Page 61 of While the Sun Shines

The house is quiet the way new constructions always seems to be, with floors that don’t creak, doors that are silent on their hinges, and wall-to-wall carpeting that dampens footsteps in the basement.

Penny flops down on the bed Aunt Lucy made up for them, her hands cradling her stomach. “Too much cake,” she says. “I have absolutely zero regrets.”

Drew carefully lowers himself into the beanbag chair next to the TV. He used to run and jump into it when he was a kid, and now it swallows him, his weight sinking him in so far that it’ll surely be hard to stand up.

Good. He doesn’t want to move. Can’t, really. He’ll stay here, his ass below his bent knees, trying not to look at Penny sprawled across the mattress.

“Though today was a stomachache in the making.” Penny’s feet hang off the end of the mattress, close enough he could reach out and touch.

Once, he would’ve. Jokingly tickled her sole, wrapped his hand around her toes and swung her foot back and forth. Drew tucks his hands beneath his thighs and stares at the rack of dusty DVD cases.

“And here I thought the amount of cheese I eat on the regular would inure me to any and all poor dietary decisions,” Penny says.

He could go upstairs and sleep on the couch. Wake up before anyone else in the house, and that way, they won’t have to answer questions about who spent the night in what room.

One room is fine, right? Lucy had asked him as evening settled, pulling him aside, and he’s still sure he looked like a fish, his mouth opening and closing.

“Drew.”

He jerks his head up. “Yeah?”

“I’m not, like, suddenly poisonous. Get over here.”

“Oh. Right.” He tries to push himself up.

But his hand just sinks into the beanbag. And he can’t get his feet under himself with the bulk of it against the back of his calves, so he has to awkwardly roll to the side.

Gingerly, he stands. Crosses to the other side of the bed and sits on it as far from Penny as he can, gently as if to not jostle the thin mattress at all.

She rolls her eyes, snorts a soft laugh, and pokes his leg. “Hi. I’m glad we did this.”

“You are?”

“Yeah, your family’s fun.”

“We really can drive back. I know that Abelardo’s only here for—”

“He’s fine. He’s moving to Brooklyn. I’ll see him whenever I want to.”

“Oh.” Drew nods. “Uh, good.”

“And I know we can drive back.” Penny scoots up to sit against the back of the couch, her legs stretched across the mattress. “But that’d really get in the way of me eating as much cake as I want, and I deserve a hell of a lot of cake.”

“Of course you do.”

She crosses her ankles, straightening her back. “And I deserve friends who make time for me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you do.”

“Now. Not in twenty years, Drew.”

“I told Cooper to lay off that joke.”

“Which means nothing ’cause he’s Cooper.”

“Yeah, he’s Cooper.” Drew tries to be utterly casual about shifting to sit like she is, legs out in front of him, his back against the couch, but he probably fails, moving around so much to get settled that the entire bed rocks. “I’m—Pen, I—I didn’t even think with him moving in, that you and Whit would have so much less time together. I was just—head in the sand with the farm. You’re right about that.”

“I’m always right,” she says. “And trust me: I love them, I’m stupidly happy for them, but if I have to see them hold hands one more time, I’m going to shovel chicken shit into their bed.”