Page 61 of Come Back To Me

“Who says love is pleasant?”

He’s right, of course. That’s why people create art—because love crawls inside them and they need a way to get it out.

“I suppose it’s not. It’s mostly just painful.”

“You two are giving me a headache,” Penny says. She’s wearing her big, dark sunglasses and I can’t see her eyes, but her mouth is turned down in a frown.

“Maybe you shouldn’t eavesdrop then, Penny,” I suggest.

She sticks her tongue out at me. Very mature. I like to imagine what Penny was like when she was my age. There’s still some of the wildness left in her eyes.

“Tell us how we’re wrong, Pen,” David says.

She turns to him and smiles, and I can see that she’s thoroughly smitten. Who isn’t once they meet David? I had to watch girls younger, prettier, and firmer than me throw themselves at him on a daily basis.

“You young people treat love like it’s an accessory, not a matter of life and death. You’re amused by it, in love with the idea of it. You make all of your songs and books about it, but don’t know how to live it out. Love is not part of something else. It’s the only thing.”

Her words catch David off guard. He looks like he’s been slapped.

I lean my elbows on the bar and stare at him. “Are you writing a song?” I ask. I know that face he’s making, and I can’t keep the smile off my lips.

“Hush,” he says, still staring at Penny. “Tell me more,” he says to her. “You’re my new muse.”

“Who was it before?”

He points a finger at me.

Penny glances at me and raises her eyebrows. “Fresh meat. Nothing I have is that firm.”

I laugh, but I feel like I shouldn’t. Nothing about this situation is funny, it’s really quite uncomfortable, my husband who I ran out on, showing up at my work.

“Don’t worry, Penny, I broke his heart. Have at him. He’s done with me.”

“Am I?”

I stare at him, too uncomfortable to know what to do. I want to ask him where he’s stashed the divorce papers, but Penny turns to look at me, her drink cradled in her bony, wrinkled hand. She has a ring on every finger and she’s wearing hot pink nail varnish. That’s the thing about Penny: she’s crackly and age-spotted, her voice is raspy and dry, and she smells of Chanel and mothballs, but there’s something devastatingly elegant about her.

“American boy comes all this way for—”

“His band played a show here,” I say, cutting her off. “That’s why he’s here.”

Penny looks at David very seriously and asks, “Why are you here?”

David doesn’t look at Penny when he answers her. He looks at me.

“I’m here for Yara,” he says. “I came to find her.”

At some point during my shift, I let Ben, my fellow bartender, know I need to run to the loo.

“Hurry,” he says. “That bloody lot from the law firm just came in. You know how they love the mixed drinks.”

I wink at him and hurry round the corner, glancing once more at David before I go. He’s in deep conversation with Penny and I can’t help but smile. Most people would dismiss Penny as eccentric and weird, but not David. He loves eccentric and weird. When I reach the toilets, I have to wait in line. I wash my hands and hurry out, ready for Ben to give me a mouthful for taking so long. When I round the corner Ben is fine, laughing with a guest, and David is nowhere to be seen.

“What happened to the guy who was sitting there?” I ask Ben.

He’s juicing grapefruit and he doesn’t look up at me.

“Paid his tab and left in a hurry,” he says.

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