Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Poppy
Poppy, paint on her fingers and in her hair, a cup of cold coffee in her hand, skipped down the stairs on the way to the kitchen for a fresh cup and, hopefully, to find a snack to restore her flagging energy levels.
She’d been working on Melody’s map for hours now, and she was happy (ish) with the progress she was making.
It needed refining and a lot more detail, but she thought she might, just might, have captured the vibe of Melody’s fantasy world. God, she hoped so because this is what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.
Stepping into the kitchen, she felt her phone vibrating and pulled it from the back pocket of her jeans.
“Bird, are you back in H-Town?” she asked, dumping her cup in the sink and pulling a fresh one from the cupboard.
She jammed it under the coffee machine’s spout and smacked the button with the side of her hand.
“Still in Nashville,” Wren told her.
Poppy yanked open the door to the fridge and scowled at its emptiness. Was it too much to ask for some leftover pizza or Chinese, a slice of cheesecake? Why were there only apples and anemic-looking cheese?
“I was hoping you’d come to the Tag thinking about it, it was nearly noon on Wednesday, and it was a strange time for Wren to call. “Anyway. What’s up? You are normally in the studio at this time.”
“My dancers are tired and their energy is flagging, so I told them to take an early lunch,” she replied. “By the way, one of the dancers I’m working with saw my profile and commented on the pillow on my lap.”
Poppy put her call on speaker and checked Wren’s pic.
On her lap was a pillow Poppy had embroidered for her years ago as a gag gift.
The text was in old-fashioned calligraphy, but with a little concentration and some squinting, you could make out the pithy mantra, Calm the Fuck Down.
Poppy smiled, she still thought it was funny.
“My dancer friend wants one as a birthday present for her best friend,” Wren told her. “She’s prepared to pay.”
Knocking up the pillow was easy, but the embroidery took time. “If she wants it hand-embroidered it’ll take a while and it’ll be expensive, but I could machine-embroider it. You picked up my sewing machine from Benji’s, right?”
“Yes, it’s with the rest of your stuff. She wants it to be hand-embroidered, so you can charge a premium. Listen, I’ll give her your number and you two can talk.”
“Hand-embroidered won’t be cheap, Bird,” Poppy reminded her.
“Like I said, she’s prepared to pay, and since she’s dressed head to toe in designer dance clothes, I’m sure she can afford your rates,” Wren told her. “Got to go, chat later.”
Poppy said goodbye and ambled out of the kitchen. She’d never thought about making and selling her cushions, but if it turned out to be worth her while, she could do the embroidery while she watched TV or listened to an audiobook. It could be an additional income stream.
Something to think about…
Hearing voices coming from Thom’s study, she stopped, made a U-turn, and headed down the hallway.
Thom told her earlier that he was going to spend the morning at the local business center, where he’d rented a private room to do a virtual consultation.
The inn was too messy and too noisy—Thom had a construction company here, and they were installing three en-suite bathrooms upstairs—and he needed quiet to talk.
Poppy poked her head into the library and saw his open laptop on the desk. Inching over, she peered over the top of the screen.
Upside down, she could see that the camera and microphone were off.
Thom had apparently gone full tech-bro and joined the meeting from two devices at once—she assumed he’d left the laptop in the library to use it as a presentation hub, while he took the meeting from the business center.
Amused, she sat down on the desk, and munched her apple, safe in the knowledge that no one could see or hear her.
Yeah, she was eavesdropping on his meeting, but she was curious to see Thom in professional mode.
Her eyes locked on her lover, wearing a blindingly white shirt under a black jacket that highlighted his broad shoulders. He leaned forward slightly in his chair, was mid-sentence, his voice calm but cutting.
“That’s not quite right,” he said. Poppy knew him well enough to read the, you’re being a dumbass, in his eyes.
Placing one hand on the desk, she scanned the names under the four other faces on the call: CEO, CFO, Director of Policy, Director of Environmental Affairs. They were people whose assistants had assistants, people who sat at the top of the corporate tree.
Thom waited a beat. His expression held no apology. “You’re framing algorithmic bias as a flaw in the data. It isn’t. It’s a consequence of the objectives you’ve set.”
Poppy sensed his frustration.
“When a system is rewarded for speed, scale, or engagement, it will reproduce whatever shortcuts achieve those outcomes fastest. Correcting the data set after the fact doesn’t fix that. It just obscures the mechanism.”
There was a short silence before he continued.
“If your proposal is to re-label the outputs and move on—then no, that’s not governance. That’s plausible deniability. And it will fail the first time anyone audits the incentives.”
Poppy didn’t understand what he was saying, but she still knew he was, politely, handing them their ass.
Stepping away from the desk, she frowned and looked at him again. This wasn’t Thom-renovating-the-inn. This was Thom-in-his-natural-habitat, utterly at ease. He was fully in charge of this meeting, and everyone else was listening, the alpha dog leading his pack.
His world, the world away from H-Town, was where he went toe-to-toe with the powerful, discussing high stakes and important issues that made headlines and changed lives.
He provided the people who mattered with weighty and consequential advice and road maps and gave them information to make crucial decisions.
Poppy inched toward the door, wanting to put some distance between her and Thom-on-the-screen.
Her world, in comparison, seemed so damn small.
She spent her time at her desk drawing a map of a fantasy world, and thinking about the character art Melody wanted her to create.
While Thom looked completely at home and born to consult, she was in flux, unsettled and a little lost, trying to find her own spot to shine, her life held together by creativity, intuition, and a huge heap of stubbornness and hope.
Sure, Thom might’ve taken a detour over the past few years, but he was returning to what he did best. He was systematic, organized, determined, and results driven.
She was a ghost-seeing, chaotic creative who prioritized people above professional success.
If Thom was an ocean wave, then she was seaweed floating on its surface.
Opposites might attract in romance novels, but the trope didn’t always translate in real life.