Chapter Text
"Hi, I'm sorry, I really don't want to bother you, but are you Penelope Marshall?"
The hair on Stuart's arms stood at the sound of that name. He lowered the volume on his laptop, as a new song began to play, and then pulled his headphones from his ears altogether. The coffee shop had died down as the lunch hour crowd had begun to clear out, and the tables around Stuart's began to empty. He looked around to see where the conversation he had managed to overhear, in between changing songs on his computer, was coming from. Three tables down he saw a girl standing in front of a table, and then saw a familiar sight: a pair of blue slip-on Toms, ankles crossed, resting on an empty chair. Stuart thought that it had to be a coincidence, and yet, he continued eavesdropping.
"I just, I'm such a huge fan of your work, and my Modern Literature professor at USF had us read your book my sophomore year and I have read it so many times since, and it has gotten me through a lot of hard times. I just, it would mean the world if I could get your signature."
Stuart listened, quickly slipping between bouts of absolute denial and sheer, heart racing terror over the fact that this was too great of a coincidence and it was actually her. He knew that he heard that name correctly though. He quickly grew frustrated that the coffee shop was playing Adele's "Hello" a little too loud, and that only the excited, standing fan was speaking loud enough for him to hear. He craned his neck, trying to see around her, but she was standing too close to what he really wanted to see, to actually set his eyes on it. He leaned in, and tried to listen more.
"I'm so sorry to hear that, honey." Stuart knew that voice. It was quiet and low, but it was unmistakable. "Oh, don't cry...."
"It's just, your writing has really helped me to not feel alone. That passage where you wrote 'Break the news, you're walking out to be a good man for someone else. Sorry I was never good like you. Stood on my chest and kept me down, hated hearing my name on the lips of a crowd. Did my best to exist just for you.' was something I so understood and identified with and to know that someone as talented and beautiful and wonderful as you got cheated on but bounced back and turned all this trauma into something so brilliant, it really... it really..." The girl devolved into a puddle of tears, and the one he wanted to see finally stood.
"Oh, you are so sweet. Come on, honey, let's sort you out and I'll buy you a coffee..." The familiar voice rang again.
Stuart sunk into his chair and hid his face with his hand as the girl was escorted to the bathroom by the woman she was talking to. He watched as the restroom door closed behind them, and he began frantically packing up his laptop, tablet, personal phone, work phone, multiple flash drives, and two external hard drives. Then he stopped.
He hadn't seen her in person in six years, and just the sound of her name still gave him literal goosebumps. He had dreamt about running into her again, on a more frequent basis then he would ever admit to anyone out loud. If Stuart believed in fate, he would think that this was it, and he made a decision. Something in Stuart told him to keep his laptop out and remain in his seat. He did a Google Images search for 'Penelope Marshall' and stared at the picture that he had seen on the inside of her book cover a million times. It was about four years old at that point but it was certainly her.
"No, thank you, sweetheart. You are so kind and I really loved meeting you. I hope to see you at my reading on Thursday. Have a good day, honey." She waved as she sat back down at her table. Stuart saw her smile and shake her head, as she picked up her pen and began to write on the yellow legal pad in front of her. Her smile was like a shot of adrenaline to his heart; he felt more alive in that very moment than he had in years. A rush of memories came over him suddenly, but one in particular stuck out in his head. The kiss. He sighed and ran his long fingers through his chocolate brown hair, massaging his scalp as he worked his way to the back of his neck. He slumped his head down in the crook of his arm, feeling his glasses jab into the bridge of his nose, and he stared at the USB ports on the side of his MacBook Pro. He sighed, picked his head up, glanced over at her again, and then went back to reading the memos in his work email, trying to focus on anything but her. He reached for his now tepid coffee and looked up at the ceiling as he sipped. He slowly lowered the oversized mug back onto the accompanying saucer on the table and stared at her again. He couldn't take his eyes off of her.
Penny tapped the end of her purple felt tipped pen on the paper in front of her, stalled in her writing, and she looked up. Finally, she saw him. A slow, but genuine smile spread across her lips as she made eye contact with the man across the room, hiding behind his laptop and coffee cup. She smirked and raised an eyebrow, as she pushed the empty chair across from her out from under the table with her feet, daring him to come over. Stuart accepted her silent proposal. He shoved his phone into his gray trousers pocket, stuffed his computer into his backpack, and grabbed his coffee. He adjusted his thick black rimmed glasses on his nose and walked over to her table.
"Hey, Pen." Stuart said in his low husky tone.
"Hey, Stu." She said smiling up at him. "You going to sit or...?"
"I don't want to bother you if you're writing..." Stuart began doubting himself. He was normally very confident and self-assured, but there was something about this exchange that was throwing him off. He knew what that something was: her.
She happily shook her head, and pushed the chair out a little further with her tip-toes, the sound of the legs sputtering against the terra cotta tiled floor filled the quiet room. "Sit, Twombly. Let's catch up."
Stuart smiled. 'Twombly.' God, he loved hearing her say his name again. Stuart dropped his backpack to the floor, pushed the sleeves of his navy blue pullover up to his elbows, and sat down in the chair across from her. "I never.. I, uh..." He struggled to find the perfect opener. "How are you?" He sighed internally.
She smiled and leaned forward, resting her elbow on the legal pad and her chin on the back of her hand. "I'm good, Stu, how are you?"
He rolled his pink lips into his mouth and wet them with his tongue, and rang his hands together in front of him on the table. He was mere inches from her and he could not think straight. "I'm good. Uh.. just, you know... Um.." Stuart struggled to find his words.
"Okay, well while you figure that out, I am just gonna..." She snickered and pointed her pen down towards the paper underneath her. "..go back to this..."
"Oh god, I'm gonna go."
"STUART! I'm kidding! Sit! Oh my god, you act like I'm auditing your finances, not catching up with you for the first time in years, would you relax? I'm your ex, not like the boogeyman." Her raised tone garnered some attention, and a few of the other customers looked up to watch what was happening at their table. Stuart lowered himself back into the chair and sighed.
"I'm surprised to see you is all. I never thought you'd come back to San Francisco again."
Penny smiled, and leaned back in her chair, biting down on the end of her pen between her front teeth. Her arms folded in front of her, as she barely held onto the cap. "Well, I've only been in town for a couple of months, so."
"Months?" Stuart questioned, unable to hide the surprise in his tone.
Penny nodded. "Yes, Stuart, months."
"What are you doing back here?" Penny frowned slightly and narrowed her eyes at him. "I didn't mean it like that, just, like, what brought you back... oh, fuck, Pen, you know what I mean." Stuart brought the palm of his hand up to his forehead and Penny laughed. He glanced up at her from under his eyelashes and felt like he had been struck through the heart again. Her laughter was like the best song from his childhood; the sweetest and most nostalgic music he had ever heard.
"I got recruited by a writer's collective in the area, and... yea, my publisher has been on me to write and I thought that a new space could get the creative juices flowing again, and yea, so I moved back."
"You have a publisher? That's amazing, Pen." Stuart played coy. He didn't want her to know that he had kept tabs on her after all these years.
Penny narrowed her eyes and smiled, then nodded. "Yep, and she's trying real hard to get a decent book out of me."
"I'm sure you could write a wonderful book, Penny. You were always incredibly talented." Stuart continued his charade.
"You still at Google?" She asked, trying to steer the conversation away from her reappearance in the Bay Area and her employment by a publishing house.
Stuart nodded. "Still at Google. I've been headhunted by a few other companies, Facebook, Spotify, Microsoft, but Google was always the goal, and it's home at this point. I couldn't leave." Stuart relaxed as he talked about work, one of the few things he was truly passionate about in life.
"How's Neha?" Penelope was never one to beat around the bush, and in this instance, she felt like she had nothing to lose by being direct.
Stuart's cheeks flushed a bright and noticeable red, and he ran his hand through his hair, pushing the locks back and forth, trying to hide his face with his arm. "She's good, I think. I haven't talked to her in a long time. She moved to Apple like five years ago."
"So you broke up?" The smile remained on Penny's face. She was playing the best game of personal question poker that Stuart had ever participated in.
Stuart furrowed his brow and frowned slightly. All of his daydreams of running into her and instantly falling back into a happy rhythm were being dashed by the talk of Neha. He rubbed his hands together nervously. "We broke up after only a few months; it was never destined to be anything special..."
"Hmm.." Penny moved her pen off of her paper and onto the table. She had spent six years irrationally hating a girl she had never met, and now she knew that she had never been replaced by that girl, and Penny didn't quite know what to say about it. She moved on instead. "If you're working for Google, what are you doing here on a Tuesday afternoon? Shouldn't you be at work, at Google...?" Her smile returned.
Stuart was grateful for the topic change. He smiled and Penny felt a small tingle dance across her skin. She pulled the sleeves down on her denim jacket to hide her sudden goosebumps. "I can work remotely if I want and sometimes it's nice to just get out of the office."
"So you're supposed to be working right now?" Penelope asked, with a smirk, leaning to the side of the table to look at Stuart's full backpack.
Stuart chuckled quietly. "Kind of, yea... and you were obviously writing, so I can just..." He scooted his chair back and began to get up to go back to his previous table, until suddenly Penny's hand was on his forearm.
The two of them stared silently at each other, frozen in their respective positions for a longer amount of time than would be considered normal. Finally, she spoke. "No, you weren't bothering me, Stu. You don't have to go back over there to work, I can work just fine with you sitting here... if you wanted. I wouldn't mind hearing about your job and your parents and brother a little more too.."
Stuart felt like he had been kicked in the stomach; his breathing was ragged and shallow. He could barely think straight, let alone speak coherently. He simply nodded and sat back down, grabbing his laptop out of his backpack and placing it on the table.
Stuart tried hard to focus on his work and not the way that she chewed on her bottom lip as her pen flew across the paper. He could make out the words if he tried, but instead he felt warm inside staring at her handwriting. He always thought that it looked more like calligraphy than regular handwriting. It was a beautiful cross between print and script and it was steady and full of flourishes and embellishments. He remembered all of the handwritten notes that sat in a shoebox at the top of his closet in his apartment, and all of the memories attached to each letter. Some were pages long and some were simple and short, pages torn out of her books with affirmations of her love to him, or napkins that she had scribbled little notes of encouragement on when he needed a quick confidence boost.
Penelope was hunched over the table, her free hand rubbing her shoulder and neck, under her shirt. He became distracted from her writing when a section of her hair feel from her back to the front side of her shoulder, and suddenly, Stuart found himself at eighteen again, on his first official date with Penny, watching her stare at the menu and then smile up at him when she caught him admiring her.
"Stu... Stuart...."
Stuart jolted out of the movies playing in his head when he felt her soft skin touch his arm. "Yea?" He blinked at the contact that she hadn't broken yet.
"You haven't typed anything in, like, three minutes and you have been staring at me...." She narrowed her eyes and smiled at him.
Stuart laughed. He missed how direct she was. Regardless of the fact that both of their blunt natures used to lead to some arguments between them, that quality was one of his favorite things about her. He never had to wonder what she was thinking because she would always just tell him. They never really played games. It was something he struggled to find in his dating life as an adult.
"I kind of zoned out there for a minute there.. sorry." He winked at her quickly, and then glanced at her smile in reaction to his gesture.
"I missed that." She grinned from ear to ear and shook her head. "Fuck, I didn't even realize I missed that until you just did it." She began laughing, and covered her face with her hands.
Stuart closed his eyes and drunk in the sound of her laughter; that childhood song playing over again. "I missed that." He whispered, testing out the limits of his upfront nature. He opened his eyes and saw her leaning forward, softly smiling and looking at the paper in front of her.
"You know what I've been thinking about since I saw you?" She asked, as she leaned in, her chin resting on her balled up fist, suddenly willing to take a walk down memory lane with him.
Stuart raised his eyebrows, rolled his lips into his mouth, and allowed the corners of his mouth curve upwards into a coy smile. "Hmm?"
"The kiss." She replied, and Stuart felt like he had literally been shot in the chest. He instinctively brought his hand up to his heart and dug his fingertips into his chest, almost like he was trying to jumpstart his heart again.
Stuart stumbled with his words; his brain felt like it was on fire. "Is that what you've been writing about?" He asked, glancing down at her yellow legal pad.
Penny smiled, and Stuart felt his skin tingle. He rubbed his left arm and wondered to himself if he was having a heart attack. All of those thoughts left his head though, as he watched her long and delicate fingers run across the dried ink and flatten out the pages. "I was working on short stories and some poems about my time in New York before, but it was going no where...." Penny grinned. "Then some inspiration hit, but I haven't quite worked out my thoughts yet." She gently pushed the pad of paper across the table, towards Stuart, and he read the words quietly to himself.
Stuart saw some scribbles at the top of the page about old school versus new school and a doodle of his glasses. He flipped the page up to see if anything was written on the back and noticed the underside was blank, so he tore out the doodle and placed it on the table. He reached into the small front zipper of his backpack and pulled out his wallet. He opened it and placed the doodle inside, next to his cash, and then closed it and put it back in his backpack.
"For the collection." He winked, and Penny blushed, and grinned.
He continued reading the ramblings on the page. A lot was crossed out and most was her just jotting down feelings and words and ideas, but when Stuart got to the bottom of the page, he read something that was incredibly familiar. Something he had read before. Something he had read upwards of a hundred times. 'When you see me, will you say I've changed.' Stuart tried to fight an emerging smile, as Penny became fidgety, and leaned back in her chair, tapping her pen quickly against the air as she waited for him to speak again. He reached across the table and pulled the pen out of her hand, and then wrote something down on the paper below her scribbles, then slid the pad back over to her.
Penny held her hair back from falling in her face with her hand, as she leaned over the table and stared at the words he wrote. She glanced up at him through her eyelashes, a bashful smile emerging on her lips, and she remained frozen in her position. "'Just more gorgeous with age'?" She repeated what he wrote, and then shook her head. "Still know how to make a girl weak in the knees, Twombly." She shook her head and grinned.
Stuart closed his laptop and leaned his elbows on the table, folding his hands over the closed lid. He leaned his chest against the edge of the table and spoke lower. "Penny, I don't want this to be the last time I see you again." As soon as the words left his mouth, Stuart's AppleWatch lit up with a phone call from Dana. "Shit, it's my boss... I may have just accidentally dropped out of a work Google chat... Um, I probably have to head back to the office, but Pen... I'm serious. Can I see you again? Take you out to dinner and actually catch up?" Stuart founds his confidence in desperation. He needed to see her again. He had waited six years to see her again, and he was not going to let the opportunity slip through his fingers.
Penny smiled gently, and tucked a small section of her hair behind her ear. She began to slowly nod. "Okay. Yea. I'll see you again... For old time's sake."
Stuart didn't love that clarification but he would have to take it. He began to pack his computer back into his backpack, and then pulled his phone from his front pants pocket. "Um, what's your number? We'll set up a plan for maybe Thursday or Friday?"
Penny leaned back in her chair and smirked. "I don't have a phone, Stuart."
Stuart's mouth gaped open slightly, and he raised his eyebrows. "You what?"
"I feel like that should surprise you less.." She smirked, and Stuart snickered and shook his head. If anyone he knew would live a cell phone-less life, it would, in fact, be Penelope Marshall. "I'll tell you what, do you remember that dim sum place we used to go to all the time in Chinatown?"
Stuart grinned and nodded. "Yea, but it isn't there anymore."
Penny smiled at the fact that Stuart knew that. "I know, but the Greek place that replaced it, that's in the space now, is weirdly amazing. I have a work thing on Thursday at 6:30, but it should be over by 8:30 and I can meet you for dinner there at 9. If you're late though, Stu, I won't wait. Sound like a plan?"
Stuart sighed softly and nodded, while he typed the dinner date into the calendar on his iPhone. "I'll see you on Thursday then."
Penny stood as he stood, and she walked around the table to hug him. The familiar smell intoxicated her and she was grateful for his prolonged embrace. Stuart rested his cheek against the top of her head and wrapped his arms around her back. "I'll catch you later, Twombly." She whispered into his clavicle.
Stuart exhaled through his nose. His heart hurt and his chest constricted again. He didn't want to let her go, but she began to break from the embrace. He licked his lips and adjusted his glasses, the slung his backpack over his shoulder. "I'll see you on Thursday, at nine. I won't be late." He winked one last time, watching her cheeks flush pink, as she smiled and shook her head, and he walked out the door.
"Stewieeeee. What's happenin', kiddo?"
"Oh, hey, Billy. Nothing, just trying to troubleshoot that glitch for Nick." Stuart answered, barely glancing up from his computer.
"Whoa, 'Billy'? What am I your boss or something? Since when do you not call me 'Big Daddy'?" Billy asked, his face contorted with confusion and a subtle smirk.
Nick walked over and patted Billy on the shoulder as he saw his friends and colleagues congregating without him. "What's up, guys? What's the news?" The tall and shaggy blonde-haired man always had a much more casual and gentler approach than his lifelong friend, Billy.
"Stewie neither complained about me calling him 'Stewie', nor did he call me 'Big Daddy'." Billy reported to Nick.
"Whoa.. Stu, what's going on? Your aura is a little weird." Nick ran his hands above Stuart's head.
Stuart rolled his eyes and turned in his swivel chair to face the two men behind him. "Shut up about my aura, Nick. You have no idea what you're even talking about."
"No, no, it's really dark, I can feel it. What's wrong, bucko?"
"You know he's not going to give up until you tell him? He's a relentless friend like that. He cares. I respect your privacy but Nick, he cares." Billy began to talk faster and faster, knowing exactly which of Stuart's buttons to push in order to get him to talk, and finally Stuart did.
"OKAY! Enough, my god. The two of you are like a circus act. Fine. I'll tell you." Stuart huffed and rolled his neck along his shoulders, then adjusted his glasses. "I ran into my ex yesterday..."
"You ran into Neha? How is she? Man, I miss her. She always had a penis joke just ready and waiting." Nick grinned, and Stuart shook his head profusely.
"No, not Neha. Penny."
"You gotta give us a little more here, Stewie. This is the first time you have mentioned a 'Penny'." Billy replied.
Stuart sighed and turned back to his computer. He opened a new webpage in Chrome and typed in Penny's name, along with the title of her book. Nick sat in the chair next to Stuart and leaned over to see the screen. "Oh, I know her! Dana is obsessed with her book... wait.. Penny... Penelope Marshall is your Penny? Your ex? Dana is going to flip." Nick became very excited and smacked his hand against the desk top.
Billy patted Stuart hard on the back and Stuart scowled, sighed and then turned back around. "Well, she is quite the looker. How'd you mess that up?"
Stuart became more pensive looking and shook his head. Billy pulled up a seat and sat near the two of them, listening intently as Stuart began his story. "Penny and I met during Freshman Orientation at Stanford, during one of those idiotic ice breaker games. She was complaining about it and I was on my phone and she kept leaning over and making snide remarks about other kids' stupid answers and instead of finding her annoying, I found her funny, and..."
"Wait a minute.... she wrote, wait a minute, if you met her when you were Freshman... wait.." Nick tried to work out the problem out loud, but it only frustrated Stuart more.
"IT WAS ME!" He shouted, then looked around and saw that he had garnered some stares. He lowered his voice and continued. "It was me, okay? She wrote the book about me... about us, and about what I did."
"I'm confused. Who is this girl, besides someone who is really hot?" Billy asked, gesturing to Penny's picture on the screen.
"She's a New York Times Bestselling author. Dana read her book a billion times. Hell, she made me read it too. It's amazing." Nick explained.
Stuart took his glasses off and pinched at the bridge of his nose, trying to stave off a tension migraine. He sighed and put his glasses back on. "Penny and I dated from eighteen to twenty-one, about three and a half years, and honestly, she was the love of my life, and I let her get away."
"Weren't you twenty-one during the internship, Stu?" Billy asked, toning down his jokes and sarcasm, seeing the internal struggle happening inside of Stuart.
Stuart rubbed the back of his neck and closed his eyes, a pained look covering his face. "We lived about thirty minutes away from each other when we were home from school, we grew up in adjacent towns outside of the Bay Area and I was... well, you knew me back then."
"You were kind of a dick, buddy." Billy patted him on the shoulder.
"Not too bad though. You grew out of it. I mean, it only took you.. how old are you now?" Nick tried to defend Stuart.
"Twenty-seven.... and I didn't grow out of it quick enough. I just, I thought I was too good for her when I got here and we started doing well as a team, and Neha would flirt with me, and I felt like we were going in different directions in life, and so about half way through the internship, I broke up with her..... over text message...." Stuart winced and glanced between the two older men.
"Oh, you dog." Billy chuckled.
"Not good, Stu, not good at all. That's not how you treat a lady." Nick shook his head.
"I know that now. I was an asshole back then."
"Alright, then what happened?" Billy asked.
"Then towards the end of the internship, Neha and I sort of hit it off, and you guys know that story, but then we all went home because classes for my senior year started a few weeks later, and she knew what day I was coming home, and when I pulled up with my parents, she was sitting on my front steps. My parents went inside and she just sat there, holding her phone in her hand, and her eyes were all puffy and red, and she just kept asking me if I had seriously dumped her over text after almost four years, and I only then realized how fucked up that was. She cried and asked if it was because of someone else, and I told her no, but I also told her that I had become recently involved with Neha an-"
Billy cut Stuart off. "She thought you were cheating?"
Stuart nodded shamefully. "I hadn't, not even emotionally, but there was no changing her mind on that. She smacked me across the face, and she accused me of being self-involved, which was true, and having a superiority complex about my future, which was true, and not supporting her when she would perform her writing live, which was sort of true too. Then she told me that she had managed to get into the study abroad in New York City for Fall Semester and that if she ran into me when she was back for Spring Semester, not to fucking talk to her. She said she would never forgive me and that I broke her heart."
"And then she wrote a best selling novel about it." Nick shook his head, and patted Stuart on the shoulder lightly.
"Yea, and I mean, she wasn't even petty or cruel about it either, and she never mentioned my name and basically every thing she wrote was true.." Stuart trailed off, staring into empty space as he thought about the book.
"So you ran into Penny yesterday?" Billy asked.
"That makes sense, she must be in town for a book reading and signing. Dana is going to it tomorrow night." Nick interjected.
Stuart shook his head. "No, she moved back. She lives here again, and she's writing another book, and she looks amazing and she was Penny, and it was kind of spectacular being around her again." He stared down at his hands.
"Oh, I see, Stewie, you still have it bad for this girl, huh? Never got over it?" Billy prompted Stuart.
Stuart nodded, shamefully. "She was the one and I'm pretty sure I just barely got her to agree to get dinner with me tomorrow night after the reading."
"You need a big gesture." Billy suggested. "Show her you care."
Penny listened intently and graciously as the manager of the local bookstore introduced her to the packed house of eager fans. She stepped up onto the stairs, leading up to the platform where the podium stood in the middle.
"Please give a big round of applause for Ms. Penelope Marshall." The manager said before the room broke into a round of applause.
"Pen.." Penny's agent, Meg, grabbed her wrist and put the book in her hand. "The day you don't forget to bring your book up with you is the day you can fire me."
"Lucky for you, I'll probably always forget my book." Penny smiled and then walked up onto the stage. She stood in front of the podium, adjusted the microphone and opened her book. "Hi, everyone. How are you all tonight? Thank you for not only coming out to this reading tonight, but for sending my agent so many emails requesting that this happen that we had no choice but to make sure it finally did."
The crowd sat in their chairs chuckling and one younger girl screamed out above the laughter, "WE LOVE YOU, PENNY!"
Penny chuckled, smiled, and shook her head. "Thank you..." Penny flipped through the book, staring at the words on the pages of her usual passage that she used for readings, but something about it didn't feel right that day. "Um, do you guys mind if I read something a little different than what I usually do at these sorts of things? I am feeling particularly....." Penny cleared her throat. "...connected to this chapter this week, and you all know I try to live my most authentic life as often as I can."
Excited murmurs filled the room and Penny's agent whispered from the side of the stage. "What are you doing?"
Penny smiled at her friend, and flipped to the section of the book that had been on her mind for two days. She took a deep breath and began speaking slowly into the microphone, staring out into the eyes of her audience members as she asked her first question. "Have you ever been kissed by God? Passionately (tongue, lips, etc.)? Here's a simpler question: Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss?" Penny looked up from her book and out into the crowd, connecting her eyes with those looking back, when suddenly she connected with a familiar amber set, hiding behind black thick framed glasses. Penny felt like she had been punched in the stomach; all of the air left her lungs and she adjusted her focus to be sure, and she was. Stuart sat in the third seat from the left, in the back row. His brow was slightly furrowed, like he was worried that she would be upset that he was there. Penny understood that she had started this chapter in front of some of her most enthusiastic and dedicated readers and that she would have to commit to what she had started. She blinked up at the warm lights above her, and took a deep breath. "Sorry. I've been having one of those weeks."
Penny heard the soft and comforting sound of people rubbing their hands together over and over in support of her. She smiled out at her fans and bowed her head slightly. "Take your time, Pen!" Someone finally shouted out, and others snapped in agreement. Penny loved the quirky support that usually accompanied creative communities like this. She took a quick sip from the glass of water under the podium and decided she was ready to continue.
"Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss? I mean pure psychedelic inebriation. Not just lustful petting but transcendental metamorphosis when you became aware that the greatness of this being was breathing into you... The first kiss of the rest of your life. A kiss that confirms that the universe is aligned, and that the world's greatest resource is love." Penny spoke slowly and emphatically, hovering on certain words over others, using hands gestures and the slow winding of her neck to further drive her point home. "Will you allow me to tell you a story about that kiss?" Penny looked up again, and instead of watching as the people in her audience snapped in agreement with her question, her eyes became glued to the handsome man in the back, who had leaned forward, pressing his elbows against his knees, his hands pressed against his mouth, just to focus more on the words escaping her lips.
"It was a record breaking and sweltering one-hundred and two degree September evening, in the Nob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco and the power had gone out four hours and twenty-three minutes prior. The rooms in Billy's apartment were illuminated by the candles that were haphazardly strewn on level surfaces, inevitably raising the temperature by another few degrees. The apartment smelled of sweat, skunky beer and weed, and to this day I am certain that the only reason that we talked as long as we did was because his phone died and even if he had gone home, he wouldn't have been able to charge it." Penny looked up at Stuart, and saw the right corner of his mouth curl up. He recalled that evening like it was yesterday, instead of nine years ago.
"'What kind of stuff do you write?' He asked me, as he adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. 'Poetry, mostly.' I told him, confident in my youthful talent. Three more hours, and the entire city was covered in a dark sheet; no light, no distractions. Just truths. The kind of night that only happens under those circumstances. Our skin wasn't sticky, not with that much sweat involved; it was just smooth and wet. I watched him watch me drag my hand from my jaw down my clavicle, under my shirt towards the valley of my breasts, trying to wipe away whatever salty excretion I could." Penny mimicked the movements she explained, closing her eyes and getting lost in a memory. Stuart felt his blood pressure rise, as he remembered the epic moment that followed, and how it led him to be sitting in the sturdy mahogany chair he was currently in. He shifted uncomfortably.
"Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss? We did. We kissed as if we, alone, could forge the signature of the sun. Licking the sides and corners of your mouth, like sealing a thousand fleshy envelopes filled with the essence of your passionate being and then opened by the same mouth and delivered back to you, over and over again - the first kiss of the rest of your life." Penny wasn't even reading from the pages in front of her anymore. Her eyes were closed and she was speaking from pure memory and feeling. When she opened her eyes, she saw that at least half of the audience had pulled out their phones and were recording her, but there was one person who was still watching for just him, his eyes glued on her.
"'Bet you rue the day you kissed a writer in the dark.' I said to him, the joking threat rolling off my lips in between reality-shattering embraces, on the dingy old couch in Billy's cramped living room. 'Why's that?' He inquired in a whisper, peeling a damp strand of hair off of my shoulder, and replacing it with his fingertips. 'Cause now I'm gonna play and sing and lock you in my heart. Bet you rue the day you kissed a writer in the dark.'"
Penny paused, and opened her eyes. She made eye contact with Stuart, who suddenly looked visibly uncomfortable. They both knew what was coming next in their story. "Three and a half years of love and laughter and pain and tears and opposites coming back together through history's most epic kisses...." She took a very long pause, and stared straight into Stuart's amber eyes. "Then he left." Stuart pursed his lips together, his nostrils flaring, as he tried to fight the sharp pain building in his stomach. His regret was eating its way out of his body.
She never broke her gaze on him. Some of the audience members began to take notice of their prolonged eye contact, and began to glance back and forth between Penny and Stuart. A spectacle was forming, but neither of them noticed.
"So, she left. But those feelings never did, because I am my mother's child, I'll love you 'til my breathing stops. I'll love you 'til you call the cops on me. It took two years, but in our darkest hours, I stumbled on a secret power. I'd find a way to be without you. But I'll always wonder if you regret the day you left a writer in the dark."
Penny stopped speaking. She stared into Stuart's melancholic eyes, and then got brought back into the present by her agent fake coughing off to the side. Penny blinked excessively for about ten seconds, trying to collect herself, and then she finally closed the book, and leaned back over to the microphone. "Thank you." The crowd erupted in excited applause and gave her a standing ovation.