Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
FLETCH
I’m not the most thoughtful guy in the world, but it feels rude to message with Grace while Poppy’s stuck driving. Not that I could text comfortably, what with my shoulder pinned to the door and my knees jammed against the glove compartment.
Can I help it that I’m itching to tell Grace about this insane road trip? We don’t share a lot of details about our lives, but Poppy begging me to let us take a detour to see the “World’s Largest Ball of Twine” is testing my limits.
She leans forward, her shoulders tense as she focuses on the road.
“You said you can only handle six hours of driving, and you’re worried about the weather,” I remind her. “Seeing a ball of twine will add at least an hour, and who knows if those roads are safe?”
“Who knows if this road is safe?” she asks, hands clutching the steering wheel as snow slaps the windshield. The heater is blasting, but the cold seeping in from the windows is giving a fair fight.
“You’re from Rochester,” I say, studying the slope of her nose for a moment too long. “Are you not comfortable driving in snow?”
“I drive a truck with snow tires. Not a raspberry with bald tires,” she says. “The handling on this thing is garbage.”
“All the more reason to hold the course,” I tell her. I point to the road. “Besides, there are tons of cars on this highway. It’s our safest bet to get home.”
She nods, but she looks worried.
My lungs pinch at her fingers curled so tightly around the steering wheel. I hate that she looks worried. It makes me want to reach over and—
What?
Pat her back? Brush the hair out of her eyes?
We’ve been cooped up in here for too long.
It just sucks that it’s my fault she’s in this crappy, cramped rental at all.
Yeah, yeah, I’m getting her home, too, but who’s to say if she hadn’t waited a couple of hours, there wouldn’t have been a bunch of cars that got returned to the rental counter?
She could be driving a Tundra home right now.
Of course, she probably still would have ended up at that diner, and she probably would have eaten that disgusting chicken fried steak.
I shudder remembering every bite. Wanna know how to ruin a steak? Bread it, fry it, and pour country gravy on that slop.
How could she order that just to appease the server? Worse, how could she have planned to eat it?
This girl is too accommodating for her own good. Her driving this matchbox car right now so I don’t have to is further proof of that fact.
Driving this car would be miserable. Probably not impossible, though.
If she gets too tired, I’ll tell her I can drive. I’ll explain I get dramatic when I’m stressed. She’ll have no trouble believing me, because she’s seen it firsthand.
I hate it about myself.
You’d think my granddad would have drilled that out of me years ago.
“Could you put on some music? Or a podcast?” Poppy asks. I watch her long lashes blink hard and slow.
“Are you getting tired?”
“It’s fine,” she says. “I just prefer listening to something over silence.”
“Yeah, sure,” I say. I want to catch up on the latest Beyond Justice episode, but Poppy said she got burned out on it. If she works in criminal justice, that makes sense.
I should ask her about her job, but I don’t love talking about the criminal system outside of the message board.
Most people don’t know what to say, don’t know how to disagree without being a tool, or they’re not informed.
The people on the forum, on the other hand, are hyper informed, hyper opinionated, and have no problem disagreeing …
though they’re also usually tools about it. Everyone except Grace.
The built-in media system hooks up automatically to Poppy’s phone, so I’m able to navigate to her music app without using the phone itself.
“You don’t have any playlists saved,” I say. “What do you listen to?”
“I just pick a random station and listen,” she says.
I stifle a groan. She’s even a people pleaser to faceless playlists made by AI and algorithms.
If robots ever take over the world, something tells me Poppy will sign up to serve them motor oil.
“What kind of music do you like?”
“Oh, a little of everything.”
“No you don’t.”
She gives me a confused smile. “Yes, I do.”
“Really? Fine.” I find a Screamo playlist—an awful blend of hardcore emo punk music.
Chaotic, dissonant tempos assail us, making me feel like my ears are bleeding. And that’s before the screaming vocals start.
“I take it back!” Poppy cries, swatting my arm in a way that makes me chuckle. “Turn it off!”
I turn off the song. “Want to try again? What kind of music do you like?”
She glares at me, her hazel eyes playful and piercing and her lips puckered, like she’s biting the inside of her cheek. “You’ll just make fun of me,” she says.
“I won’t,” I say, though we both know that’s probably a lie.
“‘80s New Wave.”
Funny. Grace likes New Wave. I pull up a song she told me she loves.
It’s from one of those old John Hughes movies where the cute overlooked girl wishes the cool, aloof guy would love her, and at the end of the movie, he realizes he’s been an idiot all along and that he can’t live without her.
Poppy sways to the music, more relaxed than she’s been for hours with that far off look on her face.
“So?” she asks, batting her long lashes slowly, like she’s still waking from a dream.
“It’s not what I’d pick, but it’s not bad,” I say honestly. In fact, I’ve come to like this song. It reminds me of Grace.
“What would you pick?” she asks.
“We’re not close enough for that.”
“What?” she laughs, her full lips stretching into a disbelieving smile. “I told you what I like!”
“Hey, a playlist is a personal thing,” I say. “Just because you overshare with strangers, doesn’t mean I do.”
She flares her nostrils as she breathes out a laugh that somehow fills the car. “You are unreal.”
Two semi trucks are taking up both lanes, driving at the exact same speed and acting as a very slow-moving roadblock. Poppy might be anxious about the weather, especially now that the sun has set, but she doesn’t look like she’s happy driving this slowly, either.
“What if I can guess?” she asks.
I think for a second. I don’t actually mind telling her what kind of music I like, but I’m tired and she’s tired and it’ll be easier to keep her alert if she’s engaged in some back and forth. On top of that, she already knows me as an ornery guy. No need to change her opinion of me.
“All right, give it a try,” I tell her.
“Stadium rock.”
“No,” I say.
“Metal. Hairband, that kind of stuff.”
“Meh,” I say. “Not the worst, but it’s not my style.”
“Classic rock,” she says.
“Who doesn’t like classic rock?”
“Is that your answer?”
“No. I like it, but it’s not my go-to.”
“Girl power rock?”
I sniff. “What even is that?”
“You know, Pink. Heart. Katy Perry.”
“No,” I say.
“I give up.”
“You give up? You haven’t mentioned tons of genres. Country, punk, classical, emo. Come on.”
“Okay. Country? Punk? Classical? Emo?”
“No.”
She makes a growling sound I can barely hear over the rhythmic thump of the windshield wipers. “Ollie Fletcher, you are the most irritating man alive.”
I laugh to myself. “Okay, okay. Surf pop. The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean—that kind of thing.”
“What? You like surfer music?”
“Why is that so hard to believe?”
“Because everything about you screams ‘jock,’ and ‘jock’ doesn’t exactly scream ‘Beach Boys.’”
“You’ve watched way too many ‘80s movies if you think people are separated into boxes like that.”
“Beach Boy are ‘60s,” she says.
“You get my point.”
One of the trucks finally gets around the other, and Poppy changes lanes to get around the slower semi.
She side-eyes me quickly after she passes a handful of cars taking caution to the extreme. Poppy’s a good driver. The few glances she gives me are the most distracted she gets.
I like that about her.
I force myself to look out the window. It doesn’t matter. In a couple of days, we’ll never see each other again, and we’ll both be happier for it.
“I like The Beach Boys. One of my best friends got me hooked on them, in fact. But I like classic rock and some country too,” she says.
“Let me guess: you’re obsessed with Lucy Jane,” I say. She’s one of the biggest names in country right now with just enough crossover to blues and Americana that I can deal.
“I’m a woman between the ages of 18 and 50. Yes, I’m obsessed with LJ,” she confirms. “Starlight is my favorite.”
I nod. It’s a good song. “You know, she’s engaged to my friend’s brother.” The words are out before I can stop them. Am I trying to impress her?
“Wait.” Her mouth falls open, and she does a slow blink. “She’s engaged to Patrick O’Shannan. That makes your friend … Sean O’Shannan. The hot hockey player married to Kayla Carville! You have the best life!”
“Funny enough, I don’t find Sean hot.”
She laughs. “I mean you’re friends with a famous hockey player and his billionaire wife.
Kayla Carville! The woman is iconic, always holding one of those sleek tumblers that matches her outfit.
Epic.” The snow around the front of the car looks like a ship in Star Wars zipping through the galaxy.
“Wait, LJ was at Kayla’s wedding! I saw the pictures. Were you there?”
“I was in the wedding party.” I hate to admit how much I like that she’s impressed. “Kayla’s actually my boss.”
She almost whimpers with envy. “You are so lucky.”
“It’s not like having a famous boss and famous friends does a whole lot for me.”
“Yeah, well, having the exact opposite has taken its toll on me, so allow me to live vicariously through you for a minute, will you?”
Passing headlights cast a moving shadow on her face, giving me a better glimpse of the dreamy look in her eyes. I could tell her that my life is a lot closer to hers than she thinks, but after everything she’s said, it would be a lie.
I watch her profile—the soft curve of her jaw, the way the apples of her cheeks fall …
Why is her face falling?
“Hey, I just realized how insensitive that was,” she says. “Your whole life, you worked hard to become a famous athlete, and you earned it. I’m sorry I’m minimizing that by focusing on your friends. They don’t make you cooler or more important.”
It hadn’t even crossed my mind to think that way. But the fact that she did says something about Poppy.
She’s not merely a people pleaser.
She’s a people investor. She puts herself into others’ shoes and tries to imagine what life must be like for them.
No wonder she stopped being able to listen to a true crime podcast that focuses so much on the fallout. The pain of victims and their families must tear her to shreds.
“Poppy—” I start, but I stop myself just as quickly.
What am I going to say, I’m sorry for the way I treated you when we first met? I already apologized for that. I’m sorry I keep misjudging you? She doesn’t know I’m doing that at all, so an apology would relieve my guilt to hurt her feelings.
Crap.
When did I start overthinking everything? What has this woman done to me in only a single day?
“Yes?” She angles her face toward mine, keeping her eyes on the dark and snowy night. A strand of hair escapes from behind her ear, and I have an urge to tuck it back in place.
Man, she’s pretty.
“Uh, we’re getting low on gas and there’s a station up ahead. We should stop,” I say.
She nods, and a few minutes later, we’re pulling off the road. “I’ll fuel up,” I tell her.
“Okay,” she says before rushing out into the cold toward the convenience store.
As I pump the gas, I watch her through the store window. She’s talking to the cashier, probably asking about his day. The guy smiles and leans on his elbows to talk to her. The jerk. What’s he doing flirting with a woman he’ll never see again?
Exhaust fills my lungs, but I breathe easier without Poppy so close.
This trip can’t end soon enough.