Chapter 9

Once you find love, you’re screwed, and not in a good way.

~ Mac, the shagadelic

Austin was taking a sip from a bright yellow coffee mug as I approached him. How could a man make canary yellow look so damn good? His arm adorned with tattoos flexed as he reached out and placed the cup on a table to his left. His clean, ink-free arm found its way to the strings of his guitar as he began to lazily strum. I noted the different colors that made up his aura. Orange yellow that confirmed his creativity, a pale green that indicated balance and love, then there was a noticeable deep red that revealed the man’s strength and will to survive. The colors of his soul made him even more appealing to me. I added a little extra swing to my hips as I approached Austin, and now that I was standing right in front of him, he still hadn’t noticed me. As his gaze passed over my face, the butterflies in my tummy swarmed, battering my intestines ruthlessly. When his gaze landed on Mac and stayed, those butterflies turned to knives.

“Hi, this is my BFF, Phoibe,” Mac began, taking advantage of Austin’s obvious interest in her. “We call her Bee for short, but never, and I repeat, never, call her butt-love Bee, she hates that ,” she added with a wink.

I elbowed her sharply in the ribs.

“She’s currently single and enjoys horror movies, sweets, in particular sour Warheads, and traveling. Oh, and she is wicked cool at archery.”

Mac grinned, satisfied with her Phoibe Cupid resume. Austin gifted me with a slight nod filled with nothing but aloofness, and his gaze quickly returned to Mac.

“Nice to meet you, Bee . . . and you are?” he asked, watching Mac with undisguised interest.

Before I could turn and rip my bestie’s head off, Mac smiled sweetly.

“Oh, I am Mac, and I’m a lesbian. See, I even carry a pussy around in my handbag,” She pointed to Krueger who licked his paw with complete disinterest. “I’m crazy for the pink fortress. Oh, and boobies, love boobies, which brings me to Bee’s boobies, aren’t they great?” Mac pointed at my chest, and I pressed my shoulders back a fraction to show off my best assets. I had great breasts, C cups and perky.

Austin covered his mouth and coughed, though I knew he was trying to disguise his laughter. Did he think my breasts were funny? Nobody ever had the audacity to laugh at me, let alone my snuggle pups. His gaze settled on my rack, and the knives subsided; the butterflies were back.

“Impressive,” Austin remarked with a sexy smirk, his eyes lingering on my mounds. “You girls will have to excuse me. These guys are paying me to perform, and I’ve got another half hour left in this set. It was nice to meet you both.” With what seemed little effort he drew his gaze away from my boobs and began strumming his guitar.

My smile fell, and my heart practically fell with it, smashing into tiny pieces on the ground as Austin turned subtly away from us and began to play for the small audience. Mac tugged me back a few steps to sit at an unoccupied table.

“He’s totally in to you,” she whispered as she placed her big pussy carrying handbag on the table between us.

“That damn indifference is going to cause permanent damage to either my heart or my punani,” I murmured, rubbing my aching chest.

My emotions had been taken on a rollercoaster ride, and as much as I enjoyed a good roller coaster, this one was never ending and made me want to puke. I was so happy I’d saved so many people from all these obnoxious feelings. Maybe I should start wearing a cape, with a picture on the back of a heart with a big carving knife stabbed into it. Super Phoibe, saving the world from stupid love. I glanced back at Austin who was looking anywhere but at me. Mother trucker, this hurt! There was no way I was ever putting potentials through all this crap.

“Now, you listen to me,” Mac began, dragging my attention away from the sexy man who completely ignored me. “You are Bee smokin’ hot Cupid, you are love personified, bangin’ lady lust, and you have a tiara at your home in the clouds to prove it. You not only dish out desire, you own it, and if you want to get jiggy with your potential, you damn well will. Let me here a ‘hell yes, Mac, you’re right, and you are one sexy shagmuffin!’”

Mac’s eyes narrowed when I remained silent. Not particularly feeling in the mood to wrestle, and I knew that’s what would happen if I didn’t entertain Mac’s motivational speech, I rolled my eyes and gave Mac what she was waiting for.

“Hell yes, Mac, you’re right, and you are one sexy shagmuffin.” It was delivered with much less enthusiasm, but it was enough to pacify my friend.

“Right. As soon as AusBee is finished this set, you are going to seduce the pants right off him.”

“AusBee?” I wondered out loud. Was she high?

Mac smiled. “I know, cute right? I just came up with it. It’s your very own couple name. You're welcome. Now, I need a peach bubble tea, and you should get it because you’ll have to walk right past the sex muffin. Be sure to strut it like I know you can.”

I sat in stunned silence. I had never wanted a couple name, the mere thought made my skin crawl, and yet, when Mac used the name, a strange sense of pride and excitement filled my veins. We weren’t a couple, though. We never would be. Austin was merely a means to an end; our story would be short, like a novella. That thought increased the ache in my heart, because deep inside that icy appendage, I might actually want an epic masterpiece with lots of chapters and plenty of words. Shaking the feeling off, I stood, pressed my shoulders back to enhance those damn impressive C cups, and added a good dose of hip swagger as I walked by Music Man. I didn’t have time for feelings and crap. I needed a quickie or three . . . or one drawn out longie, and then I needed the door to my immortal realm reopened and the door to Austinville closed and locked.

 

 The Power Of Love by Jennifer Rush blasted out the speakers in my tiny living room, filling the small apartment with the most gag-worthy sonnet I could think of. I hated it . . . totally . . . mostly . . . maybe only marginally. The words actually had some merit. After all, I was a lady, and my sights had been recently set on a man. And the power of love was a fierce one, the attraction to Austin proving that as it seemed to grow day by day. The pain of his constant rejection was beginning to weigh on me.

Currently I sat on my kitchen countertop, right beside my sink, so I could gaze out the tiny window to the crumbling brick wall across the road. My hair was a messy knotted bun on top of my head, and I was wearing sweats. SWEATS! I never wore sweats, but the more miserable I was, the more comfortable they were. It was some weird human black magic, to be sure. My chest was a constant ache, and the nausea in my stomach felt endless. I was thankful I didn’t have to eat as often as a human, or else I might starve to death. The air was permeated with a stench, and it wasn’t the musty perfume of mold or the vomit inducing smell of Krueger’s poop. No, it was something new, a smell that had never risen from my skin before, a scent so thick it coated my flesh in a sticky layer of sorrow and so heavy it seemed to press down on my shoulders. It was a dank smell that reminded me of grey clouds and the caustic tang of rotting mud and vegetation. It was the scent of depression.

For weeks I had practically served myself up on a silver platter, ready and waiting for Austin to feast upon, and he had rejected me time and time again. And by rejection, I mean he completely ignored me. I soaked up the scraps of occasional cordiality he threw my way like a greedy, dry sponge, desperate for his attention. It made me feel pathetic. All the while, he and Mac had developed this weird bro-ho-mance, laughing and joking with each other like long lost friends. It made me want to burn cities, pillage and plunder.

My mother’s arrival was accompanied by a sweeter smell that helped drown out the stagnant waft coming from me. Instead of racing across the room and falling into my mother’s embrace, like I really wanted to, I held my ground and continued to stare out the window. She hadn’t stopped my father from this ridiculous lesson in love, and she hadn’t come bearing the gift of my bow, so I was taking the childish path and pretending I didn’t want to see her. 

“Did Mac tattle on me?” I asked, knowing my sadness was driving my BFF insane. An hour ago, Mac had disappeared, determined to retrieve my bow and shoot me in the ass with it.

“I overheard her talking to your father,” my mother confessed in a low, melodic voice that always brought me instant peace.

A gentle, warm hand on my arm seemed to lift some of the sorrow surrounding me, and I finally felt like I could breathe. Turning, I swung my legs over the edge of the kitchen counter and looked at my mom.

She was beautiful in a way only a true goddess could be, carrying an ethereal beauty that made her seem untouchable and welcoming at the same time. Her cornflower blue eyes matched my own, her skin flawless and soft, her cheeks high. Dark blonde hair sat coiled into a perfectly elaborate knot on her head. Her kind smile and intelligent gaze was so familiar it made my heart ache. I had missed her. 

“I think I’m sick,” I confessed. “My chest hurts; my stomach hurts; my head hurts. I’ve been on Google and I think I need a bowl of chicken soup . . . or my bow.”

My mother smiled which lit her face up in a soft glow. Her aura was a deep shade of red that faded to a supple pink with a touch of yellow and edges laced with gold that only gods possessed. It was an aura filled with love, passion, and tenderness.

“You aren’t sick, Bee-Bee.”

Her nickname for me made me want to cry. The saying ‘life doesn’t come with a manual, it comes with a mother’ was true. Right now, I needed my mom.

“It’s physically impossible, and you don’t need your bow. You need your potential.”

I sighed and jumped down from the kitchen counter.

“To need a man is a weakness,” I mumbled.

My mother simply smiled and leaned against the fridge. To most it would be an odd scene, me in my horrible sweats and my mother garbed in a soft, rose colored robe with an iridescent quality to the fabric, shooting the shit in a tiny, rundown kitchen. Truth was, the kitchen was where we did most of our talking, the two of us taking precious moments that played pivotal parts in all my most treasured life’s moments. My mother loved to bake, and our chats over cupcakes and pie were some of my favorite memories. Regardless of the loneliness being an only child sometimes smothered me with, I loved my mother dearly and she filled my childhood with happy memories; we had a bond that outshone all others. Her patience for my beliefs was endless, her acceptance of who I was infinite. That’s why I found it somewhat painful that my mother wasn’t prepared to kick my father’s ass and have my bow returned to me.

“To need someone isn’t a weakness. It takes strength to admit you need someone and even more strength to hold on to them no matter what the fates throw at you.”

“Yeah, well, my fates threw a damn arrow of indifference at my potential, so even if I wanted to love him, which I don’t, I couldn’t. It’s impossible.”

“There is a great deal of joy in accomplishing the impossible,” my mother spoke with a small smile to her full lips.

I huffed out a humorless laugh and rolled my eyes. She hated it when I did that, but she managed to keep her faultless composure intact.

“What have you done to try and gain your potential’s notice?”

“Mother, I’ve spent almost a month parading around in front of him in the skimpiest clothes you could imagine. I’ve swung my hips; I’ve smiled; I’ve batted my eyelashes; I’ve given him ample glimpses of my cleavage; and nada. The man is a eunuch, and I’ve turned into a muse for a depressing country music song.”

My mother chuckled, the sound like bells in the breeze.

“Bee -Bee, your staunch stand on love has made you blind.”

My eyes widened, and I stared at my mother, trying to make it obvious without words that I could see just fine.

“You are thinking in a way that is only skin deep. You need to go further if you want to gain your potential’s notice.”

I had no idea what she was alluding to. Did she want me to strip down to bare flesh for him, because I totally would, in a heartbeat!

“Alright, let me try saying this in a way you might understand. You enjoy an alcoholic beverage called a Midnight Kiss.”

My mouth instantly watered. Damn, I should be hitting up bars and getting tanked, not sitting in my apartment wallowing. Booze was the medicinal cure for heartache, how could I have forgotten that?

“Stay on track now, Bee-Bee, I am trying to make a point here.”

My mother could strike guilt into the staunchest of hearts with nothing but a few patient words. She once again had my undivided attention.

“The drink looks pretty, the color is attractive, the adornments in the glass are attractive, but what is it that you really enjoy about the beverage?”

“It tastes divine, the only thing closer is ambrosia,” I confessed with a smile.

“The vodka is delicious, not to mention the lemon juice. Oh, and the champagne.” My eyes just about rolled back in my head as I remembered the taste of the drink on my tongue.

“So, it’s not just pretty to look at?”

The epiphany hit me like one of Zeus’s thunderbolts. 

“Show him what’s beneath your pretty layers, show him what’s in here.”  My mother placed her hand over my heart and the ache within immediately disappeared. As soon as she removed her warm palm, though, the ache returned, but not as intense as before.

“I can do that,” I murmured, while secretly wondering how the hell I would do that.

“Of course you can.” Mom placed a chaste kiss to my forehead and backed away. “And tell Mac if she goes through my wardrobe again, I’ll have her silly hats burned.”

With that, she disappeared. The music had all but vanished on my mother’s arrival, but now that she was gone, it blasted back through the speakers, making my ears bleed. Reaching for the remote, I pressed the forward button until Lil’ Wayne’s Sucker For Pain came on.  Bumping my head in time with the beat, I began pacing around the apartment. This game of love my father had forced me into wasn’t really about seduction, it wasn’t skin-deep, it was about bonding with someone on a deeper level. It was about scratching at the layers of your heart to see what was inside. I had never really bonded with anyone like that. Perhaps Mac, but that friendship developed naturally, without any effort. When it came to Austin, I needed to put in some effort. They were the words my father had left with me on that dreaded footpath more than a month ago, “Your potential soul mate will not see you, hear you, or acknowledge you in any way unless you put in a little effort.” Nothing is achieved without a little effort, or in this case, maybe a lot.