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He hands me his phone and I enter all of my information before giving it back to him. He texts me as soon as he gets it back and my heart flutters when I see his number light up my screen.

“Is that the…” I look at the single emoji he sent me. “Cat with heart eyes emoji?”

“Yeah.” He shrugs and his face turns crimson. “Isla said I need to start using it more because of Mister Bubbles. She wants it to be in my top emojis when she gets back from her mom’s on Sunday. I’m not a big texter, so I have to get it in when I can.”

I mean…could this man be any cuter? He’s so pure that I can’t even tell him he can cheat the system by opening his notes app and tapping on the emoji repeatedly over there.

“It’s the perfect emoji, and I for one feel honored to have received it.” I almost ask him to tell Isla that I enjoyed it before I remember that would be a very bad, terrible idea.

“Glad you like it.” His shy smile pulls on my heartstrings as he tucks his phone away.

“Now that you have it, I hope you use it. And I know you’re getting your car back soon, but in case you’ve skipped out on some other basic car maintenance that sends it back to the shop, you can always hitch a ride to Nester Fox with me and Isla. ”

“Thank you.” I hope I’ll never have to take him up on that offer, but if I can’t get in touch with Petunia Lemon, he might be hearing from me sooner than later. “That’s really nice of you.”

“Welcome,” he says. “I promise I’m only an asshole when I talk about Petunia Lemon, but I know how you feel and we don’t have to bring them up.”

He’s shown up with groceries, cooked for me, and has practically nursed me back to health, but this feels like the biggest olive branch he could offer, and I almost laugh at the timing of it.

If he offered this a week ago, I’d grab on and never let go.

But now that Petunia Lemon is making it so difficult to get the refund they promised and I can’t go to Nora, Luke might be the only person who can help me.

Someone alert Alanis Morrisette, I think this is what they call irony.

“Umm, actually…” I don’t even know how to bring it up. We still have a full episode of The Traitors cued up, and I don’t want to ruin it. “I kind of need to talk to you about that.”

“About Petunia Lemon?” He goes on high alert. The goofy guy who’s been sitting across from me all evening has been replaced by a man who is all business.

“Yeah.” I fidget with my hands, already worried I made a mistake. “Off the record, of course.”

“Of course.” He grabs my hands and interlocks his fingers with mine. The small touch instantly sets my nerves at ease. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, I just think—” I take a deep breath and try to figure out how I want to organize my thoughts.

“When Nora invited me to the Petunia Lemon convention, I really didn’t have any intention of joining, but once I was there, they did such a great job at selling the dream.

I do what keeps my bills on the lower side, but a teacher salary can only go so far and it’s expensive to be alive. ”

I stare down at the frayed edges on my blanket. I can’t look at him right now. I know I sound like such a whiny baby complaining about this stuff.

“Nora told me how much money she makes doing Petunia Lemon on the side and promised she’d help me do the same.

And she’s been great! This isn’t on her.

” I rush to defend her before he can say anything insinuating otherwise.

“She takes me to the meetings with her and sent me scripts for emails and texts. She’s the one who helped me plan my first party.

” That was a massive flop and ended up costing me even more money.

“Maybe I’m not following the directions close enough and I’m sure I could try harder, but I’m not good at asking people for help for free!

I’m terrible at selling and I haven’t made any money yet. Not a dime.”

If I were seeing a return on investment, anything at all, I could stick it out a little bit longer.

But I’m hemorrhaging money I barely had in the first place.

Sure, the products are fine, but I was happy with the face wash and lotion I got from the grocery store.

Spending almost two hundred dollars a month on skincare when the thirty dollars I was spending was just as effective feels absurd.

“I got a good deal on my car, but it’s still going to cost me eight hundred dollars.

I could’ve paid it a couple of months ago, but I got so swept up in Petunia Lemon that I maxed out my emergency credit card to buy this stupid machine they swore up and down would make us rich in weeks.

” My stomach churns with shame. I knew it was stupid, but it sounds even worse when I say it out loud.

“I knew it sounded risky, but they promised over and over again that everything was covered by a money-back guarantee. If it didn’t work out for some reason, you could send everything back, no questions asked, and be reimbursed. Zero risk.

“It sounds unbelievable, but it wasn’t until you told me about Jacqueline’s spending that I started to think back on mine.

I hadn’t even realized how much I’d ‘invested’ in this business.

The registration fee, the starter kit, products to hand sell, a monthly order here, the new spa system there.

I’m up to almost three thousand dollars and I just joined.

That’s insane. Even if I wanted to stay, I can’t afford it.

So, I called them to act on the exit plan they assured me of time and time again, but—”

“Let me guess,” he finally cuts in. “That’s not what’s happening and they’re making you run in circles to get the answers they promised you.”

Sherlock Holmes, this guy.

“I lost track of how long I’ve been on the phone with them and how many times I’ve been put on hold and shuffled around from agent to agent.

I swear, each time I call, they have fewer answers than before.

” Yesterday was my breaking point. My throat was killing me, and the sound of their automated voice telling me to stay on hold almost made my head explode.

“I’m sure Nora would help me navigate this if I asked, but she’s already spent so much time helping me, and I feel terrible that I’m quitting on her.

I know this is a touchy topic for you and I’ll totally understand if you say no, but I get the feeling that you might know more about how to get me out of this than anyone else. ”

“First of all, you don’t even need to ask. Of course I’ll help you,” he says, and I thank god that I’m already seated because sigh, swoon, knock me over with a feather. “But second, and most important, I need you to understand that this isn’t your fault.”

“That’s debatable.” I cringe thinking about how easy it was for them to suck all of the money out of me. “Nora did ply me with booze, but nobody held a gun to my head. I did all of this on my own accord.”

“No, not true. Companies like Petunia Lemon are predatory by nature and you taking the blame is exactly what they count on. They adapt a structure that keeps certain people on top, and then they spin a Cinderella story that zones in on an already vulnerable demographic. They lure ‘consultants’ in under false pretenses and make them believe that if they sign up and do exactly what they say, success is easily duplicated. All you have to do is throw more parties, send more messages, and definitely buy more products. The payday is always around the corner and it’s always the consultant’s fault for not making it. I watched it happen with Jac.

“What they conveniently leave out of their sales pitch is that the people who do manage to reach this level of success are the ones who got in the earliest. They focus heavily on recruiting over selling product, giving the largest payouts to ‘consultants’ who have brought in the most people. This is shady at best because it often ostracizes the people from their communities once they adopt the mindset that every relationship is transactional. At worst, it’s completely fucking illegal.

By the time the majority of the people jump on board, the company is oversaturated and there are no more people to recruit or customers to sell to.

At that point, it doesn’t matter how hard someone hustles, you can’t get water from a stone. ”

For obvious reasons, I’ve never talked to Luke about joining Petunia Lemon. Yet, here he is, sitting right in front of me and describing my experience to a fucking T! I was flattered that Nora wanted me to join. I thought I was special. I’ve never considered myself to be gullible but now…

“Oh my god! Did I join a cult?” I groan and pull the blanket over my face. “They have matching tattoos and call each other sisters in skincare. Of course I joined a cult!”

I feel the couch start shaking beneath me and yank the cover down.

“Are you laughing?” I level him with what I hope is my most lethal glare.

“I’m sorry.” He pulls me across the couch like I weigh nothing at all. “I don’t mean to laugh and if it makes you feel better, they haven’t been officially designated as a cult…yet. I call them cult light, but I didn’t know about the tattoos. I’m considering changing my ranking now.”

“You didn’t know about the tattoos?” I try to focus on the conversation at hand and not how comfortable I am on his lap and in his arms. “Jacqueline has one. It’s that little infinity symbol on her wrist. They put ‘SIS’ in the loop. The acronym for ‘sisters in skincare.’?”

He watches me for a second before a smile splits his face open and he throws his head back.

And I get an up-close look at it all. The way his green eyes go wide with shock.

The way his laugh lines deepen. The way his Adam’s apple moves up and down while his body vibrates with laughter.

Display this man in the Louvre because nothing could be more beautiful than this.