Chapter 4: Forbidden Fruit
Logan
Veronica's eyes are flaring a brightness of blue you usually don't see without a blow torch, and I'm getting that familiar rush of energy like I just can't help but chase the reaction. I used to get the same thing when I gave her an orgasm, or made her laugh. The light in her eyes was so addictive that I just wanted more and more and I'd do just about anything to get it. Unfortunately, these days she's loving that particular trait a whole lot less.
"I never would have expected a divorced couple to own neighboring shops," Siella is saying as she stuffs her phone back into her purse and digs for her keys. "I'm really sorry for putting you both through this."
"Oh, the connecting shops is a funny story, actually." I stretch my legs out from the tiny chair, making myself comfortable so our meal ticket here will chill.
Who would have guessed a social media celebrity would have such a conscience about starting drama? Normally, I'd find the whole thing good for a laugh—actually I do find the whole thing good for a laugh, especially when it's got Veronica fired up like this—but the thing is? Your Next Best Boyfriend's new product line was going to be my shop's contribution to the party favors for this celebutante's bachelorette party. And fourteen bridesmaids' worth of premium sex toys adds up to a pretty chunk of profits, even before you average in all the extra exposure from naughty social media snaps.
Siella pauses, her eyes darting back and forth between the two of us like she's trying to feel out how okay this is, but I can tell I've got her on the hook. She's curious, even if she thinks she's kind of a morbid asshole for wondering. She is a morbid asshole, but she's one with a heart and a huge bridal party, so I'm willing to feed the beast.
"We leased this whole space together when we got married. Apartment upstairs, lots of walk-in traffic off Carrollton, right on the streetcar line…we were living the dream. Were going to open our own shop. Then—oopsie, divorce."
I snap my fingers like this is a foregone conclusion to speed the story past this part, because I don't like telling people what kind of shop we were going to open. If they know us at all, they always ask why and the explanation…well, not even I can spin that one without sounding sappy. Nobody's a morbid asshole enough to ask why we got divorced when they just met us, but basically everybody thinks it's fair game to ask what kind of business we were going to open together before it all went to shit.
"Thing is, the commercial lease agreement turned out to be a whole lot more ironclad than the marriage certificate, and we couldn't afford to buy our way out of both. So we split it right down the middle." I gesture toward the dividing wall, the matching one upstairs heavily implied.
Which is how we started out with a gorgeous two-bedroom two-bath and ended up with a wonky ass-floor plan that left me with the kind of hot-plate kitchen you're supposed to outgrow in college and a bathroom with a tub but no shower. Meanwhile, Veronica—who used to love a bubble bath—got stuck with a shower but no tub and a kitchen that dead ends abruptly into the wall of our previously wide-open marital floor plan.
"How did—were you—" Siella cuts herself off. "Never mind."
"Nah, it's okay." I give her a smile. "This wasn't the original business model but we both found new interests in life after the divorce." More like we're both obsessives, so we ended up monetizing our post-divorce coping skills: sex and baking. I was this-close to opening a gym instead, but thankfully for my bank account I had enough self-awareness to know it didn't play to the interests of my southern hometown.
Veronica leans forward, her voice warm. "It actually turned out for the best. We couldn't exactly freeze each other out when we were still all but roommates, so the proximity has really encouraged us to be mature about the whole thing." Her lips turn up smoothly. "We work together now as well as we ever did when married. Better, even."
Wow. My wife—ex-wife—is a disturbingly good liar. I think she learned it from her dad's stint as an undercover cop. But if she's selling it this hard even now that she knows she'll be stuck seeing me on the job, her credit cards must be tapped. I chew on the inside of my lip and consider how I might send a little more money her way without her finding out. I like to mess with Veronica, especially when it seems like the only way to bring her back to life, but I don't want to see her desperate.
I never want to see her desperate again. For money or anything else.
"So you see, both of us doing your bachelorette party won't be a problem. We're fine with it if you are." Veronica sits up, clapping her hands together in a clear tone-shifting move that doesn't give Siella any time to think it over, much less refuse. I hide a smile. It's nice to see somebody else get plowed under by the tiny blonde bulldozer for once.
"Are we ready for samples?"
My good mood slips.
"I wasn't sure if you had more variety than cake in mind for the party, so I made samples from a lot of different wheelhouses," Veronica explains as she gets up and ducks around the counter to her coolers. The jeans she's wearing aren't much of an improvement over the yoga pants she was torturing me with earlier. Veronica's put on a few pounds since the divorce, and it sits so well on her curves that if I look longer than a second, I break a sweat. "We could do mini croissants, or some really pretty patisserie, maybe some naughty-shaped doughnuts to match Logan's contribution?"
"Variety is great! Actually, for the party I was wondering if it would be possible to do a different dessert for each bridesmaid. Something bespoke to make each woman feel really special. I'd be happy to pay extra for the trouble, since you'll have to make fourteen separate batches. You have enough staff to help with that, right?"
Veronica's heel taps go uneven for a second as she chirps, "Sure!" and I try very hard not to look at the Help Wanted sign that's been on her door for long enough she's had to redo the tape, twice. She comes back out with the tray, and now I'm trying very hard not to look at three things—the necklace she's wearing that I gave her on that night at the lake, the Help Wanted sign, and that tray of every shape and color of Veronica-scented sin.
Fuck me, I need to get out of here.
"I'll let you ladies get to the tasting." I scoot my chair back. "I assume you want me to pick out a toy for each of the bridesmaids, too? I just got some new stock in that I think will be perfect for party favors, so I've got you covered."
"Actually, I heard about your tarot trick and I was really hoping you'd do that." Siella catches my sleeve. "It's just…" She lets out a breath, her eyes going that "I need you" kind of soft that's suckered me into hiring three more employees than my accountant advised and buying dozens of boxes of Girl Scout cookies every year.
It's one of the things I loved and hated the most about Veronica. She never asked me for anything, never needed me the way other women do. I'm an easy touch for a soft set of eyes, and I would have been the biggest sucker of all for her…but she was too brass-knuckles tough to ever need a thing. Especially from me.
There was a time when I enjoyed the freedom of that. But that was when I thought she loved me, even if she didn't need me.
I sit back down.
"It's always tough, coming out, and then when Alissa and I found our third I felt like I had to come out all over again in a new way. With all the extra scrutiny from our very public lives it's been…" Siella takes a breath. "It's a privilege. To have a platform to speak from about my relationship and what it means to all three of us, to help pave the way for others and spread the word that you don't have to limit the amount of love in your life to just two. But it's also been really hard. I mean, my mom's supportive most of the time but even she doesn't seem to understand why we want a wedding when all three of us can't legally marry each other. Yet." Siella's eyes go determined. "When that's exactly why I want the biggest, most public wedding I can get."
She waves a hand.
"Anyway, sorry, tangent. My point is, the girls in our wedding party have been there for us, all three of us. They've really carried us through, all in their own way, and I love them like they were my own blood." Her eyes go shiny and Veronica nabs her a napkin and passes it over just as the first tear starts to fall. "I want to do something really special for them, you know?" Siella says through sniffles, her voice breaking. "So I don't want to do one-size-fits-all anything, not for this."
"Of course you don't," Veronica says soothingly. "And I can come up with different pastries for every one, no problem. We'll just put our heads together and figure out who would like what. Except I'm not following—you want Logan to do tarot card something?" She looks at me over Siella's head and mouths, "Tarot? WTF?"
I wince. "It's a little party trick I do at the shop sometimes, when customers don't know what they want or they're too shy to say it out loud."
"You read their dildo future in tarot cards." She says it are-you-fucking-kidding-me flat, no trace of the PTA-appropriate perkiness she's been feeding Siella this whole meeting, and I choke on a laugh.
"More like I get them to read their own tarot cards. I lay out the whole deck, let them pick a card for how they feel about clit stimulators, vibration, G-spot animation…" I shrug. "I tailor the variables based on the client, guess what they want based on the cards and everything they're not saying, and everybody goes away happy."
"He's a genius," Siella gushes. "I've had three people tell me that he has like, sex psychic level skills with these cards."
"Eh. It's in the family. We had a witch in our line, way back."
Siella leans forward, and that's how I can tell she's not from here. Everyone from here has a witch somewhere, if you shake the family tree hard enough. If I were a betting man, I'd say the Mars tree was the one sprouting psychics. "Really?" Siella asks. "Like voodoo?"
"Nah, wrong style. When I translated her diaries, it seemed like she did…kind of her own thing." I shrug. "Not a surprise. Echolls don't tend to make great followers."
"That's so interesting," Siella breathes.
I wave that off, because it's really not. "Not that uncommon, around these parts. I've got a family tree old enough it probably has a couple of vampires in it, and a whole lot of shame. Dad lives in the obligatory creaky old plantation on the river outside of town, spouting problematic politics and drinking up my inheritance." I smile, sharply. "Sold my car so I'd have an excuse never to visit."
"Easy there, Ace." Veronica pats me on the arm, our old signal for when I've let a little too much truth out and the dinner guests are getting squirmy. She turns her PTA smile back on, beaming at Siella. "So that's probably why he's good at the tarot cards. Magic in the blood."
Siella brightens. "That's exactly what my friends said about you. That what you picked was what they didn't know they always wanted."
Veronica sucks in a quick breath and I do not look at her. She said that to me, once. Not long after we finally started having sex. That it was like I just knew everything she didn't know she always wanted.
The sharpness of remembering that moment sticks in my chest like a hook, and for a second I can't remember why we're talking about tarot cards.
"Oh!" Siella wriggles in her seat. "Could you both do it? I mean, I was going to have you tailor the gifts to each friend anyway, but if Logan does the tarot…what if we had a pre-party where you met them all, did their cards, interviewed them about flavors, whatever you wanted to do, but did it together so you could kind of keep both gifts on theme?" Her eyes are hopeful, and they still glitter with tears.
I am so fucked. Not just because Her Next Best Boyfriend doesn't have fourteen separate items in its lineup, so I'm going to have to spread out the exposure to other vendors. But because I've never been able to tell a woman in need no, when she asked me for something. Especially if tears were involved.
I walked into this shop knowing Veronica would be on the same job. I just thought, reckless idiot that I am, that maybe I'd changed enough that it would be okay. Veronica and I haven't killed each other living side by side yet, just maybe a stray maiming or two. It's been years. Both our businesses needed the break and I thought maybe…I've changed. Maybe it's enough that she could stand to be around me for five minutes without her whole personality turning volcano goddess? Hell, maybe it's even enough that I could handle being around something good again? Besides, this might be my last chance, given the letter I just got in the mail.
But I also wanted the chance to back out if I couldn't handle being this close. Or if being near me didn't light her up with fresh spitfire energy but instead wrung her out even more, to that tissue-paper skin and limp hair and eyes that never quite have the energy to meet mine. I've hurt Veronica enough.
And the hook currently yanking at my heart tells me maybe I've hurt myself enough, too.
"I—" I take a breath. Lachelle's going to kill me for losing this opportunity for her company. This was nuts. I never should have come here.
"We'll do it." Veronica answers before I can. "No problem." She swivels her chair toward mine and her smile all but draws blood. "But just because your girls are going to pick their own flavors doesn't mean you can't enjoy the samples, right? Go ahead, they won't keep until tomorrow." She grabs a hand-dipped cherry truffle on a toothpick for herself, and I watch it disappear onto her tongue. It's like I can hear the chocolate melting. Taste that midnight bite of bitterness that she always winds into her dark chocolate that makes it taste like nobody else's. I adjust my pants under the table.
"Oh my god." Siella's already a bite of King Cake and a lemon bar square down and going back for more. "I've heard you were good but this is…my god, I thought I'd had every kind of King Cake there was but this… Logan, you've got to try these."
My heart jolts like she just asked me to pull down my pants.
"Yes, Logan. Try one." Veronica nudges the tray toward me. "His favorite is chocolate. The darker the better, right, honey?"
She has no idea I haven't eaten her baking since the divorce. I reach for her cookies all the time just to rile her up. When she's not around, Tyana sneaks me all sorts of goodies. In return, I pretend I'm going to eat them. Instead of what I actually do, which is take them over to my shop, and feed them to Pony. In his bowl, in the storage room, where I don't have to watch.
I can never watch.
Veronica's zeroed in on my hesitation like a vampire spotting an arterial bleed. "Oh come on. I know you've been on a health kick lately but a tiny sample won't hurt anything." She holds out a cake pop, cocoa-colored chocolate drizzled with something glimmering red, like temptation on a stick. I can't look at her. "What, a little walk on the dark side gonna knock you off the wagon?"
She knows, damn her. Better than anyone on earth how poor my control is. What she doesn't know is why I can't eat her baking. She's a ridiculously incredible cook, always was even before she spent the whole last three years on it. But she puts so much of herself into this now. All that's left of her, really.
I'm a little terrified to know what that tastes like.
"Surely someone with such a decadent business can't object to a little indulgence. What's the worst that can happen if you enjoy yourself?"
My throat chokes closed. My kryptonite has always been when things were too good and every kind of craziness that would come out of me in response. The worst that can happen. Siella's starting to pick up on the undercurrent now, slowing in her gobbling of samples to glance over at me. I still remember Veronica's face. So swollen with tears that even I could hardly recognize her. That was after the worst time I went off the rails. Completely out of control until not even she, brass-balls brave as she is, could justify staying in a marriage with the likes of me.
If there's anybody on earth who knows how little I can be trusted with good things, it's Veronica. But if she's throwing it in my face now, I won't back down with an audience.
I swipe the cake pop out of her fingers and pop it in my mouth.
At first, I taste nothing. The chocolate is chilled hard into a perfectly smooth shell. But when it starts to warm in my mouth, my throat opens again all on its own, the burn inside it fading. It's just cake, I can handle this. I bite into it and the hook stuck in my chest becomes a saber. I can taste her in every layer of this.
The way she buys the extra creamy butter. The denseness of the grain, like it's something more than cake, an almost savory texture I've never had anywhere else. The way there's just more to it than there should be and you can't ever put your finger on what to call it. It's how there's a kick of spice to the chocolate, which should be just this side of too bitter but balances right out with the unexpected tenderness of the cake underneath.
It's everything I ever loved about her.
She's the first to look away, and I see her throat bob under a swallow like she knows she won, but the victory's not what she was expecting.
This job may be the worst idea I've ever had. And if I'm known for anything, it's for my bad ideas.