Chapter Text
The document was titled "Draft_Notes_2019" because Penelope Featherington had never been foolish enough to call it what it actually was.
She stared at her laptop screen, cursor blinking in the Google Doc that contained approximately seven years of mortification, and wondered—not for the first time—why she hadn't just deleted the damn thing.
Because you're a writer, she told herself. And writers don't delete.
Even when they should.
Especially when they should.
The document had 147 pages. She knew because she'd checked last week in a moment of weakness after three glasses of wine and a romantic comedy that had hit too close to home. 147 pages of observations and longing and the slow, painful evolution from teenage infatuation to something more complicated. Something that felt less like love and more like grief for a future that had never actually existed.
She scrolled up, past the recent entries, past her university years, back to the beginning.
June 12, 2017
I'm going to marry Colin Bridgerton.
I know how that sounds. I know I'm sixteen and he's twenty-one and he probably doesn't know my middle name (it's Anne, not that anyone's asking). But I saw him today at the Bridgerton summer party and he was wearing this linen shirt that was slightly too wrinkled and he had sand in his hair from playing volleyball with his brothers and when he smiled it was like the sun coming out.
Eloise says I'm being ridiculous. She's probably right. She usually is.
But he asked me about my exams. Actually ASKED, like he cared about the answer. And when I told him I was thinking about studying English literature, he said "Of course you are, you've always got your nose in a book" and I know that's not much but he NOTICED. He's noticed me enough to know I read a lot.
Anthony made some joke about me being "El's tiny friend" and Colin told him to shut up. Just casually, like it was obvious that I shouldn't be made fun of for being short. Like defending me was the most natural thing in the world.
He does that—sees when someone's being diminished and steps in without making a scene about it. He redirected Anthony to the volleyball game and suddenly everyone forgot the joke had even happened. Including Anthony.
That's the thing about Colin. He's kind in these quiet ways that most people miss.
I know this is stupid. I know he probably thinks of me as Eloise's little friend, if he thinks of me at all. But God, the way he smiled at me when he handed me a drink (lemonade, because I'm SIXTEEN and everyone at this party is very aware of that fact except apparently my heart).
I'm going to marry him.
Or I'm going to get over this.
Probably the second thing.
Definitely the second thing.
But maybe the first.
Penelope's chest tightened reading it now. That earnest, hopeful voice. That stupid girl who thought being noticed was the same as being seen.
She scrolled further down.
August 3, 2019
Colin is back from Greece. Three months of "finding himself" which apparently means getting very tan and growing out his hair and developing opinions about sustainable tourism.
I'm eighteen now. Starting at UCL in September. Officially an adult, whatever that means.
He came to dinner tonight—Violet invited Eloise and me because she's convinced we'll both starve to death at university without her supervision. He spent twenty minutes telling everyone about this family he stayed with in Santorini, how they made him rethink everything about community and connection and the way we live in the West.
Benedict caught my eye across the table and made a subtle jerking-off motion with his hand. I had to fake a coughing fit to hide my laugh.
But here's the thing: Colin meant every word. He always does. He's not pretentious, not really. He just feels things deeply and then needs everyone to know he's feeling them. It's actually kind of lovely, even when it's a bit much. Even when he's so caught up in his own experience that he doesn't notice Benedict's mocking or Hyacinth looking bored or the way Eloise keeps trying to change the subject.
He gets like this—so enthusiastic about whatever he's discovered that the rest of us become the audience instead of participants. He doesn't mean to do it. He just... forgets we have stories too.
After dinner, he asked about my classes. Remembered I was doing English. Asked if I was excited or terrified. I said both, and he said "Good, that means you're doing it right" and smiled at me like we were sharing a secret.
For about ninety seconds, I was the most important person in the room.
Then his phone rang—some girl named Lucia, I think—and he took it outside and I didn't see him the rest of the night.
Eloise says he's dated half of Europe at this point. "Colin collects people," she said. "Like stamps, but with more feelings and significantly less organization."
He does collect people. Makes them feel special and seen and then... moves on. Not cruelly. Just because the next thing is always more interesting than the current thing.
I wonder what it would be like to be interesting enough to keep his attention.
Starting university in three weeks. New city, new life, new Penelope who doesn't spend her time wondering what Colin Bridgerton thinks of her.
That's the plan, anyway.
Penelope remembered that dinner. Remembered the way Colin's eyes had lit up talking about the Aegean Sea, the small sustainable farm, the grandmother who'd taught him to make spanakopita. He'd been so alive, so present in the telling.
And then Lucia had called and he'd stepped away and that had been that.
The pattern of her life: brief moments of his attention, bright and warm, and then nothing. Not cruelty. Never cruelty. Just... absence.
One more. She scrolled to 2021.
December 27, 2021
Christmas at the Bridgertons' because Mum is in France with her new boyfriend and honestly I'd rather be here anyway.
Colin is working for that travel startup now—LonelyPlanet-but-make-it-ethical or whatever. He's good at it. Of course he is. He's good at everything that involves talking to people and making them feel like they matter.
I'm interning at Bloomsbury Press now. Mostly I read slush pile manuscripts and make tea, but I'm good at it. I can see the shape of a story, see what it needs, see what's missing.
Maybe that's why I can't let go of Colin. Because I can see the shape of what we could be, even though I know it's never going to happen.
Today was hard.
We were all in the kitchen—me, Eloise, Colin, Daphne, and Simon. Daphne was talking about the baby, how exhausting it is but also how perfect, and Colin got this look on his face. Soft. Like he was imagining his own future, his own family.
"I want that, you know," he said. "The whole thing. Wife, kids, chaos. I want to build something real."
Daphne asked if he was seeing anyone and he laughed—not meanly, just genuinely amused—and said, "Always seeing someone, never seeing THE someone, you know?"
I was standing right there.
Right there, in my good dress (the green one that Eloise says makes my boobs look fantastic), with my hair actually cooperating for once, and I was RIGHT THERE.
But Colin was looking at Daphne, at Simon's hand on her shoulder, at their future. I was just background.
Here's what I've learned about Colin: he's genuinely kind. He tips bartenders too much and remembers the names of servers and once spent an entire Bridgerton dinner asking me about a manuscript I was working on because he'd actually listened when I mentioned it in passing three weeks earlier.
But he's also so focused on the Big Things—the meaningful work, the grand gestures, the Important Relationships—that he misses the small things. Like the way Anthony talks over Eloise at family dinners. Or the way Hyacinth is desperate for his attention but pretends she isn't. Or the way I've been in love with him for four years.
He's not oblivious because he's cruel. He's oblivious because I don't register as someone worth really seeing. I'm Eloise's friend. I'm furniture. I'm pleasant background noise.
And that's not his fault.
It's not anyone's fault.
It just is.
I'm twenty years old and I need to stop waiting for someone to see me who never will. I need to stop cataloging all the ways he's good and all the ways he's careless. I need to stop treating him like a character I can analyze and understand and fix if I just pay close enough attention.
After the holidays. After Christmas. After one more family dinner where I can sit across from him and pretend this is enough.
Then I'll let go.
I promise.
"Pen! Did you steal my good bra?"
Penelope slammed her laptop shut with more force than necessary and looked up to find Eloise Bridgerton standing in her doorway, wearing an oversized band t-shirt and holding a coffee mug that said "Nevertheless, She Persisted."
Her heart was still caught somewhere in 2021, in that kitchen, watching Colin imagine a future that would never include her.
"Your bras don't fit me," Penelope said, her voice coming out more steady than she felt. "Physically impossible."
"Then what happened to my black one? The nice one from Agent Provocateur?"
"Have you considered that you lost it in the disaster zone you call a bedroom?"
Eloise looked briefly offended, then shrugged. "Fair point."
They'd been living together for two years now, ever since Eloise had decided that living with her family in Mayfair was "stifling her creative energy" and Penelope had decided that living alone in London was too expensive and too quiet. The flat in Bloomsbury was small—two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen where you couldn't open the oven and the dishwasher at the same time—but it was theirs.
Well. Mostly Eloise's, if Penelope was being honest. The Bridgertons had money in the way that some people had freckles: abundant, genetic, and slightly embarrassing to acknowledge in polite company.
But Eloise paid two-thirds of the rent and never made Penelope feel like a charity case, and in return, Penelope did most of the cooking and never complained when Eloise left her research books scattered across every available surface.
It was a good arrangement.
It would be a perfect arrangement if Eloise's older brother would stop existing.
Or at least stop getting engaged.
"Are you coming tonight?" Eloise asked, leaning against the doorframe. "Mum's doing the whole Sunday roast thing. Hyacinth just got back from uni and apparently she has 'news.'" She made air quotes with the hand not holding coffee. "Which probably means she's gotten another tattoo or joined a cult or both."
Penelope felt her stomach do something complicated. A twist, a drop, a little free-fall of anxiety that she'd become very good at ignoring.
"Tonight?"
"Yes, tonight. Sunday. Roast. Keep up, Featherington."
Sunday dinner. Which meant all the Bridgertons. Which meant Colin and Isla, probably discussing wedding venues or honeymoon destinations or whatever it was that happy engaged couples discussed.
Penelope's brain did what it always did when confronted with the Colin situation: it started generating escape routes.
"I have to—" She gestured vaguely at her laptop. "—work thing."
Eloise's eyes narrowed. "What work thing?"
"Manuscript. Urgent."
"On a Sunday night?"
"Publishing never sleeps."
"Publishing is literally closed on Sundays."
Damn it.
Penelope sighed and sat back down on her bed, which was covered in a duvet she'd bought from a charity shop in Camden that was supposed to be "vintage" but was probably just old. "I don't know if I should come."
"Why not?"
Because your brother is bringing his fiancée and I've spent the last nine years being pathetically in love with him and I've finally—finally—gotten to a place where I can think about him for less than ten minutes a day and seeing him all domestically happy is going to undo all of that progress.
"Just tired," Penelope said instead.
Eloise studied her for a long moment. She had the Bridgerton eyes—that particular shade of blue that looked like expensive china—and the Bridgerton ability to see directly through bullshit.
They'd been best friends since Penelope was fourteen and Eloise had found her crying in the library at school because some girls had called her "Penny Dreadful" and made jokes about her weight. Eloise had marched right up to those girls and eviscerated them with the kind of verbal precision that came from growing up with seven siblings and learning to defend yourself at the dinner table.
And then she'd sat down next to Penelope and said, "They're idiots. You're brilliant. Want to come to my house and eat too much cake?"
They'd been inseparable ever since.
Which meant Eloise knew. Maybe not the details, maybe not the full extent of it, but she knew there was something.
"He's bringing Isla," Eloise said carefully.
"I assumed."
"And I know that's..." Eloise hesitated. "I know things have been weird since the engagement."
"Things haven't been weird."
"Pen—"
"El, I'm fine." Penelope stood, busying herself with finding her shoes—practical flats because she was five-foot-one on a good day and heels made her feel like a child playing dress-up. "I'm happy for Colin. Isla seems lovely. I'm just tired."
This was approximately seventy percent true.
Isla did seem lovely. Tall, blonde, elegant in that effortless way that made Penelope feel like she should apologize for taking up space. She worked in international development, spoke four languages, had the kind of career that made people say "wow" instead of "oh, that's nice."
She'd met Colin at some fancy charity gala thing that he probably didn't really want to attend. They probably bonded over their shared passion for making the world better and looked phenomenal in all their coupled-up Instagram photos doing charity work in photogenic locations.
She was exactly the sort of woman Colin Bridgerton would marry. Someone whose life looked as meaningful as he wanted his own to be.
"You should come," Eloise said, softer now. "Mum asked about you specifically. And Hyacinth will be devastated if you're not there to hear about whatever fresh chaos she's created."
Penelope looked at her best friend—her brilliant, stubborn, generous best friend who had never once made her feel small—and felt her resolve crumble.
This was the problem with loving the Bridgertons. You couldn't love just one of them. They came as a package deal: loud, chaotic, overwhelming, and somehow essential.
"Fine," she said. "But I'm not staying late."
"Deal." Eloise grinned and pushed off the doorframe. "Wear the green dress. It makes your boobs look fantastic."
"My boobs always look fantastic."
"True. But the green dress helps the rest of us appreciate them properly."
After Eloise left, Penelope sat back down at her desk and opened her laptop again.
The document stared back at her: 147 pages of observations. Of seeing Colin clearly—his kindness and his carelessness, his enthusiasm and his obliviousness, the way he made people feel special and then forgot they existed.
She was good at this, at seeing people. It was what made her good at her job. She could read a manuscript and see exactly what the author was trying to say beneath what they'd actually written. She could see the shape of a story, see what was missing, see what needed to change.
She'd sold three debuts this year. Actual auctions, multiple houses bidding, authors crying on the phone when she told them the numbers.
She was twenty-five years old and she was an editor at a respected publishing house and she had a life that was full and meaningful and entirely her own.
So why couldn't she delete this document?
She scrolled to the bottom, to the most recent entry.
December 15, 2025
Colin is engaged.
I heard from Eloise, who heard from Benedict, who heard from their mother, who probably heard it from Colin himself though knowing the Bridgertons they all just absorbed the information through some kind of psychic family network.
Isla MacTavish. She's beautiful. Of course she is.
The feeling I have isn't heartbreak. It's more like... relief? Like I've been waiting for permission to stop waiting.
I keep thinking about the last time I saw him—at Benedict's birthday in October. He barely looked at me. Not cruelly. Just in the way you don't really look at someone you've known forever but never really thought about. I was there. I laughed at the right times. I existed in his peripheral vision.
I've spent nine years really seeing Colin Bridgerton. The tiny crease between his eyebrows when he's listening to something that matters. The way he always lets his mother win at Scrabble even though he could destroy her. The way he tips too much and remembers people's names and once spent an entire dinner asking me about a manuscript because he'd actually listened when I mentioned it weeks earlier.
I've seen his kindness: the way he defended me from Anthony's teasing when I was sixteen. The way he interrupted Anthony at Christmas when Anthony was being condescending to Eloise. The way he makes everyone feel like they're the most important person in the room, at least for the ninety seconds he's paying attention.
But I've also seen his blindness: the way he gets so caught up in his own narrative that he forgets other people have stories too. The way he dated Emma for four months and never mentioned her to his family until after they'd broken up. The way he talks over people when he's excited. The way he's never once noticed me, not really, because I don't fit into his idea of what matters.
He's not perfect. I know he's not perfect.
But I've seen him anyway. All of him. For nine years.
And he's never once really seen me.
I'm twenty-five years old. I have a job I'm good at and friends who actually see me and a life that doesn't require Colin Bridgerton to look at me differently.
So. Letting go. Starting now.
Penelope read it once, then closed the laptop.
The document stayed there. Undeleted.
She stood and walked to her closet. The green dress hung there—jewel-toned emerald that made her red hair look intentional, a fit that acknowledged she had curves without apologizing for them.
She pulled it out and headed for the bathroom to change.
Twenty minutes later, her phone buzzed.
Violet Bridgerton: Penelope darling, I do hope you're coming tonight! I'm making your favorite potatoes and Hyacinth specifically requested you be there for her announcement. We miss you! xx
Penelope's heart did something warm and painful. Violet treated her like a daughter. Had done since Penelope's own mother had made it clear that having a daughter who was short and curvy and bookish was something of a disappointment.
She typed back: Wouldn't miss it. See you at 6.
Then she looked back at her laptop, still open on her desk. The cursor blinked at the end of her December entry.
Before she could stop herself, she sat down and started typing.
January 8, 2026
Going to dinner tonight. Colin and Isla will be there.
I'm going to smile. I'm going to be gracious. I'm going to wear the green dress and eat Violet's potatoes and listen to Hyacinth's news and be exactly the person everyone expects me to be.
This is the last entry. After tonight, I'm deleting this document. All of it. Nine years of seeing someone who will never see me back.
I'm twenty-five years old and I deserve a story that's actually mine.
Final entry.
She closed the laptop without saving.
She'd deal with it later.
Penelope stood in front of the mirror. Green dress. Wild red curls as tamed as they were ever going to be. She looked good. Not Isla good, but good enough.
"Ready?" Eloise called from the hallway.
"Ready," Penelope said.
She grabbed her coat and headed for the door.
One more dinner. One more night of being exactly who the Bridgertons expected her to be.
And then she could let go.
Probably.
They headed out into the January cold, and Penelope did not think about Colin Bridgerton.
For almost three whole minutes.
It was progress.