The wardrobe stepped up a rung or two this time, as I got ready. There was a fine balance I needed to ride, regardless of who did or didn’t show up. I wasn’t about to doll it up to little black dress level like some of those women had, but I wasn’t going in sneakers and a hoodie again either.
Yep, I was going to the group meeting. If anything required a support group, it was this day, and if I was ever in need of an ego boost, it was now. I’d spent the entire afternoon after I left Bart’s office scouring the internet for apartments, rental houses, anything nearby. Hell, even the trailer park on the other side of Charmed was full. Nothing in neighboring Goldworth that I could afford, and nothing in Denning that I’d feel safe in. I couldn’t swing a daily hotel rate, and now that Drew was in a one-bedroom tiny trailer, I couldn’t bunk with her. All my friends were coupled up, and I wasn’t about to be anyone’s third wheel. There was one option, and I wasn’t happy about it. The rooms above Graham’s Florist. The thought kept making me nauseous, and I couldn’t think about it anymore today. For one more night, I needed some kind of normal. One more night of looking through my closet for something to wear, while it was still my closet. Still my bedroom. Still my world. My house.
My house that the bank now owned in full, that I couldn’t afford to buy back or get a loan for, since my name was now attached to a foreclosure. I was stuck in limbo, and about to be stuck living in a room above my workplace, where my mother cleaned the shared bathroom that was down the hall.
I needed an outfit lined in magic dust. I decided on a soft, fitted, v-necked burgundy sweater that I always got compliments on and made me feel pretty. Some dark jeans that I knew made my ass look good, and a pair of leather mule wedges that I’d had for probably ten years and were as comfortable as slippers. Underneath, I wore a tiny thong and a barely-there lace bra I’d forgotten I owned, so I could feel very female and powerful. I had both sexy and comfort on my side, and with some extra little flip to the layers in my hair and a clear gloss on my lips, I headed out the door. I had dressed for me.
I wasn’t fooling myself. I had dressed for the possibility of someone else, too, but mostly for me. He would just be icing. They’d all just be icing from now on. No one would have the power to gut me like that again.
There was a mixed bag of disappointment and relief when I pulled into the parking lot and didn’t see Hot Guy’s truck, but I pushed both of them away. I didn’t need to have any opinion whatsoever. Icing, and all that.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Okay,” I said. “We can do this.”
I stepped out, hit my remote, and tossed my hair a little as I made it up to the porch. Hopefully, I could start new, and no one would remember me or my hasty exit, but if they did—fuck it. That would be my new mantra. I pulled my phone out so I could look like I was texting someone as I entered, because—yeah, I was secure like that.
Something warm and peachy met my nose as I opened the door, and my mouth watered immediately. I was all set to even be satisfied with a fruit tray and not need comfort food, but oh my God whatever that was needed to be in my mouth and now.
“Lois!” said a loud barking smoker’s voice, way too close to justify the volume.
Well, so much for starting over. Mantra, it would be.
“Hi,” I said, glancing at her nametag just as Cher nearly rolled off my tongue. “Um, does that say Belle?”
Her long silver hair was braided over her shoulder this time and it swayed as she nodded.
“My granddaughter, Macy, was over today, and we watched Beauty and the Beast,” she said with a grin. “So, what the hell.”
I chuckled. “Great idea.”
“You seem much more—together tonight,” she said. “Sticking around this time?”
I laughed again, and searched out the source of the aroma, nailing it down like a professional food spy.
“Is that cobbler?” I asked, spotting the three pans on the back table. Three.
“Peach, apple, and blackberry,” Cher—I mean Belle—said.
I stared at her. “You made them all?”
“Macy and I did,” she said. “I’m teaching her how to cook everything under the sun, so one…any man would be nuts to leave her, and two…she will eat just fine if they do.”
“I’m all for that,” I said. “And yes, I’m staying, if for no other reason than to get some of each one.”
She handed me a nametag and a pen. “Still Lois?”
“Nope,” I said, surprised at how fast I decided that. I didn’t have another plan. But Belle had done something that meant something to her tonight, so where could I go with that idea? Badass Bitch? “I’m not sure who I am, actually.”
“Don’t think on it too much,” she said with a hard wink. “Keep it simple.”
Keep it simple. Hmm. Homeless movie characters? No, too depressingly real. What was the last seed we’d looked at in the catalog? Thistle. No. Poppies.
Poppy. What the hell.
“Fuck it,” I mumbled, pulling off the cap and writing it in red.
“Pardon?” she said, eyebrows lifted.
“Nothing,” I said, peeling off the sticker and affixing it just above my left boob.
“Poppy?”
“That’s me,” I said with a smile. “Tonight, at least.”
She nodded with a satisfied grin. “Well, Poppy, I have to say you look armed for bear tonight.”
I held up my chin with a smile. “I think so.”
“But are you armed for him?”
I knew who the him was before her eyebrows lifted and her appreciative gaze fixed behind me. She might be old, but she wasn’t dead. She knew what male perfection was about, and I remembered every detail about it. Would he remember me? Would he recognize me?
I turned around, ready to hold my chin up and look unaffected, and my jaw nearly fell off my face.
He hadn’t seen me yet, walking in laden with two fruit trays and Aspen, who was touching him with every word, every laugh, every blink of her perfectly lined eyes. They could have been a couple—hell, they might be. They might have hooked up after I left last week for all I knew.
That wasn’t why I stood there slack-mouthed and stupid. It was him.
Gone was the professionally pressed and tucked everything and clean-shaven sharpness. In its place was a long-sleeved black T-shirt shoved up on his forearms, jeans worn soft, and a hint of scruff on his face.
“Jesus,” I said under my breath.
“I don’t think Jesus looked like that,” Belle said behind me. “If he had, he wouldn’t have stayed single.”
I cleared my throat as his gaze did a quick sweep of the room and swung back to me as if on a bungee cord. Okay, he remembered. How he felt about that memory was impossible to read. I inhaled a quick breath and turned back to smile at my silver-haired friend.
“I think it’s cobbler time,” I said.
“That’s really for the break,” she said, darting a glance back at the table.
“Then it shouldn’t be out there in my time of need.”
I headed straight for the table and opened the still-wrapped package of plastic plates, setting them out and snagging one. I was struggling with the blackberry, having cut small squares of each of the other two but still with my keys in my hand for reasons I couldn’t explain, when I felt his presence at my side.
“Look who’s back,” he said, his voice sliding over me like hot honey. As I opened my mouth and turned to him with a ready retort, his gaze seemed to absorb me in a millisecond. “You look nice tonight.”
My tongue stuck. I nodded and let my eyes take him in quickly as well before focusing back on my task. “You—so do you,” I said, my voice catching. I cleared my throat. “You look relaxed.”
He chuckled. “Is that a good thing? Or a metaphor for you look like you’ve been run over by a truck?”
I laughed as I worked on getting my blackberry piece out, looping my keyring on a finger.
“Definitely not the truck option,” I said. “I guess I don’t really know if this is relaxed for you, or if last week was dressed up, but—”
“But?”
“But they both work,” I said, my cheeks flaming.
“And you?” he asked. “Which is normal for you?”
“Depends on the mood.”
He nodded. “It’s just been a rough week in my case,” he said. “I’m exhausted.”
“I hear that,” I said. “Work?”
“Family,” he responded, grabbing a plate.
“Oh,” I said, frowning. “Sorry. Family can suck it out of you sometimes.”
“Going for the hard stuff?” he said, spearing some of Aspen’s fruit. Of course he’d want her fruit. Why not. He leaned over to read my boob. “Poppy, is it now?”
“Yep, you’ve had a week and I’ve had a week’s worth in a day,” I said. “Not wasting time on the tease, I’m going straight to the good stuff.” My eyes closed as I heard my own words, my face flooding with heat.
“Really,” he said.
“I didn’t—I mean—” The amused yet incredibly sexy look in his eyes took my words and threw them out the door. I chuckled nervously as he refused to blink and dropped his gaze to my mouth.
“Maybe you’re doing the tease all wrong, then,” he said, ignoring my stammering. He had laid out pineapple and arranged kiwi slices delicately over them, just the edge of juicy pineapple peeking out. If fruit could look sensuous, he’d managed it. He picked up a kiwi slice and ran it across my bottom lip, making me gasp and open for it as I met his eyes. “If done right,” he said, sliding it into my mouth, “the fruit can be just as good as the dessert.”
The tart-sweetness exploded on my tongue, and his eyes on me sent tiny little explosions everywhere else. A splash on my hand and a clink of something against glass made us jump as though it was a cannon firing, and I looked to my left at a pitcher of lemonade. With my keys in it.
“Oh, crap,” I said.
Quick as lightning, he dove a hand into the lemonade and extracted my keys. My electronic, keyless entry key fob and my house key. And the shop key. And a little code card with a bar scan for the gym. All those things would wipe off and be okay, except for the thing that opened and started my car.
“One second,” he said, an irritable note in his tone. Irritated with me? Why? “Aspen, I need to borrow some gauze and one of those tiny hook things you terrorize patients with,” he called over his shoulder.
“Um—”
“It’ll be okay,” he said. “Just needs taking apart and drying off.”
“You know how to do that?” I asked.
“My ex-wife dropped hers in coffee,” he said. “Twice.”
“Ah.”
He took the fob off the rest of the ring and grabbed the tool Aspen ran up with, prodding it along the edges till he found a place to pry it. Sure enough, he popped it open in seconds and pulled the little pieces carefully free, pressing gauze into all the crevices that would let him. The way Aspen was clinging to him in awe of his mad techy skills, she was willing to let him into her crevices as well. I got that. My blood was still tripping all over itself from the kiwi action.
Quit!
I couldn’t. It was the most action I’d had in longer than I’d ever admit, and my body was letting me know that. My hands were shaking like I was coming off a bender.
He wasn’t affected at all. Laying my key guts all out on a napkin away from the food table like a bionic operation gone awry, he stood upright just as Belle was walking around with water bottles, pressing them into our hands.
“Since we don’t have lemonade anymore,” she said, scooping up the tainted pitcher.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
He took two, just as his phone rang from his pocket.
“It should be fine by the time you leave,” he said, all business, the sexy stuff a distant memory. Well, not too distant. He juggled everything in his hands to get to his phone. “Assuming you stick around that long, I mean.” The right side of his mouth quirked upward as he turned away to answer his call.
Cute.
Blood rushed through my ears as I turned back to the table to pretend to finish doing whatever the hell I’d been doing. I stared at my plate, waiting for directions, when Belle appeared at my side with a napkin and a fork. I met her eyes gratefully.
“Thank you,” I mouthed.
By the time I had my shit together enough to take myself and my plate to a seat, he was flanked on either side by adoring women in an apparent competition to show him more boob. The only place left for me was directly across the circle from him. My direct line of vision.
Fantastic.
* * * *
I managed to eat my cobbler, every single bite and just short of licking the plate, while knowing that an equally delicious man might be watching me shovel it in. I never let myself check. The only way I was going to make it through this meeting and stick around, God help me, was if I kept my eyes otherwise occupied.
I listened to Veronica talk about her ex who left her for a man. Felicia updated the group on her new boyfriend in what I learned was number eleven in as many months. Collin still referred to his ex-wife as his wife, and started to cry when he told us he’d had sex for the first time since his divorce. He felt like he was cheating. Belle talked about her granddaughter, mostly, but did weigh in on someone else’s (I couldn’t remember whose) comment about exes with exes, telling them to take a lesson from how they treat their ex, because you might be the next one. There were other random shares, including Aspen’s soft-spoken reminder of how we should respect our bodies, inside and out, and know ourselves so that we could teach future partners. She said all this in a dreamy voice, and a lady next to me that hadn’t said more than hello gave me a sideways look.
“Did she just tell us to—” she asked under her breath.
I nodded, chuckling behind my hand. “I think so.”
“So, newbies!” Belle yelled, breaking the spell and making poor Collin next to her drop his empty paper cup he’d been mangling throughout Aspen’s diatribe. “Last week was kind of an intro for you, either one of you care to share tonight?”
“Um, technically, this is my first whole meeting,” I said.
“You had a cookie last week,” Felicia said. “I saw you eat a cookie.”
“He fed it to her,” Veronica said.
He shrugged in agreement, his mouth fighting a smirk. “I did.”
For the first time, I noticed he hadn’t put on a nametag.
“Dear God,” a lady with Carla on her nametag said under her breath. “After that kiwi experience earlier, I wish he’d feed me.”
I felt my face flame up like it landed on the sun, and I held my chin up to defy it. “What does a cookie have to do with it?”
“If you eat, you’re here,” Belle said.
I gave her a look. “You could have mentioned that.”
“I told you it was for the break,” she said. “Gives people an out. I can’t help it if you chose to dive in like your life depended on it.”
My life had depended on it.
“So, did that make it a date, too?” I said, deadpan. Hot Guy laughed like that tickled him. “Boy, how standards have changed.” I blew out a breath. “Okay,” I said, sighing and shaking my head, adjusting in my chair. “My story is—”
“You have to say your name first,” Collin said.
I blinked at him. “It’s fake. What does it matter?”
“Poppy,” Veronica said. “That’s an odd choice.”
I frowned at her and resisted the acid on my tongue that wanted to point out the same about her shoes.
“Why Poppy?” he asked.
Another question would have been why everyone stopped chattering when his voice joined the din. He wasn’t loud, it wasn’t bellowing, but my God it sure did make my heart slam itself against my ribcage.
“Why John Doe?” I asked, tapping my nametag. I swallowed and breathed in and out, clasping my hands together before they started up the shakes again.
He gave a slight head shrug. “You first.”
“It’s a flower,” I said.
His eyes crinkled with humor, and my insides did a little wiggle. Geez, Gabi, get a grip.
I unfolded my hands and held my palms up. “Okay, not all men are up to speed on flowers, so…”
He nodded, and crossed his arms over his chest. Good arms. Good chest. Good Lord.
“Humor me,” he said.
“They make opium out of poppy seeds,” Felicia said. “Are you saying you’re a drug?”
“Seriously?” I said, laughing.
“Maybe she’s saying she’s lethal,” Belle said with a wink.
“Or that she’s high,” Veronica said.
“Poppies are beautiful,” he-without-a-nametag said, drawing my gaze back and holding it. Damn it, he was like a magnet. “Striking. Simple. It’s the inside that can blow your mind, make everything good, or completely fuck you up.”
A laugh started in my chest but I couldn’t look away. “That’s probably the best description of me, ever. Especially the last part.”
“So, tell us your story, Poppy,” Aspen said, smiling so serenely I wondered if she’d garnered a drug or two, herself.
I looked down at my hands and listened to my breath go in and out. My story wasn’t any less humiliating than any of theirs, but it still freshly stung. Especially now that—I shook my head slowly. I didn’t know if I could say one of the pieces out loud.
“I believed in marriage,” I said, not lifting my eyes. “I believed in my vows, for better or for worse, sickness, health—all of it.” I licked my lips and focused on tracing a discolored thread in my jeans rather than look at any of them. “We wanted a family. Or I did, mostly. And—it turned out that I couldn’t.” I blew out a slow steadying breath. I would not lose it. Not in front of these people. “We moved on, but—things were different. Like our common ground had left us. I didn’t see it then, I got all immersed in being comfortable and complacent and finding other avenues to bury my mind in. I took online classes, my sister tried to teach me to paint…” I laughed, and a few others chuckled, but I still couldn’t look up. “Unsuccessfully, by the way. But my biggest mistake was never expecting the unexpected.”
I took a deep breath and let it go.
“I thought we were okay. It never occurred to me that we weren’t. I never saw the signs, I never suspected a thing. I lived blissfully and stupidly unaware right up until the day my husband left me.”
“Ouch,” someone said.
“For another woman,” I continued. “A girl, actually.”
“Double ouch.”
“Oh, it gets better,” I said, feeling the anger heat my blood. I looked up but refused to meet any gazes. I wouldn’t be able to stand sympathy or pity. I zeroed in on a print across the room of a beach with Caribbean blues and a coral sunset. “I found out today,” I said, forcing a smile. “That they are getting married.” I forced the words past my tongue for reasons I didn’t know. I didn’t have to say it. I didn’t have to tell these strangers anything. “And he let the loan default on my house without telling me. I knew nothing until today. I have to move in five days.”
“That fucker,” Veronica said.
“And they—” I closed my eyes and blew out a slow steadying breath. You can say it. You can say it. “They’re expecting—a baby.”
There was a group groan, moan, sigh, guffaw, and an “Oh, honey,” from Belle. Just like my mom had said. I shook my head defiantly.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” I said, the words falling to whisper as the emotion clutched my chest. My eyes popped open, and I blinked them hard and mentally shoved it back. No. Hell no. “They win if you do. I’ll be fine. I am fine. I have a new business starting, I have great friends. I’ll find a place to land. Life goes on and I’m better for it.”
“You go, girl,” Felicia said. “Get yourself a man or two, and—”
“Oh, no,” I said, dabbing under my eyes as I laughed. “No men. Or no relationships, I should say.” Something about that declaration made me finally look at him, and my stomach muscles tightened at the intenseness there. Interest? Lust? Annoyance? Thinking about dessert? He was impossible to read. The one thing I for sure didn’t see was pity, and that bolstered me. “Nothing with strings. I don’t need to cuddle.”
His mouth tugged on one side, and his eyes looked amused. I think.
“Amen,” Belle said. “Who needs cuddling? That just means somebody’s hogging the blanket. Get you an orgasm and move on.” As the room collectively laughed, she added. “Hell, there are gadgets for that. Buy something that vibrates and get a dog.”
“Amen to that,” I said.
“Hey, my dog hogs the bed much more than my wife ever did,” Collin said, amidst more snickering.
The conversation went scattered from there, to pets and dog hair and mattresses and someone’s new futon. I met my mysterious friend’s eyes across the circle and felt a tingle down my back as if we were suddenly the only people in the room. He gave a small grin before blinking his expression clear and running a hand over his face. He got up with a deep exhale, starting a trend as three others did the same.
A line started for the dessert, something I’d already partaken of, so it kind of left me with nothing to busy myself with. He was talking to Collin, and then Aspen (of course), and I needed to not look so completely lost, so I patted my pocket for my keys, remembering they were disemboweled across the room. I reached for my phone in my other one, and froze. It was gone. I spun around and looked at the floor around my chair. Nothing.
“Crap,” I muttered, scanning the room.
“What’s wrong?” said a voice behind me that I already recognized and instantly made my palms sweat.
“Nothing,” I said, trying to appear nonchalant. “Just—can’t find what I did with my phone.”
“Did you bring that big bag you had last week?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I—that was last week.” He remembered that? “I normally just carry a wristlet but tonight I just put my phone and my keys in my pocket.” I turned in a circle and walked toward the nametag table with my key parts. No cell phone adorned it.
“You left your wallet in your car?” he said, making me turn to face him.
“Yes, Dad,” I said.
He grimaced. “Don’t do that.”
“Then can you help me instead of giving me a lecture?” I said.
He pulled his phone out with a sigh. “What’s your number?”
I gave him a double-take as little goose bumps went down my arms.
“What?”
Handing me his phone with the keypad already up, his eyes met mine for a moment.
“Call it.”
That moment jumped up and down and waved its arms and yelled all kinds of things about this being the point of no return or questionable choices. My mouth opened and closed, and I forced my focus down before I could think too much more about it.
“Okay.” I typed in the numbers and waited. Damn it, I’d turned it on vibrate.
“Someone’s phone is buzzing over here,” Aspen said, pulling my phone out from under a tin lid.
Because my haste in tearing into the food had also brilliantly left my phone buried in the rubble.
“Oh, thank you!” I said, rushing over, taking it from her as it stopped buzzing.
“I hate it when I do that,” she said. “It’s a massive panic, isn’t it?” I nodded and smiled. “It’s become such a crutch. We’re so dependent on things, that we forget we used to get by just fine without them. We forget about people.”
“True,” I said, more interested in the person behind me. “See you next week.”
I barely had time to register that I’d just said that out loud, because when I turned around, I stopped short. He was gone.
“What the hell?”
“What’s wrong?” said Belle, the second person to ask me that in the same ten seconds.
“I was just talking to—” My eyes fell on the nametag table, where my key fob sat on the same napkin, all put back together and happy. “Did you see where he went?”
Knowledge dawned in her eyes, and I wanted to groan from it. “Man Without A Name?” she asked. “He just walked out the door.”