A/N - Hello there! Sadly, 'Manage Stories' is being a problematic Dickensian, and because I struggle to not update anything on a Monday and Molly has had a sucky day, and I have awesome readers, I'm uploading this :) The idea came to mind whilst listening to Katy Perry's 'Roar'. It's rated M for a bit of language. Let me know what you think! :)
"Come on, babe, it's no big deal."
Penny at least had the decency to wait until whoever that girl was had rushed out of the apartment to begin speaking.
"No big deal?" Penny blinked. "Your girlfriend comes home early and sees you in bed with some other woman, and all you can say is 'it's no big deal'?"
"Penny, come on, just hear me out." Kurt put an arm on her shoulder.
"No!" Penny shrugged his hand off, slightly scared in case he hit her, but the anger suddenly coursing through her pushed that fear away. "I'm done trying to hear you out! It's bad enough knowing you've cheated on me, but seeing you in bed fucking some other woman?"
"Shit… you know?" Kurt asked stupidly.
"Of course I know!" Penny's voice got louder and higher. "Panties that aren't mine, lipstick marks in shades I'd never wear on your shirts, rumpled sheets even after I made the bed in the morning? You think I didn't realize these things? You think I'm that stupid that I didn't put it together?"
"Penny, come on, I'm sorry babe."
She looked at him as though she believed him, but only for a moment. "No," she shook her head. "I don't want your apology. I don't want to do this anymore."
"What? What do you mean?"
"This." Penny gestured between them. "I don't want to do this anymore, Kurt, I can't do it anymore."
"Babe..." Kurt put his hand on her shoulder again.
"Stop it." Penny shrugged his hand off again, but softer this time, as tears came to her eyes. "You keep hurting me and I can't do this anymore, I'm sorry, I can't."
Quickly, before she lost her courage, Penny ran into the bedroom, pulling a large suitcase out from beneath the bed. In frenzy, she began pulling her clothes from the wardrobe and dresser, chucking them into the case, as Kurt watched her from the doorway.
"Where are you going to go?"
"I don't know." Penny flung an armful of dresses into the case, still on their hangers.
"You don't have any money." Kurt pointed out harshly. "What the hell are you going to do on your own? Nobody's going to want you. You can't afford a place."
Penny glared at Kurt through glazed eyes. "Nobody wants me? Maybe you don't give a shit about me Kurt but there are people out there who actually care about me."
"Name one of those people, then, babe."
"Don't call me babe." Penny said through gritted teeth, now throwing various personal possessions into her handbag.
"You can't think of anyone, can you?" Kurt laughed. "You can't even give me the name of somebody who would have you."
Silently, Penny walked to the bathroom, dropping all her things from in there into another handbag from her closet. She tried to blink back her tears; she didn't want to cry in front of him.
"You'll probably try stay with one of those sluts from that Cheesecake place you work, won't you?" Kurt called as she came back into the bedroom. "Hey, maybe you'll be less uptight if you're around those girls all the time. You could invite me round and we'll have that threesome I asked you for."
Penny almost flung her hair dyer at him, only stopping herself because it was a good hair dryer and Kurt wasn't worth having bad hair for. Instead she dropped it into her suitcase and clenched her fists, taking a deep breath, before continuing to empty her underwear drawer into the suitcase.
"You can't stay with those sluts forever though," Kurt continued. "Eventually you'll come back to me, you know it. They won't want you for too long and you don't have enough money to get your own place."
"I'll pick up some extra shifts." Penny muttered angrily, chucking a pair of panties out of her case that weren't hers. "See? Those aren't mine." She looked up at him quickly, before continuing her packing. "Maybe I'll get an acting job, I'll have some money then. Maybe I'll meet someone."
"Yeah, right!" Kurt burst into a horrid laughter, his oversized body heaving. "An acting job! Babe, lets face it, you're no good. They won't want you. You're just a pretty little face; it's not enough. Be realistic, Penny, unless it's porn, they won't want you. And even then you probably wouldn't do it. Don't be stupid. Nobody wants a little blonde waitress with no money or skills who thinks she has what it takes to be an actress. You're lucky I'm with you, babe."
The calm Penny had been channeling, or trying to, broke.
"Stop calling me babe!" Penny yelled suddenly, every part of her snapping completely. "I'm not your babe, I'm not your anything! I never was! All I am is some girl you can wear on your arm and call your girlfriend when you need to. Maybe I'm not there yet with the whole acting thing but at least I have enough sense to be making my own money! And even then, I come home from work to find some eighteen-year-old bimbo in bed with you!"
Tearing her phone charger from the plug and throwing it in her handbag, Penny continued to shout at a reasonably shocked Kurt. "You treat me like crap, Kurt, you always have. You don't care about me, you don't care enough to try and at least hide the evidence that you're off with other women all the time. And now - now you're not even trying to stop me anymore! And you know what? I'm done with this! I'm going to find somebody who cares about me and actually means that they love me. Not my body, not how young and stupid I am, but me. They're going to love Penny. And I'm going to love them to the point it hurts, and in a good way, not this stupid way where I love you so I can cling onto whatever it was we had. And they're not going to laugh at me when I tell them about my latest audition, or tell me to 'relax' when I ask them why they're talking to some other group of girls at the bar, or just leave me by myself at the table on a 'date'." Penny shoved her phone into her pocket, and began trying her best to shut her luggage. "And you know what? Thanks to you, they're probably not even going to get to see the real Penny. I always let my walls down so easily for you, gave you every part of me, and you just used that entirely to your advantage. Oh and worst of all? You used that against me, because you knew how vulnerable it made me!"
Finally managing to shut the case, with a strength she was unaware she had, she pulled the case onto the floor, throwing her handbag over her shoulder and started wheeling the case towards Kurt. "So thank you, Kurt, for literally fucking up every single part of my life. Thank you for four shitty years."
Taking care to roll the heavy case over Kurt's foot, Penny stormed out of his apartment, making sure to slam the door behind her as hard as she could. She wasn't quite sure how she carried her case down the stairs but she did. She drove on autopilot to the only person she could think of, and practically ran up the stairs to the second floor before her tears could begin to fall. The door swung open and she breathed a sigh of relief at the friendly face.
"Kim, can I stay with you for a while? I've had enough. I broke up with Kurt. I have nowhere to go. Please?"
"Of course you can, sweetie." Kim wrapped her arms around Penny, before leading her inside. "Come on, I've got some films you'll like and then some wine if you feel up to talking."
Determined to prove herself right, Penny moved into a new apartment the following week. Although she was still angry, she confessed to Kim that she thought she still loved Kurt, who would stay up with her while she argued with her own emotions. Kim went to collect the things Penny had left behind, such as her shoes and the general homeware she'd acquired. She continued to work, needing the time there to keep her mind off of things, and needing the money to keep herself going alone - especially since she'd gotten an apartment slightly out of her price range, simply to get herself away from it all as soon as she could.
Switching on her music, Penny sighed to herself as she bounced her leg a little to the beat. Hopefully the people in this building were nice. She wondered if her neighbors across the hall had a television she could watch, since hers was at Kurt's and she definitely wasn't going back there, and Kim hadn't had the time or space in her car to take it with all her other stuff. She wondered what her neighbors were actually like. She had been told the A apartments had two bedrooms, while the B's, like hers, were one-beds. Maybe it was a small family who lived in 4A - that would be nice, she thought. Or a couple who were hoping for a family one day but weren't quite there yet. Perhaps it was just one person who could afford the extra room. Or just two friends sharing the apartment. Two bitchy girls, maybe, or two guys who could demolish an entire pizza just like she could in one sitting. Or a guy and a girl who insisted they were platonic, but would cause her much suspicion and probably gossip.
She hoped one of them was a guy. She hoped whoever it was that lived in 4A didn't fall into the category of 'total jerk'. She hoped they'd make her life less hell than it currently was.
As she heard voices coming up the stairs, she turned her music down slightly. A guy and… another guy. They must be on her floor, because she'd already gone upstairs to say hello to the people who lived there, and she could hear one of them had keys. She smiled a little at her own method of deduction. Not wanting to seem too intrusive, she turned her focus back to what she had been doing earlier.