Page 13 of The Ex Project (The Heartwood #3)
WREN
“Oh my God, you will never guess what happened yesterday,” Poppy calls as she lets herself in the front door. She comes through to the kitchen where I am trying, and failing, to recreate the pizza Hudson made for me the other night.
We haven’t been able to catch up properly since I’ve been back.
I was so rushed to get to my meeting the other day, and with my sister in town, my parents wanting to spend time together as a family before they left, and not to mention the work I’ve been doing on the arts centre, I’ve been dying to see my best friend again.
“Tell me after I get these pizzas in the oven. You can put your stuff in my room if you want.” She retreats upstairs with her overnight bag, where I’ve got an air mattress set up for her next to my bed like we did when we were teens.
We’re having a true, old-fashioned slumber party tonight, and I couldn’t be more excited.
Those were some of my best memories growing up—giggling and squealing until all hours of the night.
Until my mom would inevitably come to yell at us to go to sleep and we’d hide under the covers, pretending we already were.
I slide the pizzas off the cutting board and onto the rack, admiring them for a second before shutting the door.
Good enough, I guess. The dough was a little lumpier than it should be, and didn’t stretch like I wanted, but they look close enough to pizzas for my liking.
I’ll work on them, and perfect them, until mine are even better than the ones Hudson made.
Taking a seat at the kitchen table, I pour Poppy and I both a glass of wine.
“Okay, tell me what happened,” I say. She takes a long pull of her wine and gulps it down.
“Hudson was in the café.” Poppy’s face twists into a grimace, like she tasted something gross.
“Is that it?” I swirl the wine around, watching the way the liquid creates waves up the sides of the glass. “He probably comes into the café every day. He does live here.”
“He was with a girl.” Poppy makes a wincing face as if she’s waiting for the bomb to land.
A hot, sticky feeling licks at the back of my neck, and I feel my expression give me away for a second before I school my features into casual indifference. I’ve moved on, found peace after he broke my heart, and found success. I’m a different person than I was ten years ago, and I’m past it now.
But that flickering flame of fury I feel whenever I see him, the one that burns red hot, is now a sickly shade of green. Jealousy. I will it back to anger. Anger is easier to understand. Anger and I are friends.
“Who?” I ask, still trying to conceal my emotions though my voice shakes.
I grew up in Heartwood. It’s probably someone I know.
I mentally flip through the little black book in my mind, recalling all the girls Poppy and I went to school with, trying to guess who it could be.
I wince as Poppy starts to speak, preparing for impact.
“I didn’t recognize her,” Poppy says, her voice cool like what she’s said hasn’t shaken me.
Someone new in town? She must have come here recently for Poppy not to know her either.
Which means I have nothing to go off to size her up.
“Emma? She’s Alma Rose’s granddaughter. She said she’s giving her a hand with Rose Antiques for the summer. ”
My mind feels like it’s on one of those pirate ship rides, going back and forth as I gain new information from a different perspective on the situation. It’s making me seasick.
“So, she’s not here to stay.” I don’t know why I care, or why her only being here temporarily is suddenly a good thing in my mind. It shouldn’t be.
“Who knows. I don’t think Alma has much time left in her to manage the store.” I fill in the blanks, which would mean Emma could take over. I mull this over, swishing my wine from cheek to cheek before swallowing.
“What was she like?” My competitive edge sharpens, wanting to learn everything I can about this girl, although I still don’t know why I’m competing with her.
I’m not. She can have Hudson. She’ll have to learn the hard way that he doesn’t consider anyone’s feelings other than his own … but that’s her cross to bear.
“She seems nice. Sweet. Killer body,” Poppy says and then covers her mouth quickly. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine, Pops. I’m not jealous.” I wave a hand in front of my face like the idea is simply ridiculous. “I wish them well, honestly. I hope everything works out for them.” Even as I say it, I can feel the emptiness in the words, that they don’t ring true.
But it is true. I don’t feel anything for Hudson anymore, other than plain and simple loathing. Am I still angry about what he did to me? Of course. Who wouldn’t be? It doesn’t mean I still have feelings for him. Just the opposite.
“In any case, I gave him shit for it once Emma left.”
“You what?” I nearly spit out my wine. “Poppy, I can’t have him thinking this bothers me, okay?”
She puts her hands up as a display of innocence.
“What? He’s acting like an idiot, and he deserves to know it. You don’t think it’s strange he’s been single all this time, hasn’t so much as looked in another girl’s direction for ten years, and suddenly you’re back in town and he has a blonde bombshell on his arm?”
The information hits me like a sucker punch, and all the air is sucked out of my lungs at once.
Not that Emma is a ‘blonde bombshell’ or that Poppy gave him hell for seeing her, although that is entertaining to think about—I wish I’d been there to see it, frankly.
No, it’s that Poppy has chosen to inform me that Hudson has not been with anyone since me. That’s fresh-off-the-press news.
Poppy has never once mentioned it on our many FaceTime calls over the years, and I assumed Hudson went down the same path as his little brother, Jett. Jett has always been a playboy, and once I left, I started hearing about all the dumb shit they got up to together.
Not to mention all the pranks, hazing the younger guys at the firehall, the annual boot drive competition between him and Cole. Poppy kept me up to speed on all his idiotic antics—I figured bedding women would have been one of them.
“It’s fine, Poppy,” I reassure her. She doesn’t need to defend my honour to Hudson. “He can date whoever he wants. I have no interest in him anymore.”
Poppy squints her deep brown eyes at me from beneath equally dark, wispy bangs.
“If you say so,” she says with skepticism lacing her tone.
“Do you smell that?” I say, sniffing the air.
“Okay Wren, loud and clear. We can change the topic?—”
“No, I’m serious, it smells like smoke.” From where we’re seated at the table, I can see tendrils of smoke coming out of the cracks in the oven door. “Oh my God, the pizzas!” I cry, the words coming out so fast they all sound like one.
I run over to open the oven door. When I do, even more smoke comes out, setting off the smoke alarm above me. With the noise blaring in my ears, and my eyes burning and blinded from the black cloud, I have no idea what to do.
I manage to wave away the smoke long enough to see the source; the back half of one of the pizzas has flames licking the crust, which is now completely charred.
“It’s on fire!” I shout in surprise. I’m panicking. I have no idea what to do in this situation. I slam the oven door shut. I saw something online about if you deprive the fire of oxygen, the flame will eventually go out.
“Wren, what are you doing?!” Poppy cries, running over to me and reaching for the oven door.
“I don’t know, stifling the flame? Depriving it of oxygen?” I stammer, throwing my hands up.
“I don’t think that works if the oven is on,” Poppy says, opening the oven door. She’s right. The fire is even worse now, and the entire crust is engulfed in hot flames.
“Shit, shit, shit!” I fling open the drawer next to the oven and grab a pair of tongs to grab the pizza with. As I lift it out, the flames grow larger. I throw it down onto the stove and start fanning with a dish towel.
“You’re making it worse!” Poppy sounds exasperated.
“What would you have me do, then?” I press my fingers between my brows, thinking. The sink. I need to get the pizzas in the sink. I reach for the tongs again, but as I’m about to grab them, Poppy shrieks.
“Look!” I look to where Poppy is pointing and see the flames catching the wall behind the oven. Oh God. Oh God! “I’m calling 911!” Poppy yells over the fire alarm, now blaring through the house, as she runs out of the kitchen to get her phone.
“Poppy, no! Don’t!” I grab the tea towel again and start fanning until I remember that’s how we ended up in this mess. I search my brain for any useful information. What are the differences between a regular fire and a grease fire? Is this a grease fire or a regular fire?
I need to fix this on my own, because as soon as she calls the fire department, Hudson, and everyone else in Heartwood, will know what a complete fuck up I am. But my mind is jumbled, and Poppy has already dialled the numbers and is shouting my address into the phone.
Time feels warped, like the minutes are hours and seconds all at once, and pretty soon, there are red and white lights flashing in front of the house, and a very large man is clomping through the entryway.
He’s clad in yellow, fireproof gear, a helmet, and an oxygen mask obscuring his face except for those piercing blue eyes which immediately find mine as he passes me to head to the kitchen.
Someone else ushers us out onto the lawn and wraps Poppy and I in a scratchy, grey wool blanket. Once my breathing finally settles, I’m able to look around and take in the commotion outside, the crowd gathered in front of our house.
Great. Fucking great . For sure one of our neighbours will immediately be on the phone with my dad, letting him know his delinquent daughter, the one who is a so-called structural engineer, has burnt his house down in less than forty-eight hours of them being gone.