The Seekers Club:
Happy birthday to Ophelia.
The Seekers Club:
She’s such a good girl, she’s invited everyone to her party tomorrow at nine. Click here to RSVP.
It’s that time of year again.
I click the RSVP link and hitI’m going.
Every year, Ophelia throws a big birthday party. As she should. She’s a queen and deserves to be celebrated. Plus, her birthday falls on Christmas eve, so it doubles as a Christmas-birthday celebration.
It’s always a great time, often involving too much booze and more than a couple regrettable mistakes. But her guest list is very specific. She invites only peoplein the Seekers’ Club.
But I haven’t gone back to the Seekers Club since I broke up with Shawn. Besides Ophelia, I haven’t seen most of these people in nearly a year.
The last time they saw me, I was Shawn’s pet.
Now when I see them, I’ll be all alone.
And I’ll do it. For Ophelia. I’ll smile and have fun and make sure her birthday party is a goddamn blast, because she deserves it. But the truth is, the thought of seeing all those people again solo is soul-crushing.
Luckily, Cheese Louise is bustling.
It’s called Cheese Louise because, one, the name is adorable, and two, the owner Marvin’s wife is Louise. So it’s a nice, romantic homage to the love of his life.
If my legacy was a store filled with cheese, I’d be pretty tickled pink about that.
I picked up this job on a whim but I’ve become something of a cheese expert in my short time working here, if I do say so myself. I spent my first few weeks sampling everything and staring at the assortment from behind the counter. But most of all, I love creating charcuterie boards. It’s not unlike creating a painting—I can match colors. Put in some prosciutto to add a pop of pink among the beige and blues. I like finding tastes and textures that complement each other. I build the plates as though each cheese has its own personality and I’m creating a tiny, edible little family.
December is our busiest month. Everyone wants a nice charcuterie board for their holiday party. Packages of cheese wrapped up in pretty bows. Plus, Marvin has been in and out—he gets terrible colds in the winter—so I’ve been working like a dog to pick up the slack.
I lock up the cheese shop, smelling like brie with fingers bent and sore from pinching tiny bows, and—holy fucking shit.
There he is.Dorian. Out in the wild. Sitting atour bar—thewine bar where we first met in person across the street. He looks nice—in a dark button up, the sleeves rolled up to reveal those strong forearms. His beard groomed around the severe cut of his jaw, hair flopped to the side. He’s at the window table—our table—the table where we first met face to face. He’s sipping a glass of red wine, his eyes trained on a book in front of him. He’s wearing reading glasses, which does strange things to the beat of my heart.
How much is that doggy in the window?
I should keep walking. Approaching him now would be breaking the unspoken lines we’ve drawn to protect our world from the real world.
But there is something about him that brings out thebitchin me.
I cross the street and enter Cure.
I’m met with dim lighting, dark walls, sexy vibes. The price tag is a little out of my range, but if I get off work early, I can usually make good on their happy hour before stumbling back to Brooklyn.
I unlatch the clasps of my jacket, peel it over my shoulders, and approach Dorian’s table. He’s so engrossed in his book, he doesn’t even notice me until I’ve set my jacket over the chair and dropped my body in the seat across from him.
“Whatcha reading, pup?” I ask.
He looks up at me from under those dark commas of eyebrows. He blinks, as though he thinks I must be a mirage and he can shake me from his vision.
Not gonna lie, the hint of fear in this hard man’s face is an aphrodisiac.
“What are you doing here?” he asks. His voice is tight.
“Good to see you too. Oooh. Are these olives?”
