Chapter 19: Life's A Beach

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Penny hastily pulled on a pair of skinny jeans and jammed her feet into her green high-top Converse sneakers. She'd only meant to nap for half an hour before her evening shift, but she'd overslept. Now she had less than twenty minutes to make the subway ride from the apartment in Manhattan's West Village to the bar where she'd been working as a cocktail waitress for the past two weeks - a stone's throw from the Smith Street subway stop in Brooklyn.

Life's A Beach, the place was called. It looked like just another nondescript bar from the outside, but the owner had covered the expansive back garden with 5,000 pounds of imported white sand and furnished it with plastic beach furniture and inflatable palm trees. "Shirts and shoes optional," said the neon sign in the front window. The all-female staff set the tone by waiting tables in jeans with tropical-print bikini tops.

These days, the bar was quickly becoming so popular that the Brooklyn hipster clientele lined up down the block for admittance. But it had only just opened for business, the night when Penny first ended up there for a drink.

"Hey!" a familiar voice had called out from behind her that night. "Hey! Penny! Wait up!"

She'd been close to tears at the time, stumbling blindly down the sidewalk toward the Smith Street subway entrance. Not that she knew which train she would take when she got to there. She had no idea where to go or what to do once Lauren and Kristen had turned her away.

So she'd felt nothing but pure relief when she'd heard that familiar voice behind her and turned around to see his hulking form, lumbering down the block in her direction.

"Penny!" He'd been a little out of breath, and he'd put his hands on his hips to recover himself as they faced each other on the sidewalk. "Hey! I-I've been meaning to call you."

"Greg?"

In other circumstances, she might have given him a harder time. He'd been meaning to call her? Maybe he should have thought of that before he cheated on her and kicked her out of the apartment where they were supposed to be living together two summers ago. But it had all felt like water under the bridge that night. He had seemed genuinely happy to see her, and she'd desperately needed to see a friendly face.

"Where are you headed?" he'd asked.

"Nowhere." She'd been carrying the box that David left at her old apartment, and she set it down on the sidewalk at her feet with a thud to relieve the ache in her arms.

"That looks heavy." He'd stooped to pick it up. "Here, let me help you. Maybe we should grab a drink or something."

"Yeah, um. No thanks."

"Come on, Pen. I mean it. I feel really bad about--well, you know."

"Right. So how's your girlfriend doing?" Penny had said by way of reply.

He looked down uncomfortably, his eyes fixed on the contents of the box. "That didn't really go so well.... " He let his voice trail off at the end of the sentence. "Look, Penny. I'm sorry. Really sorry. I acted like a total ass, and that's the not the way I want you to think of me."

"It's not," she'd said. "I don't." The fact was, she barely even thought of him at all. The memory of their four-year long relationship had been all but washed away, blotted out by other memories - memories of someone else completely. But she didn't bother to tell him that. "Don't worry about it." She'd forced a smile and reached out to take her box back, but he held onto it a moment longer. He'd pointed his head in the direction of a bar just down the block:

"Come on. Come have a beer with me."

She followed the direction of his gaze and read the sign aloud. "Life's A Beach. Shirts and shoes optional. Sounds classy?"

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