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“I shouldn’t have called.”
She let out a frustrated scream. “You love them, you idiot! You love them and you miss them so much that you’re calling me fifty times a day to complain about them, as if they’ve done anything wrong, at all! The way I see it, if you don’t figure this out, the only mistake those men made is falling for you. Because you’re doing to them what Andrew did to you and that really sucks, Poppy.”
Tears filled my eyes and I silently hung up and put my phone on the edge of the bathtub. Leaning over, I wrapped my arms around my knees and gave in to the tears. They came nightly but they were a little early that night, thanks to Sara’s brutal honesty.
I opened my group message with the guys and read through old messages while I broke down. All the shame and self-doubt came back the same way it did every night. Reading the sweet things they’d written to me before our fight and then playing back the things I said to them was gut-wrenching. I’d been a monster. I’d hurt them, and at some point I’d done it on purpose to force them away. It didn’t take four hundred dollars and two hours with a crappy therapy app to know that, even though ithadtaken me that.
I needed to be the one to reach out to the guys, I knew that, but I didn’t know how. I just wanted things to go back to the way they were before. I wanted to never have felt the things I felt. If emotions hadn’t been involved, everything would’ve been fine. I would’ve been planning on hanging out with them like normal, instead of hoping that they’d call me and that they hadn’t given up on me entirely.
When I crawled back into bed later, the next stage of my grief hit. Under the covers, all alone, I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t miss them being there with me. I missed them holding me. It was when I got into bed that I couldn’t lie to myself and pretend like being friends again would ever work. It was then that I broke down the most, because I didn’t think I was strong enough to be more and I knew we couldn’t be less.
53
***Sam***
Istaredupatthe TV and grunted when Green sank a three-pointer. It put our team in the lead and the bar erupted around us, but I just didn’t give a shit. I took another long pull from my beer and looked back at Jude and Cyrus. They had the same level of energy that I did. The only reason we’d gone out was to force ourselves to act somewhat normal when nothing was.
“Week one without Poppy.” Jude pushed his half-eaten burger around his plate and shook his head. “It’s been two years since we didn’t have a weekend hang.”
Cyrus didn’t look up from the label on his bottle of beer. “We tried pushing. That didn’t work. Now we try nothing. She wanted away from us. When she’s over that, she’ll come back.”
I looked down at my phone and blew out a deep, frustrated breath. “I did something stupid today.”
They both looked concerned. We’d agreed to stick together in how we handled Poppy because that was how we would have her if she came back to us. We were a team. I could tell they were immediately worried I’d reached out to her when we’d agreed to give her her space.
“Relax. I didn’t try to talk to her.” I opened my photo app and slid the phone to them. “She got a flower delivery.”
They looked at the picture of the giant bouquet of red roses and scowled. Cyrus pushed it away and shook his head. “I didn’t do that. Red roses? For Poppy? Whoever did that doesn’t know Poppy.”
Jude nodded. “Plus, whatever jackass ordered delivery from Merna’s has no common sense. Merna will straight-up tell you that she hates deliveries so she charges three times as much for them.”
I stared at Jude like he was an alien, momentarily pulled from my thoughts. “Jude, you’re a millionaire. You do know that, right?”
“And it’s because I don’t order delivery from Merna.”
I shook my head and pulled the phone back to my side so I could swipe to the next picture. “I’m not proud of myself for this.”
My best friends looked at the second picture and for a moment, their faces lit up as they laughed out loud. Thankfully, their laughter took away some of my shame and anger.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen. I’m serious. I saw Merna leave the flowers and I couldn’t not look to see who they were from. And when I saw who’d sent them, I just lost my mind for a moment and I stole them.” I rubbed at my temples after minimizing the picture of Poppy’s flowers in my living room. “I’m ashamed of myself, but I’m not sorry she won’t get the card.”
“What did it say?” Cyrus sat forward, worry etched into his face. “Who sent it?”
“Andrew.” I saw both of them grow angry and nodded. “Yeah. The card said something about how good seeing her was. He said some stupid shit about how good it felt to hold her again.”
“She let him hold her?” Jude sat back in his chair and ran his hands over his head. “Why the fuck would she do that?”
“I’m not going there. If I go there, I’m going to end up at her door, shouting it down.” I looked up as our waitress showed up with another round for us. “Thanks.”
She grinned and leaned a little closer. “You’re very welcome, handsome.”
“Well, no wonder you didn’t invite me to our hang session.”
I snapped my head around and felt a barrage of emotions at the sight of Poppy. My body reacted immediately to seeing her after a week, my dick going hard while my stomach knotted with tension. I wanted to drag her onto my lap and shake her all at the same time.
I was so shocked by her presence that I almost didn’t notice that she was wearing pajamas and had a smear of chocolate across her cheek. Beyond that, though, she looked like she hadn’t slept in a week and I felt sick seeing the dark circles under her eyes.
“Ma’am? We have a policy about patrons wearing shoes in the bar. In case of glass breaking and just normal sanitary reasons.” Our waitress had gotten further in her perusal of Poppy than I had, because sure enough, Poppy was in a pair of fuzzy socks with no shoes.
