Chapter 21 #2
“I am?” Poppy beamed, taking her badge. She still got a kick out of seeing her name, printed there on the schedule alongside authors she’d loved for years.
“Of course you are. Do you need a plus-one for the green room?” Quinn asked, turning. “You need a special wristband to get in.”
Poppy paused. She hadn’t heard from Cooper yet. “Let me check,” she said, and typed out a quick text.
Do you think you’ll make it today? Would love to see you.
The little ellipses appeared on screen for a moment, showing he’d seen her message and was typing a response. Then it stopped. No reply.
Poppy bit back her disappointment.
“I’ll take one, just in case,” she said, turning back to Quinn. “My aunt is around here somewhere, she said she was hunting down James Patterson. I don’t know if that was a promise or a threat.”
Quinn smirked. “It’s OK, he travels with security now. Oh, Fiona! Over here!” she waved over a bright-eyed girl who couldn’t have been more than twenty, laden down under a massive bag of books. “This is Fiona, from your publisher. She’s been running your social media campaigns.”
“It’s great to meet you!” Poppy pushed her emotions aside and shook the girl’s hand. “Thanks so much for all your hard work.”
“It’s my pleasure.” Fiona beamed from under her blunt-cut bangs. “I love your writing. We all can’t wait for the last book in the series.”
“It’s got ‘bestseller’ written all over it,” Quinn agreed. “At least, it will once we talk about your promotion budget.”
Poppy gave her a look. “Let’s not talk about that today. Was your flight down OK, Fiona?”
The girl grimaced. “A little bumpy.”
“Oh, me too! I hate to fly.” Poppy carefully steered her on before Quinn could corner her to demand a national book tour and full court press.
Her first panel was a fun discussion about how to write compelling heroes, with a group signing after.
It was always a little nerve-wracking being in front of an audience, but she got to chat back and forth with the other authors, and pass the microphone along when she didn’t know quite what to say.
There was always safety in numbers, but when Poppy arrived after lunch at her second event, she found a stage with just two chairs, and a sign proclaiming Poppy Somerville in Conversation. ”
“Wait, it’s just me?” Poppy’s nerves rose. “I thought there was a whole group.”
“Sorry, didn’t they tell you?” Fiona frowned and scrambled to find the paper. “A couple of the authors had to drop out at the last minute, so they shifted things around.”
“This is excellent.” Quinn surveyed the room, which was filling fast. “You’re the star attraction. Just look at all these customers.”
“Readers,” Poppy corrected her automatically. She looked around, her stomach churning. It was one thing to talk about her work as part of a group, but alone on stage? She felt a flicker of nerves, but Quinn gave her arm a squeeze.
“You’ve had crowds like this before at signings. You’ll be fine,” she said with a surprisingly supportive smile.
Poppy took a deep breath. “OK.” She nodded. But as she scanned the crowd full of expectant faces, she realized something that set her heart sinking in her chest with more than just nerves.
Cooper wasn’t here.
She knew he had work, but she’d hoped he would have found a moment to slip away to come support her.
This was her last event of the day, and even though she’d forced herself to focus on meeting the readers and giving her all to the event, she’d still been holding out a hope that he would come.
Because if he didn’t, if he chose not to support her when she was just a few miles up the highway, well .
. . whatever was making him pull away from her wouldn’t just be solved with a little space.
Could this be over before they’d even begun?
Poppy’s heart ached, but she didn’t have time to think about it. The interviewer, a local journalist named Eliza, welcomed her with an enthusiastic handshake.
“Don’t worry, this will be fun,” Eliza reassured her.
“Oh God,” Poppy laughed, “do I look that nervous?”
“Maybe a little.” Eliza grinned. She had auburn red hair caught back in a flyaway bun, and tortoiseshell glasses. “But I’ll go easy, I promise. My first question is just about the social impact of the romance genre and the sociological implications of the fantasy of gender norms.”
Poppy gulped.
“Kidding!” Eliza grinned, and Poppy let out her breath in a whoosh.
“Seriously, just relax. We’ll chat about your writing, and your path to publication, and then open things up to questions.
But, beware,” she added, guiding Poppy towards the stage.
“There’s usually one person lurking in every audience who wants to pitch you their unpublished manuscript, so get ready to hear about their alien abduction romance story! ”
Luckily, Eliza was right—about the easy and fun part, at least. She was a skilled interviewer, and gently guided Poppy through the panel, peppering her with enthusiastic questions about her characters and experience until Poppy could actually relax and enjoy the conversation.
When the time came to open it up to questions, she was surprised to find just how many of the audience were fans of her books and had thoughtful questions about how she’d written her series.
“We have time for just a couple more questions . . .” Eliza said, and Poppy realized that the hour had flown by. “How about you, in the red?”
She pointed to a woman in the front row with her hand waving high in the air. The woman bounced out of her seat and gripped the mic. “Hi, first of all, I’m a big fan,” she gushed. “I’ve read all your books.”
“Thank you.” Poppy smiled. “I like this question so far.”
Everyone laughed. “I was wondering,” the woman continued, “the love stories you write are so . . . amazing. They’re passionate and loving and everything you could want. Are they based on real relationships you’ve had? Is that where you get your inspiration? Is there someone special in your life?”
Poppy took a deep breath, ready to roll out her stock answer about love being inspiring in all forms—family, friendships, and more—but then she caught sight of a familiar face in the crowd, and her heart took flight.
Cooper.
He was standing in the back of the room, leaning against the wall. She caught his eyes, and he smiled at her: that heart-stopping, eye-crinkling grin that made her insides flip over and melt.
He came.
“I . . . made it all up,” Poppy said, with a flash of honesty.
“For the longest time, I didn’t really know what it felt like to connect with someone the way I wrote in my books.
I saw it around me, every day, and I wanted it so badly for myself.
That’s what I poured into my books, that hope, the longing—I think we all feel it, every day.
” She looked around and saw people nodding along, and it gave her the courage to continue.
“I wanted to believe, but it wasn’t easy.
When you’re alone, and you’re writing about love like that every day .
. . well, it felt like a cruel irony, sometimes.
I wondered if I would ever find the kind of relationships I was writing about, or if they even existed at all.
Whether they’d always just stay confined to the pages of my books, and never be something real to me. But . . . then I did find it.”
She met Cooper’s eyes again, and felt it all over again.
The bond between them, that alchemy of connection and chemistry that seemed to draw her to him, every time.
She smiled, hit with a sudden wave of gladness that her winding road had brought her all the way here, to Sweetbriar Cove, and the man she’d almost given up hope of finding.
“So, yes. It’s real,” she said, turning back to the questioner.
“That passion, the feeling like you’re not alone, and somebody sees you, all the way to your heart.
I’m glad I kept the faith and believed all those years, because the love I’ve written about before is only just the beginning.
I can’t wait to share more of my stories with you. ”
The crowd broke into applause, and Eliza wrapped up the panel. “That was great,” she said to Poppy, as they headed off stage. “You’re a natural.”
“Really? I felt like my hand was shaking so hard my mic was trembling.” Poppy looked around, wanting to catch Cooper before she went to sign books.
But when she looked for him, there was no sign of his tousled dark hair to be seen.
She frowned, straining on her tiptoes. Maybe he was over at the signing tent already.
“Darling, fantastic.” Quinn swooped in, smothering her in a hug. “I loved that part about your new book, there have already been a dozen tweets from people in the audience. They can’t wait!”
“They’ll have to wait a few more months.” Poppy dragged her attention back. “I’m still not done with the first draft.”
Quinn waved it away. “But what you have written so far is phenomenal. Now, let’s go sign some books for your adoring fans!”
She swept Poppy off, but Poppy hung back, scanning the crowd one last time. She thought she saw Cooper in the hallway and lifted her hand to wave, but then he turned around and melted into the crowd, and was gone.