Feeling restless and uneasy about just unsteady everything in my existence currently was, I pulled my phone out and pressed a finger to the name of the single thing that put a stop to all the questions and uncertainty. All I had to do was picture Poppy’s wide, timid eyes and everything that was screaming and thrashing around inside of me went quiet. It was so much easier to focus on overcoming her aversion to closeness than it was to think about straightening out my own mess. I was convinced I could prove to her that there were men in the world she didn’t need to be afraid of, that there were men who would do right by her even if that rightness came with a little bit of maneuvering. She said I moved her without using my hands and she was correct. Everything I did around her was me trying to get her to move closer to me. I pushed her to take steps that she needed to take in order for her to be comfortable around me. I wanted to see if there was any way she would be open to something more than our current tense friendship.
I wanted her, but I wanted her to want me back even more. Partly because I knew I was a safe bet for her once she was ready to jump back into the dating pool. I wouldn’t take advantage of her and had every intention of handling her like I did one of my classics that was on the verge of falling apart. I would tread lightly and deliberately until all the parts were in working order and then I would prime her and make her purr the way she was always meant to. I wasn’t scared of the work and I had every confidence that the end result would be a thing of pure beauty and something that was priceless.
The phone rang for a long time, and just when I was about to hang up and send a text, the call connected and her breathless voice rushed out a quick “hey.”
I frowned at my reflection in the side of my car and trapped the phone between my ear and my shoulder as I unlocked and opened the door. “Are you okay?”
She gave a brittle-sounding laugh. “Uh … I’m fine. I ended up alone in an exam room with a male patient for a little longer than I was comfortable with because the doc had an emergency in another room. The guy’s dog could sense my anxiety and had a little meltdown. You actually called at the perfect time.” She exhaled and I could practically hear her entire body shaking in the way her voice quivered. “You gave me an excuse to get out of the room. I don’t usually freak out so badly at work. I guess that near miss with the guys from the apartment yesterday has me a little on edge. My therapist is going to have a field day with me during our next session. I always think I’m getting better, but then the universe decides to show me that I’m not.”
I heard a dog bark and she called to someone that she needed five minutes. I hated that she was so hard on herself when her reactions were totally normal considering everything she had been through. “You let me into your apartment last night even after those guys scared the piss out of you. You voluntarily stood in the kitchen with me and you shook my hand. You wouldn’t have done any of those things a couple months ago when we met.” She was moving in the right direction even if she couldn’t see it because she was still looking over her shoulder.
She breathed out again and her voice was very soft when she told me, “I think that has more to do with you than it does with me.”
Her words made my heart stutter and skip a beat. I wanted her to trust me but her handing that information over so quickly was unexpected. I didn’t think I’d done a thing to earn her trust yet. I had to clear my throat before I could reply. “I was hoping we could meet up after I get off work tonight and start to work on some kind of schedule with Happy.” I couldn’t hold back the grin when I said the puppy’s name. “I’ll order pizza and make sure you eat dinner.” She went quiet on the other end of the phone and I wanted to kick myself for pushing too hard too fast with her. “I can always come to your place if you’re more comfortable with that.”
She sighed. “It’s not that.”
I scowled at myself in the rearview mirror and reminded myself that this was all about the long game with her. She was a good distraction at the moment but I wanted her to be around long after the dust of my currently imploding life settled. “What is it then?”
I could picture her tugging on her lip and shuffling her feet nervously because her nervous habits were becoming as familiar to me as my own. So hurriedly that the words smooshed together and were barely discernible, she admitted, “I don’t like pizza.”
Stunned that she was worried about telling me something as simple as that, I found it was my turn to sigh. “Is that all? I’ll order Mexican or Chinese food. Hell, I can even whip up some sandwiches or some mac and cheese.”
She gave another one of those laughs that sounded shrill and slightly hysterical. “I don’t eat tomatoes. I hate them.”
I nodded even though she couldn’t see me. “Okay, so pizza sauce is out, but they make white pizza, we can always do that instead.” Getting to know this woman was like walking across a minefield. Every step I took toward her felt like the ground below me might detonate and throw me a thousand steps backward, injured and unable to keep fighting my way toward her.
She whimpered a little bit and I felt it like a kick in my stomach. I hated how hard something as simple as telling someone else what she did and didn’t like was for her. If her shitbag husband wasn’t already six feet under I would have gladly helped put him there.
“Oliver loved pizza. He told me it was unnatural and ridiculous that I wouldn’t eat it. He’d demand that we order it for dinner once or twice a week and I’d have to sit and watch him eat while I sat there starving. He always told me if I didn’t want to eat what he provided then I could go hungry.”
I swore and curled the hand that wasn’t holding my phone around the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles turned white. My voice was gruff and uneven when I told her, “I’ll feed you whatever you want to eat, Poppy.”
She made a strangled noise and then cleared her throat. “I have to get back to work. I have a group meeting after work tonight, so I won’t be by your place until after seven or so.” She hesitated for a second and then quietly handed over, “My favorite is cheeseburgers. I could eat them every day of the week.”
She didn’t look like she’d had a cheeseburger in years but if that’s what she wanted I would make sure she had the best one Denver had to offer. “Cheeseburgers it is. I’ll text you my address and see you later tonight.”