Chapter 35 Pink Lemonade
Pink Lemonade
Poppy
I wake with a headache in a hospital bed.
It takes effort to breathe. Effort to move my head around. I try my best to stretch, and piece by piece, the memory of how
I got here comes back. The realization I accidentally ingested pineapple. Jack’s face, tight with worry, floating over mine
as EMTs arrived. The panic of being separated from him when they bundled me into the ambulance. I sit up with effort, my heart
sprinting, sweat breaking out underneath my arms. I don’t want to be alone here.
Jack is in a chair next to the bed. He looks like he woke up not too long ago; his hair is mussed, shirt wrinkled. When he
meets my gaze, something crosses his face, an emotion I can’t categorize or even label. He takes me in silently, and I do
the same. I’ve heard that tornadoes can turn the sky green. His eyes remind me of that right now: a viridescent sky, strange
and foreboding.
“You stayed?” My voice comes out scratchy.
He simply leans forward to pour me a cup of water from a jug on the table next to the bed.
Cradling the back of my head, he tips the cup into my mouth.
My eyes flutter shut as I drink. His thumb rubs over my nape soothingly.
I lean into his touch, arching like a cat, wanting more contact.
It’s cold in this room, and he’s deliciously warm.
I could fall asleep again like this, surrounded by his scent.
“Sweetheart.” He brushes the hair away from my face. “How do you feel?”
Thinking up an answer seems monumentally difficult, given the way my temples are pounding. I rub my head against his palm.
One side of his mouth tilts up. “Tell me, Poppy.”
I whine as he slides away. I reach out my hand, desperate for more contact, for the mere brush of our fingers. He interlaces
his with mine, and I breathe easier. “My head hurts. But I’m okay. Did I really . . . I mean . . .”
“You had an allergic reaction. Owen used pineapple juice in the taco marinade. I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“I should have mentioned something to him.”
With effort, I smile. “I think that’s my job.”
“All the same.”
We’re quiet. Out in the hallway, I hear murmurs, but no one comes into the room. Jack rubs his eyes. It occurs to me that
it must be Saturday. Morning sun comes in weakly through the windows. He’s wearing the same clothes he wore on the drive down
to Fort Lauderdale. He looks as rumpled as I feel.
He stayed all night; I’m sure of it. My stomach swoops. I don’t know what to do with that. It feels too big, too scary to
even think about.
“Shouldn’t you be at the restaurant?”
“I’ll take you back when they discharge you.” He runs a hand over his beard, then pulls out his phone, swiping it open. He
puts it to his ear as he stands. “They kept you for observation overnight, just in case. Let me find a nurse.”
The door shuts behind him. I stare at my wrist, the thin line of the IV snaking out from my vein. His scent lingers, ocean
and pine and something else that’s uniquely him. I sniff the pillow. There’s the sterile hospital smell, but also him, like
the pillows we’ve been sharing at the houseboat.
Another memory swims into my consciousness.
Jack carefully curled up around me in this very bed, his body like a protective shell.
His breath tickled my ear. His arm held me close to his chest. A helpless giggle slips out of me.
I haven’t been in many hospitals, but I’m pretty sure that’s not allowed.
And yet he did it anyway. He stayed by me, guarding me, so I wouldn’t be alone in a strange hospital for even a moment.
Another thing I don’t want to ponder too closely.
A nurse pokes her head into the room. She smiles at the sight of me. “Poppy, hello. So glad to see you awake. I’m Lola.”
“Hi. Jack said I was here overnight?”
“Yes.” She fiddles with the machine I’m hooked up to, adding data to a tablet before turning to me. Her scrubs are plum-colored,
her locs held back from her face with a matching headband. “We got plenty of adrenaline and fluids into you, but decided to
keep you for observation overnight just in case. We should be able to discharge you later today.”
“That’s good.”
“Your boyfriend is quite the protective one,” she adds teasingly as she checks my IV. “He wouldn’t leave your side at all.
The night nurse had to remind him quite sternly not to jostle you.”
Her assumption ought to make me scoff, but it doesn’t. It sets my heart racing anew. Flush creeps up my cheeks. “Oh, he’s
not my boyfriend.”
“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“He’s my business partner.” I lick my sore lips, trying to sort through my thoughts. “He’s, um, sort of like a brother, except—well,
obviously a brother wouldn’t kiss his sister like that, so we’re . . . well, we’re friends. Just . . . good friends. He really
stayed in this room with me all night?”
Lola blinks.
I can’t seem to make myself shut up. “Sometimes I annoy him so much, I wouldn’t put it past him to feed me pineapple on purpose.
Not that that’s what happened here. He didn’t try to poison me. If I died because someone intentionally fed me the thing I’m
allergic to, would that be considered a poisoning?”
“You should rest a little more,” Lola says. She frowns. “Actually, let me take your temperature again.”
As she wraps up her examination, reassured that I’m not fever-babbling, Jack walks back into the room. He looks more alert than before, with a paper cup in hand.
“Coffee?” I say hopefully.
“No coffee for you yet,” Lola says, fixing us both with a stern look. “I’ll send a tray for you. Keep down some orange juice
and then we’ll talk.”
As she leaves the room, Jack settles into the chair next to the bed. “I’d sneak you a sip, but I’m already on thin ice around
here.”
“Lola mentioned something about that.”
“She seems nicer than the night nurse. That woman was about a hundred years old and made it clear she’s called security many
times before.”
I snort, shaking my head. “You really could have gone back, you know.”
“No, Poppy.” He sets the coffee on the table, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. His voice has dropped an octave.
“I couldn’t have.”
And with aching gentleness, his lips meet mine.
I freeze. My mind trips over itself. Jack Hartman, kissing me again. Considering the other things we’ve done together, this
shouldn’t lend itself to any reaction at all. And yet my breath catches. I whimper as his hand slides into my hair. He’s undressed
me, tasted me, filled me, and the mere brush of our mouths has me trembling. It’s erotic beyond belief. A kiss a thousand
times more charged than the one he gave me in the kitchen. A kiss to end all other kisses. A kiss that promises even more
than what he’s already given me.
I want it. I want it so badly, my soul aches.
Almost too late, I kiss back. He groans, low in his throat, spurred on by my clumsy reaction, and licks into my mouth. We’re
devouring each other. His fingers tug my hair. I claw down his back, practically growling as I grab a fistful of his shirt.
It’s a filthy thing to do in a place like this, and yet I can’t stop. When he tries to ease away, I cling tighter, a koala
hanging on to her favorite tree branch. Jack is my eucalyptus tree.
“Poppy. Darling.” He untangles us gently. His face is flushed; I can tell even with his beard. “The heart monitor is going
wild.”
I wish he’d kiss me again, but his face is pinched with worry. “I shouldn’t have—”
“Jack.”
“You’re exhausted.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good.” I scratch my thumbnail over a tattoo on the back of his hand. A set of fangs, dripping blood. It’s right next to the
delicate outline of a sunflower.
He leans in again, and I meet him halfway, eagerly awaiting more pressure, more friction. The heart monitor can explode for
all I care; I’ve never craved a kiss more.
“I was so scared to lose you,” he whispers as his lips brush mine.
My brain short-circuits. Fireworks erupt in my belly. The whispered confession echoes again and again in time with my heart,
which beats a frenzied tattoo against my ribs.
No one has said anything remotely like that to me, ever.
Distantly, a phone vibrates. Jack eases away, and then he’s talking, voice low. I can’t make out what he’s saying over the
buzz in my ears.
Eventually, he holds out the phone. It’s mine; the scuffed pink case is unmistakable. His brows are pinched together, mouth
twisted like tangled fishing line.
“It’s your parents.”
Before Florida, the longest I’d gone without talking to my parents was approximately twelve hours. Even when I was limping
my way through SUNY Binghamton.
Hearing them exclaim over the phone is almost enough to make me forget why I decided to put distance between us in the first place.
“Thank god you’re okay, honey,” Mom says, relief palpable in her tone.
“If you need us, we can be there in a few hours,” Dad adds.
I struggle to sit up. This bed doesn’t make it especially easy. Jack moves away, or at least he tries; I grab his wrist before
he can stand. He sinks back into his chair. “No, I’m fine. I’m being discharged soon.”
“Jack said you didn’t have your EpiPen.” That’s Dad.
“I must have forgotten it in my other purse.”
He sighs. “Poppy—”
“Douglas, it was a mistake,” Mom says. “She’s fine.”
Longing hits my chest, my bones, at their little tiff. Whatever my frustration with my family, I can’t deny that we’re closer
than most. I wish, suddenly, that I was in Rye. It’s mid-October. The leaves must be all kinds of colors by now. I’m sure
Mom put Miso in a sweater at the first sign of chill. I miss our family dinners. Watching old movies with my dad and shopping
with my mom.
“Usually, it’s pretty easy to avoid pineapple.” I rub my tired eyes, suppressing a yawn. Any sign that I’m less than peachy,
and it’ll be all the ammunition my dad needs to hop on a plane.
“And yet you didn’t, and now you’re in some random hospital in Fort Lauderdale, of all places,” Dad grumbles.
“It’s Fort Lauderdale, not the moon,” I put in.