“The fuck you mean you don’t take cash?!”
Beside her, Rosaline froze, and Poppy did the same, eyes trained on the guy sweating off his body paint and bitching at the harried-looking worker behind the concessions counter.
The woman offered him an apologetic grimace as she set a plastic cup full of foamy beer on the counter. “Sorry, sir. We went cashless at the start of the season. But there are cash-to-card kiosks located throughout the stadium if you need one.”
“’s fucking ridiculous ’s what it is,” he slurred, obvious that this beer was far from his first. He flicked his credit card across the counter and didn’t even try to stifle his laughter when it hit the worker in the chest and fell to the floor, forcing her to bend down to pick it up.
Rosaline’s lips flattened into a thin line, her nostrils flaring delicately. “Prick.”
The man stiffened, drawing up to his full height, a hulking six-foot-four, easy. Poppy cringed and stepped back. Shit.
He glared over his green-painted shoulder. “What did you just call me?”
“You heard me.” Rosaline stood her ground, unflinching. “She’s undoubtedly underpaid, overworked, and doesn’t make the rules; lay the fuck off.”
A stale, beer-soaked sigh exploded from his lips and—it was like watching a car wreck happen in slow motion. One second, he was twisting around and the next his glassy eyes were widening as he stumbled and lost his footing on a souvenir football someone had dropped, the beer he held sloshing up the sides of the cup and over the rim, spilling onto and instantly soaking through Poppy’s sweatshirt all the way to her skin.
He gaped at her, then frowned at the empty cup in his hand. “Fuck that. I’m not paying for this.”
He tossed the cup to the ground and staggered off, disappearing into the sea of fans, forgetting all about his credit card.
“What afuckingmoron.” Rosaline’s scowl softened as her eyes swept over Poppy’s beer-soaked body. “Are you okay?”
Poppy smelled like a dive bar, like sour citrus and skunky hops and it made her head swim and her eyes sting. She couldn’t go back to the suite smelling like this.Everyone would think—Eileenwould—
“Poppy?”
“I’m fine.” Her voice sounded far away, faint and garbled like she was ten feet underwater.
Rosaline watched her with a sort of intensity that suggested she didn’t believe her, the sort of intensity that would normally make Poppy shiver, but right now just made her want to curl in on herself. “Would you like to try that again?”
She swallowed twice, tongue fat and uncooperative inside her mouth, and plucked at the pocket of her hoodie, pulling the sodden sweatshirt away from her skin. “I just—I need to get this off.” She scanned the concourse with eyes that failed to focus, the halla dizzying blur of black and green with the occasional splash of red thrown in. Her stomach churned and her lower lip wobbled. Fuck. “I need to find a—a merch stand.”
A hand wrapped around her wrist, grip gentle but firm, Rosaline’s touch grounding, real in a way nothing else felt right now. “Come on.”
Rosaline tugged, giving Poppy no choice but to follow her down the hall and into the restroom, where she bullied Poppy into the big stall all the way at the back. She locked the door and dropped her hand, reaching for the hem of her beer-soaked sweatshirt.
Poppy’s breath hitched in her chest. “What are you doing?”
“What’s it look like?” Rosaline’s eyes flickered to hers, her steady gaze a lifeline Poppy desperately clung to. “Arms up.”
She didn’t hesitate; she lifted her arms over her head and held still, letting Rosaline drag her ruined sweatshirt up her body and over her head, leaving her in nothing but a thin blue T-shirt bra and her denim cutoffs. Goose bumps erupted across her skin the second the chilly, air-conditioned air hit her damp skin. A shiver lashed up Poppy’s spine and she crossed her arms over her chest.
Rosaline let the sweatshirt fall to the floor with a soft splat before turning to the sink inside the stall and turning the tap all the way to the left, as hot as it would go. She ripped one, two, three paper towels from the dispenser on the wall and ran them under the steaming stream of water, soaking them before squeezing them out. She turned back to Poppy, soggy paper fisted in her hand. “Is it okay if I touch you?”
“Yeah.” Poppy uncrossed her arms and let them hang limp at her sides. “Okay.”
Carefully, almost as if she were afraid Poppy might spook,Rosaline stepped closer and reached out, brushing the warm, wet paper towel against Poppy’s stomach.
She held impossibly still, breath trapped in her chest as Rosaline wiped the remnants of beer off her skin, eyes flitting to Poppy’s face every few seconds as if checking in, making sure that this,she, was still all right.
Poppy was not okay.
Sour spit filled her mouth and no matter how many times she swallowed she couldn’t get rid of it, the smell of beer stuck in her nose, so cloying she swore she could taste it on the back of her tongue. The paper towels Rosaline was using to wipe her down were scratchy and rough, like sandpaper against her skin, but she wasn’t—she wasn’t scrubbing hard enough. Each too-gentle stroke might as well have been a lash butterflying Poppy open, all the tender bits she painstakingly kept tucked away on display beneath the harsh light of a flickering fluorescent bulb.
She wanted to snatch the paper towels from Rosaline’s hands and scrub until the skin of her stomach turned red and raw and angry, until she wasclean,but she couldn’t move, pinned in place by Rosaline’s stare and the free hand she’d curved around Poppy’s waist, her palm a brand against Poppy’s bare skin.
“Your bra looks dry,” Rosaline said, voice no louder than a whisper. “I think it’s fine.”
