink at the edges. Like he's in a dream — but one of the ones where you know you're dreaming so you can just enjoy it. She's soft and warm on his lap, his hands cradling her face like she's fragile, like the veined petals of the flowers.
"What is this?" she asks quietly.
"I love you," he tells her without thinking. "I'm in love with you."
He's said it before, he supposes. He's been careful about it, though. Hasn't said it as much as he's wanted to, because of what he sort of knows and what she sort of knows he knows. He didn't want to hurt her. He wanted to be sure. But it's been in his mouth, hasn't it? Sitting heavy on his tongue, plum-like, waiting for his body and mind to catch up.
He tucks her hair behind her ears and holds her cheeks in his hands. Her glasses are adorably askew, her lips red from all the kissing. He is hers, entirely.
"Oh," she says softly.
"Yeah," Colin nods, his thumb stroking over the apple of her cheek. "That's exactly what I said."
She kisses him then. Wraps her arms around his neck and presses soft, delicate kisses across his cheek until she finds his mouth.
She feels amazing on his lap. He has no idea how long they kiss for, but it feels like hours pass — days, months, a lifetime with her clinging to him and his hands cupping her hips, thumbs sliding over the inch-wide strip of skin above the waist of her pyjama pants. It is slow, unhurried, meandering — but aren't things always like that with them? When they go to get coffee together they can lose an hour wandering the streets to choose the best place. They talk in wide, looping circles, points made and unmade, ideas losing their threads and new ones picked up. Their kisses are just the same — explorative, instinctive, almost lazy in their spooling sweetness. They kiss cheeks and temples and throats. Colin spends a long time sucking on Penelope's tongue while he strokes her back, just to hear the nice, hitched way she breathes as he does it. She is endlessly patient — lets him wrap her curls around his fingers just to watch them bounce when he releases them, and lets him skim his hands up and down her sides so he can learn the precise shape of her body. She breathes into his mouth and presses herself to him, so warm and enveloping, and Colin wonders how he could have ever not been sure.
Things drift and rise and settle again, sliding between kisses and touches, until Penelope slows on his lap and pulls away, her cheeks flushed and her lips swollen. Colin can't help staring at them — he's never seen them like this. So plump and shiny, parted just far enough that he can see the little bite of her upper teeth, her breath puffing out. He supposes he's never seen her so thoroughly kissed before.
She puts her hands on his shoulders and her eyes slide sideways to the peonies Colin tossed onto the sofa. There is a long, quiet moment that Colin doesn't really understand, and his eyes are too transfixed on her mouth for him to try to parse it.
"They need to go in water," she says, and there is something in her voice he doesn't like. Something that catches and prickles at his throat. Tastes like doomed. "They'll die otherwise."
Colin looks around at the pink forest he has planted in her house. Every surface heaves with peonies in various stages of bloom. Ridiculous, really. How could he not have known?
He feels something ball up tight in his belly like the furled up blooms. "They'll be fine," he says firmly, seriously. "They're sturdier than they look."
But her eyes are still sideways, pinned to the flowers.
"I've been thinking about…" Her fingers worry the fabric of his T-shirt. "About why I love the peonies."
"Yeah?" Colin croaks, and he feels like he is made of glass all of a sudden.
She nods and hums. "I think, maybe, it's safer to love things that are only around for a short time." Her words are slow, careful. "I love things that I know won't last. That don't stick around. I think, maybe, that's why I love you."
Colin's eyes burn and his throat constricts and he feels that tight little lump in his belly get even tighter. She loves him. He didn't think it would feel painful to hear it.
The corners of her mouth are turned down, her eyes shaded behind her glasses. Colin feels suddenly fierce, determined — which is unusual for him. Colin is not stubborn like the rest of his family. They bash and scream and kick the world into the shape they want it. Colin just laughs and shakes his head and lets the little disappointments nick and chip. Swallows them down and doesn't make a fuss.
But not now. Not with her. His hands slide up from her soft, soft waist to the apples of her cheeks.
"Penelope," he says, and he thinks of his siblings, how bold they are. How hard they fight for what they want. He's a Bridgerton too, isn't he? "I am not a peony."
Her mouth trembles, and Colin wants to kiss it; wants to weep. But he holds firm.
"Right," she says, though it's hollow. A little huff of air that he supposes is an approximation of a laugh. Her eyes are still cast down, her lashes fluttering against her cheeks. "Right."
"No. No." He runs his thumb over her lower lip and tilts her chin up. "I am not a peony."
She is incredible, he thinks. He is right to love her, he thinks. How could he not?
Because he watches the fear on her face, watches the doubt — and then he watches her put it away. Watches the plush bloom of her mouth set firm; watches her chin pluck upwards in determination.
Penelope, it turns out, is very stubborn. She knows her own mind, doesn't she?
She draws in a slow, deep breath, her nostrils flaring with the inhale. She touches his face, her fingers brushing over his temple and his cheek and his jaw, leaving silvery paths of sweetness in their wake.
"Right," she says, and it is shaky but determined. As though she will make herself believe it, even if her body does not want her to just yet. "You're not a peony. You're Colin."
"I love you," he says helplessly, and the corners of her mouth twitch upward, her cheeks pinking further.
"Yeah," she says, and it sounds like she believes it a little more. "Yes. You love me."
And then she moves to get up, to take the peonies and put them in water, and Colin feels that purpose, that clarity, surge through him. He feels certain that if he lets her walk away now, this moment might slip away; that there will be vases and water and trimming the stems and asking where he bought them from and throwing out the dead flowers and they will lose this moment. It will slip out of their fingers like the pink snow on her windowsill, curling and dead.
He needs to make her certain, needs to leave no room in her body for doubt.
He grabs her hand, and pulls her back into his lap, straddling him. She makes this nice little squeaking noise that he enjoys as he palms her arse and slides his hands up the back of her tank top, fingers discovering warm skin.
"Colin," she breathes, as he starts to kiss across her shoulders, her collar bone, holding her tight against him so she can have no doubt as to what he wants, how he feels. "Now?"
"Yes," he says firmly, his lips pressed against the freckled skin of her bare shoulder and his hands digging into the nice soft rolls of her back. "Now."
She freezes for a moment and he stills while she decides — and then he feels her melt against him. She feels like poured cream and June sun, feels like how the flowers feel in his arms when Colin waits on her doorstep for her to answer, his fingers absently tracing the petals. "Yeah," she breathes, and Colin hums into her neck, his entire body lit up with wanting her.
He is bold, purposeful. Lets his hands slide around her torso under her vest top, cupping the soft pillows of her tits under the fabric. He groans without meaning to, because they are ridiculous — plump and heavy and satin-soft, her nipples hard under his thumbs.
"God," he mutters, kneading her carefully, lightly, even though his hands want to grab and grope and jiggle with all the inelegance of a teenage boy.
"Yeah," she agrees, and her voice is so shaky and pleased that he can't help himself — he drags her closer and presses his tongue over her nipple. Well — over the fabric over her nipple, his mouth full of white cotton, but he doesn't care. He thinks maybe the barrier is helpful, actually, because he starts to teethe at her lightly, helplessly, and he doesn't want to hurt her.
She doesn't seem like she's hurting. In fact she rolls against him, her hands in his hair and her thighs gripping tight around his waist. As he gets the fabric all wet and plastered over her skin she breathes heavy and lifts her chest into his mouth. Colin becomes dimly aware of an ache in his crotch, and realises he's hard, his dick digging against the zipper of his jeans. She keeps rubbing against it, pressing the metal in deeper, and he hisses and moans around her tit at the little sting of it.
When he pulls back, the cotton is almost sheer from his tongue. Beneath he can see it, the petal-pink shade of her nipple darkened against the wet fabric. Peony-pink, actually — but not the bright magenta or the deep bubblegum. More the peach-and-cream kind. He moans, and before he realises what's happening he has her flat on her back on the sofa while he's propped up above her.
She blinks up at him, her throat rippling as she swallows.
"The window," she squeaks, her eyes adorably wide. Colin can't respond for a moment, his breath snatched. What a miracle it is, actually, to have this girl he's know his whole life, who he believed he had seen in all ways (crying and laughing and scowling and sitting upside down on her sofa) — what a miracle to have her open and pliant beneath him, her pupils dilated and her fingers twisting into his T-shirt. Such a gossamer line between before and now, between friendship and this. He's so, so very glad they stepped over it.
He glances at her big bay windows, notched open a few inches at the top and the light cotton curtains drawn open so the sun can spill through. He should probably get up and close everything, but his erection is so achy and throbbing at this point he's not sure he can actually walk — and the thought of doing anything to cover up the golden spill of light over her rosy skin makes him want to die.
Her street is dead-quiet, he reasons, and anyway, all anyone would see if they did look in is Colin, because his body pretty much covers hers entirely. And the sofa isn't really in view of the street, is it? They'll be fine, he reasons.
"You'll have to be quiet then, won't you," he breathes, and lowers himself to her neck.
She smells amazing, here in this nice little crook between her neck and her shoulder, where her hair feels like warm silk against his cheek. He should have been smelling her here for years, shouldn't he? He puts a hand on her thigh over the striped cotton of her pyjama bottoms, the fabric worn soft with age. She arches her back prettily and drags his face up to hers for a kiss while his hand wanders. Thigh and hip and belly. Fingers toying with the drawstring ties. His cock throbs with anticipation — his entire body is throbbing, really, pulsing and full with this moment.
"I want to touch you," he murmurs into her neck, his fingers on her waistband. Silly, because he's already touching her, on his knees between her bent legs, their bodies pressing close — but it sounds a bit more romantic than I want to finger you, doesn't it? But he really, really does, wants to press his fingers into the soft flower of her and feel her bloom, feel her soft and dewy and warm around him.
"Yeah," Penelope sighs back, and her fingers clumsily meet his at the waistband of her bottoms. She starts to push at the fabric, wriggling underneath him in a way that makes his cock twitch. He drags himself off her, kneeling up so he can help her pull the pjs off.
Fuck.
His vision starts to bend and spot as he gazes down at her dizzily, and he supposes all the blood in his body must be rushing directly to his groin, because she's —
"Beautiful," he croaks, and he's never meant anything more sincerely in his life. She's so abundant — extravagant, almost, like the peonies in their crazy over-bloom, plush and full and plentiful. Thick thighs with dimples made just for his fingertips. The unruly red thatch of her bush, soft curls he wants to kiss. Her pussy, pink and wet and pretty. His heart hammers and his throat gets thick as he looks down at her, her knees bent and her thighs spread and her wet tank-top plastered to her tits.
"You're so beautiful," he says again.
The word feels so nice on his tongue, new and certain and familiar all at once, and he realises he probably hasn't ever said it to her before, has he? Hasn't let himself.
She blinks up at him, her lips parted as she takes quick, ragged breaths.
"I can't believe this is…" she whispers, and Colin nods, because he can't believe it either, and then he settles himself back over her so he can kiss her slow and sloppy while his fingers explore the tender satin of her inner thighs. Then he moves inwards — higher — and he has this feeling that he's pushing his fingers through that gossamer thread, that membrane between before and now.
Wet, he thinks — or maybe he says it aloud, actually, because Penelope mewls into his mouth and grips his shirt as he slides his fingers through her pussy. He feels her breath hot and rapid against his cheek; feels her body warm as he starts to pet her slowly, carefully. She is silky-wet and warmer than the June sun. She makes soft little coos when he brushes her clit. He is, he thinks, as he presses his tongue helplessly into her mouth, really in love with her.
"There," she gasps — or tries to, around his tongue. "There — like that, yeah —"
"Like that?" he whispers, trying to concentrate on what the fuck he's actually doing rather than losing himself in the pleasure of touching her.
"Mhm." Her eyes close and she gets a sweet little scrunch in between her eyebrows. The same one she gets when she's reading a menu or trying to think of the next line in her novel. She settles herself and pulls away from her kiss, concentrating on her orgasm. "Like that."
Colin tries to focus then, to move his fingers with the soft precision she needs. Gentle, tender circles, from her clit down to her entrance and back up again, slow and steady. Lighter than he would usually go, and he wonders if he's been doing it wrong before now because she really seems to like this.
"God," she breathes, her tongue darting out to wet her plush lip. Colin kisses her cheek and keeps going, going. He feels certain he's never been this fully present before in his life, here cradled between Penelope's thighs, trying to make her come. He feels within time and without all at once, and he doesn't know how much of it has passed when Penelope starts to grip his wrist and her mouth opens jaggedly and her face scrunches up.
"There, there, like that, don't stop," she breathes, cheeks red, and Colin feels like a fucking tuning fork, like a bell rung, his entire body vibrating with purpose. He doesn't stop, keeps touching her just like that — and even though his fingers start to cramp and his erection is biting into the zip of his jeans he keeps going. He wants her to know that he's not going anywhere; that he's the type of person she can rely on to stay in it, who won't run or disappear. Who will always bring her peonies and give her orgasms, if she'll let him.
She comes and Colin wonders if he will too from the sight of it, just from the feel of her wet and pulsing under his fingers.
He manages to keep it together, just about. Kisses her after and babbles nonsense about how beautiful she is, how much he enjoys making her come. He's not sure she really hears him, her lashes fluttering and chest heaving as she floats back down to earth — probably for the best, actually.
He doesn't want to pierce the moment, but the throbbing of his cock is getting too insistent to ignore.
"I'm really close," he mutters apologetically. He is, in fact, about thirty seconds from coming in his jeans.
"Oh," Pen says in a kind of dreamy, pleased way that chases away some of Colin's embarrassment. She slides her hands between their crushed-together bodies, shifting beneath him so she can unzip his trousers. Colin's belly swoops and tumbles and he squeezes his eyes closed as her fingers slide over his boxers — over the obviously sticky wet spot his tip is pressing into.
"Ohhh," she says again, and slips her small, soft hand beneath the waist band so she can cup him gently.
"Fuck," he hisses, dropping to his forearms over her, pleasure spiking and rolling through him. "God — Pen —"
His body moves without permission, hips bucking into her palm as she cradles his dick, leaking helplessly as he kisses her messy. It almost feels like he's fucking her, her legs still wrapped around his waist and her body so warm and plush beneath him. He kisses her and groans pathetically as he fucks her hand, sweetness chasing through his body.
"God, Colin," she whispers, her voice high and breathy. "God, you feel nice in my hand. You're so big."
"Christ," he groans against her tongue, his hips moving faster as his cock slides up and down her pre-cum wet hand. Her words make him feel high, unravel him in ways he hadn't quite expected. He knows her voice so well and yet he's never heard her sound like this, hushed and needy and awed, a little dirty. That thin membrane between before and now has disintegrated entirely — there is only this, them, her breath in his mouth and her hand on his cock.
"I love you," she breathes.
Colin comes instantly.
Embarrassing, really — except he feels too good to be embarrassed, letting himself spill into her cradling palm as his hips buck and stutter. A whine escapes him (that he will cringe at later).
Penelope kisses it off his mouth.
"That was crazy," she says, once he has stopped shaking and his cock lies soft and sticky in her cupped hand.
"Was it?" he asks, with a wince. He knows this was not exactly his smoothest lovemaking, but it felt good in the moment. Now he feels a little embarrassed.
"I just mean," she says faintly, her brow furrowing and something distant on her face, "that teenage Penelope would not believe me if I told her that Colin Bridgerton just came in her hand. I feel like I ought to preserve it somewhere for posterity. Go wipe it off in my journal or something. A scrapbook."
Colin lets out a huff, nearly collapsing on top of her. He feels sort of helpless. Maybe because she has him quite literally by the balls. Maybe because he's never felt more vulnerable, more peeled. He kisses her cheek quickly and heaves himself off the sofa to go get them tissues and close the window once and for all. The helpless feeling chases him to the bathroom and back again, and as he walks through her flat the peonies seem to whisper and taunt him.
Has he ruined everything? Was she just fucking him out of her system, ridding herself of her childhood crush? Was she right — does she only love him because he leaves? Does she even want him to stick around?
When he gets back to the sofa, Penelope has her pyjama bottoms back on and she is sitting up, her phone in one hand and her other hand, the one covered in cum, resting palm-up on her knee. Colin sits next to her and starts cleaning it off carefully with a tissue, his heart in his throat.
"What are you looking at?" he asks, half-afraid of her answer.
"Flowers," she tells him simply, but her cheeks are blushing pink.
"What for?" he croaks, heart pounding.
"We'll need to find new ones for you to buy me." Colin's shoulders sag, relief and dizzying sweetness filling him all at once. "For when peony season is over."
Colin closes his eyes and his world is flooded pink, summer light filtering through his eyelids. Then Penelope swings her legs over his lap and lifts his arm up to place around her shoulders, and once they are all cuddled up on her sofa, she holds out her phone so they can choose the flowers together.