“Oh great.”
She handed it to her mom as she once again got inside her vehicle.
“What are you wearing to the rehearsal?” her mom asked.
Liam and Frankie’s rehearsal dinner was going to be held at The Castaway. Her mom always had opinions on what she should wear, and the most frustrating part was, most of the time, she was right.
“I don’t know, Mo?—”
“You should wear the blue dress.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“Blue dress, Popsi.” Her mom waved and backed down the drive. “Nice meeting you!”
“You, too!” Deacon called out.
Poppy turned to go back inside.
“You sure you don’t want to have some barbecue"?” Deacon asked as he fired up the grill, and Tabitha ran around the grass patch with Rocco.
“I’m good, but thank you.”
She retreated to the guest house, letting the door fall softly shut behind her. The world outside faded, the only sounds were the thoughts in her head and the faint giggles of Tabitha and barks of Rocco.
Once again, she set up her makeshift workstation—her ten-year-old laptop, phone for Spotify, and a stack of color-coded 3x5 cards with her own scrawled notes— and tried to corral her brain into something resembling focus. Her desktop was a messy constellation of open tabs: Early Interventions inNeuroatypical Toddlers, Complex PTSD, and Family Systems. She’d promised herself she’d at least outline her upcoming thesis proposal tonight, something about the intersection of community care and special education. But every time she tried to click into her Google doc, another intrusive thought jostled her attention off course.
AJ. AJ Costas. The name flared on the back of her tongue like a hard candy, sour and sweet at once. She’d spent one night with the man, not even twenty-four hours. She should have been able to file him away with all the other unfinished business in her life, but her mind kept circling back, obsessive and helpless as a moth trapped in a lampshade.
Feeling frustrated and unproductive, she tried to redirect. She made a half-hearted attempt at meal prep, then microwaved a big bowl of ramen and ate it cross-legged on the velvet loveseat while scrolling through her latest research citations. But she was barely picking at the noodles. She chewed the edge of her thumb, staring blankly at her screen, the words blurring into one another until her eyes watered. Foregoing studying altogether, she put on her favorite rewatch comfort show,Dexter. After two episodes she cried uncle. Not even the just murder of serial killers could distract her from the steady, insistent pulse of want.
She could phone-a-friend. Zion would come over and happily commiserate, but he would push her to talk about her feelings, something she rarely did. And then there was Miss Carol, her honorary grandma. She owed her a call, but Miss Carol would know something was wrong from the word “hello” and would get down to the truth of it. Poppy didn’t want to say she was in love with a man she’d known for eight hours who lived across the country and had women breaking into his house because they thought they were his girlfriend. So yeah, both sounded like more work than she could muster. Instead, she wandered to thebathroom, thinking maybe a hot shower would burn off the extra static.
As she undressed, she caught sight of herself in the mirror above the sink. She had faint purple moons of sleeplessness under both eyes. She knew she was tired, she just didn’t realize shelookedthat tired. She twisted the shower tap, letting the water run until the tiny room filled with a cloud of steam that softened the edges of the mirror and made her skin dewy.
For a second she panicked when she noticed the large window above the stand-alone tub, but then she remembered that the glass was reflective so that light could come in and you could see out, but no one could see in. That’s when she noticed it. The view from the guest house bathroom looked out onto the rear deck of the property next door, which was a single-story ranch house Zion mentioned he’d almost put an offer on before the tech guy outbid him and was using it as an Airbnb.
There was a light on in the kitchen, so she assumed he had guests there. She started to look away, but her eye snagged on the profile of a man in a hoodie and sweats, walking out the sliding door onto the deck. The sight hit her as hard as the time she fell off the swings and got the wind knocked out of her.
AJ Costas. In the flesh. Standing fifteen yards away from her in a battered hoodie and sweats, looking entirely out of place and at home all at once.
No. That wasn’t possible. Was it?
She squinted and leaned forward. He was tall, with broad shoulders and dark hair, his jawline looked as if it had been carved by a patient sculptor with a taste for drama, a clean, decisive line of stone that caught the light and refused to let it go. Shadows clung to his angles, the golden hourhighlighting his rugged, commanding presence, impossible to ignore.
Poppy couldn’t move. For a moment, she wondered if she’d conjured him into existence, if she’d fallen asleep and this wasa dream. But no, he was real, she could see the way he absent-mindedly tapped his palm with his middle finger.
Her heart was galloping wildly, and her entire body was tingling with need. After she got over the initial shock and her physical reaction, worry set in. He was tapping his palm.
Was he stressed?
Why was he stressed?
Was it the travel?
Was it the thought of being around a lot of family?
Was it seeing her again?
