AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I swear, Grams. It’s not mine.”
“Whatever you say. I’m here when you’re ready to talk,” she says, then lets her gaze stray very purposefully to the envelope and the address on it. “Maybe you want to do the right thing.”
My brow creases. “And that would be?”
“Well, if you found a wallet, what would you do?”
On that chestnut, she takes off, leaving me in my office with an envelope and a fake dick.
I flip over the label on the package, hunting for a clue. That’s the address for Sticks and Stones right in the center of it, but the name above it is Elodie Starling.
Huh.
She’s not one of my employees.
Instantly, I’m consumed with the need to know who she is. My gut is telling me something. I set the vibrating dual-density dildo on my desk, then google the name. In seconds, the search engine spits out some intel. Elodie Starling is a San Francisco native, lifelong chocolate devotee, and a believer that life’s better when it’s sweeter.
She’s also the owner of Elodie’s Chocolates, which is a mile from here. I click on the link, and hello, sex challenge.
There’s her picture. The gorgeous, sassy blonde who sent a vibrator to herself at my bar tonight.
It’s not quite like finding someone’s wallet, but perhaps it’s even better. And really, I should follow Grams’ advice.
Even if it means I’m bending the rules a little. Or a lot.
3
THE DILDO THIEF
Elodie
Talk about a parenting trial by fire.
That’s what the last two years have been. With no safety net or help from a partner, I’ve had to scramble to have the period talk, the we need to change schools convo, and the birds and the bees discussion with Amanda.
Parenting is so hard, especially when it comes to parenting your thirteen-year-old sister.
But this is uncharted terrain, and I don’t even want to google what to do when your kid sister steals your battery-operated-boyfriend.
Since last night’s disappearing dildo act, I’ve been practicing for just the right moment to ask Amanda if she nicked it, but I’m still flabbergasted the next day when I’m behind the counter in my chocolate shop, checking the time. Three-thirty. She should be here any minute.
My assistant manager, Kenji, catches me staring at the clock. “Please don’t tell me you’re already counting the minutes till quitting time. If so, there’s no hope for the rest of us,” he says, while tying bows on gift boxes.
As I delicately place salted caramels into paper cups on the counter, I peer out the glass door, past the pretty Elodie’s script in robin’s egg blue. No sign of Amanda yet.
There’s a brief lull in customers. “Listen,” I say quietly to Kenji, since I can’t take the worry anymore. “I’m seriously worried that Amanda took my—” Dammit. It’s hard to say, even to an adult who’s a friend. Where is the handbook for all this hard stuff?
Kenji makes a rolling gesture with his hand. “Your flat iron? Your credit card? Your Webflix password? Or the Louis Roederer 2013 Cristal Rosé Brut that you got me as a surprise for my twenty-eighth birthday next month?”
Laughing, I whisper out of the side of my mouth, “My…Command Performance.”
“Your Command Performance?” he repeats, at top volume.
“Shush,” I say.
His brown eyes pop. “Oh! That must be one of your battery-operated friends.”
A flush starts in my chest, spreads up my neck, and splashes across my cheeks. “How did you know that’s what it was?”
