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It’s an amazing event with really fancy silent auction prizes and dinner right out on the ice, but as I head out to the car that Dallas sent for Poppy, I’m filled with dread.
I open the car door and slide into the back seat where I find Poppy sitting, looking gorgeous. One look at me, and she frowns.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks.
“I was thinking of faking a heart attack,” I say. “Or a broken bone. Do you think I could run out into traffic and get hit by a car? Or get deported to France within the next hour? Then I wouldn’t have to go to this thing.”
“What is your problem? You love to dress up!” she laughs. “It’s going to be fun.”
I groan. “Ever since I successfully shelved my feelings for Gray, being around him is the opposite of fun.”
“Oh, are you worried he’s going to be too hot for you to resist tonight?”
I stare out the window in lieu of responding. Because yes. I am absolutely scared of that.
“The truth is, you will probably be too hot for him to resist.” Poppy links her arm through mine and squeezes. After a long pause, she says, “This is really hard for you, huh?”
I shrug. “I’m trying so hard to be professional, but I feel more confused than ever.” I glance at her. “I just don’t feel like myself anymore.”
“Maybe because who you are is a person who puts herself out there, who wears her heart on her sleeve, who loves people big.” She frowns. “Bigly? Is bigly a word?”
“No,” I say. “I’m pretty sure ‘bigly’ is not a word.”
She waves me off. “Well, you know what I mean.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But I don’t want to keep getting hurt. I’ve been letting myself feel sadness in small increments every day to, you know, build up a tolerance. Like microdosing.”
“You’re microdosing sadness?”
“Yep.”
Poppy frowns. “How in the world are you doing that?”
Another shrug. “I watch the news.”
“Ah,” she says. “Well, that’ll do it.”
“I take in a few minutes of awfulness every day, and I let myself feel however it makes me feel. Last night, the news led with a story about a police dog named Rocko that heroically saved two police officers in a drug raid, and I bawled for two hours straight.”
Poppy frowns. “Isn’t that a happy story?”
I swallow a fresh dose of raw emotion. “Rocko didn’t make it.” The pain I feel over that discovery is still so fresh I almost start crying even now.
“Wow,” Poppy says. “That sounds horrible.”
“It is.”
“And this is working for you?”
“Nope. I hate it.”
Once the floodgates opened the day before Scarlett left, it took me a full week to function without having to rush off and cry in the bathroom. I avoided everyone the entire week, and that set me on the path for Eloise 2.0.
It’s working.
My job is everything now.
Except when I’m on the phone with Scarlett, who I can’t bring myself to keep at an arm’s length. She calls me sometimes, and we chat about her hockey games and how much she wants to move here to spend more time with Gray.
