Page 28 of While the Sun Shines

“I had work,” Drew says. “I couldn’t make it.”

Get a ticket, go, have fun, Uncle Bert and Aunt Mary had both said. Mary had even driven him to try on tuxes to rent, but Drew had mumbled his way out of actually choosing one.

“I don’t think I like this Bobby guy,” Cooper says.

Whit slips his arm around Cooper’s waist and kisses his temple. “The one that got away.”

“I think I was the one doing you a favor that night,” Penny says. “And don’t worry, Coop. I think he’s married and living in Cincinnati, plus he wasn’t even that cute.”

Whit grins at her. “Not how I remember it.”

“Penny, clearly, you need my dating app services,” Cooper says.

“No thanks,” Penny says. “It’d just be me versus the cows, yet again.”

“Are the options around here really that slim?” Abelardo asks.

“Not apparently if you’re Bobby Jacobson,” Cooper mutters and Whit kisses him again.

“There are no options,” Penny says. “I’ve dated them all and no fucking thanks to any of them.”

“There’s Drew’s cows,” Cooper says, his arms around Whit’s waist.

Penny pulls out her phone, unlocks it, and hands it to Abelardo. “Here, you take a look. If you can find an actual human, non-cow option, you’re doing better than I ever did.”

Cooper slips away from Whit and looks over Abelardo’s shoulder as he scrolls through Penny’s phone.

“Nice pic, Drew,” Cooper says.

Oh, shit. Drew feels his cheeks turn pink. “Stop.”

“Is that really you?” Cooper asks. He points between Drew and Penny. “You’re on this? And you matched? With each other?”

Drew opens his mouth.

Shuts it.

He and Penny did match. Though now it sounds so weird. Nothing at all like how it had been, lounging on the couch over the winter with a show on the TV that neither of them were watching, but the volume turned up loud enough that they could ignore Cooper and Whit having disappeared upstairs, their door clicking shut behind them.

Penny’s picture had smiled up at Drew from his screen, her eyes lined with makeup that she never wears at home, and her hair sleek and shiny, hanging over her shoulder. She’d let out a laugh when he’d shown her the image, and then she’d quickly scrolled through her feed until she found him, too.

Drew scratches at the back of his head. How embarrassing, now that he thinks back on that. Pretending he was completely and utterly at ease with the fact that he was seeing the version of Penny she puts forward to the world of local single men and women—however small and limited that might be. That anyone else clicking on her profile might end up with a time and place to meet for drinks, not the emoji of a cow she sent him, her toes digging into his leg as she laughed.

“There’s like four single people in this entire town, and until you showed up, Mr. Cooper, Whit was one of them,” Penny says. “Of course, Drew and I matched. Who the hell else is around here?”

“Travis?” Cooper asks and then ducks as Penny flings a beer cap at him.

“Shut up about him.”

“I got to meet him today,” Abelardo says.

“Yes, lucky you, ha ha, very funny.” Penny aims another beer cap at Cooper as he ducks behind Whit. “We’re not talking about Travis, okay?”

“I won’t say a word.” Cooper holds up his hands in surrender.

Though he doesn’t drop them back to the counter and ball of dough, just forms a circle with thumb and forefinger then passes his other index finger in and out of the tunnel he’s made.

“Cooper!” she snaps.