Page 24 of The Disasters of Dating
I pull up my boarding pass. In all the craziness of final meetings this morning, I hadn’t checked my gate assignment. I look down and grin, then frown. My gate should be almost directly across from The Wandering Reader. My stomach does a little cha-cha move. I want to see Poppy, but I can’t guarantee that the feeling is mutual.
Maybe she isn’t even working today? It’s a lot earlier than I usually fly in or out. I get the idea that she works the night shift pretty regularly. I’m both happy and disappointed that I might not see her.
I slow down as I walk past the shop. My gate is actually two past The Wandering Reader. I glance inside, my insides knotting together. No wonder the universe told her we were a hard no. I’m a complete weirdo. What kind of guy pursues a girl who tried to have him arrested? I’m now remembering that I was supposed to psychoanalyzemyself while I was at my hotel. Guess I dropped the ball on that one.
The person in the shop is bent over with their backside to me. It’s a pleasant looking backside, if I’m being honest. But it doesn’t do much for me because it’s not Poppy—not that her backside does much for me. I mean it’s attractive, but—I’ll stop now.
The woman stands up, and long hair, with at least a dozen small braids, falls down her back. Oh, man. It is Poppy. In the handful of times I’ve been into her shop, I’ve never seen her in pants. But I should have realized the wide-legged jeans belonged to her. I can barely see the faint mist rising from the diffuser on the counter behind the register.
My heart picks up speed. I’d convinced myself I wouldn’t see her today. And now that I am, I’m all kinds of nervous, and I don’t know whether I should go in and say hi or pretend I don’t see her.
She turns around, and our eyes lock. Crap. I can’t ignore her now. Not that I want to. I want to talk to her…I just have no idea what I’ll say.
She smiles and lifts her hand in a wave. So I guess she doesn’t hate me. Or she is good at customer service. I glance down the terminal at my gate. I’ve got a little time to kill, so I may as well at least say hi.
I pull my bag behind me and stop in front of her. “Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” she says back.
Well, so far, the conversation is riveting.
I glance over at the gum. “I was coming to buy some gum.”
Her lips twitch slightly. “Did you use up all those packages you had with you on Monday?”
I nod. “It was one of those weeks, you know?”
She shakes her head. “No, I’m not much of a gum chewer. I was as a kid, but I guess I never transitioned from kid gum to adult gum.”
I shift my backpack up higher. “I get that. It’s hard to make the move from grape to mint. I think they tried to make it easier by making a minty grape. But it just didn’t do it for me.”
She actually laughs, and my breath hitches. I think if she’d been laughing when she tried to arrest me, I might have gone willingly. “So, you’re headed home? Or do you live here and just travel a lot?”
“Both,” I pull my suitcase up, letting it rest on all four wheels. “I mean, I don’t live here, but I travel back and forth a lot.”
She nods. “What gate are you out of? With the way our past interactions have gone, I don’t want to be responsible for you missing your flight.”
I lift my chin, motioning down the terminal. “I’m there at Gate 18. I can hear if they call for boarding.”
She glances down at the luggage tag from a past flight. “Boston, huh? What brings you to Utah so much?”
“The company I work for is moving its corporate offices here to Lehi. I’m overseeing it.” I lean against the gum display case. They look much sturdier than they are. Before I know what’s happening, the shelves collapse, and the gum is all in a pile on the floor.
With wide eyes, I drop to the ground and start picking up the minty-smelling packages. “Oh, man. I’m so sorry.” I shake my head and keep my eyes on the floor. What is wrong with me that I can’t function like a normal human being when I’m around her? “This kind of thing rarely happens to me.”
Poppy kneels next to me. “It’s okay. Those shelves are terrible. I keep asking the owner to replace them. But he just says, ‘There isn’t the money to do it right now, and so you’ll have to make do.’” She says it in a low but mocking tone of voice. She scoots the gum to the side and starts messing with the first shelf.
“I’m really sorry. I’m sure it’s my fault. If I need to pay for the damage, I totally can.” I might think about not pursuing this relationship just for the sake of my wallet.
She waves me aside. “Don’t worry. This happens at least once a month. You were the lucky person to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She puts the shelves back and starts stacking the gum. I help her, matching the gums with the ones she has already placed.
Everything back where it belongs, we stand up. She brushes her hands together. “Thanks for the help.”
I lift my backpack to her. “Would you like to search it? Just to make sure it wasn’t a ploy to steal a pack of gum?” I wink at her. Where in the crap did that come from? I’m not a winker by nature. I won’t say I’ve never done it. Because I have. And if a guy says he hasn’t, he’s lying. We all try it. But most of us grow out of it. I went through my winking phase when I was in college—undergrad. By grad school, I had realized what I looked like when I winked and it’s not an attractive thing, trust me.
She laughs again, and my chest constricts. “I’m pretty sure you earned the gum when you helped me clean it up. So we’ll call it even.” She moves behind the register and rests her backside on the counter behind her. “So, when do you come back?” Is that interest in her voice? Or is she just making polite conversation? Man, I want it to be the first.
But I don’t want to look like any more of an idiot than I already do, so I try for nonchalance. “Sunday night. That’s my usual.”
