Chapter 9
MAYA
The ambush was obvious the second I walked through the door.
Poppy’s Ice Cream Parlor & Cake Shoppe was closed for the day, the little hand-painted sign on the door flipped to “See You Tomorrow!” But the lights were still on, warm and golden against the polished wood floors and gleaming glass cabinets.
And there, gathered around the biggest table in the place, sitting on mismatched chairs with mismatched China cups already in hand, were my girls.
All of them.
Mia and Emily sat together at the end of the table.
Cassidy stirred her tea with the calm focus of someone settling in for a long evening.
Annie and Samara were sharing a slice of something layered and pink, and Hannah had already demolished half a cupcake, crumbs on her chin and zero shame about it.
Poppy stood behind the counter in her apron, pink hair piled on top of her head, looking far too pleased with herself as she arranged slices of cake on a tiered stand as though she was staging a crime scene. Which, in a way, she was.
“Oh good, you’re here!” She beamed at me. “Grab a seat. Coffee’s fresh, and I saved you a slice of the lemon drizzle.”
I took in the table. The cake. The full attendance. Poppy’s barely contained glee.
“What is this?”
“What do you mean? It’s Wednesday. We’re catching up.”
“We caught up on Friday.”
“And now it’s Wednesday. Sit down, Maya.”
I sat, because arguing with Poppy when she had that look on her face was like arguing with weather.
She slid a cup of coffee in front of me, followed by the promised lemon drizzle on a delicate floral plate. The coffee was perfect. The cake looked incredible. The trap was already sprung.
I just didn’t know what it looked like yet.
Poppy untied her apron, draped it over the counter, and rounded the display case. She had the energy of a woman who had been holding something in for twenty-four hours and had reached her absolute limit.
She dropped into the empty chair at the head of the table, laced her fingers together, and looked directly at me.
“So. Pictionary.”
There it was.
“What about it?” I picked up my coffee, casual as anything. Totally relaxed. Nothing to see here.
“Oh, I’m sorry, did you want to tell it?” She gestured magnanimously. “By all means.”
“There’s nothing to tell. We played Pictionary. We won. The end.”
Poppy turned to the rest of the table with the expression of a prosecutor about to present exhibit A. “She high-fived him.”
“People high-five, Poppy. It’s a normal human interaction.”
“She held on.”
“I did not hold on.”
“You held on. I was there. Your fingers lingered.”
Emily’s cup paused halfway to her lips. Mia leaned forward. Hannah stopped chewing.
“And then,” Poppy continued, clearly just getting warmed up, “after they won, which by the way was disgusting, they were like some kind of psychic hive mind the entire game, she told him, and I quote, ‘We’re telepathic. That’s the only explanation.’”
“It was a joke!”
“It was not a joke. It was flirting. In front of your mother, Maya.”
Samara pressed her hand to her chest. “In front of Nancy?”
“In front of Nancy. And then,” Poppy held up a finger, silencing the table like a conductor. “When they won the final round, Maya launched herself at him. Full body. Arms around his neck. The works.”
The table erupted exactly the way I knew it would. Mia gasped. Hannah slapped the table. Samara grabbed Annie’s arm.
Emily pinned me with a knowing stare, clearly filing this alongside everything I’d told her the other night.
“It was a victory hug,” I said firmly. “A completely normal, celebratory, platonic victory hug.”
“You were fully airborne,” Poppy said.
“I was not airborne. My feet were on the ground. Mostly.”
Cassidy, who had been quietly sipping her tea through all of this, set her cup down. “Define mostly.”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and shoved a forkful of lemon drizzle in instead. Buying time. Regrouping. The cake was exceptional, which was annoying, because I wanted to be mad at Poppy and she’d gone and made it impossible.
“You’re all overreacting,” I said around the mouthful. “It was game night at my parents’ house. There was wine. People got excited. That’s it.”
A murmur of dissent rippled around the table, but I held my ground. This was survivable. Embarrassing, but survivable. The high-five, the telepathy comment, the victory hug. All of it could be explained away with enough determination and a straight face.
Then Poppy’s expression changed.
The playful glee softened into something quieter. More careful. She picked up her teacup, took a slow sip, and set it back down with a soft clink against the saucer.
“There’s one more thing.”
My stomach dropped and I couldn’t even say why.
“When we were leaving, Dan was already outside with me. You stayed back to say goodnight.” She paused. “I looked back through the doorway.”
The table went still.
“You hugged him. Which, fine, you hugged your parents too, no big deal.” Her bright blue eyes held mine. “But you didn’t let go, Maya. You had your cheek on his chest and your fingers curled into his shirt, and you just... stayed there. For a long time. And so did he.”
Nobody spoke. Even Hannah had gone quiet, which was how I knew this had shifted from teasing to something real.
The worst part was the memory itself, still playing on an agonizing loop in my brain.
Every second of it. The steady thud of his heartbeat under my ear.
The warmth of his hands on my back, holding me but not pulling me closer, like he was letting me decide how long it lasted.
The way my fingers had twisted into the cotton of his shirt without any conscious instruction from my brain.
I’d blamed the wine. I’d been blaming the wine for twenty-four hours straight, and it had been working perfectly well. Until Poppy said it out loud and the excuse crumbled to dust in front of seven pairs of eyes.
I set my fork down. Stared at my plate.
“It was just a hug,” I said quietly.
The lie rang utterly hollow.
The silence lasted another beat before Mia broke it, her voice soft and careful in the way only Mia could manage. “Maya, nobody’s making fun of you.”
“Speak for yourself,” Hannah muttered, and Samara elbowed her in the ribs.
“What I mean is,” Mia went on, ignoring them both, “we’ve known you a long time. All through the relationship with Trevor, you were never like this. In fact, the only person you’ve been this way with was…”
She let me fill in the blank. “Nate.” Fuck.
I’d liked Trevor. He was kind and steady and reliable, and I’d liked him right up until he’d knelt down with a ring and the cold truth hit me.
That liking wasn’t enough. That comfortable wasn’t enough.
That I’d been sleepwalking through something that looked like a life without ever asking if it was the one I actually wanted.
And now here was Nate, blowing through every carefully constructed wall I’d built in the year since, just by existing in my general vicinity.
“It doesn’t matter how I act around him,” I said, reaching for my coffee. “He ignored me for ten years. Ten years, you guys. Whatever’s going on is just... nostalgia, or proximity, or something. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Emily held my gaze across the table. Her silence spoke volumes. The knowing tilt of her head laid it all bare: And that’s the part that actually scares you, isn’t it?
I looked away.
“Okay, new rule.” Poppy clapped her hands once, and just like that, the softness was gone and Take Charge Poppy was back. “No more moping. Eat your cake, drink your coffee, and someone please tell me something that has nothing to do with Nate O’Hare’s biceps.”
“They are exceptional biceps, though,” Annie said quietly.
Laughter rippled around the table, because Annie was the last one of us to go making observations like that.
I sat in the middle of it, warm and full and surrounded by the people who knew me best, and let the noise wash over me.
But underneath it all, quiet and stubborn and impossible to ignore, a single thought sat lodged behind my ribs.
It wasn’t just a hug. And I had absolutely no clue what that meant.