She puts her hands in fists at her waist. “Joke’s on you. This is your t-shirt.”
As if I could forget.
“I can come back,” Collin says.
Poppy waves him off. “No, no. The more the merrier.” She explains the AC situation and offers him pancakes. He settles in at the peninsula, and Poppy grabs the towel off my shoulder. It’s pretty damp, but she dries her face and starts chatting with Collin about his plans for the day.
I love that she’s so at home in my house. I love that she gets along with my friends. My mind takes me to a place where she and I are hosting all sorts of events—birthday parties, summer cookouts—here, together.
And then I can see us messing around, cleaning up the kitchen side-by-side long into the night.
“I should go get changed. I’ll wash your shirt, Big.”
The fantasy in my head is still so real it’s like I’m looking down on us instead of standing here next to her, soaking wet. “Keep it,” I hear myself say.
She freezes, her lips pressed together, but then she wiggles her eyebrows. “Are you afraid I have cooties?”
I don’t dare tell her that I would gladly take any and all of her cooties, because that sounds weird any way you phrase it.
Poppy, I’d swap spit with you in a heartbeat. I’d welcome your germs. Lay ‘em on me.
I mean, honestly.
“I have a million of those shirts,” I say, all nonchalant. “All the guys wear them at my job sites.”
“Wow, I feel so special. I’m just like one of the guys.”
I shake my head because…no.
“What? You don’t think I can pull it off?” She pops a hip.
The shirt rises up an inch on her leg. I’m sure she’s wearing the same shorts she had on yesterday; I just can’t see them. But I still can’t seem to tear my gaze away from the smooth skin of her toned thigh. “That’s not it.”
“Then what?”
The challenge in Poppy’s voice makes me meet her eye. We stare at each other for a weighty moment, until I can’t take it anymore.
“You are completely different than one of the guys.”
My voice is gravely, and Poppy sucks in a deep enough breath that I can see her chest move. She doesn’t break eye contact with me, like she’s searching my face for some sort of hidden meaning.
The hidden meaning is that she looks one hundred percent better than anyone else who has ever donned a Mack Electric t-shirt.
“Well, then,” she says quietly. “Thanks.” She blinks, and the charge around us dissipates. She beams and tosses me the towel. “Be right back.”
She skips out the front door, and I watch her through the window as she hustles toward her duplex. I’m an astronomer and she’s a comet I’ve been tracking for years only to watch it cross right in front of me. I don’t want to let it—her—get away.
Collin, whom I forgot about, clears his throat.
When I glance at him, he’s got a pie-eating grin on his face. “Well, well, well.”
I throw the towel at him.
21
Pick Me Up
Poppy
