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He lifted an eyebrow. “Dumping a drink on a guy?”
“It was really satisfying. You have no idea.” If only she’d thought to record it with her phone. That would have made a great Instagram. No filter required.
The bell on the shop door jingled again. “What happened?” asked the elderly man who came in, gesturing at the wet floor sign. He was one of Penny’s favorite regulars, a retired cinematographer by the name of George Simkin.
“Roxanne threw Penny’s boyfriend out,” Charlotte announced from the couch.
“Ex-boyfriend,” Penny said.
“Caleb dumped an iced coffee all over him,” Charlotte added. “It was awesome.”
“I miss all the fun,” George said.
“Ring up a brewed coffee for George,” Caleb told Elyse. His hand landed on Penny’s shoulder, squeezing briefly before he walked away, and her stomach did a traitorous flip-flop.
Stop it, she told her stomach firmly. He’s only being nice because he thinks you’re pathetic.
“And a cherry Danish,” George called out as he slid onto his usual stool, two down from Penny’s. He stopped in almost every day for his plain black coffee and cherry Danish. Penny suspected he was lonely; his wife had died a few years ago and his son lived in San Jose.
She reached for her latte, which had gotten cold. Great. Stupid Kenneth, ruining everything. She pushed the mug away glumly. Her shoulder was still tingling where Caleb’s hand had been, and she reached up to massage it, trying to rub away the sensation.
George leaned toward her, running a hand through his wispy white hair. “What do we think of the new girl?” he whispered.
“Her name’s Elyse,” Penny whispered back. “She’s a sophomore at Loyola Marymount and she seems very nice.”
“Yesterday she tried to upsell me one of those fancy coffee drinks that are nothing but foam and sugar.” George shook his head and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Don’t know why anyone bothers with those things.”
“I happen to like my fancy coffee drinks,” Penny said. “You don’t have to get them with syrup if you don’t want.”
“Can’t beat a bottomless cup of good old-fashioned joe. Best value on the menu. They didn’t used to have coffee this good when I was young, you know. Only coffee you could get back then tasted like bilge water. Course, it only cost you a nickel. Can’t buy a damn thing for a nickel these days.”
Penny admired George’s dedication to perpetual crankiness, which reminded her of her own grandfather. She came from a large, close-knit family, but they were all back in Virginia. Her weekly video chats with her mother didn’t do enough to assuage the homesickness she felt being so far away from them.
George peered at her over the top of his glasses, which had slipped down his nose again. “So what’d Kenny boy do to get himself dumped?”
“It turned out he was cheating on me,” Penny said, scraping at a chip in her Tiffany blue nail polish.
“Really?” George’s bushy eyebrows lifted in poorly feigned surprise. “That’s just terrible.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You knew too, didn’t you?”
He spread his hands, shrugging.
“Did everyone know?”
“I only knew because Caleb told me.”
Exactly how many people had Caleb told who weren’t her? And why was he talking about her at all? He couldn’t be bothered to talk to her, but he talked about her when she wasn’t around?
“Why didn’t he tell me?” Penny asked George. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
George shot a glance at the pastry case where Caleb was plating his Danish, then leaned toward Penny again, lowering his voice. “It’s not the kid’s fault. I told him not to tell you.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Some people don’t want to hear a thing like that. They’d rather live in their happy little bubble than have their world turned on its ear.”
“Well, not me. You officially have my permission to tell me the next time you know my boyfriend is cheating on me.” She raised her voice loud enough to carry all the way to Caleb at the pastry case. “You hear that, everyone? From now on, please tell me if you know my boyfriend is a cheating cheater who is cheating on me.”
