I’ve been on the receiving end of that magic more than once in the past five years.
It’s how I got my job here at Blackwood Brew. Gilbert, with barely more than a look, got me to confess that, despite what I was telling Muse, I didn’t actually have any job lined up or a single clue what I could even do. I hadn’t gone to college, too scared to leave Sonnet on her own with our parents. I hadn’t ever had a job for the same reason. All the money I’d ever earned was from mowing our neighbors’ lawns and picking up their mail when they were out of town. I wasn’t sure I even had any marketable skills.
Gilbert disagreed. He said anyone with two hands and two feet can do something, even if they have to learn.
And so I’d learned. How to get thereallysticky stuff off of bar tables. How to count change fast. How to smack a wayward hand from an overly familiar guest. You know, all the basics of working in a bar.
It took me a while. I wasn’t good at math and I was even less good at sticking up for myself, but eventually I got there. I was one of Gil and Belinda’s best workers, learning how to barback after I got the hang of serving. I was working my way up quite nicely, getting raises as I went to support myself and Sonnet, who’d gotten a job as a personal assistant to the Mayor, of all people. It had all the makings of a proper life glow-up montage.
Until Fox swooped in and ruined it.
He’d been off having a quarter-life crisis or something, riding a motorcycle around the country like some kind of vagrant. When he got back to find me all cozied up to his parents, he didnotapprove. He approved even less of the friendship that had been blooming between his sister, Almond, and I, or the way I’d been slotted into family game nights, taking what was apparently his rightful place.
Fox didn’t like a lot of things when it came to me.
Turned out, I didn’t like a lot of things when it came to him, either.
Not much has changed in the three years since he’s been home. I’ve had to deal with his constant bad attitude—as if it’s my fault that his family loves me so much?—and his frankly unprofessional behavior when it comes to interacting with me in the workplace. Meanwhile, he’s gotten to experience the joy that is me messing with him in any way that I possibly can, because when Gil taught me to stick up for myself, hereallytaught me.
Old Poem would’ve quietly backed off, leaving Fox to regain his family without my “interferance” as he calls it. New Poem, though? New Poem thinks Fox is a moron who should know that his family has enough love in them to give a little tosomeone new without it taking anything away from him. I mean, seriously. Gilbert and Belinda have enough love in them that they could take in a hundred strays and still have plenty of love for him.And he should know that.
If he wants to act like a fool, though, I’ll treat him like a fool. Particularly if it means that I get a front-row seat to his parents giving him a good ole fashioned rebuke.
Heck, I’ll even make popcorn for it.
Chapter Three
?
Oh, he’s gooooone.
Fox
She made popcorn. Instead of, I don’t know,doing her job and closing the bar floor, she went to the kitchen to make popcorn, then she brought it out here, hopped up on the bar—hello, health code violation—and started kicking her feet.
I contemplate firing her for the one million two thousand and third time. Then she blinks her freaking cartoon princess eyes at me and the thought flits out of my brain, along with every other thought I’ve ever had.
I scowl.
“Get off the counter.”
“Make me,” she replies, tossing a handful of popcorn into her mouth.
My fists clench. How I’d love nothing more than tomake her. “You’re being a brat,” I grunt, picking up a cleaning rag so I don’t pick her up instead. Pick her up, throw her over my shoulder, and then… what? Carry her around like my neanderthal heart desires?
I snort.
What a lovesick fool.
“Do you think they’ll ground you?” she asks, feet swinging.
“I’m thirty-four years old,” I reply.
“Right,” she draws out. “So… do you think they’ll ground you?”
Probably. Unless I tell them what the drunk guy said. If they knew I was defending Poem, they’d put a plaque in the town square for me. Throw a parade, maybe. Which is exactly why I’m not telling them. Or anyone. Ever.
Instead of answering Poem and inviting more conversation where she’ll inevitably be cute and adorable and make me want to kiss her, I grunt.
