9. Pillow Talk
9
PILLOW TALK
Elodie
Elodie: Is this too crazy?
Gage: Yes. But I’m pretty sure crazy is good.
Elodie: You sure? I feel like you’re the responsible one.
Gage: And that makes you…the fun one?
Elodie: Yes, of course I’m the fun one. That’s why I’m asking YOU!
Gage: I think you meant to say responsible is hot.
Elodie: You just want me to call you the hot one. And we agreed we can’t do that anymore if we’re going into business.
Gage: Hold on. Pretty sure we agreed if we’re going into business that we’re hands off. Not that I can’t flirt with you.
Elodie: So is that your loophole to the hands-off rule?
Gage: Yes, I believe it is.
Elodie: You’re bad.
Gage: And you had no complaints Friday night.
Elodie: Or last night when I replayed it.
Gage: With The Command Performance?
Elodie: Of course.
Gage: Did you name it after me?
Elodie: If your name is oh god.
Gage: Now who’s enjoying the loophole?
Elodie: I guess I’m bad too. But seriously, is it crazy trying to pull off this new venture?
Gage: No, it’s a good idea. Trust me. It’s such a good idea that I’m willing to keep my hands off you. And don’t think for a second I don’t want to fuck you. I do. Badly. I want to take you out on another date and then put you on your hands and knees and give you ten more screaming orgasms, but I also really want to make sure my daughter never winds up in the financial holes I’ve been in. And oh, yeah, I’d like to pay health insurance for my employees for a long, long time to come. And I think this is the way.
Elodie: Yup, responsible is hot.
On Sunday night as I’m wiping down tables in the back of the shop, I steal a moment to read our recent text exchange one more time. Nearly forty-eight hours and several brainstorm calls later, during which we also talked about our weekends—he did a beach cleanup with Eliza, and I took Amanda to check out a new ceramics shop in Noe Valley, then she insisted I learn to play a new trivia game with her since she’s obsessed with trivia games—and Gage and I have a plan and an appointment at The Escape in the morning.
It feels a little crazy, but it feels right too.
I had the weekend to weigh mojitos and martinis, truffles and toffee. What started as pillow talk turned into something even sexier—a bold idea for a new business that can solve both our problems, even if it means setting aside the spark I felt for him. There’s so much more at stake than sparks. The shared space can drive business to our existing businesses—and that’s what we both need. I can potentially gain more customers for my chocolates at the shop, pay off the loan, and keep growing Elodie’s Chocolates. And Gage can use the pop-up to get customers excited for the higher-end bar in a more cocktail-centric location that he wants to open. It’s a win-win.
I even talked to my friends about Special Edition over our pancake brunch, during which they teased me for locking it up with Gage.
But the reality is this—banging your new business partner is a bad idea, so Gage and I agreed to put our attraction on ice. Something about Special Edition feels right. Right in a way The Chocolate Connoisseur offer never did. I return to the counter, so Kenji and I can finish cleaning up the shop on Sunday night. When we’re done, my second-in-command shoots me an expectant look as he undoes his apron and hangs it up. “So, did you decide, mama?”
Nerves rush through me, chased by excitement. He’s got a lot at stake here too. A first generation Japanese American, he helps pay the bills for his family, who all moved and live here in the Bay Area too. If I took The Chocolate Connoisseur offer, I’m not sure there’d be a job for him.
“I did,” I say, then add a smile. “Wish me luck saying no.”
He mimes putting a tiara on me. “Queen.”
“Get out of here,” I say, and he leaves first.
When I lock up a few minutes later, I gaze at the sign above the shop feeling something like certainty when I see my name. That’s something I don’t always feel, but right now I cherish it, I clutch it.
And I need it.
Amanda’s at home, making a salad for us, since she swears she’s only eating salads for the rest of her life, and that’s that. I take out my phone to call Sebastian on the way, passing the perfume shop next to my store right as the owner steps out for the night too.
Samira Haddid also owns the retail space itself for my shop, her shop, and for the lingerie store next door to Scents & Sensibility. A real estate investor and a perfumier, I like to say. She’s older than me, probably in her sixties, with warm brown skin, weathered from the years. Her voice is melodic. “Elodie, it’s trading time soon. I have new scents for you. Do you have some salted caramels for me?”
“Always, and they’re on the house. But why won’t you ever let me buy your perfumes, Samira? I’d happily do that.”
She shakes her head adamantly. “It’s best to be fair.”
“If you insist.”
“I do,” she says, then waves and heads the other way.
As I walk home, I dial Sebastian’s number.
He answers on the first ring. “To what do I owe the pleasure of a Sunday night call? I hope it’s a yes.”
My stomach dips. It won’t be the first time I’ve turned him down. “I want to thank you for the offer. Truly, it’s amazing,” I tell him even though it wasn’t amazing. He doesn’t need to know that though.
“I hear a but ,” he says, his voice full of a little too much charm. “Sort of like when I asked you out.”
It’d been foolish to hope he wouldn’t bring that up. A few months ago, the chocolate magnate—the man who bought The Chocolate Connoisseur and turned it into a national chain with fantastic low prices—had visited my booth at the San Francisco Chocolate Show several times. First, he’d talked about how he built his company as a bean-to-bar business—meaning he makes his chocolates straight from cocoa beans, making him the biggest small-batch chocolate maker.
Then he’d tested the milk chocolate bar I’d crafted from Valrhona, the dark chocolate with hints of orange, and the semi-sweet with just the right amount of coconut and almonds. Some of the best from a chocolatier, he’d said, then asked me out to a fancy dinner.
While I’d appreciated both his effort and his chocolate compliments, I didn’t feel the chemistry. I don’t believe, either, that chemistry comes later—you either feel it or you don’t. And fine, maybe the ultra-romantic in me had rushed headfirst into romances in my twenties with the wrong men, but I also know that I need chemistry. I need flutters. I need to feel that special something. But I’d listened to enough of Juliet’s podcasts so I’d turned him down politely with a kind thank you but I don’t think I feel the same way .
Gentle honesty is better than saying you’re busy. They can tell when you’re not busy, she’d said on an episode.
A few weeks ago, he asked to buy my shop, and I was this close to accepting the offer.
A buyout felt like the safe answer. A way to pay off the loan. To avoid my parents’ pitfalls with money. But perhaps it’s not the only answer. I don’t want to give up what I’ve dreamed of my whole life. What my parents never really achieved—independence. Maybe this is foolish. Maybe this is risky. But I’m doing it anyway.
“It’s a great offer, but I want to keep growing Elodie’s,” I say, and I’m bouncing with new hope over how to do that thanks to an idea born over pillow talk.
Because chocolate? That’s been my one constant in my chaotic life. It’s the one thing that’s never let me down. The one thing I could always depend on when my parents weren’t dependable at all. Maybe a future with Elodie’s Chocolates can make Amanda’s dreams possible. More than a buyout.
Sebastian’s quiet for a long beat, a kind of icy silence. I don’t breathe until he sighs ruefully, then says, “All right. I’ll just have to continue competing with you from down the street.”
It’s said jovially, but is there a warning shot in it? “There’s room for both of us,” I say, because really, there is. Can’t he see that? It’s just chocolate. You can never have too much of it.
“Of course there is. But enjoy the bath bombs.”
“I will,” I say, feeling only a little guilty about that lie.
I return home, excited and hopeful about tomorrow. I made a decision and it feels like a damn good one. I’m such an adult.
I can’t even say my parents would be proud. They never adulted this well.
* * *
“Your outfit of the day is ready,” Amanda declares as she leaves my closet on Monday morning. “Today you’re the…candymaker.”
I laugh. “Isn’t that my outfit of the day every day?”
“Work with me here. Today you need to be extra . Extra candymaker,” she says. “It’s all hanging up for you.”
I gesture to my sweats and hoodie. “And what’s this?”
“Walking your sister to school outfit,” she says.
Along the way, we catch up on how she’s doing with her application to art school (great!), the next level in Valorant, the video game she plays (so close), and the inscribed decorative plate she’s working on in ceramics (so hard).
It’s like Friday night’s burger fiasco never happened, especially when she takes off to meet up with Ally outside their middle school with barely a goodbye.
But that’s for the best.
I return home and strip out of my casual clothes and into the candymaker costume.
I put on my best I’m going to look really fucking good on social media dress. It’s a red-and-white checked skirt, swingy and playful. It hits at the knees. A belt cinches at the waist with a buckle made in the shape of a heart. I pair it with the white tank top Amanda picked and a matching three-quarter-length red cardigan with buttons shaped like cherries.
Damn, Amanda did good with her picks.
I curl my hair in my best retro do. I check my reflection. Yep. That girl in the mirror can sell the hell out of chocolate. I slick on some lipstick, then some gloss, then spritz on the tiniest bit of perfume—the same cherry kind I wore on Friday night, courtesy of a Samira trade for salted caramels. I put on my lucky jewelry too, just like I wore that evening.
I leave and head over to the place where I sat on my business partner’s face seconds before our date ended.
He’s impossible to look away from, leaning casually against the entrance to the hotel courtyard. Gage looks the part too. Dark jeans, motorcycle boots, a tight, and a trim black short-sleeve Henley that shows off the lotus flower on his arm, and the swirls of black ink climbing up his skin. His tattoos are all black, fine linework and intricately drawn.
He whistles when he sees me, shaking his head in admiration as he walks over to me like a lover, even though he can’t be anymore. “Damn, woman. I don’t think I’m good enough to be seen with you,” he says with an approving hum.
I jut out a hip, enjoying the compliment. “Amanda picked it out. She’s into the whole outfit-of-the-day thing. Do I look the part?”
“You look like a piece of chocolate, and I want to eat you.”
“Good. Because we’re selling an image. We’re selling a partnership. The tattooed bar owner and the va-va-voom chocolatier.”
“We are. But I’m going to need to steal one last touch,” he whispers, then he runs a hand down my arm, warm under the October sun. That’s San Francisco for you. Sometimes it’s freezing here in October. Sometimes it’s summer.
His touch makes me shudder. He groans too. “Fuck, am I really giving this up for business?”
It’s rhetorical. It’s for the universe. Still, I answer for the universe and me. “Yes, because there’s one rule of business—don’t screw your business partner.”
“Amen,” he says, letting go of my arm. “So basically it was special edition sex we had.”
“But did we even have sex?”
“You came on my face. I’m counting that as sex.”
“Well, aren’t you just an evolved male,” I say.
“I don’t have to whip my dick out to have sex. You know what counts as sex?”
“Do tell.”
“If you come, we had sex. That’s all that matters.”
“I guess there’s a whole new meaning to if a tree falls in the forest. I’m just really sorry that a tree didn’t get to fall in your forest,” I say.
He laughs, then his laughter burns off as he nods toward the courtyard. “But that’s just the way it goes.”
I have a feeling it’s not the first time he’s said those words. I have a feeling that Gage Archer has become accustomed to life hitting him in unexpected ways. I have a feeling he doesn’t even think he can have it all.
I suppose he’s right.
Who really can? You simply have to pick what you can handle at any given moment in time. There’s no way I can handle more than this.
I march into the meeting, leaving sex behind me.