Page 27

Chapter fourteen

Inside

R ai sat on the stoop of Poppy’s mother’s house, glaring at the relentless, cloudless blue sky.

He was feeling better than he had after their previous coffee date, having started this day full of energy, but it was fading fast. And while he’d been eager to accept Poppy’s invitation to “come hang out for a little while,” now that they’d left the coffee shop and its infinite supply of water, he was not certain how long he could last in the intense, dry heat.

Would Poppy be upset if he used her hose?

Or perhaps he could suggest a bath? She would look glorious bare and beaded with drops of water.

He might not have acquired condoms yet, but—

The door opened, and Rai looked up. Poppy was smiling with her lips but there was a worried line between her eyebrows, a line that spoke of subtext , and he bolted to his feet. “Is your mother well?”

“She’s fine,” Poppy said, closing the door behind her. “She’s just embarrassed.”

Rai felt a flash of irritation—not at Poppy or her mother, but at himself. Since when were worry and embarrassment his concern? Except they were, now. And not only these humans and their problems—it seemed he, too, was always embarrassed. He did not like it. “I do not shame her.”

“I know.” Poppy shivered her shoulders, then gave him a real smile. “Anyhow, she’s in the middle of baking bread, which is gonna take a while. But she'll be in a great mood afterward.”

“Do you wish me to leave?”

“No,” she said firmly. “Please stay. I didn’t ask you over to hang out with Mom.”

“Very well.”

“So did you want to see my studio?”

“Yes.” He did not know what a studio was, but it was hers. Perhaps a pet? Or perhaps it was a very large bathtub she wished to share? Ah, but that was his loins speaking.

Poppy led him around to the guest house and unlocked the door, then pushed it wide. “It’s not fancy,” she said, looking a little embarrassed herself.

Rai stepped in and looked around at a room filled with glorious chaos.

It was not a large room—perhaps half the size of her mother’s living room, but with the same amount of furniture—and it seemed to be overflowing, shelves full of bits and baubles and the walls covered with images, some in frames and some simply paper stuck to the walls.

There was a cozy couch striped in blue and a squashed orangeish chair and a low, wide table with chipped glass panels inset in a wooden frame. “It feels like you,” he said.

She snickered. “Scavenged trash people left out on the curb with a free sign?”

“Complicated and colorful and interesting,” Rai said, narrowing his eyes on Poppy again. “Not trash.”

She laughed wryly. “I’m doing it again. Apologizing for being me.

” She walked over to one of the shelves and wiped bits of dust off the figurines.

“I sometimes think I should arrange things… I don’t know.

More artistically? But I was so excited to get my stuff out of storage that I just wanted it all out.

You know? Not be all curated and designer.

” She glanced at him sidelong. “I wasn’t planning on having guests. ”

“So I am your first?” The honor warmed Rai’s heart.

“Visitor? Yes.” She shifted from foot to foot. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Water, please,” he said, trying not to sound desperate.

She laughed and went toward another room; he followed her, standing in the doorway while she rummaged in a white cupboard that hummed with electricity. “I’d better show you where the bathroom is, too,” she said. “You drink more water than a golf course. ”

“Hydrate or die-drate,” Rai said, curiously eyeing the plastic containers that Poppy withdrew from the cupboard.

He remembered seeing similar containers at the grocery store, wrapped together into huge bricks of entrapped water.

It had seemed a great deal of plastic to him at the time, and the stacks had made him imagine entire buildings made of such bricks.

“I only have two bottles left,” she said, “but we can refill it from the tap in the studio if you need more. Dad put a filter out there.”

“My thanks,” he said, accepting the bottle and watching Poppy so he could mimic the way she opened hers before following suit. The water inside was cold, if a little flavorless; he drank it quickly, closing his eyes in relief.

When he opened his eyes again, Poppy was watching him intently. “Wow,” she said. “Let me fill that up for you.”

“Teach me how,” Rai said.

Poppy gave him an odd look, but then she took his hand and led him down the hall.

She pointed out the bathroom door as they passed but didn’t pause, escorting Rai out into a room with windows on three sides.

It was oddly bare in the bright sunlight, and the sparse furniture seemed made for use rather than comfort—a few tables, one with the surface at a strange angle, and a single chair on wheels with paint-stained fabric cushions.

Shelves around the room held an assortment of papers, boxes, and arcane materials.

There was a large board of some kind set on a triangular frame of sticks, smeared with a rough paint outline of a plant, and the angled table held several sheets of paper with marks on them.

“Sorry it’s such a mess,” Poppy said, hurrying over to the angled table and gathering the drawings. “The glamorous life of an artist, huh?”

“This is where you make art?” Rai peered at the papers in Poppy’s hands but couldn’t see what had been drawn on them before she set the stack face down.

“When I can,” she said. “This is my dad’s studio. I haven’t, um, settled in yet.”

Rai wanted desperately to ask a thousand questions about the room and its mysterious artifacts, but Poppy seemed ill at ease, so instead he smiled and held out his empty water bottle. She took it with a grin that seemed grateful and strode over to a large sink spattered with color.

“He put the filter in here so he didn’t have to go all the way to the kitchen when he was working,” she said .

“Very wise,” Rai said, watching as Poppy first pressed a lever on the side of a metal fixture attached to the tap, then turned the water on, filling his bottle. “That is the filter?”

“Yep.” She twisted the cap back on and held out the bottle. “Anyhow, don’t feel like you have to ask for a refill. You can just come back and…” She trailed off, her gaze flashing to the papers she had set aside.

“I will not look,” he said, taking the bottle.

“That’s not—” She set her jaw and faced him fully. “Okay, I just need to make sure we’re on the same page here. Because I know that we have a little bit of a language barrier going on.”

Rai nodded, regarding her warily.

“You’re going to be in town for, like, six more weeks?”

“Until the rains end,” Rai confirmed.

She nodded sharply, eyes flickering away from him briefly.

“So I had… Well, when we were…last night… I figured you were in town for maybe a week more, max, and that you’d be working most of that time.

And—and it’s good that you’re going to be here longer.

It’s better. It’s totally better. But I had it in my head that it was just gonna be, you know, a one-night stand kind of thing.

So I’m just trying to figure out…” She huffed out an irritated sigh.

“I want to make sure we want the same thing.”

Rai looked at the bottle in his hands, then back at Poppy. “I want you.”

Poppy inhaled sharply. “You just get right to the point, don’t you? And here I’m a babbling idiot.”

“I like how you speak. It is music.” He set the bottle aside, taking her hand. “Do you not want me?”

“I do,” she said. “I just don’t want…” Her fingers tightened on his.

“I was married once. And it didn’t… It wasn’t good.

And I’m not looking for that again. I’m really not.

There’s just too much going on for me to be…

in that place again, not for a while. So I just…

Rai, you’re sweet, and you’re romantic, and you say things that make my head spin, but I don’t want you to think this is the start of something big. ”

“But it is big,” Rai said. “My desire for you is greater than the ocean.” He took a step closer, close enough he could feel the heat of her skin.

Poppy shivered. “There you go with the head-spinning.”

He set his free hand to her cheek. “I will hold it fast.”

“I didn’t mean that.” She released his hand, set both her palms to his chest .

“I cannot make my feelings small,” he said, thunder swelling in his heart. “They are the size they are.”

“The desire can be big,” she said. “ We can be big. Huge. Epic. But when you leave… Rai, I don’t have the energy to do long distance. I’m not looking for more than…the six-week equivalent of a one-night stand.” Her fingers slid up his chest to toy with his collar. “When you leave, it has to end.”

Rai paused, then nodded. He could not even imagine six weeks ahead. All he could see was now, this moment, Poppy before him with her eyes shining and her hands trembling and her lips begging for his.

“And it can be less,” she said, bright eyes shifting away. “I mean, it doesn’t have to be the whole six weeks if you—”

He kissed her. “Until the rains end.”

She whimpered and opened her mouth to him, her hands digging into his hair, and this language he understood, the language of lips and tongues and teeth, hands and bodies, scents and tastes and the fast drum of her heartbeat.

With a gasp, Poppy drew away, then brushed her lips against his cheek, his chin. “I swear this isn’t what I asked you over for,” she said, voice rough.

“You said we should talk,” Rai growled. “We have talked.”

“I also said—wait a sec.” She took a step back. Her chest was heaving and her eyes were wide and her hair was tousled. “I have to do work this afternoon.”

“Now?”

“Not now, but soon.” She was looking at his lips hungrily, rubbing her hands on her thighs.