Chapter seventeen

Poppy

Despite being late, Wilson shuffled down the hall toward the classroom at a leisurely pace.

“Is your hip bothering you?”

I asked. “We could have grabbed a walker at the pharmacy.”

He stopped and leaned against the cinderblock wall. “I’m fine. I was just giving you more time to tell me what’s bothering you.”

“Oh,”

I said, looking down at my boots. “Is it that obvious?”

“It is to me,”

he said, kindly. He placed his weathered hand under my chin and tipped my face up, so we were eye to eye. “Now tell me what’s wrong.”

I fought the tears blurring my vision and sucked in a shaky breath. “I wish I knew. I’ve been going over and over it in my mind, but I don’t understand why Theo doesn’t want to be more than friends. Something’s wrong with me, Wilson.”

“Balderdash. Don’t you think that for a minute, sweetie.”

He opened his arms, and I snuggled in for one of his bear hugs. He smelled like the pharmacy, a unique blend of peppermint, something antiseptic, and the man himself. I immediately felt better.

“What happened to bring all this on?”

he asked, holding me at arm’s length.

Instead of going into detail, I pulled the sketch from my bag.

He nodded. “Are you showing Theo that in class or after?”

“Never,”

I said, shoving the paper back in my bag.

Wilson shook his head. “I’ve never known you to be chickenshit.”

“Wilson!”

I said, smacking his chest. “What would the town council think if they heard that language? You’ll never be citizen of the year again.”

“I’d cuss enough to make the devil blush if it meant you’d show Theo that sketch.”

I tugged his arm. “Come on, we’re already late.”

When Wilson and I opened the door, the rest of the class stared at us from their usual seats. Theo stood at the front of the room, watching us as well. I made a point to lock eyes with him and smirk. The creases on his forehead melted.

That smirk cost me every ounce of my limited social graces. Luckily, Wilson acted like a shield, nodding hello to everyone as I trailed him to the back table.

“All right, y’all,”

Theo said, clapping his hands. “Now that we’re all here, let’s start by showing the sketches you did for homework. Who wants to go first?”

Wilson elbowed me in the ribs. I elbowed him back hard enough to shift his body on the stool. He shook his head and centered himself.

Gladys scooted her walker toward Theo when no one else volunteered. She hacked some phlegm from her throat and pulled a sheet of paper from the little basket attached to her scoot ’n sit. She wiggled closer and held out her elbow for Theo to hold. “Get a good grip,”

she said, flashing him a worn smile. “I’m better on my back than my feet.”

The other members of Theo’s Fan Club snickered, and he blushed an adorable pink. Whenever young women flirted with him, which let’s face it, happened all the time, he ignored them. But these old biddies made his cheeks burn every class. I sometimes wondered if he could make himself blush at will. A small gift for the women who looked forward to seeing him all week. It’s exactly the kind of thing Theo would do. And one of the million reasons why I couldn’t find it in me to stop wanting him.

“If you’re not showing that sketch, what are you showing?”

Wilson whispered as Gladys shared a rather phallic looking still life of a vegetable garden.

“One of Chris,”

I whispered back.

“Lovely. Can I see it?”

I pulled out the sketch I’d done of my brother and slid it to Wilson. He picked it up and ripped it in two. Gladys stopped mid-sentence and everyone but Esther turned in their seats to stare at us.

“Oops,”

Wilson said, and then proceeded to tear the two halves in half again.

“If you’re done, Gladys,”

Esther shouted. “I’ll go next.”

Gladys wasn’t, but she nodded and shuffled back to her chair as Esther groaned out of her seat with the grace of a front loader lifting a dumpster.

“Wilson,”

I whisper yelled once everyone had turned their attention back to the front. “I thought we were friends.”

“We are,”

Wilson said, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “Sometimes we need our friends to nudge us in the right direction when we’re scared.”

“I’m not scared.”

Wilson shrugged. “Hurt, then. Embarrassed. Whatever negative emotion you choose that’s keeping you from showing that picture.”

I glared at him, unwilling to admit it was all of the above, and turned my attention to Esther, who’d made a decent attempt at a self-portrait. When Esther finished, we all clapped and Wilson raised his hand.

“You’re up, Mr. Wilson,”

Theo said with a smile.

“Oh no,”

Wilson said. “I forgot to do the assignment, but my friend Poppy here is ready to present hers.”

Really, Wilson? He couldn’t even let me sit in abject panic until everyone else had gone before I made a fool of myself. More likely he’d figured I’d realize I could make another sketch of Chris while everyone went before me.

“You’re evil,”

I hissed before taking the sketch from my messenger bag. Wilson smiled like I’d given him the greatest compliment on Earth and made little shooing motions with his hands.

I pressed the sketch to my chest to hide it and purposefully stopped before I reached Theo. He’d have to walk past me to see it, but everyone else had an up-close view. I turned the sketch to face them, but didn’t say anything.

Theo started to walk forward, but Mrs. Adams held out her hand to stop him. “If she wanted you to see it, she’d have walked closer.”

“He should see it,”

Wilson shouted from the back.

Mr. Fitzwilliam and Twill nodded.

“She doesn’t need any of you old farts telling her what to do,”

Millie hollered. “Or forcing her to do something she doesn’t want to do.”

She aimed a death glare at Wilson, and he had the decency to look a little ashamed.

“Come on, Millie,”

Mr. Fitzwilliam said. “You’ve been trying to get them together for over a year now. Aren’t you the one who brought Poppy to class?”

“That was me,”

Wilson said, raising his hand.

This time Gladys and Mrs. Adams glared at him, and he lowered his head like a puppy who’d just piddled on the living room rug.

“Well, Millie’s the one who keeps drawing all the dirty pictures to get them in the mood for romance,”

Mr. Fitzwilliam said. “Heck, we all have. I haven’t doodled this many peckers since high school.”

Theo said my name and everyone hushed. He pointed to the paper in my hand. I stood as tall as I could and turned toward him. I watched him take in every detail: My hands reaching for his, my fingers grasping the air. His hands balled in a fighter’s pose with the Xs facing out, creating a rigid end to the empty space between us. I’d drawn it from several angles, like a rendering of a sculpture, recreating his intricate tattoos with each. My hands aren’t as distinctive, but anyone who knew me would see them and know.

Theo stared at the sketch for a good thirty seconds before he cleared his throat, the sound booming like a firework in the quiet room. “Excellent work, Poppy.”

“For the love of Pete,”

Twill said, throwing his hands in the air. “What’s the problem, Theo? I know we’re not supposed to assume things, but I caught you with enough girls under the bleachers to figure you like women. And Poppy is perfect for you.”

Theo took a deep breath. “Does anyone else want to share their work?”

Everyone glared at him.

“OK,”

he said, walking to the front. “Tonight, we’re going to work on color mixing for shading.”

“Red and yellow makes orange,”

Gladys shouted. “We got it. Now what do you have to say for yourself, Theo?”

“Enough,”

I said. “I’ve presented my sketch. Let’s move on.”

“Is that what you want, Theo,”

Wilson said from the back. “For Poppy to move on?”

Theo gripped the table in front of him so hard his fingers whitened.

“Of course, he doesn’t,”

Esther shouted. “I can’t hear half the time, but I’ve got the eyesight of an eagle. That boy is beyond smitten. We’ve all seen the way he looks at her.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Mr. Fitzwilliam asked.

“Right now, seven seniors who can’t mind their damn business,”

I snapped, storming to the back of the room where I grabbed my bag, tossed the sketch at Wilson, and stomped out.

I ignored everyone I passed in the hallway and pushed through the glass front door. The frigid night air stole the breath from my lungs but did little to cool the full-body flush of embarrassment. I climbed into Tallulah, slammed the door closed, and threw my bag into the passenger seat. I banged my head on the steering wheel and took a few deep breaths to slow my heart rate before I drove.

A gentle tap on my window interrupted any hope I had of finding my Zen.

“What!”

I yelled, looking up. Theo stood beside the hearse, my sketch in his hands. I lowered the window and waited.

“This is a plan for a sculpture,”

he said, surprising me.

“It is,”

I replied.

“It’s brilliant,”

he said. “Evocative.”

“Um, thanks.”

“It’s also wrong,”

he said, leaning into the window and handing me the sketch. “It looks like I’m fighting you.”

“Aren’t you?”

He shook his head. “Can I sit with you for a minute?”

I shrugged like my heart wasn’t about to beat out of my chest and tossed my bag into the back.

Once he’d folded his tall frame into the passenger seat and closed the door, he gripped his knees and blew out a breath. “I don’t want you to leave,”

he said to the windshield.

“For fuck’s sake, Theo. I stormed off. I can’t go back inside now. First rule of storming off is to stay gone until whoever you left has time to think about what they did.”

“I don’t want you to leave me,”

he said, finally turning to face me, his eyes soft. “Ever.”

Oh.

He wrapped his long fingers around mine and gently pried them from the sketch so he could clasp my hand. I watched the paper flutter to my lap.

“I’ve been fighting myself,”

Theo said, and I lifted my eyes to his. “I thought I was doing the right thing, keeping us apart. I thought you’d be better off with someone else, anyone else. The truth is I’ve had feelings for you for a long time, and if you’d let me, I want us to be more. To be us. Just you and me and no more lines to cross.”

I felt my head nodding, but I couldn’t find the words I wanted to answer him. “OK, sure.”

OK sure? What the hell was wrong with me? After a year of waiting for this man to leave the friend zone, all I had was OK sure? “I mean, I’d like that too.”

Theo’s grip on my hand tightened, and his eyes filled with the heat I’d come to crave. Both of us started breathing like we’d just run for miles. “Will you go to my house?”

he asked in a tight voice. “Aiden put a key under the garden gnome in the flowerbed. I need to smooth things over here, but I won’t be long.”

He lifted his chin toward the classroom window where the entire class had their aged faces pressed to the rapidly fogging glass.

My stomach squeezed at the thought of being alone with Theo, knowing he would touch me in ways I’d never known, if I wanted. “OK sure.”

I guess I left half my brain in the community center. I glanced at the window again, like I’d find part of my IQ there and winced. “Good luck.”

“They might let me leave faster if I kissed you. Otherwise, there’s no telling what they’ll do to me when I get inside.”

I fought the smile tugging at my lips. Just like that, he’d made me feel completely at ease. “Theo Makis, are you afraid of a bunch of senior citizens?”

“Yes,”

he said, without hesitation. “I also can’t wait another second to kiss you.”

I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him close. We kissed to the sounds of muffled cheers and clapping, his hand cradling my face like something precious.

“See you soon,”

he said. The smile he gave me would have stolen my heart, if he didn’t own it already.