A small laugh bubbles up. “Maybe. It’s not much fun when it’s just for one person, and then I have to eat the same thing for lunch and dinner for four days.”
She continues on to the living room, her gaze falling on the sliding glass doors. Her smile drops, and she crosses to them. Turning the lock, she slides it open. The cold makes her shiver, and she wraps her arms around herself as she steps outside.
I have no memories of her in the hot tub, and that bothers me. That whole night bothers me. I wish I could delete the entire night from her head like I’d mostly done in mine.
“I never made it outside, out here.” She gestures to the hot tub. “Kristi and Felicity came out with you and Randy, and I snuck away to the bathroom.”
“Maybe we should’ve gone to your place. I haven’t had anything to drink. We can go now.” I reach for her hand, but she shakes her head.
“No. I want to be here.”
“But the memories are bad ones.”
“We can replace them with good ones eventually, can’t we?”
I squeeze the back of my neck. She’s talking like there’s a future, which is good. I don’t want to jeopardize it with bad memories before we can even deal with the fallout of Tash.
Poppy circles the hot tub; on her way back around, she hooks her pinkie finger with mine. “Come on.”
I wish I knew what’s happening inside her head.
“I was so embarrassed.” Her voice is a whisper of sound.
“I’m sorry.”
She turns and presses a palm against my cheek. The contact is fleeting, but welcome.
“I know you are, and I know it’s for the right reasons.” She heads back to the kitchen and opens the cabinet next to the sink, where the glasses are. I don’t ask how she knows where to find them. She must have gone searching when she was here before.
“I must’ve stayed in the bathroom forever. I didn’t know what to do. My phone and wallet and keys were in Kristi’s purse, and she had it outside—but the hot tub… I couldn’t go out there. I knew Kristi wanted to hook up with you, and I just couldn’t—” She shakes her head. “I felt so dumb. I never thought I’d meet you again, and I’d certainly never dreamed it would go like that.”
I hate that she looks like she’s on the verge of tears. I wonder if she’s shed any in the days since I’ve last seen her. If she has, it’s my fault. “We don’t have to talk about this—”
“I want to. I need to.” She turns on the faucet and pours herself a glass of water, filling one for me, too. She takes a deep breath. “Eventually Miller’s pizza came. I thought maybe you’d all come back inside, but you didn’t. I snuck out and went upstairs, thinking I could wait it out and grab my things from Kristi’s purse.” She takes a sip of her water.
“But she brought it to my room,” I supply. Jesus. My stomach feels like someone’s kicking a lead balloon around inside it.
Poppy nods. “I didn’t know that, though. I fell asleep, and when I woke up it was late—or early, depending on how you look at it. I went downstairs, hoping I’d find it out by the hot tub, but of course it wasn’t there. So I had to stay.”
I consider what that must have been like, being stuck in someone else’s house with no way out. And God only knows what she imagined we were doing.
“And then in the morning I ignored you. Christ. Why do you even want to know me?”
“That one night doesn’t define who you are. I should’ve insisted Kristi give me my things. But I didn’t. I didn’t have to come back here, but I made the choice to. Those consequences are my own to deal with. I should’ve been honest with you right from the start, just like you should’ve been honest with me about Tash, but we weren’t.”
“I didn’t want to mess things up.”
She gives me a small, sad smile. “Neither did I. I liked that you wanted me to treat you. I convinced myself it would be okay if I could just keep the professional boundaries. And then I didn’t need to any more when you asked me out. I should’ve pushed for information about Tash, but I didn’t.”
When I give her a probing look, her gaze drops.
“I could’ve and should’ve asked you about the DO NOT FUCKING REPLY contact that kept popping up on your phone. I knew it couldn’t be good with the way you reacted.
“And the night before you left for the away series, I knew you were lying about talking to a telemarketer, but I didn’t say anything then, either.”
“I didn’t want you to worry while I was away.”
“But I did.”
She’s still looking at the floor, where her toes are curled under against the pale ceramic.
“I’m sorry I did that to you.” All I want is to touch her. “Why don’t we sit down?” I gesture to the white couch. If we’re finally going to hash out the Tash business, I think I need to be sitting down.
She expels a breath. “Okay.”
“Can I get you something else to drink?”
“A glass of wine might be nice.”
“Should I be worried that you need alcohol for this conversation?” I ask, hoping to alleviate some of the tension.
She smiles a little. “You should only be worried if I ask for shots.”
I retrieve two wine glasses—they’re relatively unused because I’m generally a scotch or beer drinker, or straight from the bottle if I can’t manage my shit. But I’ve been a lot better about that lately. Miller and Randy have been keeping me in line so I don’t go off the edge like I sometimes do.
Poppy sits tucked up in the corner of the white couch when I return with our drinks. One of the throw pillows the interior designer said I needed as an accent is clutched in her lap. She’s so fucking beautiful. I want to keep her in my life, and I get that in order to do that I need to let her in, even if it means she sees all the broken parts of me.
I pass her the glass, and she cups the bowl to take a sip. She doesn’t put it down after that, just twirls the stem between her fingers.
I sit down in the middle of the couch. I want to get closer, but we’re not there yet. “Where do you want me to start?”
Poppy looks down at the glass and sighs. “I just want the truth, Lance. So why don’t you start with that?”
“The truth about Tash?”
“Tash. The rumors. Any of it. All of it.”
Fuck. This is the stuff I don’t want to deal with. But I have to, one way or another. I hope that what I tell her makes things better, not worse.
“You mean the rumors about how I fuck?”
She cringes, probably because I’ve chosen to word that in the worst way possible.
My knees are bouncing so hard her wine swishes in her glass. I set mine on the table.
“I wasn’t lying when I said I really don’t like to be touched. Like at all. Especially by women. After my brother died, I could only ever associate hands on me with my mum’s anger. So dealing with girls was really fucked up. I knew there was something wrong with my head, ’cause I didn’t enjoy sex the way all the other guys on my team seemed to.”
“But you must have found a way to get over that?” There’s a hardness to Poppy’s voice, tension that makes her words sharp and heavy.
“I thought maybe I could, but it didn’t really work. I had this party once…and there were these two girls.” I study my hands, unable to look at her. “They wanted me to—uh…anyway, that wasn’t any better. It was worse. There were so many fucking hands to manage. The fucking panic—I hated it.”
“Did Tash know this?”
“Aye.”
“But she brought other girls anyway? Even though she knew how you felt about it?”
“Aye.” The memories make my skin crawl. “And it just made the rumors worse, because then there was some actual truth to them.”
“She’s a horrible person.”
“She has a lot of issues. Anyway, that’s done now. And I have a new roommate when we travel. One of the guys with a girlfriend, so I don’t have to deal with the, uh…bunnies and that awkwardness.”
“That’s good.” Poppy raises the glass to her lips.
“And I’ve been staying away from the bar after games.”
“I don’t expect you to become a recluse.”