Page 116 of Under the Waves
“I miss her,” I whispered quietly after a while. Groaning, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I miss her, and I hate myself because of it. We were never supposed to get this close, I was never supposed to fall—” I shook my head. “Whatever. What’s done is done, right?”
“That’s a pathetic excuse, Cap, and you know it.”
“I—”
“No,youlisten tome, Jasper Ridge. If you want to quit on her, fine.Quit. Take the easy road out. But you and I both know that you have too much love and generosity in your heart to simplystopbelieving in her. You’ve never once given up on Lia, or me, or any of the guys. So don’t start now. Don’t start with her.”
Fuck. Did he even know how much he sounded like Lia just then?
I glared at him. “But she hates me.”
Jakson groaned. “I don’t know Poppy very well, Cap, but I do know that girl is more in love with you than me, and that’s saying something.” He winked at me, to which I elbowed him in the chest. “She’s just hurting right now, rightfully so, you big idiot, but that doesn’t mean she won’t come around later. You just have to give her time. This is Poppy, no matter how far away she runs…she’ll always come back.”
“How can you be so sure?” I asked.
He wiggled his eyebrows at me, a grin playing on his lips. “Call it Jedi intuition.”
I elbowed him again for that comment alone, even thoughmy stomach was full of laughter and my heart felt a mountain lighter.
“Poppy…she’s got these sad green eyes, Sonny,” I breathed in, the air around me still tainted with the scent of the ocean.Of her.“And this hair—man, her hair is curly and messy in a sun kissed way…”
…and like anidiotI learnt how to take care of it in case she ever trusted me enough to let me get that close to her. No kidding, I’d lostcountlesshours scrolling through YouTube watching videos about the best ways to wash curly hair and how to properly take care of it to ensure it stayed healthy. It wasn’t a burden, it was a part of who she was, and I wanted to know everything about her.
Poppy Wells was beautiful and broken and everything in between. She was like nothing I had ever seen before, and I hadn’t known I was a man starved until I met her. I wanted to be hers for real this time. No more fake pretending, even though I knew we probably weren’t doing a good job of it anyway.
I wanted to be hers for real more than anything in between.
Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of brown curly hair and my heart jumped in my throat.
“That’s her, Sonny,” I grasped onto his arm, directing his gaze towards the girl of my dreams. “That’s the girl who stole this.”
I sighed contently, my hand resting atop of my heart.
It beat for her.
Only her.
“Your heart is on the other side, Cap,” Jakson snickered, shaking his head with a smile.
“Oh,” I muttered, switching sides quickly. “I don’t ever want it back.”
Poppy Wells was ethereally beautiful, with those dark rosy lips and thick onyx lashes that covered those mesmerizing forest-green eyes. Those green eyes that burned their way right through to my heart, momentarily causing it to stop beating whenever she looked my way. I never knew someone could have that much power over me…but she did. She always had; even when she used to look so angry at the world, covered head to toe in that black and white Orca-like wetsuit, she looked like the rarest pearl in the entire ocean.
The same Poppy Wells who used to laugh when she got pistachio ice cream on the tip of her nose, whose freckles came out in the sunshine, dancing across her tanned skin, looking like a collection of stars. Messy curls that fanned down her back and tight little denim shorts with matching white and blue tennis shoes.Thatwas the Wellsy I missed—the Wellsy who had streaks of paint in her hair and across her forehead, who grew her own strawberries and danced in the falling raindrops from the sprinkler in the front yard. The one who hummed the lyrics to Harry Styles on her way to school and wasn’t afraid to stand up to people who tried to keep her quiet.
Poets could’ve written sonnets about her. If they didn’t, I would. I’d do anything to hear her laugh. Anything at all.Even pretend to be her fake boyfriend,apparently, but then again, it had never felt fake to me. She probably wouldn’t even recognize us as friends, yet she was everything to me.
I was a desperate man when it came to her.
“You don’t know, Cap. What if she’s already given you hers and you just can’t see it? Poppy might not give herself to you physically, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t already let you keep pieces of her that she only wants to belong to you.”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Maybe you’re right.”
Jakson lightly clapped my shoulder, gripping my skin with a tight hold. “Of course I am,” he grinned, “it’s the Jedi in me. The force is with me, Cap, I’m telling you.”
My vision swayed as I chuckled. Every drop of alcohol I’d consumed suddenly started to catch back up to me.
“I want to give her a vinyl,” I slurred. “She likes them. I like that she likes them.”