“You are brilliant, you’re like so funny to watch,” Emmy added.
Poppy looked at Ryan with a confused look on her face. He’d seen it before, that same look she’d given him when he’d asked her how much she was worth.
He smiled at her. “I agree. You have a gift. It’s clear you were born to entertain and amuse people.”
At that, her eyes lit up.
“God knows you’ve amused and entertained me from the second I met you, Poppy.”
He couldn’t stop looking and smiling at her. And out of the corner of his eye, he also couldn’t help but notice the look that passed between Emmy and Tamlin.
CHAPTERSEVENTY-SEVEN
Poppy
They all sat in silence for a moment or two after the show had ended. The dramatic theme music filled the room. I’d heard it a million times before. But hearing it here, in Ryan’s house, it felt strange. Strange but nice.
“Well, I better go back to bed now.” Emmy suddenly shot bolt upright.
“Me too,” Tamlin said, also standing up hurriedly. They both had a strange tone in their voice.
I jumped up too. “Emmy, can I walk you to your room? I’d like to talk to you.”
“Sure.”
We walked to her room together and, once we were out of earshot, I stopped her.
“I wanted to say sorry, for lying to you about who I was. You trusted me with a lot of things, and I wasn’t being completely honest with you,” I said.
She regarded me for a moment. “I can’t believe you’re an actress—” she started.
I nodded.
“And I actually can’t believe you dressed up in a disguise and pretended to be an executive assistant . . . and worked for my uncle?”
I nodded. God, whenever I heard it repeated back to me, I knew how crazy it sounded. “I know. It sounds mad.”
“Mad?” she said. “It’s one of the craziest things I’ve ever heard. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s also one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.”
“Yeah, I guess I can be a little crazy like that,” I said.
There was an awkward silence between us for a while.
“Did you lie about the other stuff too, about your mother?” Emmy asked.
I stepped closer to her and placed my hands on her shoulders. “No. Absolutely not. I would never do that. And I meant everything else I said to you too.”
She nodded. “I didn’t think you lied about that. You had that same sad look on your face that I do when I speak about my mom.”
I sighed and shrugged.
“I wonder when that goes away?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to force a tiny smile. “Maybe it doesn’t go away altogether. Maybe it’s still there, but the gaps between the sadness just get longer and longer as you experience more and more happy moments.”
“Maybe,” she said and then smiled at me. “You have some serious guts, tricking my uncle like that.”
“I would call it naivety. Had I known what he was like, I might have been too scared to do it.”
