Poppy’s head peeks out of the dining room, and I look at her over Caylee’s head, where she’s still snuggled into me. I don’t think she’s hugged me in years. Poppy licks her fingertip and draws it through the air, giving herself a winning tally mark.
I’m going to kill her.
Or maybe kiss her again.
Maybe kiss her and then kill her, my mind suggests. It’s a lot less Tim Burton that way.
Chapter 10
Poppy
“And then . . . oh, my God, Connor looked like . . . mmm-mmm!”
Around the table, I’m getting a mix of looks. Daysha looks amused while Becca’s a little confused. “Connor?”
“You remember!” Jasmine says, hushing her. “The hot security guard, the guy who stole her laptop?”
“Oh . . . I thought . . . never mind,” Becca says, grinning now. “Right, hot security Connor. I’m with you. Go on.”
Go on. How in the hell do I do that? I feel like someone stuck a stick blender in my head and tapped the power button for a quick ‘bloop’. I’m able to make some coherent thoughts, but half the time, I feel like I’m just swirling and trying to still make sense of everything.
“So anyway, after I jumped him—”
“You go, girl!”
“Not like that!” I correct Becca, who pouts. “I jumped on his back and beat the shit out of him. Or well, I tried. But he threw me to the ground.”
Aleria doesn’t look happy at that. “He violated your person?”
“Al, she did jump on him,” Daysha says. “Rule in life. You start shit, expect shit. That’s true for everyone.”
“And I did end up kneeing him in the nuts,” I point out, making Daysha give me a double-take.
“Oh, no, you didn’t.” She laughs. “That’s cold.”
“Yep,” I affirm, grinning. “And he basically admitted to stealing my laptop.”
“What did you do?” Jasmine asks. “Call the cops on him?”
I glare at Jasmine, my eyes asking if she entirely slept through the part about how unhelpful the police were with the whole missing laptop issue and how much I wanted to kill Detective Carter with my bare hands.
“Right, right. No cops. So, what did you do?”
“Uh, well . . . his phone rang, so I swiped it and told his mom that I’m his fiancée.”
Around the table, the response is unified and simultaneous. “You what?”
“Well, I figured that if I called the cops, I wouldn’t get anything,” I try to explain, trying to give a reason for my instantaneous decision. “I mean, even if he ratted on his guy, it’s not like that guy’s going to just admit it, and so on and so forth. But anyway, he agreed to get my laptop back, and I didn’t want to let him out of my sight. Plus, I need leverage, so I went to dinner with his family and pretended to be his fiancée.”
“You . . . to the guy who stole your laptop?” Becca asks, confused again. I swear, how does she keep her characters straight when I’m only talking about two people—me and Connor—and she can’t keep up.
“Well, it sounds weird when you say it like that.”
Daysha snorts. “It is weird, woman!” she grins. “But go on.”
“So, at dinner, they’re all giving him shit, and they don’t even know he’s a thief!” I tell the hushed group. “So when the wedding came up, I said yes.”
“What wedding?” Aleria asks. “Wait . . . you’re marrying the guy who stole your laptop?”
“What?” I ask, shocked. “No! His sister’s wedding. He got mad and dragged me into the hallway, and that’s when we kissed.”
“Kissed?” Jasmine asks with a raised eyebrow. “The laptop thief neighbor?” At least she’s got it all straight. And now Becca is nodding, apparently thankful for the Cliff Notes.
“Okay, kissed doesn’t begin to describe it,” I admit with a happy sigh. “I’ve never been kissed like that, like I forgot my own name in a drunken haze.”
I sit back, still in utter awe of the memory of last night.
I feel their eyes on me until finally, Daysha sighs too. “That’s the best kind.”
“Wait, badass Daysha has a big streak of gooey romance in her?” Becca teases. “Ooh, I gotta know more because I thought you were all whips and chains, ‘take what I give you, my sweet slut’, and emotionally damaged savior types. This is news!”
“One story at a time!” Aleria begs. “I have to keep them straight. But we’re totally coming back to that.”
Becca snorts. “You said coming.”
Wanting to move on, I jump in before an argument can spring up. “So we’re going to the wedding next weekend.”
Aleria looks totally unfazed while the other girls look like I’m nuts. “What about the laptop? Your book?”
“Connor says he’s working on it,” I admit, pulling out my current replacement. “In the meantime, this’ll work.”
Jasmine scoffs. “Girl, you’d better get to ‘working on it’ yourself or Hilda is gonna skin you alive.”