Chapter 15 #2
Poppy knew Phoebe meant well, but her good intentions didn’t do anything to dull the sting of her condescending tone and sentiment.
First of all, Phoebe was six years older than Poppy, so why she would refer to her as ‘at your age’ baffled the mind.
Second, and even more frustrating, was someone recognizing Poppy’s ‘bravery’ from the creature comforts her husband’s million-dollar bank account afforded her.
Phoebe never had to worry about her future.
Even if, God forbid, something happened to Roger, she’d be taken care of.
Just like when their father died, his entire life insurance policy went to his wife and their daughters. She and her mom didn’t get a dime.
“I agree. It’s so exciting,” Lina chimed in, and everyone nodded as if on cue.
For one dizzying second, Poppy felt like she was floating above her own body, watching three versions of herself at once: the Poppy who was in the bridal shop playing the role as supportive friend and soon-to-be sister-in-law to Frankie, the Poppy who was secretly mourning a relationship that was over before it started with said new SIL’s brother, and the Poppy who was terrified she’d never find her place in the world that her sisters were given on a silver platter of the perfect job, the perfect home, the perfect man, the perfect life.
“She is still baby!” Yaya grabbed her cheeks and smushed her face together until her lips puckered like a fish.
Poppy blinked in shock at the abrupt invasion of personal space.
“You have whole life ahead of you. Five, maybe six more careers. This is only one life. You try everything! I was showgirl. I was resistance fighter. I own tobacco factory. I was mother. I was artist. I was—”
“Hold it! Pause!” Zion’s hand flew up in the air. “You were a showgirl?”
“Yes. Showgirl, you know. Sequins. Feathers. Sexy. Before war, when I was girl.” Yaya was a force, a hurricane of Balkan opinions and memories, and Poppy could only blink as Yaya’s hands continued their assault.
“Pretty, like you. Only eighteen. I have beautiful legs. I perform in cabaret show. I was star. I sing. I dance. I travel all Europe. Then, poof.” She flicked her hands open.
“Poof?! What happened?” Zion looked at Yaya as if he’d discovered a secret passage in his childhood home. “What poof?”
“Poof, I see Frank. My heart, it stops. That is it. No more shows.”
“He didn’t want you to perform?”
“No!” Yaya slapped Zion’s arm. “Frank never tell me what to do! No. Never. I never want to be far from him. I don’t travel when I meet him. No.” She shook her head. “No more shows.”
“Do you have photos?” Zion pressed his palms together, begging her. “Please say you have photos?!”
“Photos. Yes, of course.” Yaya nodded. “I tell you. I am beautiful. You come for dinner. I show you.”
A wide smile spread on Zion’s face. “It’s a date.”
“And you were a resistance fighter and owned a tobacco—” Poppy’s inquiry was cut off when the door to the private fitting room swung open, and Frankie emerged at the threshold like a reveal on a home makeover show.
There was a round of gasps, then a hush fell over the room.
Yaya’s eyes instantly filled with tears.
The A-line dress clung in all the right places, a patchwork of silk and lace that seemed tailored not just to her body but to the exact design of her personality.
The lace sleeves grazed her wrists, delicate as moth wings, while the bodice dipped in a V that was suggestive but not scandalous, very Frankie.
The skirt flared out from the hips, whispering over the floorboards like rainfall.
For a moment, the room existed only in that hush, all the oxygen sucked into the vacuum created by the vision of their friend. Even Zion, who had probably seen every conceivable wedding dress in his years working as a photographer, looked awestruck.
“Wow,” Cora, Frankie’s mom, whispered quietly, and the word seemed to fill the space.
“Are you kidding?” said Phoebe, adjusting Bristol higher on her hip. “You look like the goddess of spring getting married in a Greek cathedral. All you need is a laurel crown and a lightning bolt.”
Yaya, always the critic, sniffed with tears in her eyes.
“Yes, you look beautiful. Turn. Let me see.” Frankie rotated, and Yaya lifted the glasses that hung from a band around her neck.
She examined the train, the seams and the line of the waist. She made a noise of approval.
“Good. You have hips. Don’t hide. Emphasize. ”
Zion was less restrained. “Holy shit, Frankie, I’m actually crying! Like literal tears.” He dabbed theatrically at his eye.
Poppy didn’t trust herself to speak, partly because she, too, had been ambushed by a wave of emotion that left her throat tight and her eyes prickling.
Something about seeing her friend so incandescently happy, so fully realized, made her own losses and uncertainties seem both smaller and more poignant.
Frankie’s mom, Cora, hovered nearby, her own face a study in barely contained pride and nostalgia. “Liam is gonna…”
“Cry,” Poppy offered. She knew her brother. He would cry.
“Yep,” Phoebe co-signed.
The women all agreed, and the seamstress began working on the last-minute tweaks when Yaya sprang from her seat like a Jack-in-the-box, her purse and scarf in hand.
“Okay, I go, I go, I go! My ride is here!”
“Your ride?” Frankie questioned as her grandmother walked over and kissed her cheeks.
“Your brother.” Yaya waved her hand dismissively as she walked towards the front of the shop.
Frankie wrinkled her nose. “Which one?”
“AJ!” Yaya shouted back as the bell chimed, indicating the door opened.
“Tell him I said—” The door chimed again, indicating it had closed. “—hi.” Frankie turned back towards us. “I didn’t even know AJ was coming into town today.”
Everyone returned to their regularly scheduled programming except Poppy. Her entire body reacted to the news that AJ was in Hope Falls. Not just in Hope Falls, he was parked outside the shop she was in.
His name hovered in the air around her, and Poppy felt it pass through her body like an electric current.
She’d known, on some logical level, that AJ was going to be at the wedding.
For some reason, she’d just assumed, like last time, he’d fly in the day of and leave the next day.
But that was not the case. AJ was parked outside the very bridal shop where she was, which meant he was less than fifty yards from her.
He’d called her and texted her several times over the two weeks after he returned to Virginia.
Six voicemails and six texts, to be exact, but she hadn’t returned any of his calls or messages.
He had another woman in his home gathering her things.
He lived across the country. In one night, Poppy had developed feelings for him that were stronger than she had ever felt for…
well, any other man she’d ever been with.
All of that was messy. She didn’t want messy.
So why did the idea of seeing him again have her entire body buzzing with excited nerves and something perilously close to hope? Not that it mattered because she doubted he’d want anything to do with her. And if he didn’t, she couldn’t blame him.
But if he did…
The “Welcome to Hope Falls” sign “Population 6,942” was on his left and AJ wondered if that number would soon be six thousand nine hundred and forty-three.
Beauty surrounded him in the form of snow-dusted pine trees passing in rhythmic intervals.
He couldn’t help but marvel at the majesty of it all when he caught sight of a set of white-tailed deer frozen by the roadside, their glassy eyes shining directly at him before they vanished into underbrush.
One second they were there, the next they were gone.
It felt like a metaphor for his life recently.
Nothing permanent, everything temporary.
The past eight weeks had been a fog of life-altering decisions.
One significant being putting his home up for sale.
He hadn’t told anyone yet, not Frankie, his mother or Niko.
The second was his career. Officially, he was on leave until the new year.
Unofficially, he’d already made up his mind, no reenlistment.
No more DOD contracts, no more deployment rotations.
The choice should have come with a sense of relief, but it brought only silence, a vacuum in which he felt his future knock around like loose change.
He’d lived his life having five-year, ten-year, and twenty-year plans.
Now, he didn’t even have a one-year plan.
His skill set was in high demand in the private sector, so employment was not an issue.
He was leaning towards contract work. He’d been in contact with Adam Dorsey, who lived in Hope Falls.
Adam offered him a job, and he was going to be meeting with him while he was in town for Frankie’s wedding.
AJ had always planned on retiring in Hope Falls, of course, that was when Papou was alive.
He’d been extremely close to his grandfather.
He accepted AJ for who he was, despite not understanding him in the slightest, or at least not relating to him.
Niko and Papou were alike in nearly every aspect, they were cut from the same cloth: the big personalities, the gregarious laughter, the elite athletic abilities, the ease with which they occupied space in the world, and both the life of any party.
On fishing trips, Papou and Niko bonded over the San Francisco Giants and the 49ers, their chosen Bay Area teams, and Niko’s love life.
AJ’s twin would fill Papou in on the rotating line-up of women in his life.