Chapter 6 #2
She watched as AJ and Niko delivered Cora to the altar, each brother taking a step back in perfect, mirrored synchronicity.
He was a few feet away from her, and she was sure he could hear her heartbeat, it was so loud.
She held her breath as he and Niko took their place beside Frankie.
There was just the briefest moment where their eyes connected again, and for Poppy, it was as if some thin, invisible string hung between them.
When the congregation was instructed to be seated, Poppy felt her knees give out on her.
Her legs were jelly, her body a mass of wiggling matter.
She reached for the program in front of her, needing something to do with her hands, trying to anchor herself.
Next to her, Grant leaned in, his tone a shade more curious than before.
“Do you two know each other?” he asked, his voice pitched low so as not to disturb the ceremony.
“Excuse me?” Poppy found herself out of breath.
“The twin, do you know him?”
She shook her head, still reeling from the man who had just rocked her world from a walk-by.
The thought occurred to her that she’d never wanted to know someone more in her life.
He hadn’t even spoken to her or touched her.
What could he do with her if she heard his voice or felt his fingers slide along her inner thigh?
She had no idea, but she really hoped she got the chance to find out.
AJ finally had a moment to himself. One drawback of rarely attending family get-togethers was when you finally did, every aunt, uncle, and cousin wanted to ‘catch up.’ Another drawback was not engaging in conversation, which allowed people to fill in the silences.
People often labeled him anti-social and mistook him for being rude or uncaring.
What they failed to take into account was that as much as he loved each one of his family members, every piece of information they told him was stored in his brain forever.
Most people left interactions and filtered out any details not pertinent to their own lives.
In one ear and out the other. He did not have that luxury.
He now knew that his cousin Athena’s son, Mason, grew out of all the hand-me-down clothes she got from her neighbor and is in the 90th percentile.
He knew that his circumcision had gotten botched and they had to do it again.
He knew that she had gotten three UTIs and was using this weekend to wean him off of breastfeeding.
Oh, and her co-worker Leanne was cheating on her husband with their boss who had an STD.
His Theia Joanne has to have bunion surgery, and the nurse, Mable, has halitosis, so she’s thinking about making an anonymous Yelp account and posting it in the review because she doesn’t want to smell her breath the next time she goes into the office.
Uncle Leo is retiring in two years and has a slipped disc.
He started growing weed to help with the pain, and now all the neighborhood teenagers think he’s a drug dealer.
Those were just the tip of the useless pieces of the information-iceberg in his mind that he would now have to carry around and store for no reason.
Small talk was his own personal hell. He stood on the periphery of the dance floor at the reception, watching from the sidelines, wishing he had a control-alt-delete option for his memories.
As he observed quietly, his gaze kept finding Poppy.
He still hadn’t spoken to her, but their eyes met fourteen times, and twelve of those times her cheeks flushed a deep red, which meant it triggered mild emotional arousal.
Basically, the sympathetic nerves dilate blood vessels in the face, increasing blood flow and producing the visible reddening.
The other two times her face was in shadow, so he wasn’t able to decipher whether or not there had been a shade difference.
Every time he scanned the room, he found her instantly.
She was impossible not to notice. She was the type of person who seemed to glow even in the dark, a gravitational force, drawing people into her atmosphere.
It wasn’t just her beauty that was so spellbinding, AJ watched the effect she had on other people.
The way the elderly couple at the table next to the ‘single’s table’ leaned in conspiratorially when she was telling a story.
The way the kids’ faces lit up when she got on the dance floor and joined them in doing the Cupid Shuffle and then the Cha Cha Slide.
The way she held her own with his aunts as they forced her to vote on which had made the best wedding cookie by holding up either an Italian or Greek flag, and how she’d managed to remain Switzerland by declaring her Mexican roots and stating that her abuelita, God rest her soul, would never forgive her if she dared to compare any wedding cookie, Greek or Italian, to hers.
When his aunts left, he’d overheard her telling the bartender that her mom’s mom, her abuelita, passed away when she was five, and she only met her once, but she did have great wedding cookies.
The room was filled with half Costas clan and half surgeons, a unique combination of people who had seamlessly blended to celebrate the love of his mom and Dr. Sterling.
The contrast of cultures was not unlike the combination of the ornate crystal empire chandeliers one would expect to see in a ballroom in Paris, hanging from rustic wooden beams in the banquet hall at the mountain lodge resort.
Both groups were definitely letting their hair down.
His family knew how to party, and they were not holding back.
At the moment, his cousin Anthony’s wife, Athena, was twerking on the dance floor with his cousin Angelo’s wife, Misty.
Both women had young children who had stayed back home, giving them a responsibility-free weekend, and they were, quote, “living their best lives.”
It had been a recurring theme, AJ had noted that every time anyone he knew had children. As much as they loved those children, they were so happy, elated even, when they got time away from them.
Coming from a large Greek family, the subject of children had been a persistent one in AJ’s life.
He never understood the appeal of offspring.
Intellectually, he grasped that humans were hardwired with a biological imperative, of course he did.
He knew scientifically why people had the urge to procreate, known as baby fever, which was mistakenly assumed to only occur in females, but in fact, males also experienced it.
Academically he understood the desire from an evolutionary perspective, there was a “biological clock” ticking, a reproductive timeline for optimum fertility.
And then there were the social and psychological pressures that society at large put on people.
But as far as people wanting a baby for the sake of wanting one, he would never relate to.
Children were an unknown entity. There was no guarantee of what sex you would have or what temperament or medical-emotional-psychological issues they may face.
Not to mention the worry and anxiety they cause just by being in the world.
That didn’t even scratch the surface of the sacrifices one has to make of time, sleep, autonomy. Not to mention the financial, physical, mental, and emotional toll a baby, child, teen, and even adult took on a parent, even in the best-case scenario.
It wasn’t that he disliked children. He’d just never conceived of himself as a father.
Why would you roll the dice on creating a human, knowing the world was both unpredictable and, statistically, terrible?
Why would you take on that kind of liability, knowing you could screw it up in ways you wouldn’t even recognize until it was too late?
There were too many unknown variables. He’d never had any desire to be a father.
In the middle of his existential calculus, Poppy crossed in his line of sight.
Her beauty stole his breath as his eyes tracked her, following her across the room.
It wasn’t a conscious decision. He had no choice in the matter.
The moment she entered his field of view, AJ’s chest tightened.
He couldn’t have looked away if he’d tried.
In a split second his thoughts shifted to her being pregnant with his child.
This woman he’d never spoken to. He had no idea whether they shared the same morals, the same life goals, or were compatible in any sense, all of which he felt were essential attributes partners should share when raising a child.
Yet, when he thought about her pregnant with his child, it didn’t provoke panic or abject terror, which logically, it should.
He wasn’t even ambivalent, it made him happy.
Happy was not a word AJ had ever trusted.
It always sounded like a diagnosis or a moment of delusion.
But there it was, a flare of unfiltered contentment that lit up the inside of his chest. He tried to analyze it, to chart the sensation on some kind of internal graph, but the only thing he felt was the inevitability of reaching out for something he’d never thought he wanted.
He watched her approach Frankie and her best friend, Zion. She said something that made his sister look in his direction. Was she asking about him? Just the thought that she might be caused his heartrate to speed.
Liam, who had that uncanny surgeon’s ability to appear out of thin air, leaned in beside him, eyebrows drawn together in concern. AJ felt the pressure of a question before it even left his lips, like the sudden shift in air before a thunderstorm.
AJ took out his earplug and looked up at his friend.
“How drunk do you think she is?” Liam’s tone was almost casual, but AJ heard the diagnostic undertone, the same one he used when reviewing an abnormal lab result.
He had no clue how much Poppy had had to drink. Why would Liam be asking him that? As soon as he asked himself that question, he came to the most logical conclusion that Poppy most likely wasn’t the person Liam was inquiring about.
“Who?”
Liam tilted his chin towards the dance floor. “Athena.”
Right. His cousin. AJ considered the question. Athena was now twerking on Dr. Pendergrass, a retired cardiologist, and announcing that she wanted another round of shots.
“Too much.”
“I think I better go and get her before she hurts herself or someone else.”
Growing up, Liam had always kept a watchful eye on the entire neighborhood.
Some of the kids had nicknamed him Batman because he kept the peace, protected younger, vulnerable kids, and was a loner who spent a lot of time in his room, which they called the bat cave.
Those caretaking tendencies seemed to have magnified now that he was a doctor.
He set his drink down on a table and headed out as AJ reinserted his earplug.
He watched as Liam made his way, weaving between dancers.
When he arrived at his target, he leaned down to speak to her.
She flopped herself against him like a dead fish.
He wrapped his arm around and practically carried her off the dance floor.
They made it to the edge when AJ watched in horror as Athena turned towards Liam and projectile vomited onto his chest. It was like a scene out of The Exorcist. Unfortunately, Liam wasn’t the only casualty of Athena’s puke.
Theia Joanna was dancing in the splash zone and slipped.
Her arms flailed in the air like a 1920s vaudevillian flapper.
AJ moved behind her to catch her so she didn’t land on her tailbone and hurt herself.
He managed to save her from falling on her backside, but not before she clocked Liam square in the nose.
Now the man, who had just been trying to do a good deed, was covered in puke and bleeding from his nose.
Athena was intercepted by her husband and Uncle Leo, who both told her it was time to call it a night.
Once AJ got Theia Joanna balanced on her feet again, she began to fuss over Liam, but he’d assured her he was fine.
He grabbed a linen napkin and surprised AJ with a question. “Can you do me a favor?”
Liam was not a man who asked for favors. It just wasn’t in his nature. In the nearly thirty years he’d known him, this was the first time he’d ever heard him utter those words or do anything that came remotely close to asking for help.
AJ nodded, agreeing before having any idea what the ask was. Liam was like a brother to him. And unlike Tristan, who he’d also grown up with, Liam was a brother he respected and cared about.
“I came here with my sister, half-sister, it’s a long story.
Her name is Poppy.” Liam pointed in the corner where Poppy was still speaking to Frankie and Zion, but two more women had joined them, Karina Black, who had sung a duet at the wedding, and Lauren Harrison, who, according to his aunts, was on a reality real estate show.
He’d known both women from spending his summers and holidays in Hope Falls with his grandparents, Yaya and Papou.
Liam motioned down to his now blood and vomit-stained shirt. “I think I’m going to call it. Can you give Poppy a ride home for—”
“Yes,” AJ agreed, perhaps too eagerly.
All night he’d been trying to figure out the right time to speak to her. And now, now he had the perfect excuse. He was her ride.
“Thanks, man. I owe you one,” Liam said sincerely.
“No, you don’t.”
Liam had no idea that it was actually AJ that owed him one.