She surprises me at every turn, somehow going from sex to death to outfit selection in one sentence. I guess that’s why she’s the writer, not me.
“As it is, I could write paragraphs about those nipples, that chest, and that cute little happy trail to Dicktopia.” She shakes her head, bringing herself out of whatever scene she’s writing in her head. “But I’m going to be a good girl for now.”
Primly, she walks over to her work area, setting everything back up after plugging her laptop in. As she gets things where she wants them, I take a sip of beer and watch her quietly. “I understand,” I start slowly. “I know that with your laptop back, you’re going to be burning the candle at both ends.”
“I’ll be burning the candle at both ends, the middle, and everywhere else,” Poppy confirms.
“Well, I’m just saying . . . you don’t have to go to Caylee’s wedding,” I tell her. “I get it. It was only supposed to be a one-day fiancée thing to begin with, and you don’t owe me anything more. Especially now that you have what you wanted.” I lift my chin toward her laptop, which is booting up to show a picture of Nut and Juice sopping wet and looking quite rat-like. “I promise I’ll go, and I’ll make all the right excuses for you. They’ll totally understand why you ‘ditched’ me and the wedding is off.”
“No way,” Poppy says, stopping her paper arranging to look up at me. “You’re going. I’m going. We are going.”
Damn, she saw through my lie about going myself. She knows me too well and knows I’ll bail on my family. “I’m trying to protect them and let you off the hook.”
“Protect them from what?” Poppy asks. “From you?”
Poppy gets up and crosses the room to sit down beside me on the couch, but I can’t look her in the eyes. “Connor, I know I don’t know even a whisper of all the shit you’ve done and the drama between you and your family. But I’m not stupid, and the truth is easy to see. You’re not trying to protect them, you’re trying to protect yourself. And I get that, especially after meeting them and seeing them in action. They’re a fucking Bravo TV reality show in the flesh. But I think your mom is salvageable. Your aunt and cousin, maybe not. Your father? I have no idea. But that’s why we need to go. You can’t leave Caylee to the wolves with no one to have her back. That’s not who you are.”
“She has Evan,” I point out, and Poppy scoffs. “What?”
“Evan’s good, but he’s going to have his own stuff to deal with on his wedding day, even if his family is full of saints, which I sincerely doubt. Caylee needs her brother there. She needs you looking out for her, on her side against the rest of them.”
I sigh and take another swig of beer. “I know.”
I go quiet, remembering back when Caylee and I were close, before everything went to shit, especially with Dad. We used to be friends, playing together in the backyard. Our most common game was called ‘river rapids’. Caylee would line up rocks and pebbles into a winding lane while I would dig a hole at the end. Then we’d fill it up with water from the hose, creating a miniature river and pond for Caylee’s little pet shop animals to ‘swim’ in.
We always had our favorite animals, Caylee liking this pink poodle one and me preferring the shark because I liked the logic of a water animal swimming, even if there was the whole fresh water versus saltwater issue.
Even when we got older, both dealing with our shit in our own ways, I always looked out for Caylee. In middle school, long after things had become difficult in our house, she’d had a first boyfriend who was a miniature twelve-year-old version of an asshole. That’s probably common, but this one was especially terrible.
When I heard Caylee crying over the stupid prick, over how he’d made her feel inadequate by flirting with another girl, I’d handled that. A visit to his soccer team practice, a short ‘conversation’, and that was that. They broke up, but he never said shit to her afterward. Caylee didn’t know about it then and doesn’t know about it now.
Guilt for not truly checking out this Evan guy assails me, but even sharper is knowing the disconnect between Caylee and