Caleb called Friday night as promised to let Penny know he’d arrived safely.

“Are you surviving?” she asked, wishing it was a video call so she could see his face. Something told her he wouldn’t be on board for that though.

“Yeah, so far.” His voice sounded even flatter than usual.

“If it gets bad, you know you can call me, right? Any time, day or night, and I’ll answer the phone.”

“Sure.”

Penny pressed the phone to her ear, as if that would somehow make her feel closer to him. “If it gets too bad, I will get in my car and drive there myself to rescue you. I make a great buffer, just so you know. Parents love me, and I can basically talk forever about anything.”

“Thanks, but I can handle my parents on my own.”

He sounded distant and vaguely impatient—like he was in a hurry to get off the phone—so she let him go after a few minutes.

The conversation did nothing to assuage her separation anxiety. She spent the rest of the night worrying about him and wondering what he’d meant when he said they’d talk Monday.

Was he planning to break up with her? Had he changed his mind about keeping their relationship going long-distance?

A little voice in the back of her head, the one that was always trying to make things easier for everyone else, whispered that she should let him off the hook. It was probably what he wanted. He was just humoring her with the long-distance thing, trying not to hurt her feelings. No way did he intend to go through with it after he moved.

She was creating another Brendon situation. By trying to hold on to Caleb, she was setting herself up to be cheated on again. Better to accept reality and let him go like she’d agreed to in the first place.

Penny spent a long night tossing and turning in her empty bed. Even after she finally dropped off around three a.m., a series of stressful dreams in which she was falling off a high, narrow bridge caused her to jerk herself repeatedly awake.

When her alarm went off at eight the next morning, it was almost a relief, even though she felt like she hadn’t gotten any sleep at all. She rolled over and grabbed her phone off the nightstand to text Caleb.

How’s it going so far?

She lay in bed staring at her phone for ten minutes before she gave up on getting an answer and got out of bed to change for yoga. No more moping. She needed to get out of the house, get some exercise, and spend some time around other people.

Despite her best efforts, it was hard not to let her dismal mood get the better of her.

“You seem down,” Melody observed over coffee after class. “Is everything okay?”

Penny’s shoulders sagged as she picked at the sleeve on her cardboard cup. “Remember the guy I wanted to seduce? The one who’s moving away soon?”

“The booty call?” Lacey said, scooting closer with her triple-shot mocha.

Penny nodded. “We’ve been sort of seeing each other the last couple weeks.”

Tessa’s eyebrows shot up. “Casually sleeping together seeing each other? Or seeing each other seeing each other?”

“It started out as the first one but turned into the second.”

Melody pushed her glasses up and peered at Penny. “Is it serious?”

“Yes.” Penny frowned into her plain nonfat latte. “I didn’t mean for it to be. It just happened.”

“And he’s still moving away?” Melody asked.

“He’s going to med school in Mississippi. He leaves Thursday.” Penny slipped her phone out of her purse and checked her messages for the third time since they’d sat down. Still no response to her text to Caleb this morning.

Lacey winced. “Ouch.”

“We decided to do the long-distance thing.” Penny shoved her phone back into her purse glumly. “Or try to, at least.”

“Oh.” Melody’s lips formed a perfect O as she exchanged a look with Lacey across the table.

“How long’s med school take?” Lacey asked.

“Four years,” Tessa answered like she was delivering a death sentence.

“Plus a year-long internship followed by another four years of residency,” Melody added.

“Yikes,” Lacey said sympathetically.

Yikes was right. When you laid it all out like that, the situation sounded hopeless. What did their endgame even look like? Was Penny supposed to follow Caleb to Mississippi at some point? With her job, she could theoretically live anywhere, but was she willing to move to Mississippi for someone she’d spent less than a month with, and who would be so busy with school he’d hardly have time to spend with her anyway? She supposed she could wait until he’d graduated and hope he was able to get an internship in Los Angeles or some other city she liked better, but that was four years away. And she’d watched enough ER and Grey’s Anatomy to know she wasn’t likely to see much of him during his residency either.

It was beyond hopeless. There was no way they’d ever be able to make this work. Maybe if they had a strong, established relationship going in, they might have a chance. But they barely knew each other. There were too many odds stacked against them.

After yoga, Penny went home and changed for her escort shift at Planned Parenthood. At least the protestors aggressively reciting bible verses and chanting Hail Marys kept her from getting too far inside her own head and spiraling into self-pity. Until she got home. Then it was just her and her insecurities alone together in an empty apartment.

And still no text from Caleb.

Fortunately, her two-night sleep deficit finally caught up with her, and she dozed off reading in bed before nine. At ten thirty, she was jolted out of a deep sleep by the blip of her text alert. She’d fallen asleep with her phone in the bed with her, and it took a few fumbling, bleary seconds before she was able to locate it in the blankets.

Caleb had finally responded.

It sucks here. I miss you.

Penny typed her reply as fast as her fingers would obey.

I’m sorry. I miss you too. I’m awake if you want to talk.

She fell asleep again clutching her phone as she waited for a response that never came.

She didn’t hear from Caleb again until Monday afternoon.

When the call came through at three thirty-five, Penny dragged her attention away from the action outline she’d been typing up and stared at his photo on her phone screen as a flood of mixed feelings rushed through her.

She’d cried herself to sleep last night, her delayed breakdown triggered by the lavender-scented sachet in her lingerie drawer, of all things. This morning she’d woken feeling like a wound that had scabbed over, and she wasn’t eager to tear it open again.

She honestly didn’t know what she wanted to say to him at this point—or what she wanted him to say to her. She’d half convinced herself a clean break would be in both their best interests. Maybe they should even go ahead and call it quits now, when she’d started to build up a little armor. Letting Caleb back into her life for three days, only to lose him again, seemed like gratuitous self-flagellation.

It took her until the third ring to work up the courage to answer.

“Hey,” he said, sounding uncharacteristically cheerful. “I’m about an hour out.”

“Okay.” She chewed on her lower lip. “Are you coming over here?”

“I brought some stuff back with me. I’ve got to unload it at my place first.”

She twisted a strand of hair around her finger. “How was your visit with your parents?”

His voice turned hard. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Of course he didn’t. He never wanted to talk about anything.

“Listen,” he said more gently, “I was thinking maybe tonight we could go out. On a date.”

Seventy-two hours ago, Penny would have jumped at an offer like that. Part of her still wanted to. But she was trying to listen to her self-preservation instincts, and they were buzzing a furious warning right now.

She squeezed the phone. “We don’t do dates.”

“I thought we could try it for once.”

“I’ve got knitting tonight.”

“I thought maybe you could skip it.”

After he’d disappeared for three days with no notice and almost no communication? Now he expected her to drop her plans at the last minute for him?

The old Penny would have agreed in a heartbeat, without even thinking about it. But that wasn’t her anymore. She was through rearranging her life to suit men who weren’t willing to rearrange theirs for her. If he wanted to see her, it would have to be on her terms.

“I can’t do that,” she told him.

“You mean you won’t.” The hurt in his tone made her flinch. It took all her willpower not to change her mind.

“You can come over after.” It was a compromise. A fair one.

“Fine.” The word sounded like it had been dragged over broken glass. “I’ll see you after, then.” He hung up without another word.

They were going to break up tonight.

The certainty settled over her like a blanket of snow: icy cold, weighty, and numbing.

For possibly the first time ever, Penny was the first to arrive at knitting. Unfortunately, she was also empty-handed.

“I’m sorry I didn’t bake any treats today,” she said when the others joined her at the couch she’d been holding for them.

Vilma set her wineglass down and lowered herself into an armchair, casting a concerned look in Penny’s direction. “That’s all right, honey. You know you’re not obligated to bring us treats every week.”

“Yeah,” Jinny said as she bent over her knitting bag. “We like you even when you don’t bake us cookies.”

“How was your weekend?” Olivia asked Penny cautiously. She left unspoken her real question, which was how Penny’s relationship with Caleb was.

“Crappy,” Penny replied, and everyone stopped what they were doing to stare at her.

“Whoa,” Esther said.

Jinny’s mouth fell open. “I’ve literally never heard you swear before.”

Penny felt like this was an exaggeration. Surely she’d sworn at least once around them. And it wasn’t like crappy was even a real swear word; you could say it on TV. It wasn’t like she’d dropped an F-bomb or anything. Although in her current mood, she just might.

Olivia dropped her laptop bag and purse to the floor. “What happened?”

Penny glanced up at her, then down again. “Caleb went home to see his parents this weekend at the last minute and I’m being a petulant baby about it.” She clutched her knitting bag in her lap the way she used to clutch her favorite teddy bear as a child.

Olivia silently handed Penny her wineglass and sat down beside her.

Cynthia took the seat on Penny’s other side. “Who’s Caleb?”

“Someone I’ve sort of been seeing,” Penny mumbled into her wineglass.

“Whoa,” Esther said again.

“The same Caleb who works here?” Vilma asked, eyebrows lifting in surprise.

“Wait.” Jinny’s eyes widened. “Hottie Barista Caleb?”

Penny felt her cheeks flush and took another gulp of wine.

“You’ve been seeing Hottie Barista?” Esther asked. “Since when?”

“A few weeks,” Penny said.

Esther’s eyes narrowed as they shifted to Olivia. “You knew, didn’t you?” Olivia shrugged and leaned back on the couch.

“I think you should back up and start from the beginning,” Vilma said as she took out her knitting.

“Yes!” Jinny leaned forward in her chair excitedly. “How did you and Hottie Barista become a thing? I want all the gory details.”

Penny filled them in on the entire Caleb saga. The news that he was moving away was met with a chorus of disappointed ohs and sympathetic clucks. When she’d finished recounting their phone call a few hours ago, Cynthia wordlessly passed Penny her own wine to replace Penny’s now-empty glass.

“Why didn’t you tell us all this was going on?” Vilma asked.

Penny stared down into Cynthia’s glass of pinot noir. “I guess because I knew I was making a mistake, and I was afraid you’d talk sense into me. I didn’t want to be sensible. For once in my life I wanted to be insensible.” She looked up at the faces of her friends, relieved to have it out in the open. “Go ahead, tell me how crazy stupid I was.”

“You weren’t crazy stupid,” Esther said. “You were just a regular amount of stupid.”

“What she means,” Jinny said, punching Esther in the arm as she shot her a reproving look, “is that any of us probably would have done the same thing.”

“It’s true,” Vilma said. “I am a happily married woman and that boy is young enough to be my son, but even I would have had to think twice about it.”

Cynthia barked a laugh. “Vilma, you dirty old woman.”

Vilma shrugged as her knitting needles clicked a staccato rhythm. “I’m forty-seven. I’m not dead.”

“Amen.” Cynthia nodded her head. “That Caleb is straight smokin’.” She directed a look of approval at Penny. “When life presents an opportunity like that, you have to go for it.”

“Was the sex good?” Jinny grinned as her eyebrows waggled suggestively. “I’ll bet it was good.”

“So good.” Penny’s face heated at the memory, and she pressed a hand to her cheek. “But it wasn’t just about the sex. I mean, it was, but it definitely isn’t anymore. I really like him. I think I even love him.”

“Wow.” Olivia’s eyes widened. Penny hadn’t told her that part yet.

“Wow is right,” Penny said, handing Cynthia back her wineglass.

Esther sat back in her chair, frowning. “Do you think he loves you back?”

“I don’t know.” It was a question Penny had been asking herself. “He can be so closed off sometimes. There are these moments when he’s so sweet and tender, I think it’s possible maybe he does. But then other times it feels like he’s putting up a wall between us.”

“Maybe he’s just protecting himself,” Jinny said. “Maybe he loves you, and he’s just as afraid of losing you as you are of him.”

Esther shifted in her chair. “Not to be Debbie Downer—”

“Here it comes.” Jinny rolled her eyes. “The eternal pessimist’s take.”

Esther shot her a sideways glare. “I think it needs to be said: there is a possibility he’s just using you for a good time. I don’t need to tell you that men can sometimes be scum.” The Esther of a year ago would have happily declared all men to be scum. That she was even allowing the existence of some decent men in the world was a sign of how much her relationship with Jonathan had improved her outlook.

Penny didn’t think Caleb was scum. She might doubt the depth of his feelings for her, but she didn’t doubt that he had some feelings. Even if he was just having a good time, it didn’t make him scum. That was the arrangement she’d freely entered into. It wasn’t his fault if he was adhering to it and Penny wasn’t.

She shook her head, groaning. “It doesn’t matter anyway, because he’s still leaving on Thursday.”

“It matters,” Cynthia said quietly. “Love always matters.”

Penny folded forward to cradle her head in her hands. “What am I going to do, you guys? I can’t hold on to him, but I don’t think I can let him go either.”

Cynthia laid a warm hand on her back. “It’ll be okay.”

“How?” Penny whined, rubbing her temples.

“You’ll know what to do when the time comes,” Vilma said with enough confidence that Penny could almost believe it.

At least she wouldn’t be alone. That was some consolation.

Olivia’s hand clamped down on Penny’s knee.

“Penny,” Cynthia hissed.

She heard Malik’s voice cut through the din in the coffee shop: “Yo, Caleb. What’s up, man?”

Penny shot upright so fast she made herself dizzy.

Caleb was here. Walking straight toward her. He stopped behind Esther’s chair, casting an uneasy glance at the circle of women before his eyes found Penny’s. “Hey.”

Penny swallowed, her chest constricting painfully under the weight of his gaze. “Hi.”

He shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “I know you said to come over later, but I couldn’t wait. Can we talk?”