He shook his head. “Don’t worry, Vera. I know this isn’t about me. What else did she say?”
I didn’t know how to explain to him that I wanted him here so badly for plenty of reasons, but none of them were good for me. “She’s just disappointed in me. I’m not married. I don’t have kids. No real career. I’m not adventurous or outgoing. I’m not any of the things she wants me to be.”
He steered us around a corner, down a quieter street full of darkened art galleries and restaurants that were closing up for the night. “But are you any of the thingsyouwant to be?”
I sucked in a deep breath, the thick, humid air coating my lungs with condensation. “No. Yes. Maybe. Sometimes. I don’t know how to tell her that I’m disappointed in myself too without feeling like she’s somehow won. It’s like... I can talk shit about myself, but when she does, it’s different.”
“No, you can’t.”
“What?”
“Talk shit about yourself,” he said. “I’m not okay with you bullying yourself like this, Vera. And respectfully, fuck Ruby.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it.
But he wasn’t laughing with me. “How the hell do you not see what I see, Vera?”
I shook my head. “Tell me, then. What do you see?”
He stopped and turned to me. We stood in the darkness just outside a circle of light emanating from a courtyard.
“I see the girl who did extra credit in classes she already had an A in. And the woman who cared for her dying mother through an illness that hurts nearly as much to witness as it does to experience. The open and kind person who let Brody in and treated him like family even though he’s a human wrecking ball.”
“I liked to think of him more like the Kool-Aid Man,” I said quietly.
He shook his head. “Sure. The Kool-Aid Man. You encouraged Leonard to finally go through with the funeral he spent years planning. And you’re one of the funniest motherfuckers I know. You’re smart and curious and thoughtful. You put me in my place.”
I looked up at him then. His green eyes were silver puddles in the moonlight. “You make that part easy.”
He threw his head back with a knowing grin. “You need a drink,” he finally said. “Let me buy you a drink.”
INT. RECORD STORE—DAY
Arlo scours the crates. Vinyl in one hand.
ARLO
You can tell everything about a person by the songs they skip.
POPPY
I don’t believe in skipping. It feels like cheating.
Each song is there for a reason. Even the quiet ones.
Chapter Forty
We walked a little farther down until we stumbled upon a bright building with a canopy that readHotel Monteleone.
The lobby was brimming with people in various stages of their night. Wedding rehearsal parties saying good night before the big day. Freshly minted twenty-one-year-olds who went too hard too soon. Hip travelers on their way out of the Quarter to find more authentic local experiences.
We turned the corner into the bar, and then I stopped. The view was absolute brain candy, but the most surprising thing of all was— “Is that bar moving?”
Eli doubled back, realizing he’d left me a few steps behind. “Welcome to the Hotel Monteleone’s Carousel Bar. It rotates every fifteen minutes or so.”
In a cheeky nod, the back of each bar seat was embroidered with an exotic animal you might find on a carousel ride.
Long fingers threaded through my own. “Come on. That couple over there is about to get up.”
