Lovely Sad

The winter heat wave that Arizona had been blessed with the previous week was now long gone, as the temperature dipped into the 50’s. Absolutely freezing for someone born and raised in Arizona, like Poppy. The afternoon forecast promised a high closer to the mid-70’s so optimistic Poppy had opted for a pair of ripped denim shorts today, but now found herself bundled up in her office in a grey pullover sweater and leather jacket in an attempt to stay warm.

The sandwich she had bought herself for lunch sat discarded on her desk as she leaned back in her chair, kicking off her boots and resting her feet up on the edge of her desk.

This was a rare moment in Poppy’s schedule where she had a spare second of free time. And she had no idea what to do with it.

Tapping her thumbs impatiently on her phone screen, she unlocked the device and tapped on the messages icon. Bridget had yet to reply to her text asking if she was free for dinner tonight. She also hadn’t heard back from Bridget in response to the six other texts she had sent her declaring how bored she was. She knew Bridget was busy at work, and being a teacher didn’t really allow ample opportunities to be sitting around on your phone texting, but Poppy was bored and needed something to do to occupy her time.

Poppy had sent off nearly all her ideas to Candice for approval and couldn’t do anything until she heard back from her. It had been about 20 minutes since Candice had acknowledged the email and promised her she’d give the ideas a look. Poppy was now out of ideas of things to do.

She had never been one to relax. In fact, Poppy couldn’t even remember the last time she had taken a day off or gone on a vacation. Even at home in the evening, relaxing on her couch to unwind at the end of the day usually involved her checking her emails and doing business on her iPad. There was no rest for Poppy. Successful people didn’t take breaks in her eyes.

Scrolling through her inbox, she searched for a familiar name to jump out at her, desperate for someone to occupy her time. John’s name jumped out to her, and she clicked on his name to open up the conversation. She had not heard a word from him since their disaster of an attempt at a date earlier in the week, and she figured it probably wouldn’t hurt to apologize again. She had yet to send him any messages either, and she assumed he was probably just waiting to hear from her. It was her that ran out on the date, so she accepted that she was the one who needed to apologize first. After sending the apologetic message, she let the phone drop into her lap, leaning back in the chair and staring blankly up at the ceiling. She tapped her fingers on her knees while she waited, allowing a few minutes to pass before looking back down at the phone again.

No reply.

But Poppy was never one to just sit back and allow the world to ignore her.

‘Any interest in a redo of that attempt at a first date?’ She tried again.

This time her phone finally buzzed with a reply, opening it instantly.

‘Wouldn’t want to inconvenience you by getting in the way of your busy work schedule.’

Poppy scowled at her phone. This was a definite mood change from her initial conversation with John. Or had he always been this hostile and she had just failed to notice it?

She locked the phone, tossing it rather carelessly onto her desk and opening up her laptop to find something else to do in the mean time. She wasn’t going to waste her time replying to such a rude text from a guy she had been nothing but nice to. She must have seriously misjudged his character, the tone of his message sounding a lot like a child preparing to throw a temper tantrum rather than a grown 26 year old man.

Poppy could have sworn he seemed nice, not only when she had initially texted him, but also during their brief date a few days prior.

Granted, their conversation had barely even begun when the date ended. And he did seem pretty pissed off when Poppy said she had to leave. She had always thought she was good at judging a person’s character upon meeting them, but she had obviously overlooked his short temper in favour of focusing on his charming smile.

Her laptop was open in an attempt to find something else to take her mind away from her boredom, but instead she found herself bitterly typing John’s name into Google and pressing enter. The first few links that came up were for some Irish DJ of the same name, but the final link at the bottom of the page opened up his Instagram for Poppy to see. It was definitely childish, but Poppy found a rather small therapeutic aspect to it all, gaining satisfaction as she scrolled through the photos. She wanted to see if there were any other details she had overlooked in favour of his looks, and she just wanted to make herself feel better as she thought about just how much better she was than him.

The more photos that popped up on her computer screen, the more interest she lost in John. They were all abstract photos under hideous blue filters.

Why was he trying so hard to be artsy? He sure was playing the poor misunderstood artist card real well, she thought to herself as she looked at a photo of a fishing line cast out into a lake, the caption talking about something ‘zen.’ That was too much for Poppy, and she was about to close the window, when one coloured photo caught her attention amongst all of the weirdly blue pictures. It happened to be the most recent photo he had posted, the time stamp informing her he had posted it right after their date. It was a photo of a dog, it’s head resting in John’s lap. Poppy swooned taking in the way John’s hand was in frame scratching the dog’s ear, much to its delight. But then Poppy’s eyes fell to the caption accompanying the photo and she immediately scowled.

‘Can confidently say this is the only girl I need in my life.’

“No fucking way.” Poppy muttered, staring at the photo. Was he subtweeting her?

She understood their date didn’t go exactly as she would have liked, but he was posting a photo of his fucking dog, and insulting Poppy in the process. She scoffed, slamming the laptop shut. As if John didn’t need Poppy in his life. She was the one who didn’t need him in her life.

She scooped her phone back up, furiously typing out a text to Bridget about what she had just found. Just thinking about how smug he probably thought he was being, posting about her and then ignoring her texts, it was all enough to make steam come out of Poppy’s ears as if she were some poorly animated cartoon.

It had only been a few nights ago that Poppy had sat through a lecture from Bridget about how she needed to be more assertive and stand up for herself. Although, that lecture had been in response to Poppy letting clients walk all over her and take away from her personal life outside of work. She told her to draw a line in the stand and separate the two, setting aside designated time for work and pleasure, never letting clients cross over. Poppy had thought it was ironic, as Bridget had no idea she was talking about Adrian when she told her to stop mixing business and pleasure. But now Poppy was interpreting her advice differently. She was going to stand up for herself. She was going to make sure John O’Callaghan knew that he didn’t get to walk all over Poppy. She was going to come out on top, like always.

Clicking on John’s name in her messages app, she tried to brainstorm how she was going to approach this.

If this was going to end, it was going to end on Poppy’s terms.

‘This weekend will be work free, I promise.’

When he didn’t reply after a few moments, Poppy began to type again. He was going to say yes to this date, she was going to charm him until he fell head over heels for Poppy, and then she was going to be the one who got to end it. That last message wasn’t forward enough, she needed something he couldn’t possibly say no to.

‘Saturday night. We’ll start again and I’ll make this all up to you. ;)’

A winking face. Guys fucking loved those. It made them instantly believe they were going to get laid when a girl sent them a winking face. Poppy couldn’t help but laugh to herself as she locked the phone after sending the message off to him.

Although her actions at the moment didn’t necessarily reflect it, Poppy was a nice person. She had been raised with manners and would go out of her way to help anyone. That being said, she was also very competitive. There were few things she hated more than losing. Since her break up with Adrian, her last serious relationship, dating had basically just been a game to Poppy. And it was now a game she wasn’t going to let John win.

Deciding a trip out of the office to get coffee would probably kill the remaining time she had before Candice got back to her and she could resume her work, Poppy slipped her phone into her pocket and grabbed the keys to her car. As if on cue, her phone began to buzz in her back pocket just as she pulled into the parking lot of the Starbucks. Pulling into a parking spot, she removed the keys from the ignition before taking out her phone and unlocking it.

It had been nearly 15 minutes since she had sent off her last text to John, and she just could picture him hunched over his phone scowling at the message as he contemplated an answer. Taking that long to think it over and answer Poppy’s question about their date, he must have thought he was the one in control. Poppy was desperate and pining over John, and he was doing her a favour by saying yes. She rolled her eyes as she opened his latest message.

‘Fine. I’ll see you Saturday.’

Nice try, O’Callaghan, but Poppy Rae was winning this round.