Chapter Thirteen #2
He was rattled, but knew better than to show it. “Hey, hey!” Landon shout whispered. “These walls are thin!”
“That should be the last thing you’re worried about right now,” Poppy said, though she did, in fact, lower her voice. “I thought you were leaving.”
Landon opened the door to his room all the way and waved her in. “I never said that.” He was fairly sure that, if anything, he’d said the opposite.
Poppy brushed him out of the way with her shoulder and stood in the center of the sparse room, arms crossed. “I told you to.”
He rubbed his eyes and tried very hard not to roll them as far back into his skull as they could go. “I hope I’m not the first person to tell you that your words don’t actually carry more weight than the average person’s.”
Poppy’s nostrils flared. “Rose told you not to come.”
“You made it very clear that Rose didn’t say anything at all to me.”
“Implicitly.”
Landon didn’t want to think about it like that. If he did, then what he was doing would feel more loaded than it was. “So you’ve tracked me down and barged into my room in the middle of the night to tell me to go home, is that right?”
“First of all,” Poppy said, scowling, “it’s not even ten. Second of all, this hardly counts as ‘tracking you down.’ Rose told me about you.”
It made Landon’s heart flutter like a teenager with a crush. “She talked about me?”
She pulled her lips into a line. “I asked Rose how she was feeling, and she mentioned a new member of her and Graham’s group. A prospective student who looked like, and I’m quoting her here, ‘someone who has a complicated relationship with ceiling fans.’”
“That’s really spot on,” Landon said. “Rose didn’t used to be that funny.”
“She’s not Rose.”
Landon was sure the answer lay somewhere in the middle but did not think this conversation with Poppy would benefit from shades of gray. “Agree to disagree.”
Poppy audibly ground her teeth. “You know that I don’t do that. I just disagree.”
“It only takes one person to agree to disagree.”
“You always do this,” Poppy said. “You always find a way to twist my words, but I’m here because I actually fucking care about you, okay? I fucking care about both of you.”
“Well, then you understand why I’m doing this.”
“No, Landon,” she said, some of her fire giving way to sadness. Or maybe pity. Landon had never been very good at reading her. “I don’t.”
“I’m no different from Graham.”
“Yes you are, Landon. You know you are.”
“How?” He was getting angry now. “If she doesn’t know me, tell me how it’s different?”
“It’s not fair to her.”
“What do you—”
“You have to know it’s not fair.”
“Tell me—”
“Graham is a blank slate!” she yelled.
“Hey!” Someone in the room next door banged on the wall. “For the love of God, would you shut up!”
“Sorry!” Landon yelled back, then dropped to a whisper. “Graham is a man who met a woman, just like me.”
“I’m giving you some grace here,” Poppy whispered, “because I’ve seen you at your lowest. Both of you.
And I understand you’re doing what you think you need to do to dig out of the hole you were in.
Because that’s what Rose is doing, too. And she deserves the freedom to live this new life without bumping up against your baggage. ”
“She’ll never know,” he whispered.
Poppy frowned. “Does that make it better?” she asked. “Does it make what you’re doing right?”
Her words nagged at him. “She left without a word, Poppy. She left me without a fucking word.”
“Landon—”
“No,” he said, without raising his voice.
“You didn’t even give me a chance. You knew she was going to take the pill, and you didn’t give me a fucking chance to try to change her mind.
I had to beg Conor to give me that address.
I had to tell him I would do unspeakable things if he didn’t help me.
” Even in his altered state, he’d known it was a terrible thing to do to a friend.
“What would you do?” he asked, with sincerity.
“The love of your life leaves without a word. Your wife walks away without a word and no one will tell you where she’s gone or what’s happened to her after—” He froze.
“Would you just try to start over as though none of it had happened? Would you take a pill? Or would you fight for it?”
They stared at each other in the dark, neither of them willing to break first. Finally, Poppy sighed.
“It’s in your eyes, Landon,” she said. “She might never find out who you are and what you did, but it’s all there, in your eyes.
” Landon felt himself hardening, the protective barrier he’d carefully constructed falling back into place around his aching heart.
“But I should have called,” she said, the concession so cushioned that this time Landon was sure it was pity.
“You deserved closure. I should have at least come by the house to give you this.” Poppy reached into her leather purse and pulled out a small clasp envelope.
“I’ve been meaning to, since you got here. ”
Landon took it, wishing his hands weren’t trembling. “Is this—”
“Her ring. She wanted you to have it. Well, she wanted your mother to have it. But either way, it wasn’t mine to keep.”
Landon had wondered, of course, what had happened to it, but when faced with the truth of what Rose had done, the trappings of the material world had quickly lost their significance. He tossed the envelope on the bed in a show of indifference they both knew was just that.
“I’m calling Conor,” Poppy said. “And look, I know that neither of us can stop you if you’re bent on this, but I really hope we don’t have to keep trying.”
“I don’t have anything more to say.” It wasn’t true. There was so much more he wanted to say. He could rail against what had happened to him—to them—for hours. Landon crossed his arms. “And I think you should go.”
“Sleep on it,” Poppy said, softly. “Everything always feels better in the morning. There’s still time to do the right thing.” Landon clicked the lock back into place behind her.
Eyes burning, Landon riffled around in his backpack until he found them: the last of the Ativan his doctor had prescribed to help him forget, at least for a little while.
He broke a pill in half and washed it down with the lukewarm water on his bedside table.
His heart rate would slow as the drugs worked their magic, and he would sleep.
He knew that reliably. And he would feel better in the morning, he reasoned. Because Rose would be there.