Chapter Fourteen
? ? ?
I hope Brian actually spiked the ingredients with magic.
Liam
“This must be super odd for people,” Amber says, leaning against the counter of my work station—a number of beakers and tubes and chemist equipment bubbling with reds and pinks and purples. Dozens and dozens of flavors—liquid and powdered—line tables in the largest board room at Whirlwind Branding’s main branch. Several other board rooms mimic the pristine chaos, which culminates…in a love potion lab.
“What is odd?” I ask as I test a cherry flavoring in a beaker. When Brian explained the cost breakdown for some of these events, I gave him a company card and my blessing.
He has yet to disappoint.
“You. Here. Making a love potion.”
“It’s our time block to use a potion station. I had you schedule it specifically before we left on Friday. What’s odd about us being in our designated location at the designated time?”
Amber hums. “It’s just…the staring.”
“They’re staring at you.”
My wife today is wearing a sleeveless top and a corset that does beautiful things to her body. In contrast, I am wearing what I always do. Every day. Because I have eight sets of the same exact outfit, one for each day of the week and an extra, just in case something goes terribly wrong and I’m a day late with the laundry. She’s the new face in the office, and she’s strikingly beautiful, disconcertingly seductive, and casually adorable. Like a doll. My doll. I hope she lets me take pictures when it’s her turn to make a potion. I hope her little lip juts in concentration as she reads labels and concocts a love mocktail to her exact specifications.
“Are they?” She shifts her position. “I don’t think so. I don’t like when people stare at me. It makes me uncomfortable. So they must be staring at you.”
Oh. I understand. She’d like me to assist in her delusion. I add a splash of lime to the mix. “My mistake. You’re right. Everyone’s staring at me.”
“It’s like they’re waiting for you to fire someone. Are you gonna fire someone if they don’t make their love potion right?” A smile flirts with her very pretty pink lips.
The fact that she has been appeasing my wish for her to dress in the clothes she loves, not beige , for money on top of this look makes it very difficult not to kiss her, right here, in front of everyone.
Maybe there’s something in the fumes of these ingredients. When I pick up a bottle labeled both as lemon and lust , I put it right back down. Just in case.
“I am not going to fire anyone for failing to make a working love potion. I will only openly judge their incompetence. Obviously.”
Shaking her head, Amber lets her smile fall. “It’s kind of annoying that no one around here works, yet you’re still making millions a minute. Luck is a—” she swears.
“It’s not luck. It’s branding.”
Her eyes roll. “Is that your motto?”
“No, our motto is taking your branding by storm .” I finish my love potion, deliver the carbonated liquid to a pedestal glass, and offer it to Amber.
The resulting, audible gasp leads me to glance around the room and discover that…maybe she wasn’t delusional. My employees are watching me. Odd indeed.
Suddenly self aware, I clear my throat and return my attention to my wife. “Extra strength tolerance potion.” I’d smile if my skin weren’t prickling from the excessive, undefined perception right now. They see me all the time. Why are they watching me as though the most adorable angel in the universe isn’t within their midst? “I tried to make it blood red. Please make mine pink.”
Her attention lifts off the glass, toward my eyes, but I avert them before she makes contact. “I’m supposed to drink this? And make you one? Everyone else is drinking their own, self-love style. Very proponent of self-care.”
“Is this unrequited tolerance, Bambi?”
She takes the glass. “I’ll drink your blood juice, Cutie. Don’t look so pitiful.” She steps in beside me, taking a sip, and whispers, “Also, if it helps, I appreciate you drawing the eyes. This is way too many people for me.”
That does help. Some.
At least with that information the perception has some definition, some purpose. I’m drawing the attention to protect my Bambi.
I lift a finger and move a curl off her neck. “How’s it taste?”
“Very cherry. Very tolerable.” She begins going through labels, selects strawberry—passion—and adds some. She looks through some more. “Where’s the good boundaries flavor? Kindness?”
Speaking of overstepping boundaries, I want pictures. I pass her the coconut flavored kindness as I get my phone out of my pocket.
“Figures,” she mutters at the coconut container filled with white powder. “You don’t like coconut.”
“It’s a truly offensive flavor.” I lift my phone. “May I?”
“May you—” She stops short of reaching for the lemon bottle. “Oh.” Deadpan, she pops the cap and puts an ample amount through the mechanism’s funnel. “Are you going to make taking pictures of me a habit?”
“I desire memories of my wife being adorable.” I snap a few of her cute little focused expression. She’s like a chemist princess. “Are you aware the lemon flavor is labeled lust ?”
“You like lemon. I’m making you a pink lemonade. Should I be worried you’ll take the fake magic labels on these ingredients as some kind of weird permission?”
No. Maybe… Probably yes. I know I’m not a good person, but I’ve never thought I was the absolute scum of the world, either. Still, every day I’m worried I’ll become just bad enough to throw inhibitions to the curb and do something that will make Amber hate me all the time, in every moment, with every instant the thought of me enters her skull.
She laughs and answers herself in my stead. “Yeah, right. If you’re lucky, this might turn you into a real boy.”
A…real boy? Is she implying that, from her point of view, I don’t experience attraction?
Is she… Is she insane?
I’ve been viscerally attracted to her for years. Decades. It started soft, hypnotizing, then—one semester after summer—it turned violent . I’ve been struggling to catch my breath since.
She pours the concoction into a cup and offers it to me, to the chorus of more hushed gasps. Giggling adorably, she pushes her curls back and smiles. “Your employees have got to get out more, I think. Or , you should show them you know how to smile.”
I wrap my fingers around the cool pedestal glass. “I only smile for you, Bambi. If you want them to see me smile, you’ll have to get me to smile.”
She does not release my cup as a tiny frown mars her lips. “Hold on. I’m going to put the entire container of coconut in this. I think you need it with the evil way your eyes just lit.”
“Hurtful that my excitement translates to evil for you, Bambi.”
“It’s the sadistic pleasure that ideas of torturing me bring you, Cutie.”
My lips—tamed things—twitch.
Releasing my potion, Amber retrieves her glass and sips.
I can’t stop myself. As I lift my pink lemonade to my lips, I smile against the rim. “You don’t even have to try.”
“It’s a blessing and a curse.”
“Your ability to effortlessly make people happy?”
Her head tilts, graceful, and the waterfall of her curls tickles her cheek. “No. How well I know you. You’re like riding a bike.” Her lashes lower. “I’ve never forgotten how, no matter how many times I’ve fallen off.”
Heat spreads to my cheeks, because—as it turns out—I’m not celibate, and hearing Amber create an analogy that includes her riding me does not settle innocently in my brain.
When the gasps erupt into whispers, I flatten my hand to the small of Amber’s back—which, surprise, surprise, also does not help my heartbeat—and steer her from the room.
As I’m plowing us up the hall while she clutches her drink, her laughter dances around me, oblivious, adorable. I mash the elevator call button while other employees heading toward the conference room stop, stare, gape.
The doors do not open fast enough.
But once they have, I mash the top floor and shut them swiftly behind us.
The second I can, I corner my wife in the ascending elevator. A droplet of condensation slides down my glass along my thumb while I whisper, “Sometimes, Bambi, you are not entirely cute .”
She beams, proud. “Why, thank you . Being something other than cute is all I aspire to, really.”
Breath leaves me, and I lose the tension in my shoulders as I lower my face, resting my forehead against her bare skin. She smells…like rose. “No…that’s not…” Defeat hits. “…what I mean.”
The elevator eases upward—tired, repetitive tunes filling the nooks and crannies around us.
Careful, drink held in both hands against her corset, Amber asks, “What do you mean?”
I don’t reply.
But I do, so gently, and deliberately, kiss her neck.