Chapter Seven #2
“What a fucking moron.” Rosaline’s scowl softened as her eyes swept over Poppy’s beer-soaked body. “Are you okay?”
Poppy smelled like a dive bar, like sour citrus and skunky hops and it made her head swim and her eyes sting. She couldn’t
go back to the suite smelling like this. Everyone would think—Eileen would—
“Poppy?”
“I’m fine.” Her voice sounded far away, faint and garbled like she was ten feet underwater.
Rosaline watched her with a sort of intensity that suggested she didn’t believe her, the sort of intensity that would normally
make Poppy shiver, but right now just made her want to curl in on herself. “Would you like to try that again?”
She swallowed twice, tongue fat and uncooperative inside her mouth, and plucked at the pocket of her hoodie, pulling the sodden sweatshirt away from her skin.
“I just—I need to get this off.” She scanned the concourse with eyes that failed to focus, the hall a dizzying blur of black and green with the occasional splash of red thrown in.
Her stomach churned and her lower lip wobbled. Fuck. “I need to find a—a merch stand.”
A hand wrapped around her wrist, grip gentle but firm, Rosaline’s touch grounding, real in a way nothing else felt right now.
“Come on.”
Rosaline tugged, giving Poppy no choice but to follow her down the hall and into the restroom, where she bullied Poppy into
the big stall all the way at the back. She locked the door and dropped her hand, reaching for the hem of her beer-soaked sweatshirt.
Poppy’s breath hitched in her chest. “What are you doing?”
“What’s it look like?” Rosaline’s eyes flickered to hers, her steady gaze a lifeline Poppy desperately clung to. “Arms up.”
She didn’t hesitate; she lifted her arms over her head and held still, letting Rosaline drag her ruined sweatshirt up her
body and over her head, leaving her in nothing but a thin blue T-shirt bra and her denim cutoffs. Goose bumps erupted across
her skin the second the chilly, air-conditioned air hit her damp skin. A shiver lashed up Poppy’s spine and she crossed her
arms over her chest.
Rosaline let the sweatshirt fall to the floor with a soft splat before turning to the sink inside the stall and turning the
tap all the way to the left, as hot as it would go. She ripped one, two, three paper towels from the dispenser on the wall
and ran them under the steaming stream of water, soaking them before squeezing them out. She turned back to Poppy, soggy paper
fisted in her hand. “Is it okay if I touch you?”
“Yeah.” Poppy uncrossed her arms and let them hang limp at her sides. “Okay.”
Carefully, almost as if she were afraid Poppy might spook, Rosaline stepped closer and reached out, brushing the warm, wet paper towel against Poppy’s stomach.
She held impossibly still, breath trapped in her chest as Rosaline wiped the remnants of beer off her skin, eyes flitting
to Poppy’s face every few seconds as if checking in, making sure that this, she, was still all right.
Poppy was not okay.
Sour spit filled her mouth and no matter how many times she swallowed she couldn’t get rid of it, the smell of beer stuck
in her nose, so cloying she swore she could taste it on the back of her tongue. The paper towels Rosaline was using to wipe
her down were scratchy and rough, like sandpaper against her skin, but she wasn’t—she wasn’t scrubbing hard enough. Each too-gentle
stroke might as well have been a lash butterflying Poppy open, all the tender bits she painstakingly kept tucked away on display
beneath the harsh light of a flickering fluorescent bulb.
She wanted to snatch the paper towels from Rosaline’s hands and scrub until the skin of her stomach turned red and raw and
angry, until she was clean, but she couldn’t move, pinned in place by Rosaline’s stare and the free hand she’d curved around Poppy’s waist, her palm
a brand against Poppy’s bare skin.
“Your bra looks dry,” Rosaline said, voice no louder than a whisper. “I think it’s fine.”
Poppy opened her mouth to say that was a relief, that bras were expensive, and this was one of her favorites, basic but pretty,
so it was a good thing she wasn’t going to have to trash it or beg a vendor for a bag to stick it in, but instead a sob burst
from her lips like a gunshot in the quiet of the restroom.
Under any other circumstance it might’ve been comical how fast Rosaline’s eyes widened, going as big as saucers, but there
was nothing funny about any of this.
“Sorry.” She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, trying to stave off the tears burning the backs of her lids. “This is—God, this is so embarrassing. I’m so sorry.”
Mortifying, more like it. Never before had Poppy wanted so badly to just—disappear.
“Hey, no.” Rosaline gently tugged Poppy’s hands away from her face. “You’re fine.”
She shook her head and Rosaline sighed. She hadn’t let go, her thumbs sweeping against the back of Poppy’s knuckles where
the skin was stretched taut over bone, Poppy’s fingers curled tight against her palms into fists. It took a moment for her
fingers to unclench and when they did, her knuckles ached all the way to her wrists.
“Shit happens,” Rosaline said, the corner of her mouth quirking. “No use crying over spilled beer, right?”
When people talked about how even the most mundane places could feel holy, the sentiment had never resonated with Poppy. Communing
with nature might’ve been one thing, but it wasn’t like Poppy had ever felt God in the middle of a Trader Joe’s cheese aisle.
But maybe she did get it, because standing here shirtless and shivering inside the handicap stall felt a lot like being tucked
away inside a confessional. Which was the only logical explanation for why she opened her mouth, sins spilling out like soda
from a can that had been shaken. “Maybe. But I don’t, uh, I don’t drink. Not—not anymore. Not since I . . .” She let the sentence
hang, trailing off with a stiff shrug. “I smell like beer and Cash’s parents, they’d, um, they’d think I—” Poppy had to pause
to swallow and catch her breath. “They might not say it, but they’d assume.”
Assume she’d fucked up. And they’d talk to her parents, who would assume the same, everyone except for Cash waiting for the inevitable moment when Poppy would drop the ball and prove them right.
How could Cash think it was smart to trust Poppy with the responsibility of managing and maintaining his public image when she wasn’t even capable of keeping her own life on track?
“Well.” Rosaline’s voice was measured, careful in a way that Poppy hated. “You know what they say about assuming.”
Poppy scoffed and dragged the pad of her thumb under her eyes, flakes of mascara smearing against her skin. “It’s not even
like they’d be wrong.”
Rosaline frowned and Poppy sighed.
“Not about—” She pressed her palms against the bare skin of her stomach, and it dawned on her with a dizzying rush of blood
to her head that she was standing there, almost half naked. She quickly crossed her arms. “That. But look at me.” Who was she kidding? This wasn’t a confessional, it was a stadium bathroom that smelled like Fabuloso and
that generic pink soap that was in all public restrooms. Rosaline was no priest, she was Lyric Adair’s publicist, and even
though Poppy hadn’t said the word, she had basically just told Rosaline she was an alcoholic. Brilliant. Fuck flirting; Poppy
was doing a stellar job of selling herself professionally. “They didn’t want Cash to hire me. They didn’t think I was cut out for this.” And maybe they were right. Maybe she wasn’t.
“I mean, here I am, having a panic attack in a bathroom stall because some asshole spilled beer on me, spilling my guts to
you, and—you didn’t sign on for this. Hell, you already think I’m a total hack so maybe they’re right. Maybe it is only a matter
of time before I fuck up.”
Again, just like always, her capacity for screwing up and disappointing the people who mattered to her most knowing no bounds.
The longer she rambled, the more pinched Rosaline’s face became, her eyes flinty and her mouth drawn into a scowl. “I am looking at you.” Her chin rose. “And you want to know what I see?”
Not particularly and not now when it felt like she was made of spun sugar. Like with one wrong word she might shatter into
hundreds of thousands of tiny shards like mirror ball glass. She swallowed hard and braced for impact. “What’s that?”
Rosaline’s scowl softened. “I see someone who cares a great deal about the people she loves. Someone who is tenacious and
clearly isn’t afraid to speak her mind.” Her breath shuddered softly from between her lips, and she took a step closer to
Poppy. “Someone who wants desperately to do a good job. And anyone who cares that much?” She shrugged. “Everyone stumbles sometimes, but you’re not going to fuck
up, Poppy.”
Her eyes burned with a vengeance, and she hugged her arms around her body, fearing she might fracture, that Rosaline might
actually kill her with kindness. She stared at the floor, at Rosaline’s black Adidas, and blinked fast. “You can’t know that.”
“Yes, I can.” She tipped Poppy’s chin up with two fingers that lingered against her skin even after she had met Rosaline’s
startlingly green eyes. “You want to know how?”
She couldn’t find her voice, so she nodded instead.
“Because . . .” Rosaline said, her hand drifting down, curling to fit against the front of Poppy’s throat, thumb notched in
the space between her clavicles. Not squeezing, just holding, presence not pressure. Poppy’s breath stuttered anyway, her
heart rattling against the inside of her ribs. “I said so. Because I told you so.” Rosaline’s thumb swept across the hollow of Poppy’s throat. “And you’re not going to make me wrong, are you, Poppy?”
Something inside her snapped. Her self-control, her sanity, any guess was as good as any other. She sucked in a breath that felt like breaking the surface of a lake after spending too much time underwater and melted into Rosaline’s touch.
A slow, almost imperceptible smile spread across Rosaline’s face, a little hitch at the left corner of her mouth. Instantly,
Poppy’s chest flooded with warmth, the feeling like she’d done something right, incomparable, second to none.
Several stalls away, a toilet flushed, and Rosaline jerked back, hand falling to her side, the little bubble they’d made burst.
Poppy immediately mourned the loss of her touch.
“We’re, uh.” Rosaline shivered as she exhaled, dark lashes fluttering with each blink of her heavy lids, looking more discomposed
than Poppy had ever seen her. “The game. We’re missing the game.”
“Right,” Poppy croaked. The reason they were here. “The game.”
“You can’t go out there wearing nothing but a bra.” Rosaline shrugged out of her plaid shacket. Her black bodysuit hugged
her curves, fitting her like a second skin. “Not that anyone in their right mind would complain.”
Poppy goggled at her. “What?”
Rosaline blinked back. “Did I stutter?”
This was officially the weirdest day of Poppy’s life. Maybe she was hallucinating? “Um.”
“Here.” Rosaline tossed Poppy her top before bending to pick Poppy’s beer-soaked sweatshirt up off the floor. “Put that on
and let’s go.” She unlocked the stall door. “I don’t know about you, but I still want those nachos.”