Page 9 of Poppy Kisses
I tore my attention off her ass and was caught in a cloud of sunshine and peaches. I suppressed a groan. She smelled like peaches with an ass like that?
Inhaling, I should regret cementing her scent to memory. Was I being creepy? I had no idea. Had she always smelled like a late summer day? Didn’t kids smell like wet, sweaty dogs on late summer days?
We weren’t kids anymore. Poppy was all woman, and I noticed every inch.
As she led me through the kitchen where my knotty alder cabinets were mounted, I admired my work. I didn’t often get back into a house to see the lived-in version of my efforts. I took pictures when I finished and that was it.
I ran my hand over the counter. Damn, I did good work.
“They really like them.” Her gaze was on me. She’d tucked her hands into the thin hoodie she was wearing. Just like her scent, the fabric was a soft peach color that brought out the color in her cheeks. Tendrils of hair stuck out around her head, escaping the hold of her ponytail like a rogue halo.
She lifted her brows and ducked her head. “Jensen?”
Shit. I was staring. She was angelic in a rumpled, athletic way. Like she’d played a couple games on the pitch and came to torment me about the bad decisions I had made. “Sorry. I don’t usually get to see them after they’ve been used.”
“They get abused with Alder too. He’s always in the kitchen.”
“He never used to be?”
“Nope.” She pulled out a high-back chair from the table and plopped down. She gestured to the seat on the end. “What’s up?”
I sat and blew out a breath. I couldn’t look at her. The conversation in the grocery store hadn’t been the first time it’d happened. It’d been the only time I’d gotten confirmation. “I lost a job because of my emails.”
“How?”
“I think I’m dyslexic.”
“It is hereditary.” There was no surprise in her tone.
I clenched my jaw as memories clashed in my brain. “Hassie said it couldn’t be her and pointed out I was the one who did poorly in school.”
A flash of sympathy ran through her gaze a moment before irritation set in. “She always liked rubbing it in how good she was at spelling.”
“She spelled d-i-v-o-r-c-e easily enough.”
Poppy let out a huff, then studied me, curiosity in her eyes. “You’ve never been told you have it?”
“No, my reading teacher told my mom she didn’t read enough with me and that’s why my fluency suffered.” Mom had tried to read to me for an hour a night after that. As a young boy with too much energy, that nightly hour had been sheer torture. And it hadn’t helped.
“Mrs. Groggins?” Poppy rolled her eyes. “I never liked her. How could she think that was true at all?”
“She didn’t like me, that was for sure. But wouldn’t she know? If I was dyslexic?”
Poppy shook her head. “I mean, if it’s something she’d been educated about. They’re only just starting to get legislation in the state moving to get more dyslexic awareness and learning tracts in the schools. Don’t get me started on screening that should happen much earlier. It’s frustrating because dyslexia affects, like, twenty percent of the population. One in five kids. Can you imagine? In small communities like ours, it could be more prevalent because of the hereditary factor. Other locations’ ten percent incidence could be our thirty.”
Her vehemence soothed the chastised kid inside of me. The boy who had never pleased his teachers. Who’d hated reading out loud so everyone could give me sideways looks when I stumbled through the passage.
It gave me the courage to tell her everything. I swallowed my humiliation. “I had some typos in an email, and I, uh, got my name wrong.”
A brow cocked up. “Did you switch a couple of letters around, but it looked right?”
Story of my life. “The punctuation was off too. Maybe I should make that my tagline.”
A chortle burst out of her. “Maybe. How do you know that cost you a job?”
“I heard the client tell a friend when I was at the store.” Sympathy welled in her eyes, making the yellow shine. I looked away. “If I can’t spell my name right, then how can I build decent cabinets? Even when I replied, I fucked up something.” I rubbed the spot between my brows. “I triple-check my emails, but I get my promotional ads wrong. If someone doesn’t proofread for me, I’m screwed.”
“You compensate.” She whirled her index finger by her head. “You’ve adapted. Your brain’s got your back, but in doing so, it’s also sabotaging you. Just a little.”
