Page 24 of Love at First Sighting

Carter

“Contrary to popular belief, you don’t get Lyme disease from eating too many limes,” Lea announces to the table. “And it’s spelled with a Y . No one knows that.”

Jet looks down at his empty plate, perplexed. “Yuh-limes?”

“It’s in the middle of it,” Lea yells.

“Oh no,” I mumble to myself.

The “dining chamber” is an old theater converted into a dining room.

White-clothed tables for five sit on elevated platforms in front of a decadent stage with a shimmering red curtain.

We’re near the middle, and it takes no time at all for El and me to zero in on the fact that Ian Forte is going to be in one of the private boxes near the back.

There’s a sheer curtain blocking my view, but each time a waitress walks out, I catch a glimpse of the monstrosities inside. Namely, an ice sculpture shaped like Ian Forte, a pyramid of penis-submarine-shaped vodka bottles, and faint puffs of cigar smoke polluting the room.

He’s going to have his eyes all over El in a little bit, and between that, El’s snobby friends, and her sparkling ex, I’m feeling deeply underwhelming.

Getting things from people is more El’s strong suit than mine.

She’s the schmoozer who knows how to network.

Typical PIS missions require being persuasive and savvy, and instead, on my single mission before this, I honestly got bullied.

I don’t know what I expected. I’m a dedicated people pleaser, and El recently informed me I am a Cancer sun and moon.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” I ask.

El nods. “Of course. One of us has to get up close and personal with Ian, and no offense, but I think I’ll have a better chance.”

“None taken,” I say. “The way you look tonight…I’d hand over all the nuclear codes if you asked.”

El’s dark eyes drop down like she’s embarrassed.

El’s entire business is being called beautiful.

Her paycheck depends on it. I know El knows it, but something about when I say it is making her blush.

The delusional part of my brain wonders if somewhere in that blush there’s a chance for us.

A woman who has it all and a boy who has nothing at all.

“Judging by what I know about Ian Forte, maybe I should have worn something a little more revealing,” she laments. El glances down at her neckline and adjusts the bodice of her gown, giving her boobs an extra push up.

Fuck me.

It’s a good thing she didn’t wear something more revealing. Otherwise, I’d simply have no choice but to impale myself on the antlers of the egregious taxidermy deer head hanging on the wall.

Thankfully, I get a mental cold shower in the form of Jet lovingly crafting his napkin into a swan and moving on to sculpt Bex’s napkin.

“El, did you know we’re in the presence of a real Michelangelo?”

“Someone call the Vatican,” she says, rolling her eyes.

Before we even have water, Bex puts in a demanding order for jumbo lump crab cakes because “they’re vegan,” and within minutes, Jet slurps down a dozen oysters. The sound will live in my nightmares forever.

“These are so scrummy,” she boasts when the crab cakes arrive. “Try a bite, Colin.”

El rolls her eyes and clearly doesn’t care if Bex sees or not. However, I do listen to Bex, poking at a crab cake and taking a tiny bite onto my fork. I eat it, contemplate it, then go in for another bite.

“This tastes like crab,” I mutter.

“It’s a crab cake,” El replies.

“But if it’s vegan, it shouldn’t be… real crab.”

Maybe vegan is British slang for something I don’t comprehend, because I’m just comprehending this is a crab cake.

“Just let Bex roll with it and enjoy your crab cake.”

When it comes time to order dinner, I’m starting to panic over what I’m supposed to get. I don’t think anyone expects me to pay the bill, but I’m calculating how quickly I’ll need to find a drive-through if I go with a little gem salad and a cup of soup, the cheapest things on the menu.

Meanwhile, Jet orders the two-hundred-dollar tomahawk steak for two and I think he plans to eat it all himself. El notices my apprehension and leans over. The graze of her fingertips on my pants sends a shiver up my spine.

“What’s wrong?”

“I am a federal worker, El. I can’t afford any of this stuff.”

“Don’t worry about it. I got you.”

I’ve never been able to stomach being a charity case.

In fact, I think I liked it better when people didn’t treat me differently because of what I’ve been through.

I didn’t like the awkward way friends in high school skirted around talking about life milestones because they worried I’d suddenly be sad my parents would never be there for mine.

I know that up against El, I’m nothing, with all her followers and glamour and attention.

What I like most is how she’s never made it feel that way.

I feel like I can be so much when I’m around her.

“That’s not fair.”

She waves me off. “I’m making up for it. Grilled cheese, that drive-through meal. Our drinks .”

This isn’t exactly how I’d want it to go.

If I’m ever lucky enough to get El on a real date, I want to pay.

I want to take her somewhere nice but not too flashy.

I would want to make it about us , not about the money.

But, of course, that’s what someone who makes hardly above minimum wage would think.

“Fine. Next time—” I catch myself.

“Next time?” El’s brows raise. I worry I’ve jumped the gun and read this all wrong, but she smiles. “All right. Next time, you can pay.”

I can’t figure out if I’ve accidentally asked her out or if this is all a joke.

Regardless, I still order the cheapest steak on the menu.

“So, Colton,” Jet begins. His voice bellows across the table. This man’s entire being is Full Capacity.

“Carter,” I correct.

“That’s a cool face scar you have there.”

I would love to tell him it came from a traumatic childhood car accident, that it required eighteen stitches, but after years of therapy, I can admit it does look kind of cool, so I’m not annoyed with Jet.

I’m confused by him and maybe a little scared of him, but he’s not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings.

His head might just be full of packing peanuts.

“Um…thank you?”

Jet doesn’t get to ask me about the rest of my trauma before our meals arrive.

I eat my small filet in a few bites, and I’m done by the time Sam summons El backstage to prepare for the show.

She leaves me with a smile, and when I open my napkin, I see she’s left me a little note with a heart on it.

Before anyone at the table can see it, I smile and keep it just for me.

A few minutes later, a puff of smoke erupts at the center of the room. Oh goody.

The lights dim and jaunty circus music plays over the speakers. Spotlights swarm around the room. I hate to admit it, but I think magic shows are kind of fun. I’d enjoy it more if it weren’t El’s smarmy ex doing card tricks.

A microphone crackles and a booming narrator comes over the loudspeaker.

“Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves to be mystified. He has traveled across the globe, bewildering audiences with all the tricks up his sleeves. He can guess your card, make items vanish and reappear, and then, by the end of the show, he will do his most famous, death-defying stunt where he saws a woman…in half!”

A blue beam of light strikes through the center of the smoke cloud, and from it emerges none other than Alaka-Sam.

As he enters, doves fly out of his sleeves and I have no idea where they came from and I hate myself more for actually being wowed.

There’s something about birds flying out of people’s sleeves that really gets me.

Sam starts off small with a few card tricks and El slinks onstage, presenting him with his magical deck of cards.

Her smile beams, her eyes glimmer under the chandeliers, and her red sequined dress sparkles.

It’s clear El is naturally magnetic in a way most people have to try to be.

She just is . She attracts looks from across the theater just by being seen.

Everyone takes notice. Even Ian Forte.

El keeps her eyes focused on Ian’s private box near the back, and I wonder what she can see from the stage.

Is Ian watching her as intently as I am?

Is she even going to have to ask Sam for the intro?

I begin sweating for a new reason. Men like Ian Forte don’t ask for things.

They simply get. And if he wants El, that’s what he’ll get.

He’s rich, suave, and probably has a couple of yachts.

How could anyone want someone like me when they could have that?

Sam pivots to pulling scarves out of his mouth, and then there are more doves.

I still have no idea where these doves are coming from and I don’t know where they go when he releases them.

As cool as they are, I hope one doesn’t either (a) shit or (b) nest on my hat.

His next trick involves interlinking rings he takes apart and puts back together again.

Then, to finish off the show, he invites El onto the stage once again.

“I would like to give a special thanks to the alluring Ariel Martin for helping me with this evening’s show,” Sam says, dramatically kissing the back of El’s hand. I clock the brief annoyance that crosses her face, but she goes back to hiding it and fawning over Sam as she’s meant to.

Sam steps away and frowns. “Which makes what I’ll have to do to you even more dismal.”

The audience gasps and El feigns concern. I should have expected that El is a great actress. She puts on fake faces for the whole world every day. I look back up at Ian Forte and he’s leering and watching her carefully. I conclude I hate him.

Sam disappears offstage and comes back, wheeling a table to center stage. The box on top is bedazzled and painted in deep reds and golds, and Sam opens the lid.

“My lady, I’m going to ask you to climb inside and meet your fate,” he directs, bringing over a small step stool for El to climb.

She takes the bottom of her dress, flashing a glance and a tempting tease of her leg at the audience as she climbs inside.

I look back at Ian Forte. He’s practically salivating.

El leans back in the box; her head sticks out of the top and her feet jut from the bottom.

However, as someone who watched El get ready, I remember immediately those aren’t her shoes.

They’ve been mostly obscured by her draping dress during the show, but I remember them being black stilettos, and these are red. Clearly fake feet.

Yet, as Sam locks her in and shows the audience she can’t escape, anxiety bubbles in my stomach. It’s because I’ve come to care so much about her that the thought of anything—even something stupid—happening to her scares the shit out of me.

“Are you comfortable in there?” he asks.

“So cozy,” she responds, and the crowd chuckles.

Then Sam whips out a big fucking saw. He dramatically waves it over his head, then runs his fingers over the blade and feigns cutting himself.

He saws vigorously through the box and El fidgets as he slices through her.

I am somewhat curious about how this trick works. I’m going to have to ask El later.

He hits the bottom of the box and glances up at the crowd with a single brow raised before casting the two sides of the table apart. The crowd gasps, and even I clap. He spins the two ends of the table to show there’s nothing on the other side, and then puts them back together.

“My lady, would you like to be in one piece again?” he asks El.

“That’d be great,” she says from one end of the box.

Sam pulls the table back together and makes a few adjustments on the other side before the top of the box pops open, then El sits up and carefully moves out of the box.

Sam takes her hand and guides her to the front of the stage, showing that she’s in one piece.

El gives a tasteful curtsy and her eyes drift up to Ian Forte’s box, and I look there, too.

He’s summoned one of his waitresses to his side and is whispering something in her ear as he claps for Sam.

El seeks me out in the crowd and flashes a smile meant only for me, and then she blows me a kiss as she and Sam take their final bows.

El turns on her heel, following Sam determinedly behind the curtains.

Sam worked his magic; now it’s time for El to work hers.