Would he want to see her again before he left town?
When was he leaving town?
So many questions, but one was at the forefront of her mind.
“Hey, did you fix my—?” Her question trailed off when she stepped out of the bathroom to find her seven-hundred-square-foot home empty.
There was an eerie quiet, so she knew she was alone, but just in case, she glanced in the bedroom to confirm that it was empty as well. It was. When she looked out her front window, she saw that AJ’s rented SUV was no longer parked outside.
AJ was gone.
He’d left without saying goodbye. A sick feeling rolled in her stomach that had nothing to do with the alcohol she’d consumed the night before.
It shouldn’t have stung. It’s not that she felt he owed her anything. They hadn’t made any promises. In fact, she’d been nervous about what she’d say to him, so he was doing her a favor. But the hollow in her chest was real, and it expanded with every second she stood there, alone in the echo of her own expectations.
Of course he’d left. That was the safest option. The only option, really. She barely knew the man, and he lived across the country. A clean break was the best.
She was busy trying to convince herself of that when she walked to the kitchen to grab her purse and stopped after taking two steps. On her small, bistro-style kitchen table was a bouquet of flowers, her breakfast boxed up in Tupperware that she vaguely remembered having but couldn’t remember the last time she’d used, and her to-go coffee tumbler with a white folded paper leaning against it.
The flowers were a riot of color—sunflowers, irises, snapdragons, and baby’s breath—tied in a hasty but loving explosion of rubber bands and ribbon, the plastic sheath still clinging to clusters of condensation. The Tupperware wasstacked with geometric precision, sealed so tightly that it looked vacuum-packed.
Once again she noticed her hands were trembling as she picked the paper up and opened it. Not from nerves but from something wilder, less familiar, hope, maybe, or the beginnings of heartbreak. It was a toss-up. She peeled open the tri-fold piece of computer paper, creased with surgical accuracy.
Poppy,
My phone was dead. I am expected at breakfast with my mom and Dr. Sterling before they leave for their honeymoon.
I had a really nice night with you. More than nice. I don’t actually know of a word to describe what last night was.
I’m flying out on a red-eye. I don’t know what time you get off or if you’d like to see me again, but I would like to see you. Very much.
I hope you have a good day at work. I will spend today having FOMO that I’m not with you.
AJ
FOMO. Her smile was so wide that it pushed her rounded cheeks up into her line of vision as she read the note again, then a third time, memorizing his handwriting, the shape of his letters, the sparseness and the directness. He’d left his phone number underneath his name in a tidy little column, affixed with a parenthetical “(cell)” as if she wouldn’t know that it was a cell phone number instead of a landline, which she found utterly adorable, endearing, and oddly sexy.
She quickly added his contact into her phone, not as “AJ” but as “AJ FOMO” because, honestly, the joke made her happier than she was willing to admit.
After she grabbed her keys and her purse and packed her breakfast—which she’d be eating for lunch—in an insulated bag with a zipper to keep it warm, she was out the door. On her way down to the car, she rushed down the steps but had to go backup and down them twice more. The third step no longer groaned like a dying walrus. She bounced on the wooden plank, nothing, not even the squeak of the tiniest mousy noise.
Either AJ had decided to be her personal handyman, or her one-night-stand fairy godmother had sent her maintenance fairy-god-landlord to come do repairs in the middle of the night while they’d been sleeping. If she had to put money down, she would bet on the former.
Why would he do that? Maybe he had OCD, and he just couldn’t handle things being in ill repair. If that was the case, whoever ended up with the man would be extremely lucky, but it actually made her a little sad for him. How exhausting that must be. How could he ever relax?
The ten-minute drive seemed to go by in the blink of an eye. She’d expected to feel wrecked after the night before, but her hangover had mostly abated, replaced by a kind of nervous, fizzy optimism. Her mind was filled with what could possibly be in store for them when she got off work. Would they hang out at her place? Would he ask her to meet him at the resort? Would he take her out for dinner, or would they get right to dessert?
Before she even realized it, she was pulling into the staff lot. She gathered her things and took the service entrance, the cold metal bar biting into her palm as she pushed it open. She felt like she was floating as she headed to the elevator to go to radiology on the third floor. She was still walking on cloud nine as she exited the elevator and made a quick stop in the staff room to store her lunch in the fridge and purse in the locker.
She’d just finished clocking in and texting AJ she’d love to see him when the door opened and her work bestie came in. Poppy smiled, wondering if her Carmen would be able to tell that she’d gotten lucky last night, but as soon as she saw her friend’s face, her smile dropped.
“What? What is it?”
“You haven’t heard?” Carmen asked.
Poppy’s heart slammed into her chest. “What? Heard what?”
“Liam—”
