Page 50 of Halloween Town

Hi, back, dog-walker person.

Thom handed Edie Felony’s leash. “If you’ve missed him that much, you can take him. I’ll pay you double your hourly rate.”

She looked up, narrowed her eyes, and cocked her head. “Triple.”

“Deal,” Thom said, and without further argument, tugged Poppy into a jog. When she asked him why they were running, he looked down at her. “I don’t want her to change her mind,” he admitted.

“Poor Fel,” Poppy said, trying to keep up with his long strides. “You’re abandoning your baby.”

“He’s, as we both know, your baby.” Thom stopped and smiled down at her. “And you really don’t have to worry about him. Edie will feed him hot dogs and spend a few hours patting him and stroking him, telling him how marvelous he is. When he comes home, his head won’t be able to fit through the door.”

Poppy laughed at his grumbling. “You and your dog have the weirdest relationship,” she said.

“Tell me about it,” he said. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked at it. “Shall we text Wren to find out where they are?”

“She said they’d be on the lake side of the meadow, close to where Hayes broke his leg.”

Thom instantly nodded. That was the thing about having a history that went back to their childhoods: they had references that most people didn’t.

With her hand still in Thom’s, they hurried through the crowds to the big oak tree—the same one Hayes’d tumbled from when he was thirteen. Hayes and Thom had a bet to see who could go highest, when Hayes slipped and fell and ended up breaking his tibia, putting him in crutches for the rest of the summer.

“Remember how grumpy he was?” Thom asked, picking up her train of thought.

“He was impossible,” Poppy replied, laughing. “I also remember sneaking him into Dr. Morris’s rooms to get his cast replaced because he got it wet in the lake, and him trying to bribe the doc into not telling his mom.” Thom grinned, pulled her in for a side hug, and, holding hands, they approached their friends, who were lounging on a picnic blanket under the tree.

Wren’s eyes darted to their interlinked hands but didn’t comment. Then again, they’d had a two-hour long conversation about Thom the day after she first slept with him. And, instead of giving them shit about their relationship-status change—something Poppy’d expected—they all got to their feet as they approached. One glance at Wren’s frustrated face was enough—Poppy wasn’t going to like what was coming.

Wren lifted up her hands. “It’s not bad bad, Popsicle.”

Bad bad was a childhood code, reserved for things like death and grave injuries and massive injustices, like the grocery store running out of their favorite ice cream or being smacked in the face by a dodgeball thrown by their crush. Poppy released some of the tension she was holding.

After greeting Dane and Hayes, she sat down on the picnic blanket and tucked her dress under her knees. Wren followed her down to the blanket.

“Can I get a beer first before you hit me with your not-so-bad news?” Poppy asked.

Hayes handed her a beer, and Thom sat on the grass next to her. She looked at Dane, then at Hayes. While she wasn’t very worried, she didn’t like the emotions flickering in their eyes. Anger? Protectiveness? Extreme annoyance?

Thom took the can from her hand, popped the tab, and handed it back to her. She thanked him and took a sip. Then another. Then she looked at Wren, who was holding her phone in a white-knuckle grip. “Why didn’t you tell me … us, Poppy?” Wren asked.

She frowned, not sure what she was getting at. “Tell you what?”

“The real reason you ran from your wedding!”

What was she talking about?

“You’re going to have to explain, Bird,” Poppy said.

Wren waved her phone and Poppy took it, looking down. Right, it was a picture of Benji and Maddy, one of her bridesmaids, arms around each other, taken alongside a pool.

“Good to see that Benji has fully recovered from me ghosting him at the altar,” she quipped, handing the phone back.

“This photo was taken at a Fourth of July party, Poppy,” Wren said, sounding heartbroken. And pissed off. “They’ve been having an affair from July, maybe even before that.”

“He … what?” Thom said what she wanted to, what she couldn’t. Poppy looked at him, took in his stillness and control, and shivered at the fury in his eyes. For her?

But she couldn’t think about him now; she needed to make sense of the landmine that had just detonated in her face. She looked down at the photograph again, taking in Benji’s shit-eating grin and his proprietary hand on Maddy’s hip. She wondered if anyone else had noticed the condom wrapper on the ground next to the sunbed.

Fourth of July … she’d spent that weekend here. Benji had told her that he would be with his mum in New York City for a distant cousin’s wedding, to which she hadn’t been invited.