Penelope woke up in bed around 2 AM with her head on Roman's chest and his arm loosely curled around her back. She nearly panicked before realizing that he must have brought her up to bed after the baseball game ended.
Man. She had really been out of it. She should have taken a nap earlier after all.
Unfortunately, she was wide awake now and completely trapped. There was no way to escape his embrace without waking him up and he had to get up and go to work in the morning. She didn't want to bother him since he had made her dinner.
But this was the most uncomfortable thing she had ever done in her life. She had never slept with a man before so this unfamiliar weight on her body felt wrong. Especially because she knew she was an imposter.
Roman probably did this every night with the woman he loved. It was a perfectly normal habit for him. But Penelope wasn't her.
She was a fraud from another world taking advantage of him because another version of her little brother had asked her to. Honestly? She was a terrible person.
He deserved better than that. He deserved his wife back.
Penelope had no idea where her doppelgänger had gone. Percy theorized that they had either swapped places or there was some sort of chain reaction displacement going on where all the Penelope Logans in the multiverse had been sent somewhere else.
She desperately hoped it wasn't the latter. That sort of spatial distortion was even more unbelievable than a simple swap. And probably less likely to right itself naturally. She might end up somewhere else next instead of going back home.
If the other Penelope was living her life right now…what was going on? Had she managed to force herself to work two jobs? Did her Percy know like this one did? Exactly how much did she miss her husband?
These questions haunted her. That, coupled with the discomfort from being cuddled by a stranger she had only read about, prevented her from falling back asleep completely.
She did her best but was still drifting in and out of consciousness when Roman's alarm went off at 5:30. He snoozed it with a groan and pulled Penelope closer, being mindful of her incision even when he was half asleep.
He buried his face in her neck and kissed it, giving her goosebumps, snuggling up contentedly until the alarm went off again. With a sigh, Roman got up and tucked the blanket back around his supposedly sleeping wife before kissing her cheek and going to get ready for the day.
Penelope was so wired after this that she didn't fall back asleep for real until 7 AM, eventually waking up around 10. Well. That wasn't the most restful sleep she ever got.
She went downstairs and rummaged around the cupboards for something to make for breakfast. She had never been the biggest fan of cereal, preferring bagels or toast or even pancakes if she had the time.
Ooh. Pancakes sounded so good right now.
She found some high-quality pancake mix—the kind she could never afford—and got to it, humming as she went. Today she would be more productive since she only had a half-day with Roman gone to work with before.
Penelope had barely flipped her pancake when she saw an incoming call from her mother. She may as well answer it. They were probably checking up on her because Percy or Roman told them about the appendectomy.
"Hello?"
"Penny!" her mother shrieked. "My poor baby, are you alright? Roman told me your appendix nearly burst and they barely managed to remove it in time! I would have called sooner but we were in a no-signal zone for a few days."
She couldn't help but smile. Her mother was always so easily excitable. At least, she had been before her father died. That wiped every bit of enthusiasm right out of her.
They had been married for almost thirty years when he died but had dated for another five years before that. She had been absolutely devastated losing her oldest friend.
Iris and Trevor were kindred spirits who met while admiring the same museum exhibit on Greek antiquities in college. He was interested in the mythology some of the artifacts depicted while she was interested in the artifacts themselves.
They impressed each other with various facts about mythology and ancient Greek objects for about an hour before he asked her out. The rest was history.
"It's fine, Mom. Roman has been taking very good care of me," Penelope said with a lump in her throat.
If her mom was talking to her now…was her dad nearby? He always liked to listen in on her phone calls when she was away for college. The chance to potentially hear his voice again made her want to cry.
"Ah, bless that boy. He's always taken good care of you. I hope you appreciate him properly! Love like that is hard to come by," Iris said wisely.
Penelope barely bit back her sigh. He wasn't hers to appreciate. She could only dream of having someone love her that much someday. "Not everyone can be as perfect for each other as you and dad," she said wryly.
Her mother preened a little. "Of course not. You remember the Greek myth about soulmates, yes? We're like that."
How could she forget? Trevor loved talking about that because he thought the same thing.
The ancient Greeks believed that humans originally had four arms and legs, two hearts, two heads, etc. but Zeus split them up believing they were too powerful. He doomed them to walk the earth searching for their other half.
"Yeah, yeah," Penelope agreed to close the subject.
If either of her parents started on anything Greek, they could go on all day. It used to annoy her—who wanted to be named after an abandoned wife who spent her entire youth waiting for an unfaithful husband to come back?—but after her father died, she wished she could hear another one of his monologues more than anything.