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Was he repulsed? Embarrassed? Ashamed?
Penny felt herself getting a little mad. He was the one who’d kissed her. It wasn’t like she’d been throwing herself at him. In fact, she’d been doing pretty much the exact opposite of that. If he hadn’t wanted to kiss her, why had he?
Had the kiss been that bad? Penny didn’t think so. She was a habitual overachiever, which meant she’d worked hard to perfect her kissing technique and had received a lot of compliments in the past. She felt pretty confident she was a good kisser. Caleb had sure seemed to be enjoying himself in the moment.
Could he have a girlfriend?
It was possible, she realized as a sinking feeling formed in her gut. He’d never mentioned one, but he’d never mentioned a lot of things. It was only recently he’d started opening up about himself at all. Maybe he’d been hiding a girlfriend all this time. Penny felt sick at the thought. And even angrier.
By the time she got home, it was seven o’clock and she’d missed a half day’s work. She should probably try to make up some of the hours now. Those technical specifications weren’t going to read themselves.
Instead, she called Olivia.
“What’s up?” her friend said when she answered.
“So many things.” Penny sank back into the cushions of her couch. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Chronological or ascending order of importance. Pick one.” Olivia had a direct and ordered approach to everything, which was exactly what Penny needed right now.
“Chronological.” Penny couldn’t even begin to rate the day’s events according to importance, so she started with George’s heart attack and the ensuing hours waiting around the hospital for him to get out of surgery.
“Oh, wow, Pen.”
“That’s not even all of it,” Penny said, squeezing her eyes shut.
“What else?”
“Hottie Barista kissed me.”
“Whoa,” Olivia said. “Back the fuck up. When did he do that?”
“At the hospital.” Penny realized she was starving and went into the kitchen. “When Mike went to call his wife, Caleb tried to sneak off and leave.”
“He pulled an Irish goodbye,” Olivia said knowingly.
“Exactly!” Penny grabbed a container of leftover beef stew out of the fridge and put it in the microwave. “So I went after him and followed him into the stairwell.”
“And?”
“And he kissed me,” Penny said, feeling warm again at the memory.
“Just like that? Without saying anything?”
“Practically. It was definitely out of nowhere. One second he was trying to sneak away and the next he was staring at me really intensely and then…he pushed me up against the wall and kissed me.”
It must have been a moment of temporary insanity. That was the only explanation Penny could think of. A stressful day, emotions running high. The two of them alone together in an unfamiliar environment. Maybe he’d forgotten who she was for a second and mistaken her for someone he was attracted to.
“Huh,” Olivia said. “What’d he say after?”
“Nothing! He just ran off.” Her stomach twisted. That part of it had been sort of humiliating.
“He kissed you out of nowhere and then ran away without a word?”
“Pretty much. All he said was, ‘I have to go.’ And then he literally sprinted down the stairs to get away from me. It’s weird, right?”
“Yeah, it’s weird. How was the kiss?”
Penny touched her lips, smiling. “Outstanding.”
