Page 72 of While the Sun Shines

Waiting for everything to fall apart, probably. For the walls of the house to slam outward like in an old cartoon, leaving him standing in a poof of dust of his ruined life.

Because wasn’t that going to be what happened if he ever broke through the carefully constructed barrier of friendship with Penny? A crashing and burning of everything good, everything stable and dependable?

But the coffee gurgles and drips into the carafe, unconcerned with his wait for impending doom, and outside a bird hops across the lawn, pecking for its breakfast as the sky begins to lighten into pinks and golds.

Penny’s sound asleep when Drew brings her mug down. He spends too long standing there, watching the blankets rise and fall on her breath, before he sets her coffee on the little table that he and Julie used to pile bags of potato chips on.

“Pen,” he whispers, but she doesn’t stir, and silently, he slips back upstairs.

Fucking wild, that small domesticity. A fantasy Drew never even thought to imagine, the tiny joy of bringing her a cup of coffee while she sleeps. Carefully pouring the milk until the coffee’s the same color as when she makes it at home and stirring in the spoonful of sugar she always adds. He’s watched her do that every morning for years now, the same as always, only ever changing her routine to sometimes test the sugar dish, after Cooper joked about replacing it with salt.

I want to bring her coffee in bed every morning, Drew thinks with a fervency, an immediacy that shocks him. So many years of wanting that’s now ratcheted to a higher level than he knew existed. Added dimensions to it, like the idle, half-formed ideas of a life with Penny are now in focus and are so much brighter, more vibrant than he ever could’ve believed.

“Morning, kid,” Bert says as he comes downstairs.

“Morning,” Drew says quietly, the house still hushed around them.

“You taking off soon?”

“When Penny’s up,” Drew says and passes Bert the coffee carafe.

“Well, it’s been good to see you for a bit. Now, tell me about the farm.”

No, Drew thinks, the very thought of it bursting the soft gray bubble of early morning, the hum he can still feel in his body, the so-recent memory of Penny’s hair tickling his chest, their legs threaded together.

“S’okay,” he says. Breathe, he hears in Penny’s voice. He picks up a pile of silverware for something to do with his hands, sorting forks and knives into the dishwasher one by one. “It’s—you know, spring. Busy.”

“You made it here, though.”

Probably shouldn’t have, Drew thinks. Bert wouldn’t have. No, Aunt Mary used to drive Drew to family gatherings like this one during the height of the season, leaving Bert to handle the farm while they slipped away.

“Barely. I’m a little swamped with work, yeah,” Drew says.

Swamped, what an understatement. His life feels like trying to carry water in a bucket full of holes. And Penny right there, asking him to put the bucket down.

Penny, he thinks, who let him hold her hand all night, his arm over her waist and their fingers laced.

“I stopped for a bite to eat on the road yesterday,” Bert says, “and they asked if I wanted Two Pines Farm cheese on my sandwich.”

Drew pulls his head up. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Drew feels the corner of his mouth lift. “And what’d you say?”

“I told them no goddamn way. I wasn’t paying for that when I can get it for free.”

Drew laughs and adds a cup to the upper rack of the dishwasher. “Good.”

“And then I told them about you burning the bottom of all of Mary’s pots in the kitchen and how it smelled like scorched milk for weeks.”

Drew pauses, a plastic container in his hand. Yeah, he had burned his fair share of milk when he’d started playing with making cheese, hadn’t he? “God, I’m sorry.”

“How far you’ve come, kid,” Bert says.

“Well, I’ve got a thermostatically controlled heater in the milk vat now. It helps a bit.” Drew tucks the container next to the cups.

“Exactly my point. You’re a sight to behold, Drew.”