Page 25 of Meet Cute Magic

“I think the word you’re looking for is slander,” I add without really meaning to. I expect her ire, but Rosie looks over at me with a small smile, like she likes how I’m adding to her grand show of dramatics.

“Yeah! What he said! I should sue for slander because you told everyone I was a cheater who sucks in bed.”

Rosie’s face then screws up, a mix of confusion and pity showing once again.

“Honey, that’s not how that works,” she says gently, reaching out across the bar to pat his arm, which he’s placed on the worn bar top like he’s a small child who is bartering for a third ice pop. “It has to be proven to be untrue if you’re going to sue me for slander.”

“I’m not shit in bed.”

She gives him a look that hurts my ego, and I’m not even close enough to get the full brunt of it. “You keep telling yourself that, baby,” she says, and someone in the crowd lets out a low oooh like it was a schoolyard burn.

“Fuck off, Rosie.” Rosie doesn’t back down, instead standing there, hip cocked and her arms crossed on her chest like she’s an impatient mother waiting for her child to stop throwing a temper tantrum at the store.

“Hey, hey,” I say, stepping slower to Rosie because, despite everything, I do feel a bit protective of my neighbor and now pseudo-partner in crime.

“And who the fuck is this guy?” Jake asks, tipping his chin to me but looking at Rosie.

“Her nei—” I start, but Rosie is faster and speaks with a catlike smile, and panic runs through me.

“My new boyfriend,” she says with a wide smile. Yeah, that panic was warranted.

Jake lets out a humorless laugh before running a hand over his thinning hair, and without meaning to, I let myself bask in the fact that both sides of my family have always had thick heads of hair until the end. “You bring your new piece in here and what, want me to do you favors? You always were a bitch.”

“Okay, there’s no reason to—” I start, stepping closer to the bar because even if she’s a bit of a pain and likes to stir the pot, that doesn’t mean she’s a bitch. The big man turns to me with a look of death on his face.

“You wanna fight?” he asks, moving around the bar until there’s no longer anything between us, and my pulse starts to pound.

Well. This has escalated quickly. It feels like any moment, it’s going to turn into Roadhouse, Jake smashing a bottle on the counter and threatening me with it, and try as I might, I am not Patrick Swayze in this one.

“Not particularly, I just don’t think there’s any need to be throwing names around. The woman just came in for a drink, and—” I don’t get to finish explaining why he should stop with his verbal attack on my… partner, because his full body turns to me, and then he swings.

I duck by the grace of whoever is watching me, but unfortunately, that means his fist meets the face of another man standing far too close behind me. He retaliates and swings back, but Jake sees it coming, dodging it, and that guy hits a third, a domino effect that would be funny if I weren’t in the middle of it all.

Within a moment, the bar erupts into chaos. Pushing and shouting and cheering begin, and I try my best to keep an eye on Rosie as well as avoid getting hit myself. Someone lifts a chair and slams it over another man’s head, and that’s when I make the executive decision that we need to get out of here. Fuck the liquor—we can find some other workaround. As I turn to where I last saw Rosie, I see her climbing onto the bar top with her heels still on, and I panic. She must be trying to grab the top-shelf liquor herself, which in this scenario, is a recipe for disaster. I make my way toward her to stop her. But before I can, her hands are cupped around her mouth and she shouts, “Stop!”

Everyone goes quiet, some spell she’s cast on the entire room. My eyes drift around in awe at the still room. Someone is holding an empty beer bottle up, clearly about to smash it and use it as a weapon.

“Listen here, you assholes,” Rosie yells before she smiles down at the two dozen men whose rapt attention is completely on her, and I realize this is it—this is me seeing her magic at work on a large scale. I look around the bar once more with new eyes, and awe takes over me.

I’ve always been into magical beings: reading about them, collecting items and cards about them, playing games based on them, but I always knew they were fake. Until recently, that is. But when I see Rosie working her literal magic on everyone in this room, I wonder how I could have ever doubted the truth with her living across from me. Bodies around me are frozen, and there’s not a single other sound in the rowdy bar other than her heels clicking on the wood.

“I am here on a mission. A quest, if you will.” She begins moving, pacing the bar as if this is a TED Talk instead of a woman pausing a bar brawl. “A mission for true love, to break a family curse.” I wonder if her magic helps ease the fact that she’s spilling all these secrets to them. Perhaps it erases all memory of actual magic while in use.

I have so many questions, but I try to file them away until later, just as enraptured by Rosie as the rest of the bar.

“I am just a woman, standing on top of a bar, hoping you all will believe in the promise of love. This man,” she gestures to the bar owner, “was not my true love, but that does not mean I’ll stop looking. In my quest, I need to get some scotch of the finest caliber in order to woo a man.” A dead man, I think to myself. “Is it too much, in these days of swiping and social media and ghosting, to search for that one person who will be your person? Is it out of line to wish for the person meant to become yours? I believe not.” She moves a hand over the stunned, silent crowd, and I notice a man who had his arm pulled back to punch someone relaxes his hold on the opposing man’s shirt, his other arm dropping. Blood leaks out of his rival’s nose, and I cringe before averting my gaze back to Rosie. “I believe everyone, all of you, should find that person. It’s your divine right to find your soulmate and live happily ever after. I’m trying to find mine. I come from a long line of women with broken hearts, and I want to be the first not just to settle,” she shifts her hand again, gesturing to where Jake is standing, arms crossed on his chest, and watching her, “but to find my other half. Is that too much to ask for? I think not. You all just fought, eager to prove your strength and stick up for one another. I, too, am fighting, but not out of anger or boredom, but desperation. I think that is even more beautiful, even more valiant. Don’t you all? Maybe the world would be better off if there were a little less fighting among each other and a little more love.” The room is silent as she finishes her monologue, and my pulse pounds.

At any moment, the fighting is going to start once again. Considering I’m standing in the middle of it, I’m not going to be able to avoid it. With her warm eyes scanning the room triumphantly and a small smile on her lips, all I can do is quickly devise a strategy to reach Rosie and somehow get us both out of here safely. I wonder if there’s a back entrance we could sneak to or—

The room erupts, and my back tightens.

Until I realize it erupts in cheers. Clapping and hooting and hollering.

“I’ll buy it!” a man shouts.

“Me too!”

“Give the girl the whole bottle!” a third man in a motorcycle jacket shouts. Soon, the room is a chorus of agreement, and I watch with awe as the entire room falls under her spell. Literally, I assume, though those pink glittering strands aren’t visible the way they were in the field. I suppose she didn’t have time to add a caveat to make it visible to me again. My smile widens as I watch Rosie, who is smiling as well, triumph on her face instead of the shock on mine.