Shop. Now. Bring coffee. She's nuclear.
I roll out of bed like something that's been dead for three days, and I catch my reflection in the bathroom mirror on the way to the shower.
My hair is a disaster. Unfortunately not cute-messy, but genuinely wrecked like either a windstorm or a man's hands fisted in it for hours. My lips are still swollen, pink and obvious in a way no amount of lip balm is going to explain.
And there, just above my collarbone, is a bruise. Thumbprint-sized. Turning purple at the edges. I press my finger to it and wince. Then I smile.
Concealer. Turtleneck. Ponytail. Coffee. Go.
The shop is chaos when I arrive. Poppy is sitting on the counter with her legs swinging like a kid on a sugar high,holding her left hand up to the light like she's trying to catch the ring on fire. Erin is holding that same hand, squinting at the stone like a jeweler, already on the verge of tears.
"Girl." Poppy sees me and grabs me before I can even set the coffee down, pulling me into a hug so tight the cup sloshes against my fingers. "Look at it. Look at my hand. Look at what he did."
I look. The ring is rose gold, oval cut, delicate but tough. It looks like it's always been on her finger. Like it grew there.
But it's her face that stops me. Poppy is always bright, always radiating something warm and chaotic and impossible to ignore, but this is different. She's glowing from somewhere deeper. This is the face of a woman who has been loved loudly and completely by Ramsey King for years, and who finally gets to wear the proof of it on her hand.
"Tell me everything," I say, climbing onto the counter beside her.
Erin hands me tissues I don't need yet, but will soon. She knows me.
"It was private," Poppy says, looking at the ring again like she still can't believe it's there. "Just us. At the house, on the back porch, after dinner. He said just the best things ever, and I was a sobbing mess, I tell you honestly. Got down on one knee and asked me, and I said yes before he finished the sentence."
She wipes her eyes. "He laughed and I cried and then he cried, which he will deny, and then we just sat on the porch for an hour not saying anything."
Erin makes a sound like a small animal being gently crushed. I put my arm around her.
"And then," Poppy adds, grinning now, "he fucked me so good."
And now we're all crying and laughing at the same time, and I am genuinely, bone-deep, tearfully happy for her. Poppy deserves this. She deserves a man who cries when she says yes. She deserves porch silences and rose gold rings and someone who looks at her the way Ramsey does, like she's the only interesting thing in any room she walks into.
She elaborates on the proposal while Erin and I listen, passing the tissue box back and forth. The dinner Ramsey made. The way he kept touching his pocket all night. How she knew something was coming because Ramsey can't keep a secret from her now, and the anticipation was almost unbearable.
I listen and try to follow, but underneath it all, there's this low current running through me. Callahan's mouth on my neck. His voice in my ear. The way he said my name like it hurt him.
I shift my focus back to the ring, the porch, Ramsey's tears. I exhale into my coffee cup and let my friend's happiness carry me through the morning.
My body quietly reminds me with every shift on the counter exactly what I was doing a few hours ago.
After that, instead of going home to sleep, I call my doctor and schedule a copper IUD at Harbor Hill General for tomorrow. If Callahan thought I'd hesitate about the no condom thing, he was about to learn how little he knew me.
The compound looks like a magazine shoot at golden hour. Warm light spilling from every window, cars lined up along the drive, and the smell of roasting food hitting mebefore I even close my car door. Poppy insisted on a proper dinner to celebrate, which means the whole family, good plates, enough food for a small army.
I walk in with Erin and Rome. Rome has his hand on Erin's lower back, guiding her through the door like she might float away if he doesn't anchor her. It's sweet. Also mildly nauseating, but mostly sweet.
The kitchen is already full when we arrive. Beth has claimed the stove and is doing something with root vegetables that smells like autumn in summer, all caramelized and warm. Vera is setting the table with her usual precision, each fork aligned to the millimeter. And Gran is in her chair at the head of the island, wine glass already half empty even though the evening hasn't technically started.
Does no one question the amount of wine this woman consumes?
"There she is." Gran points her glass at me like she's selecting me from a lineup. "The beautiful one. Come here."
I go to her happily. Gran grabs my face with her free hand and inspects me, turning my head left then right like she's checking for defects.
"Tired," she announces. "Why are you tired? Twenty-two-year-olds don't get tired."
I shrug. "I had a long night."
"Doing what?"
