Chapter 47 Poppy
POPPY
The sun shining through the snow-covered trees outside illuminates my room and wakes me. I rub my eyes until they’re no longer bleary and look around, remembering that I decided to stay at Jett’s last night, rather than driving all the way back to Heartwood.
I turn over and bury my face in the soft, feather pillow and try not to think about the fact that this is the last time I can stay here. Once Jett gets home from World’s, the divorce process will truly begin. We’ll both sign the papers, and that will be that.
I don’t think it’s super appropriate to continue sleeping at your ex-husband’s house, even though these sheets are divine. I wonder if he’ll notice if I take them with me.
Getting out of bed, I throw on my sweater over Jett’s t-shirt, which I slept in last night, and make my way out to the kitchen.
The house is silent, but this morning it’s a peaceful quiet, the serene view of the bright white snow and clear blue sky visible through the floor to ceiling windows that make up the entire side of the living room and kitchen.
I make myself an oat milk latte with the espresso machine Jett bought for the place while I was staying here.
So I could have a coffee up to my standards every morning.
I pour the steamed milk over the shot, into a large pottery mug, and I settle on the couch to soak up the morning sun while I drink it.
After a minute or two of sitting in the silence, I realize that there’s been no sign of Cordelia all morning, so I take my coffee with me, and make my way down the hall towards Jett’s room to look for her.
All my time spent staying here with Jett, I’ve never actually stepped foot in his bedroom, and doing so this morning feels like an intrusion. I was only joking about snooping around in his personal items last night.
When I step into the room, it’s not at all what I’m expecting. It’s not overly lavish, and it’s clear that he didn’t have the interior designer that did the guest room do his as well.
But it’s tasteful, it’s him. The room is painted a dark brown, almost black, and the mid-century modern furniture contrasts nicely against it.
There’s a single plant, a fiddle leaf fig, in the corner, and if anything is surprising to me, it’s the fact that Jett has managed to keep it alive and thriving.
Cordelia is curled up on top of his pillow, her black fur creating what looks like a smudge on the crisp, white linen.
“There you are,” I whisper, still feeling like I’m doing something I shouldn’t be by being in his room. I go over to the bed to pet her, and when I approach what looks to be the side that Jett favours, I notice something on the nightstand.
A photo. A printed picture of us, from the day Jett took me skiing. Half our faces obscured by ski goggles and helmets, but the lower half is all anyone would need to see to know that we’re stupidly happy together. I was stupidly happy that day.
Next to it, is something familiar, made of the same green cotton yarn I gave Jett when I taught him to knit. I pick it up and look at the dishcloth. It’s nothing like the first one he made. The rows of this one are all even, the edges straight, each stitch perfectly defined.
He’s been practicing on his own.
I keep turning it over in my hand, picturing him working on it as if he wanted to impress me with how much he’s improved, when the doorbell rings.
My palms are suddenly sweaty, and I drop it on the nightstand before I make my way out to see who is at the front door. Am I supposed to answer it? What if it’s a reporter? What if someone followed me here last night?
My thoughts are swirling around as I try to figure out what to do, but when I round the corner, Wren is peering in through the window beside the door, Hudson and his golden retriever, Ruby standing behind her.
I let out a breath, and open the door, glancing out to the street to make sure no one followed them here.
This whole debacle has made me so paranoid.
“What are you guys doing here?” I ask, as Ruby shoves past me, sniffing the floor, following the exact path that Cordelia took when she came in last night. “You know Jett’s in Zermatt, right?”
“Yeah, we’re here to see you,” Wren says, and I flash her a quizzical look. “Hudson texted Jett to find out where you were when we couldn’t track you down at the café or at home. We tried calling you but—”
“My phone’s dead,” I finish. It died late last night, after I got off the phone with Jett, and I was too afraid to go rummaging through drawers around here to find a charger.
“Yeah, so I’m assuming you haven’t seen the news.”
Oh god, what now?
My heart drops, because nothing good has ever started with “have you seen the news?”, at least not in the last few months, anyway.
“No…” My voice trails off, and I hear something that sounds like news coverage coming from the living room.
Hudson is already in there, flicking through channels to find one that is replaying the story they want me to see.
I understand why when I make my way into the living room, and I hear a familiar voice.
It’s missing the same cocky, confident lilt it normally has, but the deep, warm timbre warms me through to my core.
When I look up at the screen, it’s like those cocoa-dark eyes can somehow see through the camera into the house, to me.
A banner flashes across the bottom of the screen as Jett listens for the reporter’s next question. It reads Jett Landry to Compete at World’s Despite Setbacks, and below in smaller letters, Zermatt, CH.
Pride swells in my chest.
“Tell us about Dan’s decision to sponsor you. This must be costing him a fortune.” The reporter asks.
“Dan has more than enough to fund my trip, but this isn’t about the money,” Jett answers, and his mouth slides into a grin. It’s the same one he makes when he knows he’s about to stun his audience. “Dan has always had my back from day one, and his support means the world to me.”
He pauses for second, thinking, and in the moment of quiet, Cordelia purrs loudly.
“And, it turns out you don’t need money and fanfare when you’re born as talented as I was.”
There it is. That cocky arrogance that you can’t help but love. That Jett’s fans go crazy for. I smile, torn between missing him terribly and feeling my heart about to burst. Despite all odds, despite the setbacks, Jett and I both managed to get to where we wanted to be.
Just not with each other.
And that’s okay, that was the plan all along. There’s just still a part of me that wishes I could be there, at the bottom to celebrate with him. To pull him in for a kiss as he waits to hear his score.
“Would you like to make a comment on the most recent allegations about your marriage?”
I wince at the mention of the scandal, and brace myself for Jett’s answer, wondering how he’ll spin it for the media.
But something in his expression changes, softens, as he prepares to give his answer.
It’s the same look he got on his face before he addressed the kids at the high school. It’s him. No mask.
“As skiers, we always talk about the fall line, something to respect if not to fear. We’re aways riding just close enough to it to stay on the safe side, to not let ourselves lose control.
I think I did that a lot in my life, too.
But with Poppy…” Jett shakes his head, trying to find the right words.
I wonder if he knows I’m watching, if whatever he says will be filtered a certain way. But when he speaks, there’s nothing but honesty in his tone.
“The second I kissed her for the first time, I fell hard and fast. I lost control, and it was exhilarating. Our relationship might have start out fake, but my feelings for Poppy are very real. I went into it thinking that it would be safe, that Poppy and I were so different there’d be no way we’d develop feelings for each other, or that she would develop feelings for me.
But I have fallen head over heels for a quirky girl and her cat. And that’s the truth.”
My heart stutters, my breath catching in my throat as I snatch the remote out of Hudson’s hand and rewind it to listen again. My feelings for Poppy are very real… I’ve fallen head over heels…
A fluttery feeling fills me up, rippling through my body making me giddy and antsy and physically unable to stop smiling.
It wasn’t just me. I wasn’t imagining it. Jett felt it too, and God, I wish I wasn’t almost eight thousand miles away from him.
All the times that Jett has taken care of me, at bowling, teaching me to ski, even just knowing when I need a day to unwind and rest… Travelling the world doesn’t seem so impossible if I have him waiting for me at the end.
Hudson and Wren are staring at me, as I stare at the TV screen, where Jett’s face has been frozen since I unknowingly paused it.
“Poppy.” Wren breaks me out of my trance, the gobsmacked state my brain fell into. “You know what this means, right?”
I’m still dumbfounded when I pull my eyes away from the screen and look at her. All I can think about is Jett’s admission. That he’s fallen just as hard for me as I’ve fallen for him. We may have done our relationship slightly out of order, but the result was the same.
“Poppy,” she repeats, as if she knows that saying my name will help to ground me and refocus me. “We need to get you to Switzerland.”
Excitement sparks to life in my belly, the possibility that I might be there to see Jett win the cup, to be waiting for him at the end of his run. To kiss him like we have so many times now, but knowing this one will be different. It will mean more. It will mean everything.
But the spark flickers out when I realize the impossibility of Wren’s suggestion.
“The event is tomorrow. There’s no way I’ll get there on time,” I counter.
“We need to try,” Wren says, that stubborn, headstrong part of her nature blazing in her brown eyes. It reminds me of someone else who is used to always getting what she wants. Someone who owes Jett and I both a favour, or ten.
I hold out my hand to Wren. “I need to use your phone.”
She doesn’t ask any questions before she hands it to me, and I type in Brooke’s number. I’ve seen it pop up on my phone so many times by now that I have it memorized.
Brooke, it’s Poppy. Any chance you can get me to Zermatt before the final?
Wren and Hudson and I take a seat on the couch while we wait for Brooke’s reply.
I can’t stop my knee from bouncing as we stare at the phone. After what feels like hours but is only minutes, her name lights up Wren’s screen.
brOOKE
I’ve been waiting for your text. I’m headed there today on the Nuclear jet. Get to the Banff airfield in an hour and I’ll get you on the plane.