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Elodie: Your groans, your grunts, your shudders.
Gage: Me throwing you on the bed and having you over and over.
Elodie: I’d be a very happy girl.
And I’m a very happy guy as I finish. Though, happy might not be the right word. I want her even more now.
I still can’t have her.
17
MAGIC DICK
Elodie
“So how’s it working out, keeping your hands off him?” Kenji asks several days later, ever so innocently, while presenting the damning evidence on his phone of a kiss between Gage and me. “Judging from this engagement photo, not well at all.”
He gives me a busted smile. We’re at the shop on Tuesday morning before it opens and my girls are here too, checking out the pics I posted from last week’s staged proposal.
Keeping my hands off Gage is hard. Keeping my mouth shut about it is even harder as the other day, and night, proved.
But that’s just for me to know.
“That was a staged photo,” I say, deflecting, then I slide a tray of chocolates to my taste-test crew at a table in the back of the shop. It’s been zero to sixty as we prep for our first night at Special Edition later this week. “Now, stop distracting me. And try this. The opening night sampler needs to be amazing.”
“As amazing as this pic of the lovebirds,” Rachel teases as she stares pointedly at my social feed.
Admittedly, it did feel a little weird to put our fake engagement photo on the feed for the store. Sure, I post plenty of other photos of myself serving chocolate, making chocolate, and setting out the chocolates for the day on the store’s feed. I’m not camera shy, and I do play the role of the cheery chocolatier. But it’s usually chocolate and me, not…me. These photos don’t have that much to do with chocolate, but I understand the romance part of the image that we’re selling for the pop-up. I shouldn’t really feel bad that I’m not telling the truth on social media. No one does anyway.
But I do feel a layer of guilt roiling in the pit of my stomach.
Or maybe I feel bad knowing how much Felix likes our romance. He’s already commented with several hearts.
I have a job to do though, so I laser in on it. “Be my guinea pigs,” I say authoritatively to my friends, gesturing to the trays of chocolates. Time to focus on chocolate, not lust. I’ve assembled the brain trust for their palates. Rachel’s here and she’s my longtime bestie. I’ve known her since shortly after college—we’ve even shared the same shrink. Juliet’s her sister, and she’s here too. And our newest friend Fable’s at the table as well. She used to work at Rachel’s jewelry shop but recently landed a primo gig designing merch for the Renegades—one of the city’s football teams. She’s brassy and bold, and I adore her. Hazel couldn’t make it this morning since she had to shoot some promo videos for her next romance novel.
“I’ll go first,” Fable says, reaching for a dark chocolate square, then adopting a snooty pose and an erudite accent. “Now, dahling, do tell me all about this chocolate.”
Kenji side-eyes her. “Is British royalty coming to her pop-up opening?”
“Love, don’t you know? Everyone is coming,” Fable says, still queen-like.
“Also, doesn’t pop-up opening sound kind of naughty?” Juliet asks with a quirk in her lips.
“Along with everyone is coming,” Rachel stage whispers.
Kenji clears his throat, shooting daggers at each and every one of the troublemakers. “Ahem, ladies, focus. Chocolate. Now.”
“Hello! You’re the one who said I sounded British. You began the distraction,” Fable says to Kenji with a defiant flick of her copper hair and a return to her voice.
“And I am ending it,” he says, firmly, clapping his hands once. “Now eat.”
I gesture to the tray. “We’re starting with a flirty theme for the first night,” I explain. “So this chocolate is raspberries with a little champagne flavor.”
“Real champagne?” Rachel asks, intrigued.
I shake my head. “It’s not actually liquor. This chocolate has popping candy in it that makes it feel like champagne bubbles in your mouth.”
“Oh, chocolate is magic,” Juliet says, her big green eyes widening.
