Chapter 12

Look up a video of a reticulated python eating a boar.

– Marcella

I think I’ve glitched.

I’m frozen in place, standing at the front door at exactly noon, staring at a modest bundle of purple, orange, and blue flowers wrapped in cream paper. It is impossible to drag my gaze off the square text on the card protruding from a plastic stick in the center.

On the one hand, how dare F-man be offering me a Stardew Valley bouquet in real life.

On the other, this man…this man who possesses all the money in the world…really has me pegged well enough to know that a handful of flowers with a cardstock-printed screen capture means more than something extravagant like all the gestures I see in fiction.

I blink, rub sleep from my eyes, discover I’m fully awake. My silly sleep-deprived brain has not fabricated this situation after eleven straight hours of Stardew, I guess.

What a dilemma.

“Do I need more heart events?” he asks, mildly sheepish.

Heaving a sigh, I reach for the bouquet, knowing I’m going to pull the card out and keep it forever in a little book with the pressed flowers. I can’t believe him. I’m going to have to learn how to press flowers now. While anger threatens to take over, I nestle my nose against the soft petals.

Seriously…

The vibrant shades hide my smile.

How dare he.

I say, “I don’t actually like watching flowers die, but this is an exception to that rule.”

Sunshine explodes on F-man’s face, eyes twinkling like oceans reflecting the blaze.

“I’m going to put these in water. Hang tight.”

He is still blindingly chipper when I return. He rambles about how much he enjoyed playing Stardew with my friends and me last night while whichever bodyguard he has with him today drives us to Taco Bell. In a cruel twist of fate, the limo doesn’t fit in the drive through, so we are forced to enter the building. At noon. On a Sunday.

As a practical celebrity.

Mothers battling toddlers stop to gape as we enter, flanked by large men in black. Polite as ever, F-man locks his hands behind his back and smiles at the menu listed over the register.

It occurs to me many moments too late that the menu is still listing breakfast.

Easing forward, I tug on F-man’s sleeve. “Marshi, what did you do?”

“Hm?”

“It’s twelve-ten. Why are the screens still on breakfast?”

“Oh.” He beams down at me. “I made a call this morning and asked that breakfast be extended till one today. Or else.”

He threatened a Taco Bell?

No.

That’s a bit silly.

Arching a brow, I ask, “Or else what?”

“Or else I’d buy this franchise and adjust the breakfast times myself. But I really didn’t want to go through the trouble of that and probably couldn’t have had it done in time, so we came to an agreement that benefited us both.”

Just a normal day in billionaire land, I suppose.

We get our meal to go, and I abuse his credit card by ordering myself the Cinnabon coffee, not the plain one. It’s a dollar more expensive, and I’m disgusted with myself, but—at the same time—I’m not sure when I’ve ever been this happy.

Possibly when I found that Krobus elf mod.

The bar is terribly high.

After I finish the last bite of my cheesy, eggy, sausagey Crunchwrap, I say, “Thank you.”

F-man looks up from his perfectly mundane, non -breakfast menu beefy five-layer burrito. He licks a bit of nacho cheese off his lip. “For what?”

“Going through the trouble of blessing me with this experience. I know you’re rich, and that comes with an aptitude for shamelessness, but it’s still very funny picturing you doing corporate talk with the franchise owner in order to extend breakfast for two hours. I appreciate it.”

Warmth pours off him. “It wasn’t any trouble.”

“It required you to make a phone call. By yourself. As your assistant, I know the pain of having to call people. It’s trouble. A lot of trouble. And someone makes it a necessity to call many, many people every time his little whims change his entire schedule…” My eyes narrow. “Accept my appreciation. It is in short supply.”

“You’re really driving home the hate my job thing. Most people don’t mind working for me. I pay well, offer benefits, am a refreshing character to be around—or so I’ve been told.”

“All true. And yet my aptitude for pessimism is remarkable. Why focus on the positive when the negative is more fun?”

“At least you’re self-aware.”

“One of my numerous virtues.” I see a sign with giant pumpkins on it outside the window and realize we’ve managed to ease into the outskirts of the city. I sip my coffee and watch as a bustling sunlit field streams into view. Roughly a million children speckle between approximately a million pumpkins. And, in the distance beyond them, green stalks stretch to cover the horizon.

I gasp. “There’s a corn maze.”

F-man folds his wrapper against his thighs. “There is.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about the corn maze?”

His brows furrow. “I didn’t think it would be of consequence.”

My mouth falls open, and I stare at him as though he’s murdered Krobus right in front of me .

“Do you…want to do the corn maze?”

“ Yes , I want to do the corn maze. We are doing the corn maze. And next time there’s a corn maze, you better tell me about the corn maze .”

Biting his lip to keep down a smile, he says, “I’ll have my assistant make a note.”

“Marcella. Put the snake down.” Stiff and unsmiling, F-man maintains his distance as though I’m holding something venomous. “It’s trying to bite you.”

I point the little guy’s primed open mouth at F-man. I have it by the neck and wrapped around my wrist, so it’s physically unable to bite me. “So? It’ll feel like a lizard bite. No big deal.” I grin. “ Rawr .”

Heat skates to F-man’s cheeks. “I did think it odd you were so excited about a corn maze.”

“Corn mazes are corn fields. Corn fields have corn snakes. Corn snakes are very pretty. I used to catch snakes and lizards and all sorts of things in the backyard with my dad. He’d always tell me I had to save as many critters as I could before he mowed the lawn, as though they wouldn’t move out of the way.” Petting the little snake’s soft orange head, I chuckle. “Man, I was a dumb kid.”

F-man inches toward me. “How do you know this is a corn snake?”

“Because it’s a corn snake?” I judge him when he pokes the snake’s body. “It’s very obviously a corn snake. Have you never seen a corn snake before?”

“Not like this.”

I tut. “What a sad childhood you must have had. Want to hold him before I put him back?”

To my surprise, he nods, so I carefully pass the teen noodle over, making sure F-man has a good grasp on its head as its body securely winds around his hand. They stare at one another for many pregnant moments. I don’t think I’ve ever seen F-man more still, careful, or cautiously interested.

“It’s pretty,” he murmurs. “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

I cross my arms. “I know you aren’t asking me to look at this snake’s butt.”

The red in F-man’s face heightens to a blaze as his attention lifts. “You can’t tell by the coloration, like with birds?”

“’Fraid not. There are some size differences between male and female adults, but this is a teenager, and it’s not a for sure thing anyway.” Lifting its tail, I check its sex then murmur, “He’s a little gentleman. If I could take him home, I’d give him a tiny top hat and bow tie, I would.” The little guy opens his mouth to strike again when I try to pat his tiny head. “Mind your manners, little gentleman. We’re not going to hurt you.”

“Why can’t you bring him home?”

“Huh?”

Painfully sincere, F-man says, “We can make a stop at a pet store and get him a cage if you want to keep him.”

“First of all, we’d have to get him a vivarium . Not a cage . Second of all, wild snakes can have parasites. Not to mention that we’re severely stressing him out just with this brief interaction. Oh yeah, and look at this.” I throw my arm out at the corn stalks waving in the tepid breeze all around us. Sun dances off the yellow tassels and green leaves. “ All of this is his house right now. It would be very mean to put him in even the best vivarium money can buy. No. I can’t bring a wild snake home.” I ease him out of F-man’s hand and let him free at the base of a corn row. In moments, he’s gone. “No snake for me. Goodbye, little gentleman.”

“You know an awful lot about snakes,” F-man comments as I start back the way we came.

“You should know more about snakes. It’s important to value the animals that most people don’t, like snakes, possums, and spiders… They’re our front soldiers against a lot of pests that cause diseases. Even though so few people like them…they’re working hard to keep the ecosystem in check. I appreciate what they do for us.”

F-man watches me for several, silent moments—almost entranced—but as we pass his bodyguard sentries, he seems to forget we’re having a very fun conversation. “Are we heading toward the entrance?”

“Yup.”

“You don’t want to finish the maze?”

I scoff. “Absolutely not. For most mazes if you follow one wall, you reach the end eventually. Which means it’s just an exercise scam. I got my snake fix. Now, I require pie.” Stopping in my tracks, I recall my manners and cast a look back at my for-all-intents-and-purposes boyfriend . “Unless…of course…you enjoy exercise scams and want to see if we can find more snakes up ahead? I mean, see if we can reach the other side ?”

Chuckling, he shakes his head. “No, that’s all right.” When he makes it to my side, he splays his fingers near me. “May we hold hands on the way back?”

My lip involuntarily curls.

His expression warms. “I thought you might say that.”

“I didn’t say anything,” I mutter. “Don’t tell me my general disposition spoke for me? It has a habit of doing that. Rotten thing doesn’t possess an inside voice.”

He pulls a cloth out of his pocket. “Good thing I planned ahead.”

I stare at him, then at the eggshell kerchief between his fingers. “Are you…going to cry?”

Twisting the cloth into a rope, he offers one end to me and smiles.

Yet again, my body reacts involuntarily as my heart bounces off my ribs. “You aren’t serious.”

“You don’t want to be touched. I want to feel connected. Compromise.”

It is a compromise. An excellent compromise.

Like, sincerely, it’s a really wonderful and amazing compromise.

I can’t believe he’s actually going so far to meet me where I am.

Huh.

I grasp the other end of the cloth, look ahead, and continue out of the maze.

Weird.