Chapter 20 #2
At six this morning she’d been woken by her queasy stomach.
Thankfully, her walk of shame was only about twenty feet, so she’d been able to make it back to the ADU before she’d been sick.
She thought that she’d gotten it all out of her system by ten, but it was after four in the afternoon now and she was still feeling like she had on her high school graduation cruise to Cancun when she suffered from horrible seasickness and spent three days praying to the porcelain god.
Which was why she was blaming the Caeser salad for food poisoning. Poppy glanced around, wondering if anyone else was feeling any sort of effect since they’d all consumed the food from the same eatery. Everyone looked not only healthy, but also they appeared in peak physical condition.
Thankfully, no one had picked up on her being under the weather—well, no one but Yaya. That woman might be ninety, but she did not miss a beat. She had eyes like a hawk, ears like a bat, and the memory of an elephant.
About an hour earlier, Yaya pointed to her and said, “You look so pale. Like the Casper. What is wrong with you?”
“I’m okay, I just think I ate something bad yesterday at the rehearsal dinner,” Poppy assured her as she sucked on a strong breath mint.
Thankfully, Poppy had hit a nerve since Yaya had wanted the rehearsal dinner to be held at her home. She’d wanted to cook for everyone. Frankie vetoed that idea, stating she wanted Yaya to enjoy the dinner and get to visit with her family.
“See, this is what I say.” Yaya’s hands flew up in the air. “I cook, no one is sick today!”
The only flaw with Poppy’s theory was that Pippa had ordered the identical meal that Poppy had. She looked absolutely fine, or maybe she was just better at disguising it.
“Pip,” Poppy spoke quietly, just loud enough to get her attention.
She turned head to Poppy.
“Are you feeling okay?” Poppy asked.
“Yeah, fine. Why?”
“I’m just…nauseous and I thought maybe it was the salad dressing.”
“Oh no, I’m okay. Oh…?” Her face lit up, and she dug into her bag and pulled out a beaded wristband. “But I have something that might help.”
“A friendship bracelet?” Poppy questioned.
“No, it’s an anti-nausea relief-band. I got it when I was pregnant with Freddie and it worked so well, I kept it. It really helps.”
Pippa got up, walked over and slid it on Poppy’s wrist.
“Thanks.”
Poppy didn’t want to be a naysayer or Debbie Downer, but she seriously doubted the validity of these things.
There was zero scientific proof that they did anything other than offer the placebo effect, but at this point she would take all the help she could get.
The last thing she wanted to do was upchuck as the I-dos were being exchanged.
It would be just her luck that the moment would be recorded for posterity, and it would be her viral moment.
A few moments later, neither the bracelet’s power nor the placebo effect had taken hold, and Poppy knew that she needed to find a bathroom STAT.
A sudden cold sweat broke out across her scalp, prickling at the nape of her neck.
The room started to tilt, or maybe it was her vision, or maybe it was the universe.
Poppy blinked hard and realized she was about to lose it, right then, right there, in front of the entire matriarchal Greek chorus.
She shuffled out of the sunroom, past the arrangement of white peonies and eucalyptus in the corridor and down the narrow hall to the powder room.
She shut the door quietly behind her, slumped against it, and then proceeded to dry heave over the pale blue sink until her chest hurt and her eyes watered.
When it was over, she slumped down to the tile floor and pressed her cheek to the cold porcelain of the tub.
She let herself shiver there for a minute, trying not to cry, and then forced herself to her feet, rinsed her mouth with mouthwash, and popped in one, then another mint just to be safe.
She took a long look at herself in the mirror, and what looked back was frightening.
She was as pale as “the Casper,” as Yaya put it, with dark circles and bloodshot watery eyes.
Knowing that she just had to make the most of it, she patted her cheeks, applied a little color to her lips, and brushed through her hair.
“You’re fine,” she told the mirror, mirror, on the wall, trying to convince herself that she might not be the fairest, but she would be the finest of them all. “You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine.”
After several deep breaths, she opened the door and barreled straight into a wall of muscle and aftershave.
When she realized that the muscle and aftershave belonged to a person, she noted that her fingers clung to his chest like they were holds on a rock-climbing wall.
Her eyes lifted, and she saw it was AJ. A mix of relief and humiliation washed over her.
“Are you okay?” His voice was soft but vibrating with urgency.
She could tell from the worry etched in his face that he must have heard her dry heaves.
“Great, just pre-wedding jitters,” she joked as she thanked two-minute-earlier Poppy for deciding to pop in an extra breath mint.
AJ did not seem amused by her quip.
“Have you been drinking?” His tone turned even more serious.
“What?” She shook her head. “No, I haven’t had any…I think I might have food poisoning.”
“Do you need to go home?” he immediately asked. “I can take you home.”
“No.” She shook her head and realized the motion made her dizzy, so she stopped. “I can’t miss my brother’s wedding. And you can’t miss your sister’s wedding.”
There was a very long pause, he just continued holding her gaze. When he finally spoke, it was a confession that looked as if it pained him to say. “I didn’t like waking up without you.”
Her eyes widened. It wasn’t a declaration of love by any means, but for AJ it was a big deal. She knew that. And it meant more to her than any casual ‘I love you’ that had been said to her by every boyfriend and most of her situationships.
She wanted to say something equally romantic, on the same poignant playing field, but before she could, footsteps thundered up the stairs, and Niko appeared at the top landing, hair tousled and out of breath.
“Bro, did you get the ring?”
“No.” AJ didn’t spare his twin even a glance.
“Did you get lost?” Niko’s tone was incredulous.
“I’m going now.” AJ’s eye contact never broke from Poppy.
“Whatever.” Niko turned and went back down the stairs.
When he was gone, AJ said, “I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.”
AJ’s hands lowered, and he shot her one last look. She couldn’t quite decode it, but it made her feel like he was memorizing the shape of her face, and then he turned and walked into the hall to the library.
The moment he was gone, everything felt heavier. Poppy pressed her palm to her forehead and let herself sway against the wall before walking down the hall back to the sunroom in a daze.
Would every interaction with AJ make her feel intoxicated? Would they all be that potent? Would she ever build up a tolerance or become immune?
She’d never been afraid of desire before, but this was different. This wasn’t a crush or a fling or even love at first sight. This was something deeper, hungrier, and scarier—a kind of gravitational force that threatened to pull her apart from the inside out.
Because after last night she knew that she didn’t just like AJ.
She like-liked him. Super-liked. If they spent a couple of weeks, or even a couple of months together and then he fucked off to whatever new adventure he had in store, where would that leave her?
If she let herself fall for AJ, really fall for him, then what? What if he left again?
She knew the answer to that question. It would leave her “fresh start” in the town she’d always dreamed of living in filled with a bunch of memories of a man she was madly in love with who happened to be her sister-in-law's brother.
Yeah, AJ was a bad idea. Very, very, very bad idea.
The problem was, he was also tempting. Very, very, very tempting, and she’d never been good at resisting temptation.
Especially when that temptation came in the form of a six-foot-three, chiseled jawed, honest, intelligent, insanely sexy, best-sex-she’d-ever-had package.
So yeah, she was in big, big, big trouble.