“You are.” He wasn’t joking, but he could see that she was.
She stared up at him, and for a split second he saw there was a vulnerability in her eyes. She swallowed. “Do you remember I said that my life was different than I thought it was going to be?”
AJ nodded.
“Well, I was really picky because I thought I was looking for the father of my children. But I found out I’m…that I can’t have children. So, who knows, now that my standard is lower, maybe I’ll be off the market by next week.”
She placed the folded towel and bundle of clothes in his hands, her smile a shield for something more vulnerable beneath. “Remember, ice cold, scalding hot.” She turned, bare-legged, cookie in hand, and padded off toward the kitchen. Her words still hummed in the air, the kind of joke that wasn’t really a joke at all.
AJ watched her go, struck by the duality she carried, quick with a punchline, quicker to mask the tremor of real feeling. The offhand way she’d said, “Maybe I’ll be off the market by next week,” had bothered him more than he expected. He saw the truth of what she was beneath the joke, that she’d lowered some internal bar, that she saw herself as less than, now that biology had dealt her a different hand. He wanted to argue, to tell her she was more, more than any genetic lottery could quantify, but he didn’t know how to say any of that without sounding like he was making it worse.
He shut the bathroom door behind him and took inventory. The bathroom was pristine, almost militarily so, all soft colors and minimalist bath products. He closed his eyes and listened to the white noise of running water, the clean separation from the chaos of a few minutes ago.
When he finally stepped under the showerhead, the spray was just shy of boiling, and struck his skin in a thousand discrete points, washing away the stickiness of sweat, the salt of her skin,and the shockwave of what they’d just done. He braced his arms against the tile and let the water hit the back of his neck until the world shrank to sound and heat.
He replayed the last hour in his mind, every frame. The way she’d been genuinely excited about his neurodiversity and then been so thoughtful about intimacy. The way she’d let him tie her wrists but never gave up any control, not really, not for a second. The way her body had welcomed him in, utterly unguarded, her pleasure so immediate and total that it felt like a kind of gift. The way she’d opened up after, not just body but her whole self, asking if what she’d done was okay, as if she might need reassurance.
She was a contradiction at every turn. Radiantly confident one moment and so heartbreakingly unsure the next. He lathered soap along his arms, then his chest, scrubbing harder than necessary, as if he could erase the rawness of his own reaction. He thought about Dalia, who’d once cried because she thought his post-coital showers meant she was dirty, and about the string of women after her, each one a little farther away than arm’s-length, his walls a little higher, and his tolerance a little more impervious than the last. None of them had ever risked the kind of honesty Poppy had.
He rinsed the soap residue off, toweled himself dry, and slipped into Liam’s sweats and t-shirt. He would never wear a stranger’s clothes, but he’d grown up with Liam. Liam was like a brother to him. In fact, sometimes, he felt as close to him than Niko. For most of their childhood, he’d been convinced that Liam and Frankie would end up together, not Frankie and Tristan. Which did make AJ wonder how Liam would feel about him sleeping with his sister.
That was a problem for a different day. Tonight, he was going to focus on Poppy.
He opened the door expecting to see Poppy in the kitchen, maybe at the table or at the sink. Instead, it was empty. Poppy was curled up on the couch, sound asleep. Her hair, wild and radiant, fanned across the cushions, and her mouth was slightly open, as if she’d run out of energy mid-sentence. The cookie, half-eaten, rested on a napkin on her lap.
For a moment AJ just watched her breathe. He was hit with an ache so pure it almost hurt. He wanted to memorize everything about this, the way her eyelashes trembled against her cheek, the faint snore that caught at the end of every exhale, and the vulnerability of someone who trusted the world enough to fall asleep with a practical stranger in her house.
He crossed the room and leaned down. He could have woken her, could have whispered her name, and asked if she wanted to be moved to bed. But instead, he slid his arms under her knees and behind her back and lifted her, careful as a medic carrying a patient but also more possessive than he meant to be. After walking to her room, he laid her gently on the bed, and she rolled toward him, pulling him down. He crawled in beside her, and she snuggled against his side, her leg hooked over his thigh, her palm splayed over his chest.
AJ never cuddled with people. He also didn’t sleep at partners’ homes. Both were deeply uncomfortable for him. Both of those rules were exhibits as to why he’d been accused of not being able to compromise. So why lying in Poppy’s bed with her draped over him felt like the most natural, right thing in the world made zero sense to him. But right now, he just let himself exist in the quiet calm of his spirit. He stroked her hair once, twice, then closed his eyes and let the blackness come.
The next thing he was aware of was waking before dawn, his body tangled with hers, the unfamiliar comfort of it like a second skin. He didn’t move and didn’t want to disturb her. He justlistened to the slow exhale of her breath, to the heater clicking on, and to the first tentative sounds of morning.
For the first time in years, his mind, his body, and his soul were at total, complete peace.
12
Poppy’s brainbegan the morning’s torturous roll call before her eyes had so much as parted. First came the headache, an electrical storm of oscillating pain behind her temples. Next, the furry cotton of her tongue, as if a tribe of Q-tips had chosen her mouth as their ancestral burial ground. Third, and most urgent, was the acute pang of hunger that radiated through her core, so sharp and all-consuming it nearly eclipsed the other maladies. It wasn’t fair, if she was going to feel like death, couldn’t she at least have the decency to lose her appetite?
None of it would have been remarkable except for the exquisite aromas that gathered at the doorway of her consciousness like a SWAT team of temptation. Coffee. Bacon. Something sweet and sugary that might have been pancakes, or French toast, or an entire bakery. Poppy burrowed her face deeper into her pillow, desperate to stay in the oblivion of not-yet-awake, but her stomach rebelled with a noise like someone rolling a bowling ball down a gravel driveway.
When she finally forced her eyes open, she was at first convinced she’d died and woken up in a diner in heaven, the smells were that delicious. That theory was disproved by howshitty she felt. Her head pounded the way it only ever did when she spent the evening entertaining a certain gentleman named Don Julio. She winced at the sunlight stabbing her irises as it sliced through the slit of her curtains, then it all came back to her.
The wedding. The six glasses of champagne. Five tequila shots. The bouquet toss. The photos. The dance. AJ giving her a ride home. The talking. The best sex of her life. Him taking a shower. Her sitting on the couch eating a cookie to wait for him. That was it. That’s the last memory she had. Either AJ had stayed the night, or someone broke in and had cooked her breakfast. She hoped it was option A.
Next to her, she ran her hand on the sheets, and they were cool. If he’d stayed overnight, would he have slept on the couch? She grabbed the pillow and sniffed it. It smelled like him.
Shit. That meant he probably had slept with her in bed, and she had no memory of it because she’d passed out. She squeezed her eyes shut, replaying every mortifying possibility. Had she said something idiotic before she blacked out? Had she drooled on him? Had she snored? Had he watched her sleep, silently judging her collection of 80s Funko Pops, which included The Golden Girls, Punky Brewster, E.T., Ferris Bueller, Samantha and Jake Ryan from Sixteen Candles, Rainbow Brite, Indiana Jones, and more displayed on her dresser?
She pulled the blankets back, slid her legs off the side of the bed, and pushed up to a seated position. When she did, she noticed the time on the clock. It was six thirty a.m. She had to be at work at seven.
“Fuck,” she cursed beneath her breath.
Her stomach revolted as she stood, and her legs wobbled and threatened to give out on her, but she persisted, pushing past her nausea and noodle knees. After grabbing a clean pair of scrubs and underwear, she walked out to find AJ standing at her stovewith his back to her, spatula in hand, quietly executing the kind of breakfast choreography Poppy had only ever seen on Food Network. He’d changed into his own jeans, faded in all the right places and a T-shirt that pulled tight across his broad shoulders, the line of his spine visible beneath the cotton. His hair was still damp from the shower. There was something heartbreakingly domestic about the sight, like he belonged there, in her tiny, colorful bungalow, making breakfast as if this was the most natural thing in the world. The sight made her mouth water even more than the delicious-smelling food.
She couldn’t believe she actually had an appetite for either AJ or his food considering she felt like she belonged onThe Walking Dead, but she did. If she wasn’t running late for work, she would have happily indulged in both.
“Morning.” Her voice came out sounding much hoarser than she’d ever heard it before. She sounded like Chandler’s dad inFriends, played by the amazing actress Kathleen Turner.
