Compliant as always, Roger led the pack, grabbing Bristol while everyone else took a little’s hand, and they started down the path to the barrels of apples.
No sooner had the women stepped in the line than the spotlight was pointed in Poppy’s direction.
Phoebe immediately stepped into her role as the inquisition specialist. “So, Popsi,” she began, “where have you been hiding out? We text, we call…no response for days. We started to think you’d been abducted by a mob boss, or a rival motorcycle gang, or an alien overlord, or something.” Phoebe’s voice wasbright but edged, designed to draw out the truth through sheer persistence.
“I think maybe you have been reading too many romance novels.”
“Have I?” Phoebe narrowed her eyes. “Because, correct me if I’m wrong, did you not just take the position as a live-in nanny for a precocious five-year-old of a hot, single, billionaire dad?”
“No, I don’t live with him. I live in the back house, and that’s not…”
Her sisters and Frankie, who was now officially her sister-in-law, all stared at her, and she didn’t know what to say. They weresowrong, but how could she tell them that? If her life was a romance trope, it was one-night-stand fail, surprise baby, or best friend’s little sister. If Liam and AJ were best friends, which they both said that they were the best men the other knew, and neither was very expressive, so that was about as effusive as it got.
“I see how it looks, but it’s really not like that. At all. Atall,” she emphasized.
They made it to the front of the line, and Poppy was happy for a brief reprieve as they placed their orders.
“Okay. Well, what about that guy Steve, or Stevie, you were seeing? What happened to him?” Phoebe asked as they all grabbed their drinks from the window.
“I have a lot going on with school and the house. I’m just taking a break from men,” Poppy declared as she turned around right into AJ.
Thankfully, his hand wrapped around her upper arm, steadying it before her hot chocolate ended up all over his shirt. She gasped at the suddenness of the collision and also at the shock of seeing him in an environment she never thought he would be in. Her mind went blank as she stared into the golden depths of his soul, except for the acute awareness that her handswere shaking and her heart tried to reverse directions in her chest.
Frankie, oblivious to the electric firestorm of tension and hormonal hurricane her brother’s appearance had just thrown Poppy’s body into, threw her arms around AJ. “AJ! I left you a voicemail but didn’t actually expect you to come! I mean, this is literally your worst nightmare!”
He dropped his hands from Poppy’s forearms, but his gaze never left her as he hugged his sister back. The intensity in his stare had her entire body on edge. She felt his presence spread through her.
She could tell he wasn’t relaxed. He was tense. It was tiny tells. His breathing was a slight bit shallower than it usually was. His jaw was set in a slightly different way.
“Are you coming to Zee’s party?” Frankie asked when she stepped back.
“Yes.”
“Yay!” She clapped. “Best wedding gift ever!”
The group continued on, swept by the current of the festival, but Poppy found herself hanging in the back with AJ. “You came,” she said finally, her voice embarrassingly soft, as if she were confessing something.
“For you.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Yes, I did.”
He said it like it was a simple fact, like gravity, daylight, or the measured way he always called her ‘Poppy’ instead of the trillion nicknames her sisters had invented. There was no drama in his voice, but the sincerity made her eyes sting.
“You hate crowds,” she said, needing to acknowledge it for both their sakes.
He nodded. “I like you more.”
The words hit her with a force she hadn’t expected. If that was true, if he liked her more than crowds, then that meant…something. It had to.
AJ stood in the corner of Zion’s living space at the front of his glass and concrete mid-century modern home perched above the sloping gold-leaf maples overlooking Hope Falls’ Main Street and was surprisingly relaxed. The only overstimulation he faced was the volume of the music, which he solved by popping in his earplugs. Besides that, the environment was optimal.
Zion Ash, beyond being a world-renowned photographer, was a minimalist with deep allegiance to the tenets of feng shui. People often dismiss it as a scam, superstition, or pseudoscience, but AJ found value in the ancient system of practical design for environmental harmony and wellness.
In his way of thinking, if all matter was made up of subatomic particles, i.e., protons, neutrons, and electrons which are considered atoms that then combine to form molecules, in turn making it energy, why wouldn’t the blockage or continuous flow of that energy make a difference?
The Halloween party was packed with guests, but Zion was a master-level festivity conductor. He had several different areas for people to congregate. An outdoor deck with heated lamps, several board games, and hookah pipes. A lounge area with card tables, a stripper pole, and a karaoke stage. A lower level with vintage pinball machines, a two-lane bowling alley, and classic ’80s arcade games. Every snack station glowed with its own theme, a sushi spread, a vegan charcuterie, and a candy “bar” with enough sour worms to induce cardiac arrest in a small child.
