Annalise wasn’t overly concerned when the first message came through. At the time, she had no idea it was the start of something bigger. She was in the middle of coaxing Will into hitting on Poppy when her phone had lit up on the bar in front of her. She was so glad she’d decided to look straightaway, because it gave her the chance to get rid of it before Poppy saw it.
Poppy didn’t need to read something like that – especially not when she was finally ready to move on from Garret. It would totally ruin her mood, and then who knew when she’d be up for it again? As much as Annalise wanted to reply to this Inga woman and lay into her, instead she jabbed at the screen until she’d deleted the message and then blocked the sender from the group. How the hell did she get wind of their group anyway?
Once the message had been dealt with, Annalise had turned her attention back to Will. ‘I can tell you’re into her. You’ve been making eyes across the bar for the past ten minutes. Be a man and step up.’
‘How do you know I wasn’t making eyes at you?’
‘Forget about me. I’m not your type, trust me.’
‘Funny. You look a lot like my type to me.’
Annalise couldn’t help but feel flattered. Her instincts were telling her to flirt. He was good-looking, the sort of guy she’d normally be happy to take to bed. Her body started to respond on its own. Her back arched ever so slightly. Her lower lip pouted.
‘Is that right?’ she said.
Will grinned as his gaze roved across her body. But then a tiny voice at the back of her head spoke up. You were supposed to be doing this for Poppy.
She stopped herself just in time.
Once her work was complete, Annalise hung behind for a short time to keep an eye on Poppy and Will and make sure they were hitting it off. She grabbed a spot near the doorway and filled in time writing in her notebook, before soon calling it a night. She cornered a cute staff member as she was leaving, making him promise to pass on her message to Poppy. His knees almost buckled when she whispered it into his ear. Poor guy couldn’t have been any older than nineteen. He begged her for her number but she refused. He was too young even for her. She headed home, content in the knowledge that Poppy was finally going to get lucky.
Annalise had had Poppy pegged from the moment she met her. Poppy was a good girl. A good girl who worked hard and followed the rules. She dressed like she was older than she was: neat trousers with the pleat down the front. Flat shoes. Plain beige blouses. Her features were ultra-pronounced. Her eyes, nose and mouth were all clustered together right in the centre of her face. Huddled, as though they were protecting one another from the elements. And then her forehead, cheeks and chin seemed to spread out from the features at the centre. She should have compensated with a fringe and maybe some layers around her face, but instead she accentuated the wide open space by pulling her hair back tightly – and she wore her hair the same way, every single day. As soon as she had the opportunity, Annalise would have to convince her to change that.
Poppy was also great at her job. She had an incredible knack for knowing what things were about to go viral. ‘People think it happens organically,’ she told Annalise once, ‘and sometimes it does, but there’s also a formula. A constantly fluctuating formula, but still a formula. It’s art mixed with science mixed with psychology. It’s beautiful.’ She was a little bit tipsy at the time.
When Garret had betrayed her, her pain had been obvious almost instantly. It was written all over her face. It was in the way her shoulders rounded. It was in the way the odd strand of hair started to creep out of her ponytail and fall across her face. It was in the lines that etched their way across her forehead and spidered out from her eyes. Annalise was hooked. She wanted to know more. She wanted to know what had happened to her and she wanted to save her.
Karleen’s disloyalty meant Poppy had an opening for a new best friend, and Annalise’s relationships had been so shallow for so long that she supposed she was looking for a way to settle down a bit. Sometimes Annalise wondered if that was why she started to get carried away with Lawrence. Was she secretly after something more? She didn’t really think so. It was more that she just liked the way he always went down on her first.
All it had taken for Annalise to draw Poppy in was one of her trademark flirty smiles – the type she’d usually reserve for a bloke she wanted to bang for the night, but she’d had a feeling a little bit of flirting would work on Poppy. Sometimes that’s what a new friendship between women was like – a touch of flirtatiousness. Mutual attraction. Didn’t have to be sexual. Could be if you wanted it to.
The day that Annalise had told Poppy she’d join her soccer team was the same day that Annalise had first slept with Lawrence. It was only supposed to be a one-off, but somehow it hadn’t worked out that way. It had started when Lawrence watched the conversation between Annalise and Poppy. He’d been turned on by the way the two women were flirting with one another. He might have thought he was hiding the hard-on beneath his trousers, but Annalise had sensed it, and when Poppy had left the break room, she’d walked straight up to him until their faces were barely inches apart and whispered, ‘I know you want me,’ before turning on her heel and walking away without waiting for his reaction.
He’d looked up her mobile number on the internal staff list and texted her within the hour.
If Annalise was completely honest, this tactic didn’t work for her every time. Sometimes a man might find it too intimidating. Or she might have read them wrong, misinterpreted their desire. But mostly she was spot on. And Annalise knew she was good-looking. Not in the traditional, symmetrical features kind of way, but in the big lips, big eyes kind of way. They were almost too big – another fraction of a millimetre and she’d have a cartoon-like face, especially with such a small frame, the body of a twelve-year-old boy. But she knew how to make it all work for her. Catch her at certain angles and an onlooker might say she was an ugly red-headed duckling, but with the right lighting, the right hair, the right facial expressions, she knew she was hot as fuck. And it all came down to confidence anyway.
After Annalise left Poppy and Will together at the pub, she summoned Lawrence to meet her for a late-night rendezvous of their own.