“What about the true love?” he asks.
“I suppose that’s the only one that does both,” I say, surprised I haven’t thought of this before. I’ll need to add that into my transcription as a note. “True love goes both ways and needs to be reciprocated. If it’s one way, it’s only an obsession.”
I let my voice trail off at the end, realizing I’ll never be able to see that impact firsthand. I’ll never witness two people achieving their love thanks to me.
Then Rafe touches me softly on my arm like the hundreds of times he’d wanted my attention when I was reading or zoning out. It’s been so long since someone touched me like that, and never someone who knew the truth. Humiliatingly, I start to cry again. I can’t help it. All of this has been stuck inside, and that touch has drilled a hole in my flesh where it can leak out.
Rafe doesn’t hesitate. He wraps his arms around me and tucks my face into his chest to simply hold me until my tears fade and dry.
13
Hua Yuming
Northern Song dynasty. Traveled, against her husband’s wishes, to meet Li Qingzhao, whose poetry inspired Yuming’s scents.
Heart note //Boost wonder
Base note //Star anise
I don’t know how many hours later it is when I wake, suddenly alert, my heart pounding. Was there a noise in my apartment? I reach for the illegal can of pepper spray I keep by my bed and sit up, hand pressed to my chest, to listen in the darkness. There’s nothing, and once I get the nerve, a quick check of the apartment shows all is in order.
I lie back in bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to analyze the cause of this inexplicable dread, when it becomes extremely explicable for two reasons. The first is the edge of the hangover tugging at my brain. The second is that I told Rafe my secret.
I stuff my face into my pillow, yelping when the sudden movement causes my head to throb. I sift through my memories of the night. He’d stayed with me, holding my hand and occasionally patting my back. It was the same as when I was a teenager and angsting over a fight with my mother, and the soothing familiarity had calmed me down.
Was he more distant than usual when he left? It’s hard to say, since I delivered a bit of a whammy. All those years wasted because he’d been scared he couldn’t live up to something that never materialized.
I lie in bed and worry about it for a good hour, looking at every potential bad outcome, and each time reminding myself there is little I can do about it at three in the morning. My mind flutters from thought to thought, from the inane to the truly worrisome, without fully landing on anything. The store display needs to be changed again. Will this change how Rafe feels about me? Ana’s new idea of live streaming the cats in the alley. Kelsey’s samples. It’s strange how she suddenly needs wedding-based fragrances. I could have some fun with them. No florals at all. She’d go nuts if I left out the orange blossom, but she wouldn’t know why. What Mom said about my perfumes. Am I stagnant? Will Mom be mad I told Rafe the truth when she’s spent so much effort covering for me? Do I have to tell her? Whatever happened to that failed bottle from my last moli test?
Then a cascade of thoughts clatter down like I pulled the wrong block in a game of Jenga.
I know why this feeling of impending doom hasn’t dissipated. Something very bad has happened.
Kelsey is excited so many women need engagement-themed luxury gift bags.
Women get engaged when they’re getting married.
People get married when they find their true loves.
My incipient headache vanishes with a rush of adrenaline. While it’s possible those women could all be a part of some mass-marriage cult, I think not. What I do know is they all received perfume samples from a boutique called Ile de Grasse.
Whose nose, Lucy Hua, had decanted those samples from a single bottle she’d seized off an ugly break room couch after failing in an experiment to access her ancient ancestral magic.
OrhadI failed?
Kelsey sent me a follow-up email, and I scramble for my phone, never in my life so eager to read a message from my sister-in-law. A quick scan confirms I didn’t fantasize the entire conversation. All signs point to the idea that not only was my bottle a moli fragrance, but it was distributed unknowingly to a random group of women.
Oh my God.I drop my phone. The most important rule in our family is to never talk about our moli.
I blew that a few hours ago.
The second most important rule of our family, but one I never had to consider much, is that we only give moli fragrances to those who ask and who know what they’re getting. And, more significantly,pay.
It looks like I’ve screwed up the second rule too. Seriously, can not one thing go well for me? I was born cursed. That’s the only answer.
Then, bursting up through this inner torment, it dawns on me what this means.
I have my moli.
