“The what-if”

The what-if is Poppy Wright’s shorthand for the possibility that her friendship with Alex Nilsen might become romantic. Rather than treating that possibility as a settled choice, she assigns it a changing share of their relationship: five percent in New Orleans, roughly fifteen percent before their Vail trip, and a manageable two once they are together again. The phrase makes uncertainty sound measurable, but its shifting numbers expose what the calculation cannot settle. Poppy can recognize attraction, even believe that Alex feels it too, while still choosing the safety of their friendship over the risk of testing what might happen if they acted on it.

A Possibility Given a Percentage

The expression takes shape against the history of Poppy’s connection with Guillermo. She met him in New York after her friend Rachel Krohn invited her along to a restaurant in exchange for social-media promotion. Rachel framed the arrangement as both less embarrassing and a matter of cross-promotion. The restaurant’s chef, Guillermo, came out to speak with them; he was attractive and warm, and he messaged Poppy on Instagram that same night, before she had posted her photographs. The account establishes that Poppy has a romantic relationship beyond her friendship with Alex, giving the later claim that she is happy with Guillermo a concrete context rather than making it a hypothetical reassurance.

In New Orleans, Poppy says that she is happy with Guillermo and that Alex deserves to be happy too. She describes the tension admitted by the what-if as resolved, assigning it just five percent of her relationship with Alex. The number does not mean that the possibility has never mattered. It marks her sense that, for now, it no longer disrupts the friendship or competes with her contentment. The expression lets her name the unsettled remainder without treating it as the whole relationship.

The Measure Changes in Vail

Before a later trip to Vail, the figure has grown. Alex has persuaded Sarah Torval to agree to the trip, although Poppy does not ask how, because she is wary of the conversations they now avoid and of embarrassing Sarah. She considers whether Sarah’s initial reluctance came from jealousy, but does not claim to know. Once the trip is underway, Poppy says that the what-if has risen to roughly fifteen percent, then shrunk to a manageable two as being with Alex makes their relationship feel normal again. The figures register a shift in Poppy’s own experience; they do not establish Sarah’s motive or resolve the unspoken questions surrounding the trip.

Their days together supply the texture of that restored ease. They ride bikes over cobbled streets, take a gondola up the mountain, hike, and share fries with garlic and Parmesan on outdoor patios. When Poppy pulls her knees inside her sweatshirt against the cold, Alex flips up her hood and tightens the drawstrings until only the middle of her face is visible. He calls her cute, and she reads the gesture as almost brotherly. Their closeness is intimate in its familiarity, yet Poppy can still classify it as safe because it does not, in that moment, require a declaration or change in their relationship.

Attraction and the Fear of Loss

The phrase’s neat arithmetic becomes less reassuring in retrospect. Poppy later admits that an earlier night in New Orleans had been different: amid the city’s music and lights, she felt something new with Alex and understood from his gaze and touch that he felt it too. In Vail, by contrast, they dance hand in hand to Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl, laughing at their familiar lack of rhythm. This time, Poppy feels that the heat has gone out of Alex’s touch. She is happy about the absence of a spark because she does not want to lose what they already have.

Her preference is stark: she would rather keep a small piece of Alex forever than have all of him briefly and then have to relinquish him. The what-if therefore names more than attraction. It holds together desire and restraint, and makes the friendship’s possible loss part of the romantic possibility itself. Poppy’s insistence that she could never lose Alex explains why a sparkless trip can feel like a fortunate outcome, even after she recognizes that a more charged moment was mutual.

Narrative Function

The changing percentages give Poppy a compact vocabulary for an ambiguity she cannot resolve by observation alone. Five, fifteen, and two are not objective measurements; they describe how strongly the possibility presses on her at different moments. Their movement also distinguishes contexts: in New Orleans, her contentment with Guillermo helps her regard the tension as settled, while in Vail, closeness to Alex enlarges the possibility before familiarity and fear make it feel manageable again.

The expression’s apparent lightness contrasts with the stakes beneath it. Poppy can count the what-if as a fraction, but she cannot make the risk disappear by assigning it a small one. Her account preserves both sides of the relationship: an attraction she believes Alex shares and a friendship she is unwilling to gamble. In that tension, the term becomes a measure not of a decision made, but of how Poppy tries to live beside an unanswered possibility.