Chapter 3
Chapter Three
That was a Top Ten Most Embarrassing thing that had ever come out of her mouth.
Who just said something like that? And why had she offered that information for free?
It was just… None of it was for lack of trying.
There had been a catalog of errors with her attempted hookups to the point where it had become a little bit of a complex.
And yes, explosions and anaphylaxis ranked at the top of the worst reasons that she’d never actually gotten laid, but there were other things like her prom date getting in a car accident on his way to come get her – he wasn’t injured, but his wheel had broken off his axle and his car had been disabled.
There had been the guy who’d flat-out ghosted her, the one who swore that God told him they’d be sinning if they had sex. The guy who’d had spontaneous erectile dysfunction – they’d been nineteen and she’d taken that one really personally.
The universe didn’t want her to bang, and every man who had ever tried to participate had been punished.
Of course, she didn’t like to advertise her virgin status, and she really wasn’t happy that she had done it to Cooper just now.
As if he could’ve thought she was even more pathetic than he already did.
Not that Cooper had ever called her pathetic, she just had a feeling. A deep knowing, some might say.
“I don’t know what to say to that.”
She looked past him. The partial view of the ocean, gray and angry, the wind whipping up whitecaps on the surface. “You know, that’s fair.”
She glanced back at him.
“I mean, you can’t really believe in curses like that.”
“I’d love to say that I don’t. I would love to say that I’m not that fanciful. And maybe I could believe it if I’d never tried, Cooper. But I have tried. Either I’m cursed or there’s something fundamentally unappealing about me. Something fundamentally unattractive.”
“You are not fundamentally unattractive,” he said, his face suddenly going hard like stone, his jaw clenched tight.
As compliments went, it was hardly one. But it still warmed something inside of her. He was Cooper, after all. The object of so many unfulfilled fantasies.
He had been — to her — the epitome of masculinity and male beauty for such a long time, that hearing him say that, even if it was a little bit damning with faint praise, made her heart race wildly.
“You really think so?”
“Let’s… have less conversation about sexual curses, more conversation about decorating wagons.”
“Does it bother you?”
“It’s maybe not a conversation that I would choose to be in with my best friend’s little sister.”
“Well, we’re friends too, right?” She was pushing it, maybe. But if she were asked, she would say that Cooper was a friend. Not an intimate friend, maybe, but definitely a friend in his own right. They had just had lunch together, after all.
“Yeah. Of course. And still, I don’t know that this is a topic of conversation that I’m super into.”
“Well… It’s not like I’ve ever told anyone that before.”
She felt small and embarrassed, partly because he didn’t seem to know what to do with the information, which just confirmed to her that she was a total weirdo.
An abject freak, honestly. Because what woman remained a virgin at twenty-seven because every man she tried to get it on with met some kind of humorously terrible fate?
One good thing was that it wasn’t a medieval curse.
If it were, they would probably be dead.
As it was, no one had even been permanently maimed.
He winced. “Well, it’s nothing to be…”
“Are you trying to tell me that it isn’t embarrassing for me to admit that the last man I tried to hook up with had to be hospitalized?”
“Did he really?”
“Not for very long. The EpiPen did work. I gave it to him myself.”
“Well, see, you are pathetic. You performed a life-saving procedure.”
“After nearly killing him.”
“If he didn’t tell you that you couldn’t eat any shellfish, that’s kind of on him. I don’t think that’s a curse so much as poor planning.”
He looked pained. And honestly, she was also pained. She did not want to be in the conversation anymore. Because she had a feeling that Cooper couldn’t relate to this level of being… Awkward. Because he wasn’t. He was gorgeous and perfectly formed. He was everything that a man should be.
She was everything that a woman with a cursed bloodline should be, probably.
So, there was that.
“So. Wagon decorations.”
“I have some really nice Halloween decorations, and I can get them out, and bring them out to your place, and we can see what we think.”
“All right.”
“I have my giant spider.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’ve made that very clear.”
“I think you’ll like it.”
“I think that you are projecting a little bit too much onto my feelings about Halloween.”
She looked at Cooper, shocked. “Do you not like Halloween?”
“I don’t have any feelings on it one way or the other.”
“What do you mean? It’s the most wonderful night of the year! Didn’t you love going around to all the different houses when you were a little kid and getting candy?”
“We never did that,” he said, shrugging. “We live too far away from town. My mom would just buy us a big bag of candy and let us eat it. I did like that, actually.”
“What about the trick-or-treaters?”
“Nobody comes and rings the doorbell out at a place like ours. Nobody is out there walking on a rural road, and nobody’s going half a mile up a dirt driveway to ring the doorbell.”
She wrinkled her nose. The rambling house that she and her family lived in was a hotspot for trick-or-treaters.
First of all, because there were rumors about her family being witchy and spooky, which made the house even more attractive to people looking for a fright.
Also, they gave out full-size candy bars because they enjoyed having the kids so much.
But of course, it made sense that Cooper didn’t get trick-or-treaters.
“You should come to our house on Halloween.”
“Excuse me?”
“Yeah. We’ll do the last hayride, and then you can come to my place and help give candy out to the kids.”
“Did I say that I wanted to do that?”
“Maybe not. But I think it would be fun. You can dress as a cowboy.” She smiled.
“I am a cowboy,” he said.
She smiled back. “And I’m a witch.”
“I take your point.”
“I’m not sure that you do.”
“Does it matter to you either way, or are you off and scheming regardless?”
She chuckled. “I think you already know the answer to that, Cooper.”
They started to walk back toward The Water Witch. “One thing that is strange to me,” he began, something hesitant in his voice.
“Just one thing, Cooper?”
“Yes.” He hesitated for a moment. “You seem to get everything you want. You talked me into doing haunted hayrides, you got the City Council to agree to serve my beer, and I have a feeling that if you ask, you’re also going to get them to agree to give me that permit.
You’ve got… some kind of charm where all that stuff is concerned. ”
“Oh, and it makes it hard to believe that I strike out every time I try to get laid?” He was the one who had brought it up again. He didn’t like talking about it, he shouldn’t have said anything.
“I was going to say it a little bit more tactfully.”
“Why bother? It’s not exactly a tactful topic.”
“I guess not.”
“It supports my argument that it’s a curse.
Because you’re right, in every other area of my life, when I set an intention, I get what I want at least in one form or another.
I’m very good at that. At not only setting intention, but also knowing which direction I’m supposed to go in.
Except where my love life is concerned. I’m completely blocked.
I have no intuition. My sexual manifestation is nonexistent. ”
“Well…”
“I can do a mood board for it, I guess, but what am I going to do? Put up a picture of a naked man and tack a Trojan onto the board?”
“You don’t want to go putting tacks in a condom,” he said, his expression almost comedic, it was so pained.
“I wasn’t going to use that condom,” she said. “At this point, I may never use a condom.”
“Well, don’t say that.”
“I think you should let me try to put the big spider on the horse.”
“Why do you keep talking about the big spider?”
“Because it’s better than talking about my virginity. Now. I think you should just accept that I’m cursed.”
“I’m not going to accept that you're cursed. Maybe that’s half your problem. You think you are, and so you are. Don’t you believe in that shit?”
“I didn’t set an intention to be cursed. In fact, I think it’s very clear that I would like to not be. But I’m being realistic.”
“That… That’s what you think is realistic?”
“At a certain point, the evidence is overwhelming. If you continue to overlook it just because you don’t like what all the signs add up to, who’s actually being unreasonable? The person believing in magic, or you?”
He didn’t have an answer for that. They arrived back at her shop, and she could see that his truck was parked up the street.
“You have a spell book in there for love,” he pointed out.
“You cannot mix things like that with curses. It’s just a bad idea.
Anyway, sometimes I wonder if this is the curse’s way of protecting me in an odd way.
My mother and my grandmother could fall in love.
There was just a point where everything went badly.
So maybe I should be grateful. But I don’t feel very grateful. ”
He looked at his phone, his lips flexing into a thin line. “Uh. Do you want to come over to the ranch after the shop closes?”
“Uhhh…sure? What made you ask me that?”
“Lindsay and Hank and my mom, are really excited about the beer, and they want to thank you with dinner.”
It definitely made it sound like he did not want to thank her with dinner, but then, after her droning on and on about a fake spider and her never getting laid, he was probably weirded out and ready for her to go away.