“Because it’s not relevant.”
Miles side-eyed her and she felt her palms go damp. “Not relevant is different than not true,” he said.
“You want truth? I’m in the middle of the biggest job in my career. My aunt’s livelihood is dependent on my success. And I’ve been nothing but blindsided from the word go.”
“That sounds rough. But I get it. I’m going to one of the best universities in the world and every time I show up to class I break out in hives. It’s like my promise to make my parents proud and my need to do something that makes me happy are at odds, and I’m not sure what should win out.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
He inhaled half of his second ice cream bar in a singlebreath. “Yeah. I decided to prioritize myself and happiness for once in my life. What about you?”
Decker had some pretty firm points earlier—points that she’d wanted to rebut but she’d been too stubborn feigning sleep.
Or maybe she hadn’t had the right answers to prove he was wrong.
“If you need time to think about it that’s okay, too. It’s your journey,” Miles said.
“One minute you’re throwing your phone at your uncle like a middle schooler in a game of hot potato, the next you’re analyzing my love life. Who are you?”
“I’m the product of a single parent household where the other parent wasn’t interested in being a part of my life. My mom put me in therapy when I started calling random men Dad at age five.”
Poor kid. Poppy knew what it was like to long for a father who cared. Understood the envy of watching friends go home to a traditional family with two loving parents and wondering what that felt like. She’d never called strangers Dad, but she had daydreamed about strangers she’d passed on the street being her father.
“My dad bailed, too. It sucks.”
“I’m sorry,” the kid said with so much genuine empathy she thought that maybe he was missing his calling, and it was therapy.
“Me, too.”
“Do you have a Brian in your life?”
“No, I never got that lucky,” she said, purposefully showing him the flip side. “My mom never dated again and then she died when I was ten. I wish I’d had a Brian of some kind, bossy or not, to help me through it. I mean I had my aunt, who was amazing. But to have another parent to be there, someone else who felt the grief on the same level would have been a gamechanger for me.”
“You’re saying I might benefit from a little grass-is-greener syndrome.”
“Seriously. What’s with the therapy lingo?”
“I may have also taken an interpersonal psychology class last quarter that touched on the psychology of dating.”
Poppy choked on her tongue. “Decker and I are not dating.”
“I never said you were. But it’s interesting that that’s the word that stood out to you.”
“Okay, Freud.” Poppy jumped up with a clap. “Enough psychoanalysis for the day. I’m going to hit the hay. Sleeping bags in the cabinet there,” she pointed behind her. “If Kiki gives you a hard time about sleeping on the floor of the pool house just let me know. She really is a softie behind that Aikido black belt persona. She just has a hard time seeing people as people and not opponents to be thrown.”
“Uh, thanks,” he said nervously.
Poppy brushed the sawdust off her pajama bottoms and walked through the woodshop and out the door. A warm summer eve’s breeze whispered through her riot of curls and kissed her lashes.
From this high up in the Trusdale Estates, the bright lights from the Griffith Observatory and Hollywood sign were illuminated in the distance. And the twinkling streetlights of the Sunset Strip flickered like a galaxy of stars. The chaos of Los Angeles felt like it was a million miles away.
She breathed in the night’s air and slowly made her way across the lawn, the prickly grass cool under her bare feet. As she neared the back porch the cicadas stopped humming, and she heard a muffled voice shouting through a phone.
That’s when she saw Decker. He was in the dark, leaning a shoulder against a porch column, his hand in his pocket, looking like the picture of calm. Which was strange given thevolume and level of rage with which the person on the other end of Miles’s phone was yelling.
It made her wonder how often this kind of conversation happened between the brothers for Decker to remain so calm. Because if she were on the receiving end of that lashing, she’d pee her pants.
There was a long silence, then Decker said, “I’m not undermining you. All I’m saying is consider letting him make his own decision.”
