Poppy
This was moving fast…but somehow, it didn’t feel fast at all.
I’d known John for two years. Read his profile. Watched the ups and downs of his dates with various women who weren’t me, always known on some level it wasn’t going to work.
Maybe it was the compatibility report making me bold, but I felt it in my bones.
That man was mine.
He texted me mid-afternoon to tell me not to hype myself up; that I didn’t need to dress up or put on a show, that all he wanted to do was make me dinner.
No strings or expectations either; I was under no obligation to stay the night.
Still, it made me feel…things. Excitement at the idea that that was on the table.
Wanting it.
Wanting it so bad.
So bad that around four I ended up pulling my vibrator out and touching myself to the thought of him with his hands on me.
At 6:45, I was feeling much more comfortable than I had that morning—dressed in leggings and a big cozy sweater, fuzzy socks, sneakers, a scarf. I pulled my coat on over the whole ensemble and sent a text to Stevie explaining what was going on so she didn’t worry when she got home from work.
STEVIE
wait WHAT
you're going to whiskey daddy's apartment
tonight
TONIGHT tonight
POPPY
yes tonight tonight, please don't make it weird
STEVIE
I'm not making it weird you're making it weird by going to a man's apartment on the same day you confessed your feelings to him via a COMPATIBILITY REPORT
POPPY
when you say it like that
STEVIE
I'm saying it exactly like that
are you safe though? like do you have your location on
POPPY
yes mom
STEVIE
I'm serious Poppy he's literally a stranger
POPPY
he's not a stranger. I've known him for two years.
STEVIE
you've known OF him for two years. there's a difference.
POPPY
jasper ran a full background check when he joined the agency. he's clean.
STEVIE
okay fine. location on. text me when you get there and when you leave.
POPPY
noted. love you.
STEVIE
love you. have fun. use protection.
Then I locked my phone, grabbed my bag, and headed down the stairs into the November dark.
Johnny was waiting around front this time, straddling his bike.
He was watching the door already as I descended the stairs, looking like a complete snack in his leather jacket.
His helmet was under his arm; he smiled at me as I came down, already reaching for something in the saddlebag, and he pulled out a smaller helmet.
I took it, looking at it. The helmet was cobalt blue and there were a bunch of cute little drawings scribbled on it in sharpie.
I gave him a quizzical look.
“One of Elle’s kids,” he said. “Used to take ‘em for rides when they were in their teens. The helmet was lying around so I figured…”
“I love it,” I said.
Then I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.
Natural as breathing.
I put the helmet on, then got on behind Johnny. Wrapped my arms around his waist, leaned in close, my heart racing.
We took off.
The city at night was different from the city in the afternoon.
Everything was lit up and moving, the streets busy with Friday people spilling out of bars and restaurants, the cold keeping nobody inside who didn't want to be.
I watched it all go by over Johnny's shoulder, my chin tucked against his jacket, and felt something I didn't have a good word for yet—something adjacent to right.
Like I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing, wearing a cobalt blue helmet covered in a teenager's sharpie drawings on the back of a motorcycle driven by a man nineteen years older than me who was going to cook me pasta.
My life was insane.
I loved it.
Bridgeport was quieter than Wicker Park, more residential, the streets narrower and lined with two-flats and bungalows.
Johnny pulled into a spot on a side street and cut the engine and I climbed off, already getting better at it—right leg, push up, swing over—and he noticed, a small approving tilt to his mouth that did embarrassing things to me.
He took the helmet, tucked both of them under his arm. There was a little old lady walking into the apartment downstairs, and she turned and waved.
“Evening, Mrs. Okafar,” Johnny said. “Staying warm?”
"Trying," she said, her eyes sliding to me with open curiosity. "And who is this?"
"This is Poppy.” No embarrassment, no qualifications.
Mrs. Okafor looked at me the way only a woman of a certain age can look at you—like she was reading something written very small. Then she smiled.
"Pretty girl," she said, to Johnny rather than to me. "You make her something good."
"That's the plan," he said.
She nodded, satisfied, and disappeared through her door.
I looked up at him. "She approves of you feeding people."
"She approves of me having someone to feed," he said, and started up the stairs.
I followed him up, absorbing what I was seeing, how strange it seemed. Johnny was rich—I knew that for a fact, had seen his profile, his income level–but this wasn't somewhere a rich person lived.
This was a man who knew what mattered to him and didn't perform anything else.
The building was well-kept but unpretentious. Johnny, I was learning, was exactly like that. He owned it outright—I remembered that from his file too, the quiet way he'd listed his assets without fanfare. He'd bought the building, rented the lower unit, lived simply in the upper one.
He could have lived anywhere.
He lived here.
He unlocked the door and held it open and I stepped inside.
The apartment was warm and smelled incredible—garlic and tomato and herbs, low and slow on the stove, filling the whole space.
Small living room, a couch that looked actually used, books on a low shelf.
Two things on the walls: a photograph of a lake in low golden light, and a framed print of a street corner that had clearly been there a long time.
No clutter. Nothing decorative for its own sake. Everything exactly where it belonged.
I loved it immediately and completely.
"You can throw your coat anywhere," he said, already moving to the stove as he shrugged off his own jacket and tossing it on the back of the couch.
I hung mine on the hook by the door instead, and stood there for a second taking in the kitchen.
Cast iron pan. Good knife block. A wooden spoon resting on a ceramic holder that looked handmade, maybe by a kid.
The sauce was simmering in a heavy-bottomed pot, and he lifted the lid to check it, stirred once, replaced it.
I climbed onto a stool at the island.
"That smells unbelievable."
"It's been going since four," he said, not looking up. "Needs time."
"You started it before you came to get me."
"Sauce doesn't rush." He moved to a cabinet and opened it, pulled out a bottle of red wine, and held it up to me in a question.
“Yes please,” I said.
He poured two glasses, slid one across the island toward me, and leaned against the counter with his own.
I took a sip of the wine, moaning under my breath at the flavor. Johnny noticed, smiling softly.
"That's from a small vineyard outside Traverse City," he said. "Natural wine, minimal intervention. They do maybe five hundred cases a year."
"It's incredible," I said, looking at the ruby red glass.
"I have a case delivered every few months." He swirled his own glass, easy and unselfconscious about it—not performing expertise, just a man who knew what he liked. "One of the things worth spending money on."
"What are the others?"
He considered this. "Good meat. Good coffee. A mattress that doesn't make you feel like you're being punished." A pause. "The bike."
"Not the apartment?"
"The apartment is fine," he said simply. "I don't need more space than I use."
I looked around again with that in mind — the deliberate smallness of it, everything chosen rather than accumulated. It was the opposite of the way I lived, which was chaotic and overcrowded and full of things I'd acquired without quite meaning to.
“I'm messy,” I blurted out.
He grinned. “Would you believe me if I told you I find that charming?”
“Maybe.”
“Tell me about your place.”
I hummed. “Mm…books stacked on every surface. My roommate’s forensic pathology textbooks mixed in with my romance novels. A plant I bought on impulse six months ago that's somehow still alive.” I paused. “His name is George.”
“The plant’s a man?”
I balked. “Well…he's a boy. Not a man.”
He raised an eyebrow. "How do you know?"
"I just know," I said. "You can tell with plants."
He looked like he was deciding whether to push that and then thought better of it. "So George the boy plant. What else?"
"A roommate who watches true crime as white noise," I said. "Which is its own kind of unhinged. Stevie will fall asleep to a documentary about a serial killer and then be completely confused when she has bad dreams.”
“Like what?”
“She had a dream the other night that Sophie set her up with a guy who wanted to drink soup out of a her skull.”
Johnny snorted, then: “Who drinks soup?”
I shrugged. “Tomato soup? Miso?”
“So he specifically wanted to drink miso soup out of her skull?”
“I don't know specifically, but Stevie does love sushi.”
Johnny chuckled and turned back to the stove to get the pasta started.
He looked—he was so gorgeous. I didn’t know how else to say it.
Wearing a black t-shirt that hugged his biceps, the hint of a tattoo flashing every so often on his right inner forearm…
jeans slung low on his hips. He’d kicked his shoes off; I stood up to do the same thing, leaving me in my fuzzy socks. Then I padded over to him.
Stood beside him and looked into the pot.
He glanced over at me, reminding me of the height difference—he had to be over six feet, I was 5’4.
“Just boxed pasta,” he said. “I’m not that fancy.”
“I know how pasta is made,” I said, biting my lip.
I caught his shoulder and stood on my tip-toes to kiss him.
His hand found my waist, forgetting about the pasta completely—kissing me deep and slow…then pulling back just enough to look at me, his thumb tracing a slow circle on my hip through my sweater.