Page 27 of Personal Disaster

ChapterTen

Marcus

Poppy hasa rental car to return, so there’s no need for me to drive her to the airport. I want to anyway, and she laughs and kisses my face as she tells me she’ll see mesoon.

I have to kiss her goodbye on the top of my mountain, tug her ponytail and promise to stay in touch.

Barely twenty-four hours have passed, but everything has changed.

I stand beside the spot where she parked until I can’t hear her engine, then I stomp into my office.

The first call I make is toToby.

“Long time no speak,” he jokes with the care-free glibness of a man who’s happy.

I’m not happy. “We need totalk.”

“Good that you called me, then.” He clears his throat and murmurs something under his breath. “Sorry, I’m in Toronto withCara.”

“Fun.” But I say it in a hard way that makes it crystal clear I don’t care. I’ll care later. Cara’s nice, although the last time I saw her she was practically a kid. The math promises she hasn’t been a kid for a while, which is good, and probably the only reason Toby is still alive. Which is beside the point. “I—we—have a problem. Not an immediate one, but a futureone.”

“What kind of problem?”

“A reporter showed up here yesterday. She’d dug into my background, done some hard thinking, and was pretty sure I was a rogue Twitter tweeter.”

“That’s a mouthful.”

“Shutup.”

“I’m just saying, say that three times fast. Rogue Twitter tweeter.”

“It’s not funny.”

“It really is. Because you’re not a rogue—”

“She knows thatnow.”

“She? The reporter?”

“Yeah.”

There’s a long, questioning silence. “Wait. You’re not mad at this reporter? And you told her the truth. Who are you and what have you done with my wary-as-fuck best friend?”

I don’t answerthat.

“She must be some kind of something if you broke all your rules forher.”

I sigh. “Don’t worry about that. She’s not the problem.”

“Clearlynot.”

“Her name is Poppy, before you say something else that’s going to piss meoff.”

He makes a long thinking sound. “Okay. So I’m not sure what the problem is, then. You met a cute reporter, totally had a personality change, and convinced her you were a harmless teddy bear. Or something.”

Fuck, that’s shockingly accurate. “That’s not the point.”

“I—Okay. Sure. What’s the point?”

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