‘Totally stupid. I’ve got to go.’
‘Because you’re stupid?’ Poppy checked.
‘Yes.’
‘Because this was a mistake?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You’ve had too much to drink, and you didn’t mean it,’ Poppy went on.
Norah thought that had the ring of a passable lie. ‘That’s it, yeah. Wine and impending divorce.’
Poppy’s eyes filled with sudden horror. ‘I did it again,’ she muttered to herself.
That caught Norah’s attention, dragging her from her own crisis straight into Poppy’s. ‘Did what?’
Poppy shook her head. ‘No, it’s fine. You’re right. You should leave.’
Poppy was now matching Norah’s freak out, which made it all that much worse. She wanted to press her, but she was in the midst of her own panic. It was all such a mess. What the hell had they done?
‘We shouldn't have kissed,’ Poppy blurted. ‘You’re right. It was a mistake.’
Norah blinked, taken aback by Poppy's sudden change in demeanour. ‘OK, good. We’re in agreement,’ she said, trying not to be hurt. Which she knew was a bit bloody rich when Poppy was only repeating what she had said a moment ago. She was only getting rejected in the middle of her rejection.
Norah shook her head, trying to be an adult in the situation, if a little late. ‘We... we kissed. It happened. Let’s move past it.’
‘Yeah. OK,’ Poppy said. ‘Fucking Blue Nun.’
‘Right. Blue Nun,’ Norah agreed before looking at the bottle.
They’d hardly touched it, but it was a way out. It would make it OK if they could blame booze.
But it didn’t feel OK. It felt fucking awful. Norah had handled this whole thing so badly. All the more reason to get out before she made any more mess.
‘I should go,’ Norah said softly, her voice breaking the silence.
‘Yeah,’ Poppy replied, her voice barely above a whisper.
Poppy saw Norah at the door, and they said goodbye briefly before Norah legged it down the street back home. She knew that whatever had sparked between them tonight wasn't something she could dismiss lightly. But she was gonna give it a hell of a try.
Thirty-One
Poppy closed the door behind Norah and went back into the living room. She glanced at her guitar leaning against the coffee table, a silent witness to the evening's unexpected turn.
‘You bastard,’ she whispered to it. ‘You just had to make everything sexy, didn’t you? Couldn’t help yourself!’
The guitar, obviously, didn’t reply.
‘Oh, now you’ve got nothing to say?’ Poppy spat.
She sat down on the couch, turning the anger away from the guitar to the place it needed to be—on her. She shouldn’t have played the song. She’d known what she was doing, what she hoped the music would achieve. But getting what she wanted had been the worst thing that could have happened.
Because Norah had pulled back, she didn’t want this. She’d never wanted it. She was just in a bad spot, yet again. Poppy’s lips were never more than a life raft.
But she wasn’t going to let it go the way it had last time. The first chance she got, she was going to face this head-on, talk to Norah, and air it all out. Then, they could go back to being friends. Poppy could manage that. She was an adult now.
Right?
***
Poppy was behind the counter of The Sugar Cube, but her brain was elsewhere. She’d had a rough morning.
It had taken just about every drop of will she had this morning to convince Luna that she wasn’t going to school as Elsa from Frozen. Luna had negotiated masterfully, saying she wasn’t going to school otherwise.
Poppy didn’t have any cards to play at that point except bribery, winning her over with a promised visit to McDonald's at the weekend. Poppy had felt like a failed parent as she took an appropriately dressed Luna to school. But she got the kid in the door, a thin victory and a draining one.
Poppy had been hitting the coffee hard as a result, and she was on the jittery side by the time Norah came in at twelve fifteen.
‘Hi,’ Norah said, smiling widely. Poppy could have counted all her teeth.
‘Hey. Missed you at the gates this morning,’ Poppy observed.
‘I was running early for a change,’ Norah said, the hundred-watt smile still going strong.
Poppy couldn’t match it. So she went the only way she knew. ‘What’s up with your face?’
Norah’s smile fell off. ‘What?’
