Page 2 of Mad Love

“It’s not you,” I answer.

“Oh, it’s you,” one of the girls says, winking. “Word got out that this is where you guys meet for coffee and everyone wanted to get in on the action. We drove all the way from Boulder.”

I smile politely and motion for her to step forward in line.

She turns and I exchange a look with Penn. When he looks forward again, his face lights up and I look to see what changed. He waves at Clara, the sassy owner who’s my mom’s best friend. She’s the reason this is our place. She motions us over to the pickup line and lifts up our usual: flat white for me, caramel macchiato for Penn. Just one of the things we love to razz him about.

“Clara is too good to us,” Penn says.

Clara is my parents’ neighbor and decided to open this coffeehouse after her husband Jimmy died. This place has given her a reason to smile again, which is a relief. Clara is good people and seeing her brokenhearted was awful.

“Morning, Clara. You’re looking lovely today,” I say, taking the cup from her.

“You don’t have to sweet-talk me to get your coffee,” she says, but she’s smiling and her cheeks are pink. She leans in and tilts her head. “I put your boys in the back room so they could have some peace.”

“Ahh. We wondered if they saw this crowd and got out of here,” Penn says.

“They haven’t been here long.” Clara motions for us to follow her.

“Thanks, Clara,” Penn and I say in tandem.

I lift my foot to knock the back of his knee like my sister Felicity always does to me, laughing when it buckles.

For some reason I can never pull it off with my sister, but it works on Penn every time. He didn’t have siblings growing up, so he’s still caught by surprise when any of us try to torture him.

He curses under his breath and shoots me a glare as we make our way through the crowded coffee shop. It’s too small for all these people, but I guess it’s good for business. Clara knocks once and enters a code into the door, before cracking it open.

“I have two rug rats here who think they should be invited to the party,” she says.

Penn and I step into the cozy room with the large round table and a reading chair on the side with a small bookshelf of books. Clara says it’s a room for meetings, but I think this is where she comes to hide and read when it’s slow out there.

“Yeah, why you gotta be so exclusive?” I ask, mostly kidding.

Bowie smirks. “Have a kid and we’ll let you in,” he says.

Henley and Rhodes high-five, and Penn snorts.

“I hate to tell you, but youneedus in this little club you’ve got going,” Penn says.

Henley raises his eyebrows. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“You call yourselves The Single Dad Players…and you guys just high-fived. Enough said.”

Henley and Bowie look embarrassed for exactly zero seconds.

“Come on, what do you talk about in these weekly meetings anyway?” Penn says. “We’ve heard you when we’re on the road. It’s not entirely parent talk, from what I can tell.”

“We go easy on ourselves when we’re on the road. Then it’s mostly about how much we miss the kids, and we’re talking about how great they are…or how difficult,” Rhodes says.

“And when you’re not on the road?” I ask, playing along.

“Well, I was just telling the guys that Cassidy started her period last night when she was with me, and I had nothing in thehouse,” Henley says, with the same gleam he gets when he goes up for an acrobatic fingertip catch in the end zone.

Penn and I shift on our feet, obviously uncomfortable.

All three of them fold their arms and look pleased.

“I had to go to the drugstore and get pads and walk her through how to use them through the door.” He scrunches his brows and it’s the universal sign for when Henley is about to dig deeper, be it on the field or when he’s talking shit with us. “She wanted to know how to use tampons, so I talked her through that too, and then I set her up with a heating pad and?—”

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