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“That’s much appreciated,” I reply, still unsure. “You mind if I . . . read while I muse for you? Uhm, work stuff.”
She pauses, only for the tiniest split second, but I feel the hesitation like a shot to my gut regardless. But she still agrees. “That’s fine. You can even use my now backup laptop,” Poppy offers as she hugs her original laptop tightly. She gets out, and I follow her inside, where she calls out to Nut and Juice. “Hello, my precious babies! Have you boys have been good?”
A fusillade of yaps greets her, and she opens the door wider for them to run out and do their business. I have no idea how she trained them to just use her yard without much more than a short fence border they could easily scale, but they do, rolling around a minimal bit before trotting inside as if they own the place. She gives them each a treat and some loving pets and then kicks a ball down the hallway.
“Go play for a bit. Mama’s got work to do,” she tells the two, who run off after the toy. She watches them, listening to the rumble of their playing, and then looks over at me. “Want a beer?”
“Yeah,” I reply, going over to her couch and sitting down. I toe off my shoes and pull off my shirt, leaning back with my arms stretched wide along the back of the couch. When she comes back, her jaw drops open. “Feeling inspired?”
“Great googly eyed mooglies . . . I’m feeling something, that’s for damn sure.” She lifts one of the bottles to her forehead, still watching me.
I pat the couch next to me. “Want me to take off my jeans too?”
“No, that’ll be fine,” she assures me, setting the beers on the coffee table. “You get naked, I’m gonna get distracted, we’ll have crazy sex all night, I won’t finish my book, Hilda will kill me, and then there will be the whole memorial mess to deal with, and I don’t have a black dress that fits to get buried in.”
She surprises me at every turn, somehow going from sex to death to outfit selection in one sentence. I guess that’s why she’s the writer, not me.
“As it is, I could write paragraphs about those nipples, that chest, and that cute little happy trail to Dicktopia.” She shakes her head, bringing herself out of whatever scene she’s writing in her head. “But I’m going to be a good girl for now.”
Primly, she walks over to her work area, setting everything back up after plugging her laptop in. As she gets things where she wants them, I take a sip of beer and watch her quietly. “I understand,” I start slowly. “I know that with your laptop back, you’re going to be burning the candle at both ends.”
“I’ll be burning the candle at both ends, the middle, and everywhere else,” Poppy confirms.
“Well, I’m just saying . . . you don’t have to go to Caylee’s wedding,” I tell her. “I get it. It was only supposed to be a one-day fiancée thing to begin with, and you don’t owe me anything more. Especially now that you have what you wanted.” I lift my chin toward her laptop, which is booting up to show a picture of Nut and Juice sopping wet and looking quite rat-like. “I promise I’ll go, and I’ll make all the right excuses for you. They’ll totally understand why you ‘ditched’ me and the wedding is off.”
“No way,” Poppy says, stopping her paper arranging to look up at me. “You’re going. I’m going. We are going.”
Damn, she saw through my lie about going myself. She knows me too well and knows I’ll bail on my family. “I’m trying to protect them and let you off the hook.”
“Protect them from what?” Poppy asks. “From you?”
Poppy gets up and crosses the room to sit down beside me on the couch, but I can’t look her in the eyes. “Connor, I know I don’t know even a whisper of all the shit you’ve done and the drama between you and your family. But I’m not stupid, and the truth is easy to see. You’re not trying to protect them, you’re trying to protect yourself. And I get that, especially after meeting them and seeing them in action. They’re a fucking Bravo TV reality show in the flesh. But I think your mom is salvageable. Your aunt and cousin, maybe not. Your father? I have no idea. But that’s why we need to go. You can’t leave Caylee to the wolves with no one to have her back. That’s not who you are.”
“She has Evan,” I point out, and Poppy scoffs. “What?”
“Evan’s good, but he’s going to have his own stuff to deal with on his wedding day, even if his family is full of saints, which I sincerely doubt. Caylee needs her brother there. She needs you looking out for her, on her side against the rest of them.”
