Chapter 6 - Bee

Dear heart, stop being mental and harden the eff up!

~ Phoibe Cupid

Pushing my favorite oversized sunglasses further up my nose, I cursed, for not the first time, the ridiculously oversized accessory. They did not defy the law of gravity, like I had hoped, falling down my nose every time my head dipped forward. My long hair was perfectly straight, hanging over my shoulders and falling around my face like a protective curtain. A straw sat between my ruby red lips, sucking back on my favorite bright blue cocktail from a huge, bulbous cocktail glass sitting on the bar in front of me. Dressed in a figure hugging, black sequined evening dress, I was the epitome of seduction. Well, the sunglasses might have looked a tad ridiculous, but I was in disguise and may or may not have been indulging in a pity party that had morphed into a small case of psycho stalker. A deep, orgasm inducing laugh filled the intimate restaurant setting and butterflies swarmed my tummy. Stupid damn butterflies made me feel stupid and sick. That’s all it took, a simple noise from my pooptential and the magic that was the allure of a possible soul mate turned my body into a horny teenager. No, it wasn’t just lust, it was something . . . more. Something that made me shift with nervous energy, and as hard as I tried, I was unable to ignore the magnetism of this man. My body turned subtly so I could watch those gorgeous dimples which my mortal currently let loose on the mousy blonde sitting before him. My lip curled in distaste. The woman wore a pant suit, on a date, to an opulent restaurant . . . for god’s sake. It just wasn’t done! This was their second date which sent a jolt of panic through my veins that made me feel nauseated. That and the stupid butterflies made me want to find the nearest pharmacist and grab something to settle my stomach. Two dates! They were practically married. I knew that was jumping the gun a little, but my turbulent heart had them as good as legally wedded.

“You should have seen her face, Austin, it was priceless,” my potential's date said with a smile.

Austin . . . his name was Austin, my new favorite city.

“I never really believed in love at first sight.”

Turning at the sound of the unfamiliar male leaning against the bar to my right, I took stock of the newcomer. He wasn’t awful, with a golden tan, blonde hair swept into a stylish fashion, and blue eyes that some women might get lost in, but I had dallied with some of the most drool-worthy men in history, and this male didn’t even come close. I wasn’t interested in him, and it had nothing to do with my potential sitting just feet away looking like sex on a stick in black slacks and a blue button down shirt that clung tightly to his muscled chest.

“But then I saw you . . .”

The small smile I had politely put on fell. Was that a pick-up line?

“Uh-oh, you dropped something.”

I didn’t bother to look down because, duh, I hadn’t dropped anything.

“Your smile,” prince charming crooned.

I somehow refrained from slapping the smirk off his leering face.

“Darryn with a ‘Y’ Dougall, and it’s my absolute pleasure.”

I simply stared at the outstretched hand like it was a rotting appendage that I’d no more touch than give someone a foot massage. Brushing off my obvious rejection with a confidence that immediately rubbed me up the wrong way, Darryn with a ‘Y’ slipped his hands into his pockets and leaned across the bar, catching the female bartender’s attention. The attractive blonde who wore her short hair in a faux Mohawk gave me a small smile as she approached the chump stain now standing by my side.

“Isla, you look lovely tonight,” chump crooned to the bartender, reading the name off her tag and pronouncing her name with the ‘S’ which was silent. It drew a small snort from me.

“My friend here will have another of these pretty blue cocktails, and I’ll have a Rob Roy, thank you.”

I snorted, again. Firstly, a Rob Roy was such a girly drink, served in a cocktail glass and all, and secondly, I was amused at the audacity of this pretentious male to assume he could buy me a drink. Hearing my potential’s date giggle from somewhere behind me, I turned my attention back to the matter at hand: stalking.

“Do you have an eye condition?”

Grinding my teeth at the interruption, I turned to face my admirer again, waiting for the lame-o pick-up line he would gift me with this time. When he simply stared, I realized he was referring to my ridiculous sunglasses. It was a fair assumption there was something wrong with my eyes, especially since I was wearing them at the night and indoors. 

“Yes,” I murmured, “I have pinkeye.”

I used my weak powers to manifest a tissue and dabbed under the enormous glasses. Darryn with a ‘Y’ grimaced.

“It’s not so bad anymore, though. The weeping has almost stopped, and there is hardly any mucous at all.”

When Darryn’s smile completely fell, I grinned and wiggled a little closer to him, careful to place the tissue on the bar, right by his hand which he immediately snatched away. 

“Of course I am still highly contagious, so if you take me home we’ll have to be careful not to get any gunk anywhere personal.”

Isla placed the two cocktails on the bar, and Darryn was quick to pay and take a cautious step out of my personal space. Bingo!

“I’m actually meeting with someone for dinner. Perhaps another time?”

My smile grew wider as Mr Douche-nozzle made a not so elegant getaway, tripping over a bar stool in his haste to escape. I pulled the sunglasses down my nose and watched him run away, slurping on the straw of my freebie cocktail.

“I’ll have to remember to take sunglasses with me next time I go out for drinks,” Isla said with a chuckle, raising a shot glass into the air in a ‘cheers’ manner before chugging back the nip of whiskey she had poured for herself.

“A beer and a house white,” a huffing waitress from my side called over the bar. 

My gaze returned to Austin and his date in time to watch the mousy woman with thin lips and a shrewd smile politely excuse herself to use the bathroom.

“He’s hot, isn’t he?” The waitress sighed. “And she’s a grade A bitch. I should know, I went to school with her, and she sure as hell hasn’t mellowed with age.”

I already knew that from her dirty green aura, indicating greed and jealousy.

“Is that for them?” I casually asked, gesturing toward the waitress’s tray of drinks and Austin’s table. The waitress nodded. “Would you mind if I delivered it to them?” I added a small touch of persuasion in my voice, which was a gift most gods and goddesses were blessed with, and the waitress smiled, easily influenced because she didn’t really want to deliver the drinks, anyway. I placed my sunglasses on the bar and slid out of the chair, standing gracefully in a pair of four inch, black heels.

Effortlessly, I took the drink tray and strolled toward Austin who sat fiddling with a steak knife. I sighed. I always appreciated a man who could handle a blade. As I drew closer, I could practically smell him, his scent a natural musk that made me want to rub up and down his body like some kind of kinky sniffing freak. What the heck was I doing here? Spying on some man I didn’t even know? This was my potential that I could be tied down to for all eternity! Forever, with one person, in love! As panic began to flood my normally resolute composure, I glanced down at the drink tray in my hand. I’d conned my way into delivering drinks to his table like some kind of crazy fan-girl!

“Hey,” Austin murmured with a low, gravelly voice, his gaze lifting to mine.

I melted at the tiny, mono-syllable word, my panic attack slipping away like a gentle breeze. Had ‘hey’ ever sounded so damn sexy? Sexy-phonics, I thought with an imaginary snap of my fingers. Was that even a thing? If it wasn’t, it totally was now, and my potential’s voice would be the perfect dictionary example. 

“Hey,” I whispered back, adding a small, seductive smile that had reined in many of my past conquests.

“The beer is for me, the wine for my date.”

Gah, date. At the mention of it, I was almost overpowered by the need to track down said date and stab her in the eye with something pointy. Tonight, however, I was wearing my big girl panties—and by big girl panties I meant a lacy, red thong that I knew Austin would appreciate—so I took the higher road and placed both drinks down on the table.

“You have a beautiful voice,” I confessed, feeling as giddy as a school girl.

Austin smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes, those dimples staying hidden away in the scruff on his jaw. Damn that indifference. Such dreamy eyes, so expressive, and even though they were searching for his date over my shoulder, I knew if those eyes settled on me, I’d likely become weak at the knees like some cliché female from a ridiculous romance movie.

“I’m so sorry,” came a soft, melodic voice that I knew only too well.

Mac sauntered up to my side, dressed in a tiny white dress with a corset style strapless top and tulle skirt that looked a little like a tutu. A stylish tutu, but a tutu nonetheless.  I raised a brow, taking in the diamanté encrusted trucker hat she wore, with two tiny red horns protruding from either side. In her hand, she held a glass of champagne, and while gifting me an I’m-gonna-kick-your-ass look, she placed it in the space where Austin’s date would soon return.

“Phoibe here was let out on day release from the institution. She’s supposed to be having dinner with me, but she has this crazy dream of being a waitress, and when I wasn’t looking the little psycho snuck away to play hostess with the mostess.”

Mac turned her pissed off gaze from me, and her eyes immediately softened when she took in Austin. And he smiled at her, those sexy as sin dimples peeking out to say ‘how you doin?’

“Please accept a glass of Dom Perignon, on me, as an apology.”

Mac smiled sweetly at my potential, and now I wanted to stab her in the eye with something pointy. Swiftly swiping the house wine I had just delivered, Mac took my hand in a vice-like grip and began dragging me away from the table. All the while, Austin’s traitorous eyes strayed to my friend’s tutu adorned derriere. My fingernails dug into Mac’s palm to the point of drawing blood, but Mac didn’t stop. She actually enjoyed a little pain, the freaky masochist. Austin’s date reappeared, and he gifted her with a charming smile that said he most definitely hadn’t been checking out another woman’s ass moments before.

Anger flooded my senses, drowning me with a fury I would normally unleash in the immortal realm, where my out of control temper could do little damage and my enraged screams would be mostly ignored. I couldn’t decide who was going to get the ass-kicking: the tainted-soul, twat-waffle date, Mac, or my pooptential who dared look at another woman’s ass!

“You ditched me, and we are gonna have words about that later, but for now, I laced her drink with a splash of truth,” Mac hissed in my ear. “Watch!” she demanded, pushing me onto a barstool.

Vibrating with fury, I managed to move my attention back to Austin and his date and watched as the woman took a sip of the expensive champagne.

“Ohhhhh, this is delicious! This is exactly why I blackmailed my cousin into convincing you to go on a date with me. I love a man who can afford to spoil his woman.” Austin’s smile dimmed a fraction. “You know, you’re going to have to trim that hair. We can’t have you looking like a boy band gone wrong. And you really shouldn’t roll your sleeves; that’s something a tradesman would do.” Austin’s smile was gone completely, and I relished in his obvious distaste of the woman sitting before him.

“I am a tradesman,” he said with a frown.

His date blew off his remark with a wave of her hand.

“You’re just going through a phase of slumming it. Very hipster of you, especially the part where you play the guitar for spare change in the street. Your family is notoriously wealthy, and I have no doubt we can survive off their handouts.”

I huffed out a tiny laugh, and Mac released her death grip, smiling with pride at the bitter little pill she had slipped into the woman’s glass of champagne. There was still anger purring deep within my body, and I hated Austin’s date just a little bit more for the hurt she was delivering him. Even so, I also couldn’t help but feel a little giddy over their ruined night.

“Really?” Austin growled, his voice rough with anger. Oh the gods, that voice laced with fury did something naughty to my girly bits.

“Oh yes, really. A woman like me is accustomed to the finer things in life. I need you to be able to support those needs. And I’ve just been treated for chlamydia, so you should definitely wear a condom when you take me home tonight.”

I laughed loudly, and Mac quickly slapped her hand over my lips.

“I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but I’d rather stick my dick in a cheese grater.”

I shivered. Even though he was talking about punishing his manhood, just mentioning his male anatomy caused my already out of control hormones to aim all their attention to my erogenous zones. Austin’s date frowned, and she gave her head a little shake before settling her shark like gaze back on her prey.

“I’ll have you know I sleep around, a lot. I’ve gained quite a reputation for my bedroom prowess, and I’m flexible. You'd be lucky to slip your penis inside of me.”

“Penis,” I snorted, almost sending the sip of my cocktail out my nose. Aside from children and health care professionals, who called it a penis? Peen, coochy digger, weiner, wand, tricky dicky, they were all suitable words used to describe my favorite part of the male anatomy.  A vagina, however, commanded complete reverence and respect; therefore, should rarely be substituted.

The look of disbelief on Austin’s face was a soothing balm to my festering anger. All that was left inside me now was a deep sense of calm and a slight glow of happiness. Tugging a wallet out from his back pocket, Austin placed what looked like two hundred dollar bills on the table and stood with the masculine grace of a predator ready to go in for the kill.

“I’m happy for you, you should . . . I don’t know, get that on a t-shirt or something, ‘I’m a bendy slut’. You should also know, I like working with my hands. I’m a carpenter, it’s my thing, and I like busking. I find it relaxing and the extra cash comes in handy but mostly goes towards a charity organization, because, you know, I’m slumming it and all. I’ll let your cousin know it was definitely not a fucking pleasure taking you out.”

With that, he stormed out of the restaurant, sparing Mac—not me—a sideways glance as he disappeared out the front door.

“Holy snapping turtles, that was so much fun! Let’s do it again. I have five more pills, and there are ugly souls all over this city just waiting for a touch of karma. You may not be able to shoot with your bow and arrow, but we can still cause a little mayhem.”

The thing was, the further away I was from my potential, the more hollow I felt. The desire to have fun and cause a little mayhem seemed about as appealing as sand in my underpants. My stomach that had been awash with butterflies while in the company of my mortal was now calm, and I didn’t like it. My pacing heart was back to a regular beat, and even though the need to grab my potential and kiss him senseless was still there, it was distant. I felt almost normal, and strangely, empty.