Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
Helen, the new non-regular who was totally about to become a regular, ordered the hyper-fixation.
It was any coffee drink, but with an added ‘something’ to help those who were struggling to focus. Everyone likely thought it was some kind of inside joke about the name of the establishment, especially as Skylar often winked and said she was the alchemist behind the miracles.
What people didn’t know was... she often slipped something into their coffee based on their choice.
A teaspoon of potion that was non-harmful, organic, and exactly what they technically asked for.
There was the ‘daydreamer,’ which was something to help one be calmer.
Another was the ‘overtired,’ which gave someone that little kick they needed to go about their day without having to drink their body weight in caffeine and making themselves sick.
Skylar and Kaylee often drank the ‘sunshine in a cup’ one, which just lifted their moods to greet customer after customer, and handle the many rude ones.
This shop was busy during the morning and evening rush, as it was located in a prime spot right near the train station – both a curse for the constant broken tranquillity, and great for revenue.
No one noticed the changes, likely thinking it was just a trick of the mind, but patrons often left with a smile and were perkier and happier than before. That’s what made Skylar feel good – that happiness, even if a touch of harmless magic was involved.
“A-are you sure it won’t have any allergens in it?” Helen asked, going on her tippy toes to look over the coffee machine to no avail. “A-and please make sure you don’t use soy milk or get any in it. I have my EpiPen on me, but it really sucks to have an attack.”
“I promise it won’t,” Skylar confirmed, greeting Helen’s brown eyes, before her gaze flicked up to her cute, messy bun.
She then looked down at the frother swirling the milk to make sure she didn’t scald her hands again.
“And don’t worry. I’ve made sure there won’t be any cross-contamination for you. ”
“I’m sorry. I just get nervous when people touch my food or add things without telling me what’s in it,” Helen said back, giving an awkward cringe as she continued to peek over.
Skylar turned around to settle the steaming milk down and grabbed a spoonful of potion. Then why did you order it? Sometimes I don’t understand people.
Especially when Helen grabbed the cup with a shaking hand and stared down at it like it was poisoned.
Yet she took a sip and instantly squealed with how delicious she found it, then toddled off to a seat near the sun.
She placed her EpiPen on the table, just in case, and seemed to wait with bated breath to see if death was about to encroach on her.
Just as Skylar went to shake her head, the bright screen of a smartphone was shoved in her face.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I made you a hookup – I mean dating profile,” Kaylee said, wiggling the screen that had her picture, her name, and a random bio on it.
Skylar grabbed it with both hands, and her black nails dug hard into the pink pleather phone case. “What do you meannn you made me a dating profile?” she whined. “I don’t want to date!”
Skylar pushed the pad of her finger against the screen, hastily reading the garbage Kaylee had written about how she was a strong, independent woman who seriously needed a man. Then it proceeded to state that she was a badass businesswoman, was perfect wifey material, and ready to mingle.
Appalled, Skylar opened the settings.
“I can smell the sexual desperation from over here,” Kaylee said, snatching her phone back when Skylar was about to delete the profile.
“You need to get laid. Please. For the love of whatever thing it is you worship – the lord of shadows or whatever you goths are into. Get laid. Go on a date. Do... something.”
“I got laid recently,” Skylar whispered with a bite, reaching for the phone on her tippy toes.
Curse my short ass.
Her five-foot-three height was no match for the goliath, and she blew her cheeks out like a child and stamped her foot. She seriously considered smashing her heel into the soft toe of Kaylee’s worn-out converses.
The blonde woman cocked a brow. “Last year is not recently.”
“Ugh. The fact that you know that!” Skylar stormed past her to sort through the already sorted napkins and spoons. “I just... I don’t know. Every time I go on a date, I just feel this tension.”
“It’s the sound of commitment, and you running away from it. You have problems.”
Yes, but it’s because I’m not some fake witch throwing crystals on a mat or pulling cards from a deck to con people.
Being a real witch meant she had issues. Glass fractured and lights surged around her in unexplainable ways when she got emotional. She could make real potions, do real spells and hexes. Cast magic.
It was weak – she wasn’t the most skilled witch – but she just had this overwhelming fear that if she dated a guy, things would go wrong. She’d already had her heart broken in the past.
What if I tell the guy and he pulls out a pitchfork?
she thought, brushing spilled sugar onto the floor to be mopped up later.
Or he blasts me all over the internet, and I become a trending hit sensation for ridicule, and the government starts asking questions until someone close to me, like Kaylee, is taken and hurt.
What if they ask for proof and record me somehow and I become imprisoned like an alien from outer space?
What’s the Australian equivalent of Area 51?
She shuddered at all the possibilities as her thoughts continued to spiral.
What if... he just doesn’t believe me, thinks I’m insane, and tries to get me admitted?
She paused and tapped her toe in thought.
No. They’re not legally allowed to admit someone for that in Australia unless they’re a serious harm to themselves or the community.
Honestly, what truly scared her was falling in love with someone and them just up and leaving her because of it... again.
It’d been nearly ten years since she’d been able to trust someone like that, only for them to throw it in her face. A whole ring and impending wedding bells had been involved, and she’d felt compelled to tell him the truth before they tied the knot.
It’d blown up in her face when they’d argued about it, as he hadn’t found it funny that she’d kept pushing this ‘false ideology’ onto him, when she hadn’t been lying at all.
She was too afraid to find out if things would repeat themselves, and random booty calls had started to lose their fun now that she was almost thirty-one.
The guys made her feel used, even when she was the one using them for some quick dick.
Despite some amazing hook-ups – like really, really good dick – she just couldn’t trust what those joy sticks were attached to.
Sighing, she pressed her fists to the counter, with a rag dangling from the right one. But Kaylee isn’t wrong. Skylar was a horny fucker, and her toys weren’t doing it for her anymore.
She craved touch. Physical attention. To feel beautiful, wanted, and to be railed into like the little nymph she desired to be.
Sigh. Or maybe my issue is that men see the way I dress and just think I’m easy. Which couldn’t be further from the truth. Although her skirts were short, her outfits sometimes sported bondage strapping, and she liked to feel pretty with some make-up, she didn’t want to be treated like a skank.
She wanted to be respected in the streets, and a slut in the sheets.
If only guys would realise if they just stop being creepy, they’d get exactly what they want in time.
They just needed to be patient and actually be interested in her rather than what was under her clothing.
Then they’d probably struggle to get me off them.
Skylar loved sex, foreplay, and basically anything to do with touching.
She liked it soft, rough, sweet, kinky. Honestly, anything and everything, so long as it was all fun and consensual.
What was a little light choking and spanking between lovers, hmm?
And she liked giving head as much as getting it.
But no, every time she trusted someone enough to have sex, they went too far without discussing it with her, or they gave her weird vibes afterwards. Or once again, maybe that was her paranoia, and her fear of the past coming to rear its mean head once more.
“Dating sucks right now,” Skylar admitted, looking over her shoulder. “You’re right, I have commitment issues, but I’m also tired of meeting jerks.”
Kaylee beamed. “Then let’s find you a green flag.”
She narrowed her eyes at the tanned blonde woman whose lip gloss was so shiny it was obvious she’d used the reflection of something to reapply it while Skylar’s back was turned.
“I think you’re the wrong person to tell me what is and isn’t a green flag.”
Her current boyfriend, Kyle, was a walking red flag, a giant dickhead, and was lucky he was hot.
Kaylee rolled her eyes. “So what if I like to wear rose-coloured glasses and pretend everyone is just a flag to be played with?” She shook her fists as if she was waving two little flags.
“Come onnnnn, Skylar. You’re a workaholic and it makes me literally want to hurl.
You get here before any of us and then are usually the last one to leave.
And I just know you go home to do paperwork. ”
Skylar had to snuff the desire to whistle like a deviant as she averted her gaze. And make concoctions, potions, and study witchcraft in my spare time. Or she read horny novels about monsters that went bump in the night with big pulsing dicks and gushing semen.
“I like my business,” she argued quickly. “I’m happy – isn’t that all that matters?”
Malcom snorted in disbelief from his table next to the window before trying to hide it behind a cough. He met her eyes and immediately looked away with his cheeks pinkening at being caught disagreeing with her.
Skylar threw her hands up and walked to the kitchen to check in on Hank. He immediately grunted in surprise at her sticking her head inside, and she caught him struggling to text with one hand, using a thick forefinger to stab at his phone screen.
His hair was so long it came to the tops of his shoulders, but it was neatly tied back.
Even with the bald patch, with a few hairs sticking up from it, he was handsome in his late fifties.
Like her, he had bright-blue eyes and black hair, but his skin was much more tanned than hers and was wrinkled by sunlight and a life that had been lived to its fullest.
With his rock band shirt on over blue jeans, he looked like he should have been in a band and not working as a chef. His food was amazing, though, and he was always pestering her to be more adventurous with her menu plan.
She didn’t want to. She just wanted her place to be a café that had a library in it. Something simple, since it was already complex on paper.
“Hey! Just the chicky I want to see,” Hank greeted, only because she wasn’t trying to tell him what to do in his dominion. “Am I good to start cleanup for the end of day? My daughter and I are going out on a date tonight.”
His daughter, Lilian, was the picture of him in female form.
He and her mother had split up when she was young, but it was obvious that they’d tried to make sure Lilian was loved since she came out of high school hitting the ground running and motivated.
What she’d make of herself once she finished high school and was an adult was anyone’s guess, but they all knew she’d do amazing.
“That’s fine,” she answered, giving him a wide grin. “What are you two doing?”
“Thought we’d go for dinner and then have a couple of drinks to celebrate her eighteenth birthday.”
“It’s her eighteenth already?!” Skylar exclaimed, bravely stepping into the kitchen a little more. “I’ll have to get her a present.”
He gave a laugh, and it was always so light and warm that it melted her ire. Coming to Hank when she needed uplifting was always just what the doctor ordered.
“Please. There’s no need. Me and Hilary already put our wallets together to fly Lily to Europe before she’s bogged down with uni next year.”
Her grin grew. I should buy her a suitcase then.
At her expression, he narrowed his eyes over his rectangular glasses. “I just gave you an idea, didn’t I?”
She looked up at the ceiling coyly. “Nope. Never.”
She ducked away with a giggle, her three-inch flatforms scuffing across the wooden flooring as she fled.
If I buy her a suitcase, I can alter it with charms to make sure it’s never stolen or tampered with, and place a spell to ensure she’s safe while she’s travelling.
Honestly, Skylar wanted to use her magic for that, and probably would have broken into Lilian’s house while she was out to do it anyway. She may have – she absolutely had – broken into all of her employees’ homes to place down protective spells.
They were her family, as she no longer had any left.
With her head swirling with ideas and excuses to use her witchcraft, she had an uplifted bounce to her step.
Even when she came back to the front to find Kaylee still swiping left on random men for Skylar on the dating app, she tried to hold on to the positivity.
Her shoulders lost their tension, as she could see the truth in her friend’s meddling. She’s just doing it because she cares.
Whatever was actually stopping Skylar from throwing herself back into the dating scene, one thing was certain: she was... lonely. Not in a ‘breakdown and ugly-snot cry into a two-litre tub of chocolate ice cream’ way, but with a subtle ache that niggled at her chest every day.
It worsened when she sidled up next to Kaylee and helped her swipe, crinkling her nose in denial constantly and never once swiping right on a guy.
I wish I could just... summon a boyfriend.