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They never covered that part of happily ever after in the fairy tales. How even if you found your perfect soul mate, one of you was likely to be left alone at the end. Maybe it would be better not to pair up in the first place. At least that way you’d be used to living alone.
George waved his hand like it didn’t matter. “It doesn’t do any good to hold on to things. Sometimes you just gotta let go and move on.” He wadded up the paper bag his Danish had come in and tossed it into the trash can. “Enough about me,” he said, narrowing his gaze at Penny. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” she said, shaking her head as she lifted her coffee to her lips.
“Bullpucky. You seemed down even before I started telling you my sob story. What gives?”
“I’m fine.” She tried to sound like she meant it but fell pathetically short of the mark.
George’s eyes sharpened. “How’s Caleb?” he asked, far too perceptive.
“Caleb’s fine.” She hesitated. “Did you know he’s going away to med school?”
“Yeah, he mentioned something about that.” Caleb seemed to tell George everything. She wondered how much he’d told George about her. “He’s leaving pretty soon, right?”
“On the twenty-fifth.” His new job started the day after Memorial Day, and he had to drive down there and get settled in first. Only twenty-two days left before he was gone.
George nodded, watching her closely. “How do you feel about that?”
“I’m happy for him, of course.” She remembered the way he’d taken charge when George had his heart attack. How calm and capable he’d been under pressure—and how caring. “He’ll make a great doctor.” That was what mattered, not the minor inconvenience it posed to her life.
“You’re not going to miss him?”
She already missed him, and he wasn’t even gone yet. But like George had said, there was no use holding on to things you couldn’t have. Better to make your peace with reality and move on.
“I’m going to miss both of you,” she said.
George grunted. “Gimme another whiff of that coffee.”
She leaned forward and passed it to him.
“Mmmm,” he sighed, inhaling deeply. “You think they have coffee this good in San Jose?”
“I’m sure they do.”
When Penny got home from the hospital, she paced around her apartment, feeling restless and glum as she thought about George and his wife of forty years and the house full of treasured memories he was giving up.
And here she was feeling sorry for herself over Caleb, a man she barely knew. She needed to get a grip. This was supposed to be a casual fling, which meant she shouldn’t be having all these feelings about him. The whole point was to walk away before things got real.
She pulled open the refrigerator and glared at the stacked containers of leftovers inside, arranged by date and waiting to be eaten. None of them held any appeal. She shut the fridge again and leaned her back against it, surveying her empty apartment with dissatisfaction.
It hurt to admit it, but maybe Caleb had been right. They never should have started anything in the first place. She didn’t seem to be cut out for casual flinging.
The smart, logical thing to do was keep her distance from him.
She didn’t want to be smart or logical though. She wanted to call him. Just the thought of hearing his voice made her heart flutter. She wanted to see him again so much it was a physical ache, like hunger pangs. She wanted to feel his arms around her. His skin under the pads of her fingers. His breath warm on her neck as his hands roamed over her body, rough and gentle by turns.
She pulled out her phone and stared at his picture in her contacts. It was one of the ones she’d taken of his backside when he was going through her fridge. Her thumb hovered over the call button as she tried to remind herself what George had said about moving on.
While she was debating with herself, she got a notification for a new text message—from Caleb.
Hey.
Before she’d pulled herself together enough to type a response, he added: Can I come over?
This was obviously a sign. Her fingers trembled as she typed out the word Yes. There was no possibility of saying no.
But was he coming over because he wanted to see her? Or to let her down gently? Had he had the same realization as her? That their fling was in danger of becoming something more, and needed to be put out of its misery?
