Penelope didn't get very far on her drawing during the flight. She managed to get the rough sketch mostly done but the coloring and the layers would take forever.
She had drawn two versions of herself back to back. One was the way she looked when she was back in her world: her hair in a simple ponytail or braid wearing jeans and a casual blouse with worn out sneakers. The other was meant to be Penelope Cross in her fancy clothes.
There was a dividing line down the middle with different backgrounds depicting their separate lifestyles but the two Penelopes' hands overlapped the middle because they were handcuffed together.
"What are you drawing?" Everett asked, startling her so much that she accidentally made a wrong line across the drawing with her stylus.
Penelope clicked 'undo' immediately and tried to calm herself. "Nothing in particular," she lied.
At least she hadn't gotten to coloring yet. Right now the two girls could feasibly be different people because they had different hairstyles and clothes. It would be kind of hard to explain that she had drawn two different versions of herself.
"You creative types can't turn it off, can you?" Everett observed.
His words were slightly derogatory but his tone was matter-of-fact. Penelope couldn't tell whether or not she had been insulted but was too afraid to ask. She simply gave him her best version of a polite smile before returning to her task.
Thankfully he let the matter drop and didn't speak to her again until after the plane landed and he asked her if she had a carryon bag in the overhead bin. She did not.
Penelope couldn't get off the plane fast enough but her seat was pretty far back so she had to wait for other people to disembark first. She had been suffocating ever since Everett spoke to her.
When they finally all met up and got their luggage from the baggage claim, the group headed to go rent a van everyone would fit in together. They wanted to check into the hotel at the same time since people were sharing rooms.
Penelope ended up sharing with Hayley. Thankfully she wasn't terribly familiar with her other self because they were in different departments so they were able to do basic small talk 'get to know you' questions.
Hayley was a friendly woman who appeared to be in her mid-thirties and she ended up initiating the conversation. "Your ring is beautiful. Are you engaged or married?"
"Married. It's been four years now. What about you?" The less she had to say on the matter the better. She was afraid of tripping up somehow.
"Eleven. My husband and I have a ten-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son. Do you have any children?"
"No, not yet."
At this rate, Penelope wasn't sure if she ever would. But 'not yet' sounded better than a hard no in this sort of situation. She didn't want to make a bad impression on this woman she would be seeing a lot of the next week.
"Life gets ten times crazier with kids, let me tell you! Enjoy your time alone with your husband while you can," Hayley advised with a laugh.
She nodded her agreement even though she wasn't sure if she would be able to do that because Roman wasn't actually her husband. It was easier to agree.
Penelope braced herself for a long conversation but it only last about fifteen minutes before Hayley's children called asking for help with their homework, claiming their dad was hopeless. She apologized and took the call onto the terrace before turning on video mode so she could see the assignment.
That left her free to continue working on her drawing. She ended up doing that until it was time for everyone to meet up and get dinner.
She stuck to Max like Velcro because he was going to function as her human shield for the next week. He didn't seem to notice anything off about it because they tended to stick together at the office too.
Everyone was chatting around the tables they had pushed together in the semi-casual buffet style restaurant when her phone buzzed with a text from Roman. 'How's it going so far?'
'We haven't done much yet but the woman I'm sharing a room with is the chatty type so we'll see how the week goes. We're at dinner now. Have you eaten?' Penelope responded.
'Just about to'
Max noticed her texting discreetly under the table and decided to tease her under his breath. "We not interesting enough for you?"
She rolled her eyes at him. "You know that isn't true. It may be bad form to text at the table but it's also bad form to ignore your husband."
Like she was one to talk. She had been doing her best to ignore Roman ever since she came here. Her hypocrisy levels had become much higher than usual since ending up in this parallel world.
"I'm just messing with you," Max said with a laugh. "How is Roman, anyway? It's been a while since I've seen him."
How was Roman? An excellent question. Penelope wasn't entirely sure herself but he didn't seem okay emotionally. He needed his wife to make him a priority and that was going to be difficult (if not impossible) because she wasn't actually the person he needed to do that.
"He's doing well," she lied. "How's your love life looking? Go on any interesting dates lately?"
Her journal talked about how he broke up with his most recent girlfriend last year and began pestering his coworkers to set him up with someone new a few months later. All of her friends were in relationships so she hadn't been able to help him out.
Max sighed dramatically. "Interesting bad or interesting good? Because there's a huge difference, believe me."
He launched into a woeful tale about a successive series of bad dates and used such hilarious imagery that Penelope nearly snorted soup out of her nose. She barely managed to stop herself from spewing it everywhere. Talking to someone funny while eating was never a good idea.
After dinner, people were free to do whatever they wanted for the rest of the night and some people, including Max, wanted to go sightseeing. Penelope didn't see the point since she had lived in San Francisco for two years and had already seen all the good stuff.
Nobody here would believe that though because it had happened in another world. Max probably knew where she had gone to college; it would never work.
So she let herself be dragged along to see things she had already seen multiple times. Some of the group had never been to San Francisco at all despite it being in the same state. It was quite a drive though.
Penelope and a few others acted as de facto tour guides since they had been here before. It wouldn't be questionable for her to say she had visited here before and knew some of the best things to see.
They only managed to hit Lombard Street and the Golden Gate Bridge before having to head back to the hotel to sleep because of traffic. Most people wanted to continue sightseeing every day during breaks from the conference but she bowed out of that immediately using her status as a patient.
All that walking around wore her out and she had promised both Roman and Darren that she wouldn't overdo it. Tomorrow she would use that free time to rest rather than get dragged along by her coworkers' whims.
===
The advertising conference was held in a conference center only a few miles from Penelope's old university. People from mid-sized to large advertising firms from all over the country had come out to hear panelists speak on a variety of different topics as the world's media continued to change as well as be a part of activities meant to utilize this new information.
The conference provided lunch and dinner and involved a three-hour break between the last activity and dinner, where everyone was seated separately from their groups for the sake of networking. Penelope would be able to go back to the hotel and take a nap every day if she timed it right.
She stood in front of the first exhibition hall after getting her name badge and looked around with a sense of awe. She never would have imagined herself being able to participate in anything like this.
She had to stop herself from bouncing in anticipation because that wouldn't be professional. Penelope Cross was a calm and collected businesswoman; she wouldn't be excited about seeing something that was fairly normal in her field.
That begged the question of what did excite her. Penelope had read the journals and knew they had similar tastes and opinions on a lot of things but she couldn't fathom the woman's heart at all.
If she loved her husband, why did she keep putting her job first? Why exactly did she prioritize her job so much? What had been the motivation behind drawing Roman as water and herself as fire?
It could be looked at in a variety of ways. Water and fire were typically seen as elemental opposites. She could be saying that they were too different.
Or, in a more positive way, that because he was like water he could be around her passion without getting burned. But that obviously wasn't true based on how much her inability to prioritize was hurting him.
It could also be taken negatively, like he kept trying to put out her fire by getting her to do what he wanted her to do and extinguishing her spark. That was a selfish take on it since Penelope had read about the arguments and thought he had proposed a reasonable compromise.
Their life experiences were so different that she couldn't fathom her other self's thought process. If Penelope had even a fraction of what she did, she would be sure to properly appreciate it.
Therein laid the problem. Right now she had everything Penelope Cross did but wasn't sure if she was morally allowed to enjoy it and make this foreign life her own.
That was what she had to decide while she was here. She had slightly less than a week to make her choice but the decision couldn't be made lightly. She needed to carefully consider the pros and cons of all of her limited options.
The sketch she drew yesterday encapsulated her feelings pretty well. She felt chained by expectations—Percy's, Roman's and so on—and the life that her other self was supposed to be living. She couldn't escape her past and live the largely carefree life she had found herself stuck with because of guilt either. There was no winning.
"Penny! Come sit by me; the welcome ceremony is about to start," Max called.
Penelope realized she was zoning out standing in the aisle of the largest exhibit hall and that she needed to move. People behind her had started to grumble. Murmuring an apology to them, she made her way to where Max was sitting with the other members of the creative department.
She did need to do a lot of thinking to make her choice but she also needed to pay attention to what was going on around her. If she was truly going to be stuck here, she needed to know more about advertising or she was going to get fired.
She might not be obsessed with her job like her counterpart but she still wanted to be involved in the field of graphic design since she lost out on her chance before. Getting fired would make that difficult.
"What all do you think they're going to talk about today?" Penelope asked her coworkers conversationally.
"Not a clue," Julie replied with a shrug.
"I think they're probably going to talk about the history of advertising and how ads need to change with the times," Kyle contributed.
They all made noises or acknowledgement or nodded along to what he was saying. That would make sense. While looking to the future, it was usually a good idea to review what had already been done. Penelope was impressed by his insight and looked forward to seeing whether or not he was right.
She still couldn't believe she was actually here! It felt like a dream to be on a business trip since neither of her jobs were the type to make people travel. She had to make the most of the next week.
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