In her presence, one plus one didn’t equal two. The two of them weren’t a sum, or a product, or even an exponent. Nothing that mundane. Nothing that obvious or simple or safe.
He wouldn’t have unraveled so quickly, so thoroughly, for obvious or simple or safe.
No, he and Poppy together made an entirely irrational number, expansive and infinite.
And for the first time, he was delighted there was no known end.
Epilogue
Poppy was doodlingduring a faculty meeting again.
Simon tried to focus on the suit-clad consultant droning at the front of the cafeteria, but how could he? Under the table, Poppy’s warm knee pressed against his, and he inhaled paint and sweat and grass with every breath, since she’d taken her students outdoors that day. Her buns hovered mere millimeters above her ears.
They both knew his instinctive response tothat.
Even after eight months together, those drooping coils made him want to bury his fingers in her soft hair and drag her mouth up to his. He might not be able to explain the reaction, but it was a constant. A fact as reliable as the multiplication tables he’d memorized as a child.
Her doodling was detrimental to his concentration too. He kept glancing over to see what she was drawing, no matter how vigorously he scolded himself for his lapses in attention.
The clean white expanse of her notebook page now featured the bare outlines of…something. An animal. The creature perched with odd stiffness upon a board or slab, its eyes slightly crossed and its head tilted, as if—
Ah. As her distraction of choice, she was sketching the rodent on display in her den, that unmistakable and unfortunate victim of ill-considered taxidermy.
Simon’s first morning in her home, she’d introduced him to her lumpy, asymmetrical roommate with a formal little bow and swirl of her hand, as if the three of them were meeting at a royal ball of some sort.
“Simon Burnham, please meet Barry,” she’d said. “Barry, please meet Simon. I believe the two of you have a great deal in common. Namely, a tendency toward silence and stiffness.”
If she hadn’t been stroking a hand over Simon’s ass at that very moment, the gesture an unmistakable, loving caress, he might have been offended.
Instead, he’d snorted. “Why Barry?”
After one last squeeze of his backside, she’d retrieved her coffee from a side table and taken a sip. She appeared to be contemplating her answer.
Finally, her shoulder lifted in a desultory shrug. “He looks like a Barry.”
He’d had to smile at that, because—yes. The sentiment was precisely Poppy. And that misbegotten animal did sort of look like a Barry, if Simon squinted hard enough.
“WhatisBarry?” It had pained him to ask, but he needed to know. Was Barry a furry, hunched rat? A chipmunk who’d seen better centuries? A rodent creature of myth and legend, descended from a truly cursed gene pool? “For that matter,whyis Barry?”
Because Simon didn’t mean to be rude, but he couldn’t imagine plonking a horrific specimen like Barry in his own living room.
Her brow had crinkled, but she was grinning at him, amused by his discomfiture. “Why is Barry? Is that an existential question, or are you confused about his presence in my home?”
“The latter.” Although he could definitely make an argument for both interpretations.
“To answer your first question, Barry is a squirrel,” she’d told him. “I bought him from a pawn shop around ten years ago, I think.”
Good to know. Part of the rodent family, as he’d expected. Maybe an inbred cousin of the squirrels he spotted scurrying across school sidewalks every day?
“As far as why I bought him in the first place…” She’d paused, her smile fading. “I mean, look at him.”
Together, they’d turned to contemplate Barry.
“No one else was ever, ever going to buy him. He was just going to sit there, collecting dust in the window, until the day someone tossed him in the trash.” Her lips pressed together. “And he seems…sad, doesn’t he? Lonely?”
Again. Precisely Poppy.
In response, he’d gently removed the coffee cup from her hand and placed it on a coaster. Then he’d gathered her in his arms and kissed away the blooming ache in his chest.
