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I’M DEATHLY ALLERGIC to eggplant.

That’s usually how I greet people. Hi, I’m Sadie, a Gemini, lifelong Californian, and if I eat even a slice of fried eggplant my face turns as blue as a bouquet of violets. When I was younger, I wore a pin with a crossed-out eggplant, but people took that a whole different way.

So now I just tell them.

When I remember to.

After work, the Taphouse is tapping. Music blares from the party room where the occasional drunk stumbles out, screams they have to pee, and is guided toward the bathroom.

I snatch up a piece of pita and drag it through the hummus while watching one man in a cowboy hat lumber back to the party with a little help from his friends.

“This is so good!” I squeal. Most times I am, at best, a friendly acquaintance with hummus. It’s a little too beany, and either too lumpy or smooth for us to take it any further. But the Taphouse’s newest app is phenomenal.

“What’s that?” one of my friends and fellow plastic worm slinger asks. Lucy jerks her zinfandel toward the pulse of lights throbbing down the hall.

“It’s an alien invasion or line dancing has gone techno,” I shout, then give a quick cough. “Either way, they better watch their butts.” Nervously, I scratch my skin and dive-bomb another pita triangle into the dip.

“Sadie!” Ann, one of the managers at the Bass Pro Shop, chides me. She isn’t technically ours so we can whine about the others off the clock, but she also likes to keep us honorable. Like we’re a church representing the holy ascension of our lord Billy Bass while in our work polos.

“What?” I argue back, not about to let her dour face ruin a perfectly good joke. “Do you want them to all get pegged?”

Lucy squirts white wine out her nose while Ann gives me the familiar struggling-to-not-laugh face. I pop the hummus-drenched pita into my mouth and chew while smiling wide at Ann. The scratch crawls up my arm.

It’s these new polos. They were probably sitting in a factory filled with wooly lice before our corporate overlords docked our pay for them. I drag my nails up my skin, watching the brown shift to a throbbing red. The second I head home, I’m diving into a coconut milk bath.

Wait. There’s something else I have to do.

I think. With a sigh, and still gouging the invisible lice from my skin, I pull out my phone.

There’s my list. It should come with a drumbeat and a woman singing forlornly in the background.

I did well today. Got up, brushed my teeth, didn’t put the toothpaste in the freezer while making coffee.

But at the end is a blaring red warning about the Wizard Bowl shoot.

Due tomorrow.

So much for that soothing bath.

As I close my phone, doing my best to tell my brain we have to pick up glue for the milk, my eyes wander.

All thoughts of perfectly placed cereal that tastes like cardboard flit from my distracted brain.

Most of the Taphouse clientele are the kind of families who made enough in Silicon Valley to live “comfortably.” Rich without thinking they’re rich, middle-aged with kids in private schools, and implants for both parents.

But the man in the corner short circuits all functions in my body.

Even resting back in his chair, sipping on a beer all alone, I can tell he’s big.

He’s got the kind of shoulders it’d take a lizard a day to cross.

His t-shirt struggles to keep all that contained, muscles bulging where I didn’t even know muscles are.

I try to figure out what’s on his purple shirt, but he reaches an arm back to scratch his neck and his pecs hop.

I bet I could hide under those and he’d never even find me.

He bats a sweep of his luscious black hair out of his eyes, the side part as hard as his jaw.

For as much as his body screams man there’s a softness to his face—a slighter nose and poutier lips.

If I just saw his face in frame, I might confuse him for a hot member of a new boy band.

I wonder if he’s waiting for someone in the bathroom. Or a date to show up.

Curious who in Loomis would be worthy of someone like him, I watch without watching while eating more of the hummus.

I should probably look away. No reason to be weird. Nervously, I claw at my throat. He runs a palm over his sweating glass. The idea of that palm sweeping over a thigh sends my heart racing.

He tousles his hair like he’s just waiting for the right fingers to run through it and tug his face closer. As he presses his glass to his lips, his eyes close, and he takes a drink.

I’m staring.

That’s probably creepy.

I should really look away.

Maybe a little longer.

The glass falls, and his lips open for an appreciative sigh. I’m nearly falling off my stool trying to get as close as possible.

Dark eyes open…right on me.

He’s seen me seeing him!

“Whoa!” I cry out and spin back to the bar, nearly upending my half-finished drink. My skin burns as if I can feel him watching the weirdo who was spying on him across the bar.

Gah! An ache to either tear off my flesh and flee into the night or crunch down until I cease to exist causes me to claw at my throat.

I have to look absolutely insane, but I can’t stop.

Everything’s itching my dry throat. Forcing down my saliva, I struggle to ignore the pain and reach for more of the dip.

My friends are watching, their eyes brimming with questions of how insane I am. I put on a big smile and dip my last pita in. “This is really good hummus.”

“Sadie,” Lucy says as I chew it down, hoping food will cure my rising embarrassment. “This isn’t hummus.”

“Huh?” I stare at the dip that’s been obliterated on my side, then into her face. It’s getting hard to focus, my eyes stinging like they’re on fire. With both hands, I simultaneously scratch my arm and neck.

Lucy picks up the plate beside me. “It’s baba ganoush.”

What?!

I rear back like the dip I’ve been eating all night is poison. Because it is. To me! They ordered baba ganoush? Why didn’t I notice? That’s eggplant. So much eggplant!

“It…” I yelp, finally realizing my throat is closing on me.

In a blind panic, I spin off of my stool and land on my feet. But not for long. The itchiness becomes a charring fire, and I’m fighting for air in the scentless smoke. “Please,” I mumble, pointing for my purse.

The Taphouse has gone quiet, everyone watching as my body shakes from my immune system punching me inside and out. The rash has gotten worse, stretching clear up my body. Hives build on not only my arms but spread across my tongue.

“It’s…” I moan and reach for the Epipen in my purse. My leg buckles and I fall. My knee hits the footrest of my stool and my chin strikes the seat sending it flying backward. Screaming in pain, and growing more delirious by the second, I plummet to the sticky floor.

“Help her!” Ann shouts. “She’s allergic!”

Yes. In my purse. Grab my Epipen, and I can fix it. This has happened before.

I moan, trying to roll myself back onto my feet. My skeleton is on fire. I gasp, fighting for the next and last breath of air.

Hands cup me, one under my head, the other running up my leg.

Brown eyes haloed in light stare down at me, judging my sins of eating baba ganoush without checking. “It’s okay,” god says from above. His holy palm curls up my thigh, and I gulp at god getting fresh.

A flash of orange and yellow presses into my thigh. “I’ve given you epinephrine,” he says, holding the injector tight to my skin. White light fades to shockingly handsome tan.

The immediate panic that I’m going to die begins to evaporate as my throat clears and my lungs order my mouth to gawp like a fish.

All the while, Mr. Handsome gazes down at me like I’m a wounded bird in his enormous palm.

My face is beet red, swollen, and I’m gasping for air—I’m the ideal choice for a man who’s into raspberry women.

“Someone call nine-one-one,” he shouts.

Feet shuffle around us, people trying to crowd around to watch as I fight to come back from nearly dying by the hands of eggplant. He keeps them away, resting me across his arm as he crouches down. “It’s going to be okay,” he assures me.

I’ve been down this road before. There will be another Epipen in twenty minutes, followed by a hospital visit. I know I’m going to be fine.

But the way he says it, his brown eyes piercing into mine, assures me down to my marrow. I will live…thanks to him. As he holds me tight, he cups his hand over my thigh, and my heart pounds faster than a jackhammer.

It could be love.

But it’s probably the epinephrine.