Page 9 of Cozy Girl Fall

Before she’d left Magnolia Springs, there had only been one bar Penny had gone into—primarily because they didn’t check IDs too closely for anyone under twenty-one who wanted to drink.

The Old Church had been closed and reopened sometime while Penny had been gone in the city and was now called Cocktail Club.

When it came to small towns like Magnolia Springs, change was slow and not always welcomed.

But the same couldn’t be said for Cocktail Club, which was thriving on a Friday night.

It seemed to be vaguely jungle-themed with colorful lights that changed depending on the time, neon slogans on the dark wallpapered walls, and leafy green plants in gold planters that separated the booths.

Strangely, it worked and Penny felt surprisingly at ease in the space with its low-lights that made it feel like she couldn’t be watched too much by the room’s inhabitants.

She smoothed down her top, checking the sweetheart neckline was still in place, and brushed a piece of lint from the ruched detailing on the front.

It was an outfit she’d worn many times and knew she looked good in, her black, distressed skinny jeans adding an edge to the otherwise too-sweet top with its ruffled mesh sleeves—she’d picked it out deliberately, wanting to at least feel confident in her outfit if nothing else.

She’d been nervous to see Tasha again, especially now that she’d had a few run-ins with her brother, but Penny hadn’t had long to dwell on her nerves because Tasha had arrived first and was waving her over to one of the tables in the center of the room.

They shared a semi-awkward hug and picked up the cocktail menu.

The drinks were relatively reasonably priced, especially compared to what she was used to in the city, and the music wasn’t so loud that she couldn’t hear Tasha recount her day.

It took a couple of minutes for the initial awkwardness to ease, but then the two of them had quickly fallen back into sync as if it had only been a matter of days, not years, since they’d last hung out.

Penny realized that she’d missed having a girlfriend to gossip with while she’d been in the city.

She supposed it was one of the benefits of having known someone for the majority of your life: even when time got in the way it didn’t change the familiarity that every conversation held.

“So how’s it been, being back on the orchard?

” Tasha asked, studying Penny’s face. At the mention of the orchard, Penny took a big gulp of her margarita, trying to think of anything but Ethan’s toned shoulders in that tank top.

“Are you hating it?” Tasha pressed, and Penny couldn’t help but smile at how well her old friend still seemed to know her.

“It’s been surprisingly OK,” Penny replied, willing the image of Ethan’s face, the way he’d looked at her as they’d stood among the trees, from her mind. “I don’t remember it making my body ache so much as a teenager, though.”

Tasha laughed, the sequins on her short-sleeved top catching the lights and shimmering. “Ethan said he bumped into you a couple times.”

Penny was surprised by how casually Tasha mentioned this, but she nodded, trying to seem unfazed. “Yeah, I saw him.”

“He said you hid from him.”

“Maybe.”

Tasha rolled her eyes as she sipped from her glass. “I know I told you to avoid him but I didn’t mean you had to stop, drop, and roll at the sight of him.”

“I didn’t roll,” Penny protested and cleared her throat, looking for a change in subject before the prickle of guilt in her throat made her blurt out something stupid like:

Is it possible to be in love with someone you haven’t seen for ten years? Or, Hey, Tasha, when you say to avoid your brother, does fantasizing about him count?

“Anyway, enough about me! What are you doing now?” Penny asked, desperate to talk about something else that didn’t involve Tasha’s brother, especially with the warning Tash had given her not so long ago.

Tasha sipped her drink, her pink lipstick leaving a perfect imprint on the rim. “I run the library.”

“Oh wow, that’s perfect.” Tasha had had her nose in a book almost as often as her phone when they’d been growing up. “How long have you been doing that for?”

Their comfortable chatter continued as Tasha filled Penny in on what had (or, more accurately, what hadn’t ) changed in Magnolia Springs over the last decade.

Penny was surprised to find that she was actually having fun, feeling totally at ease in Tasha’s company.

When it hit nine and Penny began to feel like it was getting late, it occurred to her that maybe she was getting old.

But, she reasoned to herself, if she wanted to be able to drive home she needed to cut herself off after this drink anyway.

Part of her wasn’t ready to leave yet, though. It was easy to remember why she and Tasha had been friends, her good sense of humor and kindness shining through as Penny enjoyed their comfortable chatter.

Tasha leant in close. Her third margarita was nearing the dregs, and her rose-gold eyeliner made the intensity of her brown eyes even more apparent as she asked one of the questions Penny had been dreading all night.

“So why’d you leave San Francisco?”

“Oh, you know.” Penny laughed, looking away from Tasha’s eyes and instead signaling to the waitress for another drink. She’d get a cab home if she had to, but this conversation required another cocktail. Or three. “My parents needed me.”

“And?”

Penny sighed, shoulders slumping as she drained the last of her drink, casting around for a way to derail Tasha’s line of questioning. She began to stand, preparing to go in search of another margarita. “You know, I might go to the bar and—”

“Pen.”

Penny’s ass hit the stool as she sat back down abruptly, reminded of the other aspect of Tasha’s friendship that had always been invaluable, if only slightly frustrating: Tasha was never afraid to call Penny on her bullshit.

“I quit my job. Spectacularly,” Penny blurted.

There was no point in lying to Tasha; she’d always been able to tell when Penny was talking out of her ass.

“My boss was an asshole. Like, with a capital ‘A’. I couldn’t take it anymore.

” She shrugged. “I snapped, screamed at him in front of a restaurant full of people, quit mid-shift, and drove back to Magnolia Springs the next day.”

Tasha’s mouth hung open and she slowly shook her head. “If I didn’t know you so well I would have thought you were lying.”

“Yeah, not so much. Just the sad truth.” Penny understood the reaction. She was generally more inclined to apologize to the waiter for them getting her order wrong than to kick up a fuss, ever .

“It brought you back here to us though, which I can’t be too sorry about,” Tasha said, a small smile curving her mouth. “You know I’m a big believer of everything happens for a reason .”

“Things have definitely been happening ,” Penny muttered. “But yeah, I’ll be helping my parents at the orchard for the foreseeable future. Until I can find a new culinary job anyway.”

“Well, I’m glad you‘re here anyway. Just do me a favor?” She waited for Penny to nod before continuing. “Next time you leave, promise you’ll say goodbye.”

Penny’s eyes pricked and she bit her lip as she nodded. “I promise.”

“Pinky?”

She laughed but offered out her pinky finger, locking it around Tash’s. “Pinky.”

“Wow, looks like the band’s all back together.”

Penny’s smile dropped as she looked up and found Shelby Patterson standing beside their table.

Coda Simpley, one of the girls who’d followed Shelby around like a lost puppy at high school, was hovering behind Shelby’s shoulder, looking totally uninterested in the conversation.

Penny hadn’t got a good look at Shelby when she had passed her in the street a few days ago, too flustered by the whole coffee-soaked-jeans situation, but now she had no choice but to take her in, from her blonde balayage to the hem of her shimmery tasseled dress.

Admittedly, Shelby looked great, but knowing she was Ethan’s ex-fiancée had the observation curdling in Penny’s stomach.

Wasn’t it a rule somewhere that the mean girls were supposed to get ugly and humbled after high school?

Yet here Shelby stood, just as gorgeous as ever and, reluctantly, she could understand the appeal Ethan might have seen.

Shelby had her life together. Shelby wasn’t living with her parents.

Shelby wasn’t working the same job she’d had at sixteen.

Or, at least, Penny assumed that was the case.

Sure, Shelby looked good. But wasn’t it all a bit too much ?

Magnolia Springs wasn’t really a tasseled-mini-dress kind of place; even on a Friday night it was more of a jeans-and-a-nice-top kind of vibe.

But Shelby drew the eye and, unless she’d grown a whole new personality in the ten years Penny had been gone, there was nothing Shelby liked more than attention.

“Not quite the full band,” Penny replied, smile a little tight as she forced it back into place. She knew it was petty to bring Ethan into the conversation, even if she hadn’t mentioned him by name, but she couldn’t help herself. “So good to see you, Shelby. And you, Coda.”

Coda barely reacted as Shelby sniffed, looking Penny up and down before turning her gaze on Tasha, her eyes becoming impossibly more frosty.

Penny held back her scoff, feeling like she’d been transported back to high school.

She’d only seen Shelby twice since getting back to town, but her mean-girl act was already wearing pretty thin.

“Natasha,” Shelby said, cocking one hip forward and folding her arms across her chest.

Tash raised one eyebrow. “Shelby,” she said evenly and Penny’s eyes bounced back and forth between the two of them; if there was one person who could hold their own with Shelby, it was Tasha. “You have a nice night, now.”