Chapter 11 #2
Wren’s eyes darted to their interlinked hands but didn’t comment.
Then again, they’d had a two-hour long conversation about Thom the day after she first slept with him.
And, instead of giving them shit about their relationship-status change—something Poppy’d expected—they all got to their feet as they approached.
One glance at Wren’s frustrated face was enough—Poppy wasn’t going to like what was coming.
Wren lifted up her hands. “It’s not bad bad, Popsicle.”
Bad bad was a childhood code, reserved for things like death and grave injuries and massive injustices, like the grocery store running out of their favorite ice cream or being smacked in the face by a dodgeball thrown by their crush. Poppy released some of the tension she was holding.
After greeting Dane and Hayes, she sat down on the picnic blanket and tucked her dress under her knees. Wren followed her down to the blanket.
“Can I get a beer first before you hit me with your not-so-bad news?” Poppy asked.
Hayes handed her a beer, and Thom sat on the grass next to her. She looked at Dane, then at Hayes. While she wasn’t very worried, she didn’t like the emotions flickering in their eyes. Anger? Protectiveness? Extreme annoyance?
Thom took the can from her hand, popped the tab, and handed it back to her. She thanked him and took a sip. Then another. Then she looked at Wren, who was holding her phone in a white-knuckle grip. “Why didn’t you tell me … us, Poppy?” Wren asked.
She frowned, not sure what she was getting at. “Tell you what?”
“The real reason you ran from your wedding!”
What was she talking about?
“You’re going to have to explain, Bird,” Poppy said.
Wren waved her phone and Poppy took it, looking down. Right, it was a picture of Benji and Maddy, one of her bridesmaids, arms around each other, taken alongside a pool.
“Good to see that Benji has fully recovered from me ghosting him at the altar,” she quipped, handing the phone back.
“This photo was taken at a Fourth of July party, Poppy,” Wren said, sounding heartbroken. And pissed off. “They’ve been having an affair from July, maybe even before that.”
“He … what?” Thom said what she wanted to, what she couldn’t. Poppy looked at him, took in his stillness and control, and shivered at the fury in his eyes. For her?
But she couldn’t think about him now; she needed to make sense of the landmine that had just detonated in her face.
She looked down at the photograph again, taking in Benji’s shit-eating grin and his proprietary hand on Maddy’s hip.
She wondered if anyone else had noticed the condom wrapper on the ground next to the sunbed.
Fourth of July … she’d spent that weekend here. Benji had told her that he would be with his mum in New York City for a distant cousin’s wedding, to which she hadn’t been invited.
The lying liar. But finding out that Benji had cheated on her didn’t really move any emotional needles; she was over him before she’d run away, and was even more over him now.
“But you knew that, right?” Wren cried, visibly upset, “Why didn’t you say anything, Poppy? I’m… We’re your best friends!”
Wren was properly hurt. And the worst part? It was Poppy’s silence causing her pain. Poppy ground her fist into her sternum, trying to push away the acidic flames licking the lining of her stomach. What was happening?
“When did you find out about their affair? On your wedding day? Or before? You phoned me, the few days before the wedding… Did you want to talk to me about him then and I couldn’t because I was too sick?”
Oh…
Oh, shit! Shit. Shit. Shit.
Wren genuinely thought she’d become a runaway bride because she’d found out about Benji’s affair. And that was so far from the truth it was laughable. But how could she explain that?
“Poppy! Wren!”
Double shit. Luna and Marsha, her best friend, PA, and sidekick, were rushing across the lawn to them, followed by the head witch, Andrea, from Luna’s coven. Frankly, she was surprised that Madame Calliope wasn’t here, because the four women normally moved as a chaos-creating pack.
Andrea, because she was a witch (or super intuitive) answered her silent question.
“Madame’s dealing with Effie. Apparently, Effie’s in an existential crisis, convinced her fame as H-Town’s most legendary ghost is the only thing keeping her relevant,” she explained.
Madame and Effie were, despite living on different vibrational planes, best friends.
Meanwhile, Poppy’s best friend looked like she was about to lose her shit.
Before she could placate Wren, or think of an exit plan, Luna yanked Poppy to her feet and pulled her to her ample, very ample, chest. “I’m so glad you got out when you did, Poppy. But why didn’t you tell us?”
Oh, well, that would be because I didn’t know until five minutes ago!
“Thank God you trusted your instincts.” Luna turned to her witch friend.
“Can you cast a spell and make his penis fall off?” she demanded.
Poppy recalled Luna wanting Wren’s dad’s penis to fall off when he’d wronged her over the summer.
The fact that Luna wanted men to lose their manhood should worry more people.
Andrea, such a very prosaic name for a witch, shook her head. “What’s the first rule, Luna?”
Luna’s expression turned sulky. “First do no harm,” she muttered.
“You’re such a stickler for rules.” Whirling around, Luna put her back to Poppy and slapped her hands on her hips, her spine stiff with irritation.
“No, Cedric, I do not want to go for a walk along the shore. I’m focused on Poppy right now. Can you not read the room?”
Poppy scratched her neck. Only in H-Town would her so-called crisis be interrupted by a spectral historian. She glanced around, and wondered whether there were other ghosts listening in. She suspected they loved a bit of drama. Where was Hadley when she had questions?
Poppy felt her phone vibrate in her hand and looked down to see a message from her mother.
What the hell? Her mother never sent her messages; it was either a phone call or nothing.
She looked at Thom, who immediately sprang to his feet, worried for her.
She waved the phone at him. “My mom,” she mouthed.
He came to stand beside her and placed his hand on her back.
“You okay?” he softly asked. She wanted to tell him that she was fine, that she was unaffected, not even remotely heartbroken.
That she felt disoriented rather than devastated.
She wanted to tell him, and Wren, that she didn’t run because Benji was sleeping with someone else—yuck!
—but because she’d been trying to be someone she wasn’t.
Thom rubbed her back. “You’ve handled yourself so well, Pops. I’m so proud of you.” Oh, fuck, he assumed that she knew about Benji’s affair, too?
He tapped her phone with his index finger. “Read the message from your mom, sweetheart.”
Poppy looked at him, nodded, and opened the message.
Why didn’t you tell me? Us? We feel rather foolish. Why did you let us assume that you simply ran because you couldn’t follow through?
It was concern wrapped up in criticism, a sorry that happened to you, but also a silent reminder that she never finished med school, or law school, or whatever the hell they called finance school.
Underneath her mother’s backhanded compliment, or whatever that was, she knew they were relieved to have an explanation for her impulsivity, a reason for her flight from what was supposed to be the wedding of the year.
The blame could be shifted onto Benji, and she would no longer be, at least for now, the Daughter of Disappointment.
Poppy closed her eyes and exited the messaging app.
Morrigan appeared and stalked over to her, headbutting her calf, then her leg.
Poppy, happy for the distraction, dropped to her haunches and stroked the cat’s long back.
Morrigan sent her a long, narrow, yellow-eyed stare.
She felt … judged. Then he smacked her cheek with his tail, nipped her thumb and stalked off.
Yep, definitely judged and found lacking.
Thom pulled her up, pushed her beer into her hand and told her to drink. To give herself time to think, she took a sip, then another. When she looked at her friends and Luna, she caught the sympathy on their faces and in their eyes.
If they knew the real reason I ran, would they still defend me? Would they still look at me like I was brave?
No, she was pretty sure they wouldn’t.
Because saying it out loud would make everything she did, and put up with, sound as bad as it was. And Wren, hurt and sad and mad, would send her a “let’s talk” look—and Poppy knew she’d be in the path of some truth bullets. Or missiles.
And then she’d say it. “What the hell were you thinking?”
Because Wren knew what love, real love, grown-up love, looked like. Dane was solid and steady; he didn’t make Wren question his love—it was just there, constant and consistent. He wore it openly, easily, like it cost him nothing. Wren never once had to convince herself of it.
But Poppy’d spent the past year and a bit justifying Benji.
With Dane, Wren never had to be anyone other than who she was. She never shrunk herself to be acceptable. And Poppy would have to tell her—say the words out loud—that she’d been prepared to compromise the very essence of who she was, to twist herself into something smaller, just to feel chosen.
Wren would drag the truth of her insecurities—painful and long held—into the light, make her face it, deal with it.
Make her look at the ugliest parts of herself and then—because she loved her—force her to do something about it.
Not later and not gently. Right damn now. And on Wren’s timeline, not hers.