Chapter Text
Chapter One: The Kissing Booth
“It’s your non-negotiable social outing of the month. You know I hate these things a thousand times more than you do—just knuckle under.”
Penelope glared at the locked loo door keeping Eloise from arresting her in the tractor beam of her gray eyes, wondering if today would be the day she found the limit of her best friend’s stubbornness.
She jumped as Eloise slammed her hand against the door. “Come on. There’s caramel popcorn, and a dunk tank, a raffle—it’ll be easy to skirt around the Witches’ Coven and manage a spot of fun.”
“You just want to see Theo,” she accused, annoyed at herself for rejoining the debate rather than simply folding her arms and waiting Eloise out.
On the other side of the door, Eloise sputtered. “That—no, it’s—if he is there, I might say hello, but it’s not exactly his scene either, so I’m—Penelope.” She cleared her throat noisily. “Please.”
Penelope’s heart seized in her chest.
It was a rare thing indeed that Eloise Bridgerton pleaded.
Then, her voice curious and sweet, like she was imitating her youngest sister Hyacinth, Eloise added, “Plus, Colin will be there.”
Penelope’s face turned crimson. She knew it did because when she glanced in the mirror over the sink, she watched it bloom like red wine spilled on a white tablecloth. Seizing a disposable hyaluronic face mask still in the packaging, she began fanning her cheeks.
“So?”
“Pen,” Eloise said back immediately, her voice flat. “Despite my repeated attempts to tell you what a dork he is, you clearly enjoy his company. And he’s usually able to make sure you have a cracking good time, even at stupid events like these.” Her hand slammed on the door again. “Open the door and come get ready!”
“Why is Colin going to be there?” Penelope asked nervously, already fumbling in her makeup bag on the countertop to begin dolling herself up. (Because obviously she would be going to this thing now, because Colin Bridgerton was going to be there, and because Penelope was weak weak weak.)
Eloise’s voice was flat and somehow smug, even through the door. “Because his travel footie team is scouting for new players and Colin wants to raise money for his alma mater.”
Many of the extra-curricular teams were raising money for their various activities—the university carnival was a hotbed of bake sales, face-painting, games, and other ways to gather some extra funds for new uniforms, or travel money, or whatever the teams needed. As a member of the creative writing club on campus, and the editor of the school newspaper, Penelope really ought to be there schmoozing and doing her part, but she’d refused to sign up for anything and, miraculously, they’d figured it out without her.
But if Colin was there flashing his winsome grin at all the sighing, simpering girls on campus, then she could hardly stay holed up in her room pretending to tinker with her long-completed term paper that wasn’t due for another week.
There was another slam on the door, Penelope’s hand jerking in alarm, ruining her nearly-perfect winged eyeliner. “Eloise!” she shrieked, turning and throwing the flat iron at the door. “I am getting ready!”
“Victory!” Eloise called back, her voice already fading as she apparently hurried away to get ready, too.
Half an hour later, Penelope stepped out of their dorm room with her mini-backpack, feeling terribly overdressed. Or perhaps she felt like a librarian masquerading as a student. But she definitely didn’t feel or look like some cute college girl about to go bopping down to the student activities center for a spot of fun.
Eloise raised her eyebrows at her when she turned around after locking the door. “You going to shush everyone, threaten fines if they don’t return their books on time?”
Penelope felt her eyes shoot wide and her face go pale. “Shit, I should change.”
Eloise rolled her eyes and reached out for the top button on her blouse. “Stop, no you don’t. Just, loosen up a bit.”
When she had unbuttoned two of Penelope’s buttons, messed up her hair a bit, and made her tuck in her blouse, Penelope did have to admit she looked more sexy librarian than authoritarian librarian. Like the moment some lucky lad got her pencil skirt off he was going to be in for a very thorough education.
“I need to change,” Penelope declared, sticking her key back in the lock.
“Knock it off, Pen, you look great!” Eloise scowled, tugging her away from the door. “Tonight, just decide you don’t give a single fuck about anything but having a good time. Pick a fight with a dumb meathead and win. Tell Cressida to go suck a lemon. Here.” Eloise nudged her elbow and passed her an honest-to-God flask.
“Absolutely not,” Penelope refused.
Groaning, Eloise stuffed it back into the inner pocket of a suit coat that definitely belonged to Theo Sharpe, who worked on the newspaper with Penelope and had worn that jacket not two days ago with a band tee shirt underneath that loudly announced he was too cool for whatever it was he was doing at any given moment.
In the stairwell, Eloise stopped at the landing abruptly. “When’s the last time you felt an actual strong emotion that wasn’t related to something a professor assigned to you?”
“For the last time,” Penelope insisted, stepping neatly around the Eloise-shaped roadblock on the stairs. “I am not emotionally constipated. I am guarded. And it is both genetically inherited and conditioned. I feel plenty, I just don’t share it lightly.”
Nodding, Eloise started thumping down the steps behind her. “Sure, and we have loads of fun, Pen, but you act like enjoying yourself is a crime. Or at the very least cringey.”
“Because I’m here to learn and get a degree that will secure me a job after we graduate,” Penelope reminded her dryly. “Besides, no one invites me to any parties anyway.”
“Sure they do—”
“Being tacked on to invites extended to you does not count.” Penelope scowled up at her, hand on the door leading to the lobby of their dormitory building. “I am a wallflower and it’s fine, El. I’m not in need of a rescue. I have found my tribe, and though it be small, it is mine.”
Eloise looked at herself, then touched her hand to her chest. “Me? I’m it?”
Penelope’s stomach sank. “Well, and…”
“And the rest of my family? Except Benedict, who has for some reason still never traded more than three words with you in all the years you’ve floated in and out of our house?”
Scrambling, Penelope suddenly perked. “Genevieve! And Edwina!”
Relaxing slightly, Eloise smiled genuinely. “Right! Although they’re not here tonight, but still. Definitely in the tribe.”
Nodding firmly, Penelope tugged open the door, walked out, and immediately balked at the sight of Cressida, Marina, and Vicki Brunswick clumped up by the exit. They all wore shades of pink like they had taken a cue directly from Mean Girls having entirely missed the core concept.
Cressida snorted, then put on a wide, disingenuous smile that contained far too many teeth to be friendly. “Penelope, that is an interesting look!”
Behind her, Eloise nudged Penelope between her shoulder blades.
Penelope wasn’t stupid. Eloise was telling her to make a stand. To make it plain she didn’t care much at all about Cressida’s opinion, or take to heart any of her thinly veiled insults, but Penelope sucked her lower lip between her teeth, put her chin up, and chose the lonely high road once more.
Outside, she looked at Eloise pleadingly. “Can I please go change? Please?”
“Your tits look cracking, your bum is exquisite, and if you don’t catch at least three men giving you a once-over, I’ll buy you a drink at the pub after. Deal?”
Dropping her head back in defeat, feeling the few curls Eloise had tugged free from her previously high-and-tight bun tickle her neck, Penelope let out a childish groan and went dragging her feet toward the student activities center.
Inside, chaos reigned.
There was a big green screen stretched out with speakers blasting nearby so students could film themselves dancing in front of it and be photoshopped into various music videos and landscapes. A shaved ice machine and a row of what had to be fifty-plus different flavored syrups. The a cappella club had a booth with serenades for sale, meaning for the week running up to Valentine’s Day they’d be popping into classes to disrupt lessons and sing embarrassing snippets of love songs to those lucky idiots who managed to squeeze actual romance between their otherwise jam-packed schedules.
There were carnival games, a test-your-strength style challenge with a giant bell on the top and a tired-looking man guarding the oversized mallet that went with it, and small containers of actual goldfish for prizes. The air smelled like popcorn and fried dough dusted in cinnamon and sugar, the ground already sticky.
The newspaper stall was woefully underpopulated. But, Penelope realized with a wince, all they had to offer were a few laptops displaying the digital issue they circulated twice a week and a clipboard for anyone interested in contributing to sign their name.
The only name on it currently was Mary Poppins.
The creative writing club had taken a page out of the a cappella group’s book and were offering poems for donations so they could fund travel for any students who qualified for an annual competition where the top ten competitors had a chance to deliver their winning words on stage.
Penelope could think of nothing more terrifying.
Beside her, Eloise put her hands on her hips and smiled. “Right. So, clockwise?”
Penelope stuck her arm through her friend’s and nodded. “That’s orderly in exactly the way I like.”
Grinning at her, Eloise nodded. “Right. Let’s go do this and make sure to take some snaps to prove to my mother I do actually get out and fraternize occasionally.”
“And not just at parties where they make you throw pingpong balls into little red plastic cups,” Penelope quipped, enjoying Eloise’s cackle as she pulled her to the very first booth.
The long-haired fellow behind the table perked up. “Looking to join the philosophy club?”
Eloise wrinkled her nose, but then picked up a printed agenda from the group’s last meeting, her face immediately relaxing. “The ethics of Batman?”
“He never kills,” the student replied, wagging his eyebrows. Seeing they weren’t wholly impressed, he shrugged. “Well, at least in most iterations. But there are some really neat discussions to be had about whether or not Batman causes all the supervillains to flock to Gotham by being a superhero himself. Sort of a chicken and egg situation.”
Eloise set the pamphlet down. “Fascinating. I will consider if my Wednesday nights have enough ethical quandaries and get back to you.”
The man sank back into his chair with a roll of his eyes. “Sure.”
Rolling her lips in to hide a smile, Penelope pulled Eloise away, breaking into actual giggles when they were several feet away and looking up at a booth of make-your-own street signs. Eloise immediately jumped in line, pointing out a circular sign in red and white she planned to put NO PROSELYTIZING on in the boldest font they offered. While they waited, Penelope considered what her own street sign might say. She examined the other nearby booths, planning to bypass what looked like a sand-carving team table and a stall offering fresh-squeezed lemonade that looked watery and dreadful for the booth of hot sugared almonds.
Then she spotted a line. A line consisting entirely of tittering girls positively bouncing with anticipation. Curious, Penelope tilted her head, shifting her weight onto one foot and leaning until she lost her balance and nearly stumbled out of line. At the last moment she reared back, overcorrecting directly into the chest of someone tall, broad-shouldered, and gentlemanly enough to put his hands on her waist and stop her from falling to her bum right there on the floor.
Penelope blinked up into the not-unpleasant eyes of a smiling, vaguely-familiar face. “Sorry!” she blurted, wincing immediately after.
“No trouble,” he assured her, removing his hands and collecting them behind his back with a tilt of his head. “Looking for some signage?”
Noting that Eloise was single-mindedly staring at her phone, no doubt texting Theo (who was not at the event despite having signed up to help man the booth), Penelope nodded with a tight smile.
“I was thinking something like Caution: Bookish and Brusque, but I’m not sure I’ll pull off the latter half of the sign, which is a shame because it has a real ring to it.”
The man barked with laughter, tilting his head at her like he found her fascinating. But not in a way that made her belly flip—like she was on exhibit at the zoo and he’d seen some strange mating behavior he was unfamiliar with.
“Five pounds is nothing. I’ll get in this line five bloody times!”
Helplessly curious, Penelope craned her neck to look at the line of girls that had, in the past thirty seconds, almost doubled in size.
The man standing beside her, his hands still collected behind his back, sighed. “Sounds like a quick way to spread glandular fever, that.”
Penelope whipped around. “What are they talking about?”
The man dipped his head, scowling slightly. “The football team, raising money for a summer holiday tournament they want to travel to. They’re running a kissing booth.”
Somewhere, the siren-like song from Kill Bill started to play in Penelope’s head. She turned as if in slow motion, and for a brief, devastating moment, everything slowed down.
The crowd parted.
And there, leaning with his elbows on the edge of a cute cut-out in the shape of a wide pair of lipsticked lips, Colin Bridgerton lounged, grinning charmingly at some second-year biology student, his lips glossy and shiny and kissed.
Penelope was going to throw up.
“And they’re all lining up for a turn? Like pigs at a trough?” Penelope asked, dumbfounded.
The man laughed, loudly.
She turned sharply, not sure if she should be offended, feeling the compulsive need to defend Colin before she even knew if he was the butt of the joke here.
“At the very least you think Casanova over there would be sanitizing—then again, I suppose those sorts of things do tend to dry out the skin.” Popping his eyebrows in slight amusement, he cut his eyes to Penelope as if they were sharing a delectable dessert. “How many layers of lip balm can one wear simultaneously, do you think?”
“Excuse me,” Penelope blurted, then abandoned the line and made straight for the ladies’ room, where she burst inside, pressing her back to the door. The two other girls inside, both standing at the sink, looked at her trepidatiously in the mirror before resuming touching up their makeup and fluffing their hair.
Blushing, Penelope pushed off the door, located an unlocked stall, and flung herself inside, pressing her back against this door, too. Shutting her eyes, she fought to keep her meager dinner of microwave popcorn and yogurt in her belly.
Colin was here, as promised. She figured Eloise couldn’t have known he’d signed up for a shift at the football team’s stall, but it still rankled her terribly. Eloise had dangled his presence like a carrot in front of her, and dumb, easily-tempted Penelope had gone trotting after it, her hooves clopping on the ground until she realized she was actually a horse’s ass.
Her face scrunched. She had absolutely no right to be incensed, or jealous, or anything, but here she was, about to burst into sobs in the student activities center loo because Colin was here and half the campus was paying actual money to kiss him.
Right in front of my salad, she whined internally, then actually whimpered aloud.
God, his lips had been shiny with tinted lip gloss. He’d looked entirely unbothered—delighted, in fact. Completely unaware of her existence, per usual.
Though that wasn’t entirely true. When he got bored, he always found her and spent a fair chunk of time muttering little observations and jokes in her ear until she was pink-cheeked and delirious from his attention. But only when he grew bored.
He wouldn’t be bored tonight, that was for certain. That line would probably extend right out the door and spill onto the sidewalk outside by the time Penelope gathered her courage and exited the loo. Maybe he’d join up with her and Eloise at the pub after, if she even felt like a drink afterward.
Penelope either felt like returning home to fall face down in her bed and cry, or like going out for seventeen stiff drinks so she could forget everything that had occurred after six o’clock.
The loo door burst inward, immediately followed by a familiar voice screeching, “Oh my God, I’m literally shaking! I swear he put a little something extra on mine—did you see?”
Penelope gagged. It was Marina Thompson, of course. Cressida’s newest underling and resident expert on looking like she’d just caught a whiff of rotted fish.
“Please,” Cressida’s unhurried, snooty dismissal echoed in the tiled room as she apparently joined the still-swooning Marina. “You must not have been looking when he had his turn with me.”
The boy she had been in love with for most of her life had kissed two of her mortal enemies in the same evening. Probably back to back. Kissed them. On the bloody lips.
“That little wink—he definitely made it sound like we could get back in line.”
Of course he did. Colin would never miss an opportunity to make some tittering idiot of a girl feel special. He practically made a sport of it, flirting and winking and telling stories until everyone in the room had been wound neatly around his little finger.
Not that he was some sort of ladies’ man, Penelope reminded herself. He enjoyed the social game of it all, and he never left a trail of broken hearts in his wake, preferring to keep things light and largely meaningless. Just a bit of gassing up, as he would probably say.
Games he didn’t really play with Penelope. No, with her, it was all razor-sharp barbs and nerdy banter and bickering over the last egg roll until she inevitably let him have it because nothing made Colin happier than getting the last scrap of food on the table.
He’d take her braided pigtail and make a mustache out of it, pinching it between his upper lip and his nose and putting on a horrible fake French accent, or he’d hold up her makeup pallet and ask if he was more of a burnt sienna or mauve complexion, or maybe he’d seize her hand and spin her like a top if the song on the speaker was something dancy and light, but he wouldn’t wink or bite his lip or get that low, rumbly voice he used when he was charming bartenders into pouring a drink after last call.
“Pen?” Eloise’s voice suddenly cut over the vapid chatter happening just outside her stall in the loo. “Ugh, move, would you? This isn’t a social club—piss and move along!”
Heartened by Eloise’s bristly tone, Penelope cracked the loo door and found her, realizing too late that she probably had a red-speckled face that gave away exactly how upset she was.
Eloise marched up to the crack in the stall and frowned. “Spill it. What have they said?”
Marina let out a scoff. “We didn’t even know she was in here!”
“Have you pissed or not?” Eloise asked, spinning around and flapping her brand new novelty street sign at them. “Move along!”
Cressida and Marina disappeared through the door together, sniping about Eloise’s poor manners the whole way.
When they were fully gone and the door was closed again, Penelope rushed out to the sink and, not knowing what else to do, turned on the tap and washed her hands like she hadn’t spent the entire time in the stall trying not to barf.
“You look like you’ve been shot in the stomach,” Eloise commented blithely, raising an eyebrow. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Did you see Colin?
No, too obvious. Eloise would ask what Colin had to do with her pale, clammy face and Penelope would have to admit that seeing him working the kissing booth had made her feel violently ill. It was just a hop, skip, and a jump from there to I’ve been in love with Colin since before I even knew what that meant. Then Eloise would probably be in the stall trying not puke.
“Just, you know. Too many people.”
Eloise hummed, clearly not believing her. “Huh. I thought maybe that weirdo ornithology prof scared you off.”
“Ornithology?” Penelope repeated, squeezing out several pumps of soap into her palms in a bid to extend her handwashing endeavor by several minutes.
“The blond guy you were chatting with in line,” Eloise said, looking at her sign fondly. “Bit judgy, really. After you left he waited a bit, tried to talk to me about joining the birder club.”
“He didn’t mention birds to me,” Penelope muttered, wondering if that meant something.
“What happened?” Eloise asked, sounding properly exasperated now. “One second you’re in line and the next you’re in here, held captive in a toilet by the Witches’ Coven itself, looking like—” She cut herself off to gesture at the entirety of Penelope.
Closing her eyes, Penelope sucked in a breath. “I don’t know, El. Sometimes I just…need a moment.”
After a long few seconds, Eloise nodded, finding her eyes in the mirror above the sink. “Okay, fine. Then how about we go see what Colin’s up to at the footie booth and dip out for that drink?”
Wilting in relief, Penelope thought of those several stiff drinks she now thought she’d definitely be tossing back. Then the first half of Eloise’s suggestion caught up to her.
“Can’t we just text him from the pub?”
Eloise’s eyes narrowed. “He’d be miffed. Maybe even put out. When Colin pouts, it’s horrible.”
“Why should he be put out?” Penelope asked, putting on her best innocently confused air, focusing on her fingernails as she scrubbed at the suds on her hands.
“He’s just spent six weeks in Australia and has been talking about this carnival for months. About getting to crash with us and relive the halcyon days of his youth. Remember that tripe?”
“He didn’t say any of that to me,” Penelope muttered.
Eloise tipped her head jauntily. “No, not in any of your many emails?”
Penelope felt her cheeks heat, refusing to look at her reflection to see the evidence herself. “He mostly just tells me about his travels, his games. I’m like a journal at this point, but I write back occasionally, so he keeps sending more.”
Colin used to send long entries to his entire family, then he’d offered to copy Penelope onto his recipient list, and Penelope had been delighted to wake up one morning to make a cup of shitty instant coffee in her dorm and discover a long, descriptive email from Colin that felt exactly like it felt to sit down across from him at the breakfast table before anyone else in the family had gotten up.
His face all lit up, hands flying as he gesticulated, describing the way he had to haggle for everything in South America and how when he bragged to his mates about how little he’d paid he always discovered he’d paid the most of anybody. But he was always the first to laugh at his mishaps, finding them all to be lessons of one kind or another.
Penelope adored those emails.
Adored them so much she’d written him back almost at once, complimenting his storytelling and asking for more details. And then Colin had written back, and then at some point she noticed that her name was the only name at the top of the sending list.
“We still get the email,” Eloise had confirmed once, shrugging later. “You’re not on the list with everybody else anymore.”
Penelope had done a naughty thing later that week and compared the email Colin sent her to the one he sent to Eloise and everyone else in his family. They were almost identical, but her email that week had a little more to it. Nothing terribly out of pocket or necessarily family-unfriendly, but perhaps a touch more vulnerable than his usual look at me having so much fun traveling and playing footie with my mates than he sent to his siblings and mother.
She had tumbled impossibly deeper in love with him.
And yes, he’d waxed on and on about this uni carnival since before Christmas. About how it would line up with a long break for the team, how he’d be in London for a good stretch afterward, about how his contract was going to be up for negotiation at that time, about all sorts of things.
Penelope read between the lines easily. Colin was homesick but not ready to admit it. Eager to see his family and catch up on everything he missed while he was gone. To be part of things instead of simply informed about them.
And he was part of things out there. He had cherry-flavored lip balm all over his face to prove it.
“He can have as much fun as he wants—doesn’t mean you and I can’t duck out to somewhere quieter with better drinks than that awful lemonade they’re serving.” Penelope finally rinsed the last of her soap off, reaching automatically for a paper towel.
Eloise stamped her foot. “He is going to pout. He’ll leave early when he finds out where we’ve gone.”
“So don’t text him until later,” Penelope suggested.
Her eyes narrowing again, Eloise folded her arms, sandwiching her sign beneath her armpit. “Are you fighting with him for some reason?”
Penelope’s face flamed even hotter. “What? No!”
“Then why are you avoiding him? You never avoid him. He was practically the only reason I convinced you to come.”
The loo door opened and Penelope gritted her teeth. “Just, let’s go, okay?”
“We’re going to stop by his booth,” Eloise said, making sure it was loud and bossy as Penelope forged ahead, hating the way the two girls who’d just come in were rosy-cheeked and giggling. Freshly kissed, by the look of it.
Penelope tried to barrel straight to the exit, she really did. But the line for the goddamn kissing booth had practically bisected the entire event space, and to avoid Colin she would have to rather pointedly turn away from him and ignore Eloise’s squawking.
Grabbing her arm, Eloise frowned at her and then dragged her right past the line of girls—all ages, some of them even faculty-adjacent, all of them looking a little breathless and starry-eyed—up to the booth.
Upon spotting them, Colin straightened with a bright smile, reaching over his head for the sign dangling there. It went from PUCKER UP to BACK IN 5 MINS.
“Pen!” he cried, hopping straight over the little table the football team had outfitted in stripes of red and white with clumsily cutout hearts and lips dotted all over. “Hey!”
She couldn’t help but stiffen up when he hugged her, feeling surly and sure she was going to snap. He released her after a perfunctory hug, turning to give Eloise the same treatment before turning, his hands on his hips and face bright with contagious good humor.
“Wild night, huh?”
His face was smeared in lipstick, lip balm, and evidence of a hundred girls trading spit with him.
Curling her lip involuntarily, Penelope blurted, “Aren’t you afraid of catching something?”
“I took some vitamin C in preparation,” he assured her with a giggle. “Really I’m probably the disease vector here, fresh from a trip abroad. Lucky they didn’t catch me coming home from Africa or it might be malaria.”
Eloise’s face scrunched up as she looked at the line of now-scowling women waiting for their turns. “Are you quite serious? Showing up like some rock star and charging five pounds to kiss you?”
“It’s the going rate,” Colin replied, shrugging with another pleased grin.
Penelope made a noise that was halfway between a gag and a scoff. It came out sort of like a burp, but with the distinct flavor of stomach bile. Meanwhile, Colin smelled minty fresh like he was doing nothing but chewing Altoids and gargling mouthwash behind his cute little countertop.
“How have you been, El?” Colin asked, bouncing lightly on his feet.
“Are you sure you want to keep them waiting?” Eloise asked tersely.
“Bit of anticipation never killed anyone,” he shot back.
Penelope looked at the next girl in line, the one who looked the most murderous. Shelby Atkins, if her memory served. A fourth-year student planning to return in the fall for the graduate program. Plain, nice enough, and a fairly decent rugby player. She had her money in hand and the look of a girl who had already waited plenty long enough in the line that had just reached the doors to the venue and was about to spill outside.
“We’re headed to the pub,” Penelope announced. “When you’re all wrapped up here, if you’re not drowning in phone numbers and communicable diseases, you can join us.”
His good mood dripped off his face as his smile fell. “You’re leaving?”
“No,” Penelope shot back, feeling particularly nasty. “We’re going to pull up lawn chairs and watch you snog half the student body. For fun.”
He rolled his eyes at her. “It’s hardly even a peck, Pen. What do you take me for?”
“A rake,” Eloise supplied neatly. “I bet you fancy this is some sort of triumph, don’t you? Returning like John bloody Lennon to your old stomping grounds having gone pro, letting your adoring public get a chance to worship you. Bigger than Jesus and all that.”
He blanched. “N-no! It’s—they just—the team captain asked me to fill in! They had their forward all lined up but he tore his meniscus last night at the—it’s for a good cause!”
”And what cause is that? Money for the team to travel to an invitational and maybe win a trophy?” Penelope asked tartly. “You could be raising money for sick kids—that I might actually understand.”
Colin blinked at her, his forehead pinched in the middle like he was truly vexed by her. “It’s my old team,” he said, sounding dumbfounded. “I—it’s just an—are you both angry with me?”
“Just giving you shit,” Eloise promised, her tone suddenly light and teasing. “Though I agree, I’m not keen to stay to watch.”
Colin sagged in relief, immediately flinching when he looked at Penelope, who realized a beat too late that her face was still stony with irritation and revulsion.
She tried to push it down, tried to look amused and slightly teasing, but she could tell her scowl only deepened.
”Pen?” he asked, sounding twelve years old.
She looped her arm through Eloise’s, pursing her lips. “All in good fun,” she promised, but it sounded sarcastic even to her. “Don’t keep them waiting—they might bite.”
She tugged Eloise a grand total of four steps away before Colin came racing up, his eyes impossibly earnest and he seized her wrist and pulled her to a stop. “Don’t leave! I can get someone else to fill in for me.”
Behind him, several faces twisted in consternation. Chatter erupted.
Penelope raised an eyebrow. “Sure that’s a good idea? Seems like the straw poll indicates you are the reason the line is so long.”
She wanted him to duck out, to choose her (and Eloise) above having his face covered in a veneer of petroleum-based lip balms. But she couldn’t help herself. She needed him to feel badly.
Which wasn’t fair. She knew that. But she still hated that she’d had to see any part of it with her own two eyes.
“You have lipstick all over your mouth,” she muttered darkly.
He swiped a hand immediately across his lips, his ears turning an endearing crimson color.
“We can dillydally a bit,” Eloise promised, prompting Penelope to spin toward her, mouth dropping open in betrayal.
“Look at his face!” Eloise crowed, pointing at Colin’s puppy-dog eyes and slightly parted mouth of total contrition. “He’s minutes from weeping.”
“Shove it, you,” he growled, his cheeks pinking now, too. “I just—I didn’t realize it would put such a damper on things, my helping out—”
“It didn’t,” Penelope interrupted, making a shooing motion with her hands. “Go on. We’ll save you a seat at the pub.”
He didn’t move, his eyebrows suddenly lowering. “Then you aren’t staying?”
“We’re staying,” Eloise reiterated firmly. “Leave her to me. Just, we’re ready to go, okay? So whatever you’re going to do, do it.”
Penelope let Eloise drag her away, pleased to note Colin looked chastened and a bit flustered as he went back to the team stall and slunk around the side of it to return to his post. Shelby Atkins slapped her fiver down on the counter and offered him a tight smile.
”What the fuck was that about?” Eloise asked when they were standing in front of the lemonade booth.
“It’s just gross,” Penelope answered primly. “Disgusting, really. Unnecessary, too.”
Behind her, Eloise made a noise. “Okay, sure, it’s not my favorite either, but it’s not like he’s sticking his tongue in.”
Penelope couldn’t help but unzip her mini-backpack violently, plunging a hand in to wrench her wallet out. “Well, thank God for small favors.”
“And so what if he was?” Eloise asked carefully. “Are you really worried about germs?”
Penelope opened her wallet, nudging aside a crisp fifty pound note (from her Nan, as a reward for another term with perfect marks). “Yes. You know damn well he’s going to order some artisanal tequila and insist we each have a taste, and tonight he kissed Cressida bloody Cowper.”
“So we don’t take a taste, and poor him! Had to really take one for the team there.” Eloise tutted softly. “He’s going to need several artisanal tequilas to get that taste out of his mouth, surely.”
“I thought he wasn’t sticking his tongue anywhere,” Penelope growled, extracting a smaller bill to pay for lemonade she was sure would be awful.
A first-year with a terrible haircut (Penelope happened to know the team regularly hazed its first-year members by making them sport horrible haircuts) came running up just as she prepared to hand over her money and cut her in line.
“Hey!” she objected, ready to fight just about anybody for any reason.
“Hers is paid for,” he said to the vendor, handing over a wad of singles.
Penelope blinked, watching as the lad raced over to the football team booth, ducking behind it as Colin waved the next girl in line forward, taking her money and popping it through the slot in the top of a stuffed-full coffee can.
Penelope watched like she was watching a train wreck in person. Saw the girl clap her hands, lean over, purse her lips, and press them right up against Colin’s waiting pucker.
Tore her eyes away violently even though the kiss was over and done with before she could so much as blink. Snatched the lemonade from the confused vendor and went stalking off while Eloise let out a squawk of indignation.
“Did he really only pay for one?” she asked in a low, threatening growl. “Share, Pen—it’s only fair.”
“Have it,” Penelope hissed, shoving it into her hands. “I don’t want his apology lemonade.”
But suddenly Eloise was pushing the cup back into her hands, looking at her phone with her lip tucked between her teeth. Her Theo-face, as Penelope had come to call it.
“Don’t you dare,” Penelope began to threaten.
“Five minutes,” Eloise begged. “He’s outside. Says he finds the whole thing sort of cringey in here, so he won’t come in. But I’ll be back in a flash, I swear! By then Colin will have have gotten someone else from the team to relieve him and we can make him gargle hundred proof vodka at the pub to disinfect.”
Penelope’s mouth worked, but the words wouldn’t come. There was no explanation good enough to convince Eloise to give up five minutes of snogging her hipster not-boyfriend without admitting she was seething with jealousy and mere moments from some sort of catastrophic meltdown.
Eloise was a good friend, but she was only human. So, taking Penelope’s silence for approval, she muttered, “You’re the best, Pen,” and went bumping through the crowd to the exit.
Alone, Penelope sipped Colin’s apology lemonade.
It was sweet, and tart, and actually quite good. Her eyes stung, heart hammering relentlessly in her chest. She risked a quick glance at the line and nearly threw her head back to wail upon spotting Cressida and Marina about halfway up it, apparently going through for their second time.
She was being punished, she decided. For what she didn’t have a clue, but this was surely evidence there wasn’t a benevolent God out there. Penelope was in Hell.