Page 8 of Badd Daddy

“I really hate it here, Mom.”Poppy, my youngest daughter, wiped tear-tracks away from her eyes—the tracks were mascara-stained, smearing black across her cheeks. “I hate my professors, I hate my roommate, I hate my classes, I hate all the people in my classes. I hate the town, the bars, the keggers, the sorority bitches and the frat bastards. I hate the stupid restaurants and the stupid…gah. The boys are the stupidest of all.”

I sighed and adjusted the iPad on my lap so I could see her better. “You loved Columbia last year, Pop.”

“I know I did. But things have changed.” She pulled her massive sheaf of glossy black hair over her shoulder.

“Like Reed?” I suggested, my voice wary and gentle; Poppy was…defensive, shall we say, about her boyfriend.

She snarled wordlessly. “Fuck Reed O’Reilly.”

“Poppy Estelle Goode, I raised you better than that, young lady.”

“Sorry, Mom,” Poppy muttered. “But he’s a dick and I hate him most of all.”

“I take it you broke up.”

“If by broke up, you mean I broke his nose, then yes.” She ducked her head so her hair fell in a shimmery raven-black curtain hiding her face from my glare.

“You didnot.” My glare is such that she was prudent to hide from it.

“He cheated on me, Mom! And not just with my best friend, but my roommate too—at the same time.” She paused for effect. “IN MY BED.”

I winced. “Oh. Wow.” Don’t say it, I told myself. Don’t say it.DO NOT SAY IT.

Poppy tossed her hair away and glared back at me— I saw she was sitting in the common room in her dorm as students passed back and forth behind her, chattering and laughing, holding textbooks and Starbucks cups. “Go ahead and say it,” she muttered. “You’re about to burst.”

“I’m not going to say it,” I said, my voice crisp. “You know what I’m not saying, so I may as well not bother saying it.”

She blew a raspberry at me. “But you’ll get satisfaction from saying it. It’s already as good as said, so you may as well say it.”

“No.”

“Mom.”

“Poppy?”

“Say it.”

I sighed. “Fine. I told you Reed was going to hurt you. I wanted to think otherwise, but I always got a bad feeling from him the few times I met him.”

“You did not want to think otherwise. You disliked him from the start.”

I arched an eyebrow at her. “Well, yes. Because I got a bad feeling from him. I didn’t want you to get hurt, like you are now. I wouldn’t be a good mother if I had a bad feeling about a guy and didn’t say anything.”

She takes a sip of an iced coffee—something with a bucket of sugar in it, probably. “Well, regardless. Reed being a colossal dickhole isn’t the only reason I hate it here.”

“Poppy, the language is unnecessary.”

“Mom, quit acting like Captain America.”

“What?”

“Never mind. I just hate it here, and Reed cheating on me isn’t the only reason.”

“You loved it at Columbia before this.”

“I was wearing rose-colored glasses, Mom. I was obsessed with New York City my whole life and I was excited to be here. But now that I’m here and I’ve gotten used to it, I hate it. It’s busy all the time. People are rude. It’s expensive as hell. The classes here are unnecessarily hard, and I’m not learning anything to do with what I really want to do.”

“It’s your sophomore year, babe, you’re still getting the prereqs out of the way.”