Deciding to pull a power move, she stepped into the fourth row and stopped at the aisle seat. She’d heard that AJ and Niko were both walking their mom down the aisle, and she planned on being as close to that action as possible.
Grant was clearly confused as to why she hadn’t moved down into the row, and she nearly explained herself, but she realized she had nothing to explain. Perplexed expression in place, he stepped past her and lowered himself down next to her. Hecontinued to try and make small talk. She humored him to the point that she wasn’t rude, but she wasn’t even in the ballpark of flirty.
Relief washed over her when the music changed and a side door opened. She watched as her brother walked out with Dr. Sterling and his little brother, Tristan. It was the first time she’d seen either man in person. She’d done some online sleuthing, but that was different. It was strange because she knew that she and Liam shared a biological father, Michael Davies was Liam’s dad. But seeing the three Sterling men standing next to one another, she would swear that they were related by DNA.
They were all tall and handsome, with strong jawlines and similar athletic frames. Liam resembled Dr. Sterling more than their own father, Michael Davies. Or maybe that was just her mind playing tricks on her. The ten-year anniversary of her father’s death was coming up, so maybe she’d started to forget what he looked like. It’s not as if she spent much time trying to remember him. In fact, the only time she did was when her mom or sisters brought him up.
As soon as the men took their places, the music changed. The double doors in the back of the room opened, revealing Frankie. She wore her wavy red hair down and a gorgeous baby blue dress. She looked like an angel walking down the aisle, practically floating. Ethereal.
Poppy tried to catch her eye, to get her attention to mouth to her how stunning she looked, but her eyes seemed to be focused intently ahead of her. Poppy followed her gaze and was not surprised to find its target. Frankie was staring directly at Liam.
She wasn’t sure exactly what was going on between the two of them, but whatever it was, the sparks flying off of them were so bright she needed welding glasses. The doors closed once again as Frankie took her spot.
A hush fell thick and absolute as the opening chords of the bridal march rang out. At the front of the room, Mayor Walker’s voice carried with the practiced ease of someone who’d spent his life addressing large crowds. “Would everyone please rise for the bride,” he intoned, the syllables slicing through the expectant silence.
There was a collective rustle as three hundred guests shifted to their feet, some with more grace than others. Poppy stole a glance at the crowd, watching the ripple effect of energy that seemed to start in the back rows and roll forward, everyone subtly straightening their posture and smoothing the fronts of dresses and suits as they waited for the reveal of the woman about to become Cora Costas-Sterling. The tension was so electric that the air itself felt charged.
The doors opened again, and the entire room turned as one to watch the bride step through. Cora’s simple dress was an ode to old Hollywood, with sophisticated glamour. She looked more like a movie star than a mother of three grown children, and for a moment, Poppy saw the future, herself in a dress, some unspecified man waiting at the other end of the aisle, her mom getting choked up. It sounded like a nightmare. All she wanted to do was go to a courthouse and sign papers.
She shook the image away, and when she did, her attention snapped to AJ, who was walking his mom down the aisle, with Niko on her other arm. The trio created a tableau almost too perfect for reality. Poppy felt everything slow, then tilt, as if the room itself had pivoted in his direction. The lights seemed brighter, the music louder, and her own pulse was suddenly present in her throat.
As he walked towards her, it was as if time slowed. With each step he took, she could feel her heart pumping in her chest. Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump. She could hear itin her head. He glanced at her. His eyes met hers in just a flicker, a microsecond, but she caught it.
Poppy Davies had been looked at before, she knew the difference between a glance and alook, and this was the latter. The effect was instantaneous, her face heated, her palms dampened, and her stomach dropped in a delicious free fall. A wave of tingles started at the base of her spine and rippled outward, making her toes actually curl inside her shoes. Her mind, usually so quick with the quip or the analysis, went blank except for the echo of his gaze, the shape of his jaw, and the way his hands looked when he adjusted the lapel of his jacket. She felt the urge to laugh, or cry, or both, and had to bite down on her lower lip to keep from doing either.
Then as quickly as those impulses came over her, they were gone with a whoosh as he passed by her.
She watched as AJ and Niko delivered Cora to the altar, each brother taking a step back in perfect, mirrored synchronicity. He was a few feet away from her, and she was sure he could hear her heartbeat, it was so loud. She held her breath as he and Niko took their place beside Frankie. There was just the briefest moment where their eyes connected again, and for Poppy, it was as if some thin, invisible string hung between them.
When the congregation was instructed to be seated, Poppy felt her knees give out on her. Her legs were jelly, her body a mass of wiggling matter. She reached for the program in front of her, needing something to do with her hands, trying to anchor herself. Next to her, Grant leaned in, his tone a shade more curious than before.
“Do you two know each other?” he asked, his voice pitched low so as not to disturb the ceremony.
“Excuse me?” Poppy found herself out of breath.
“The twin, do you know him?”
She shook her head, still reeling from the man who had just rocked her world from a walk-by. The thought occurred to her that she’d never wanted to know someone more in her life. He hadn’t even spoken to her or touched her. What could he do with her if she heard his voice or felt his fingers slide along her inner thigh? She had no idea, but she really hoped she got the chance to find out.
AJ finally had a moment to himself. One drawback of rarely attending family get-togethers was when you finally did, every aunt, uncle, and cousin wanted to ‘catch up.’ Another drawback was not engaging in conversation, which allowed people to fill in the silences. People often labeled him anti-social and mistook him for being rude or uncaring. What they failed to take into account was that as much as he loved each one of his family members, every piece of information they told him was stored in his brain forever.
Most people left interactions and filtered out any details not pertinent to their own lives. In one ear and out the other. He did not have that luxury. He now knew that his cousin Athena’s son, Mason, grew out of all the hand-me-down clothes she got from her neighbor and is in the 90thpercentile. He knew that his circumcision had gotten botched and they had to do it again. He knew that she had gotten three UTIs and was using this weekend to wean him off of breastfeeding. Oh, and her co-worker Leanne was cheating on her husband with their boss who had an STD.
His Theia Joanne has to have bunion surgery, and the nurse, Mable, has halitosis, so she’s thinking about making an anonymous Yelp account and posting it in the review because she doesn’t want to smell her breath the next time she goes intothe office. Uncle Leo is retiring in two years and has a slipped disc. He started growing weed to help with the pain, and now all the neighborhood teenagers think he’s a drug dealer.
Those were just the tip of the useless pieces of the information-iceberg in his mind that he would now have to carry around and store for no reason. Small talk was his own personal hell. He stood on the periphery of the dance floor at the reception, watching from the sidelines, wishing he had a control-alt-delete option for his memories.
As he observed quietly, his gaze kept finding Poppy. He still hadn’t spoken to her, but their eyes met fourteen times, and twelve of those times her cheeks flushed a deep red, which meant it triggered mild emotional arousal. Basically, the sympathetic nerves dilate blood vessels in the face, increasing blood flow and producing the visible reddening. The other two times her face was in shadow, so he wasn’t able to decipher whether or not there had been a shade difference.
Every time he scanned the room, he found her instantly. She was impossible not to notice. She was the type of person who seemed to glow even in the dark, a gravitational force, drawing people into her atmosphere. It wasn’t just her beauty that was so spellbinding, AJ watched the effect she had on other people. The way the elderly couple at the table next to the ‘single’s table’ leaned in conspiratorially when she was telling a story. The way the kids’ faces lit up when she got on the dance floor and joined them in doing the Cupid Shuffle and then the Cha Cha Slide. The way she held her own with his aunts as they forced her to vote on which had made the best wedding cookie by holding up either an Italian or Greek flag, and how she’d managed to remain Switzerland by declaring her Mexican roots and stating that her abuelita, God rest her soul, would never forgive her if she dared to compareanywedding cookie, Greek or Italian, to hers. When his aunts left, he’d overheard her telling the bartender that hermom’s mom, her abuelita, passed away when she was five, and she only met her once, but she did have great wedding cookies.
The room was filled with half Costas clan and half surgeons, a unique combination of people who had seamlessly blended to celebrate the love of his mom and Dr. Sterling. The contrast of cultures was not unlike the combination of the ornate crystal empire chandeliers one would expect to see in a ballroom in Paris, hanging from rustic wooden beams in the banquet hall at the mountain lodge resort. Both groups were definitely letting their hair down. His family knew how to party, and they were not holding back. At the moment, his cousin Anthony’s wife, Athena, was twerking on the dance floor with his cousin Angelo’s wife, Misty.
Both women had young children who had stayed back home, giving them a responsibility-free weekend, and they were, quote, “living their best lives.”
It had been a recurring theme, AJ had noted that every time anyone he knew had children. As much as they loved those children, they were so happy, elated even, when they got time away from them.
Coming from a large Greek family, the subject of children had been a persistent one in AJ’s life. He never understood the appeal of offspring. Intellectually, he grasped that humans were hardwired with a biological imperative, of course he did. He knew scientifically why people had the urge to procreate, known as baby fever, which was mistakenly assumed to only occur in females, but in fact, males also experienced it. Academically he understood the desire from an evolutionary perspective, there was a “biological clock” ticking, a reproductive timeline for optimum fertility. And then there were the social and psychological pressures that society at large put on people.
