A Slippery Slope Read online

  I spend a few blurry hours filling my notebook with ideas, until I have to admit my brain’s tapped out for the day. Before I head to bed I load all the podcasts onto my phone so I can listen to them on my way to work.

  In the morning I walk to Holy Grounds instead of taking the car, giving me extra time to listen. It’s kind of nice to be outside, the sun filtering through the trees, daffodils pushing up through the damp soil. Despite the fact that Jess calls in sick again, leaving me to work the morning shift alone, the natural high of all this new information lasts all day. Thank you, Jackson.

  I’m not even fazed when Mrs. Keaton saunters into the coffee shop, Porkchop tucked under her arm even though the sign on the front door clearly says No Pets Allowed.

  “Frappuccino,” Mrs. Keaton says, even though we’re not a Starbucks. “But only do half the syrup. And no whipped cream.” She pats the front of her shirt. “Getting ready for bathing suit season.”

  I’m pretty sure she hasn’t worn a bathing suit in nearly a decade. I almost, almost, want to give her three pumps of syrup just so she drinks the empty calories, but she’s the type who would send a drink back. I fill her order correctly and line it up on the counter.

  “So what are you doing in town, Natalie?” Mrs. Keaton bats her eyes at me. She’s wearing false lashes—although who the hell knows who she’s trying to impress—and one corner has come loose from her eye. She looks like a deranged butterfly.

  I force a smile even though she looks me up and down like I’m a piece of meat. She’s salivating for gossip but I’m not giving her any.

  “Just picking up some hours over the summer,” I say sweetly. If she finds out about what I’m doing when I’m not in the shop, I’m pretty sure I’ll never live it down. I’ll be forever known as that perverted lube girl. And while I may be a lube girl, I’m not a pervert. So there.

  Mrs. Keaton ignores the fact that Porkchop is licking the edge of her cup. “Haven’t seen you home in a while.”

  I glance at the dog’s tongue and my stomach turns. “Oh, you know.” I run a towel over the counter, avoiding her gaze.

  “Hmm.” She shrugs. “Anyway, have you heard about some new girl named Delilah?”

  My blood freezes. It’s not just that it goes cold, it’s that it actually stops moving. My heart skips a beat and my hands feel tingly and far away.

  “Delilah?” I repeat. How could she know? I cut my eyes to the back room even though Jess isn’t working today. Could my coworker have overheard my conversation with Abby? If she knows about my business she could tell everyone. One wrong word could kill this thing before it even starts.

  I shake my head. “Haven’t heard a thing.” I force myself to smile at Mrs. Keaton long enough that she can’t consider me rude, then head back to the cash register to wait on another customer.

  Thirty minutes later my phone pings and I dig it out of my purse, cell phone policy be damned. The latest text message from Jackson tells me, Clear your schedule for Thursday.

  My pulse picks up. It’s still strange to see his name on my phone, but I can’t say I’m not secretly excited. I admit, begrudgingly, that he’s exceedingly handy to have around, and I want to put some of my newfound knowledge to use. Still, I’m not quite prepared when I open the guesthouse door on Thursday.

  Jackson looks at my surprised face with worry. “We did say two o’clock, right?”

  “Yes.” I open the door wider for him.

  “Then why are you looking at me like that?”

  “You got glasses.” They do something different to his face, make him look more solid, more real. And he looks really good.

  “Ahh, yes.” Jackson rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “It sucks getting older.” And then lower, down by my ear, he whispers, “Don’t tell anyone.” His breath on my neck heats everything from my bellybutton down. Then he walks in, setting a laptop case on my kitchen table and heading straight for my refrigerator. He pulls out two beers without asking and settles in like he owns the place.

  “You ready to go over what you have so far?” Jackson doesn’t comment on the way I’m still clutching the front door for dear life, my knees weak, my pulse shouting at me to make bad decisions.

  Am I always going to be recovering from him? He’s like some goddamn affliction that turns the world upside down. But I can’t let myself forget that he’s hurt me. I need to keep my guard up and my mind clear. The problem with me and Jackson has never been about me not liking him. It’s been about me liking him so much that I can forget that I need to protect myself. Jackson Wirth is a recipe for heartbreak.

  I shut the door quietly. “Yes,” I say. “I’m ready.” I ignore the beer that he’s set out for me and instead fix myself a cup of coffee before I take the seat across from him. “I’ve done some keyword research and I think silicone lube is the way to go. Lots of people are searching for it, and it’s a superior product to begin with.”

  “You know from personal experience?” Ugh, the stupid grin on his face.

  I feel my skin heat but I try to glare at him anyway. “I’m not going to justify that with an answer.”

  “There’s nothing to be ashamed about,” Jackson says. “In fact, if this is going to be your company, you’re going to need to be its biggest champion. Lube mogul and all of that, right?”

  It’s a good point but it makes me furious and embarrassed. It’s like the morning senior year when I sunk into his car with a head cold. I reached into his glove compartment hoping to find a tissue, and found the foil packages of some condoms instead.

  “Find what you’re looking for?” he asked.

  I held up the condoms and said nothing.

  He looked at them and then at my face before he shrugged like it was an inevitability, like it was no big deal. He was so matter-of-fact about this thing that seemed so huge and meaningful to me. Jackson Wirth was having sex when I couldn’t even dream about it yet. And I was so jealous that I didn’t know that part of him. Somewhere out there was a girl—or, dammit, some girls—who didn’t know that Jackson liked peanut butter on his waffles or that his favorite thing to do at Wirth & Sons was color-code the books by the cash wrap, but who knew this part of him that I didn’t get to know. Jackson was mine in so many ways but not this one.

  I shoved the condoms back in the glove compartment and promised myself it would never affect me. But of course it had.

  I glare at Jackson now. “Have you used lube?”

  Jackson shrugs. “Sure I have,” he says like it’s no big deal to be discussing our sex lives in the middle of an afternoon over coffee and beer and business paperwork. He waggles his eyebrows. “Vibrators, too.”

  I don’t want to think about who he’s used lube with, or condoms, or vibrators. I bite down on my lip.

  You’re not sixteen anymore, I remind myself, but somehow being around him makes me feel that way anyway. The idea of Jackson having sex is still just too much.

  I clear my throat. “So do you agree with my assessment?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Silicone is the way to go.”

  “Good. So our next step is to put together a list of potential suppliers and then start calling to see if we can get quotes for price and lead times.” I slide my notebook over to him. “There’s a list of the best lubes I’ve found so far. We need to sort out the silicone ones and get contact information for the manufacturers.”

  Jackson scans the list, running his finger down the page as he reads. When he gets to the bottom, he flips the page, looking for more. Whatever he sees on the next page makes him laugh.

  “Who’s Delilah Overbrook?”

  I snatch back the notebook. “You’re looking at her.”

  “What?”

  “As awesome as this potential business is, Jackson, no one can know it’s me. I need a business lady name I can use when we operate.”

  “Why would anyone care who you are?”

  I tick off the reasons on my fingers. “Number one, I work at a pretty puritanica
l little coffee shop. It’s bad enough that I’m Jewish. If Mr. Spence finds out I’m selling lube, I’m pretty sure I’ll get fired. Also, I don’t want anyone in town gossiping about this. Two, if this doesn’t work out or if I decide to get a different job one day, I probably won’t want potential employers Googling me and finding this.” I sigh. “And three, I don’t want to be the loser starting a lube company in my parents’ house. I don’t know if my dad would appreciate it.”

  “I think he’d be pretty impressed that you’re starting a business to begin with.” Behind his glasses his eyes get sad and I wonder if he’s thinking about his dad and the business he hasn’t stepped up to run. “But if you want to be Delilah Overbrook, fine.”

  “Well what’s your name?” I ask, remembering the details that Abigail had told me. “It’s like a stripper or porn name—the first name of your first pet and the name of the street you grew up on.”

  Jackson squints his eyes for a minute then grins. “Skippy Sawmill.”

  “Skippy?” I giggle. “I thought your cat was named Max.”

  He shakes his head. “I had a parakeet when I lived in Los Angeles.” In California, land of the sun, in Jackson’s life before Swan’s Hollow. He fell into my life so seamlessly that sometimes I forget there were sixteen whole years before I knew him.

  “Oh my god, you had a parrot?”

  “Skippy.” Jackson’s voice drips with disdain. “Yeah. He was a real bastard, too. Didn’t like anyone except for my dad.” He takes a swig of his beer. “He’d sit on your hands, right? He seemed all chill and normal, but then he’d start pecking the shit out of you for no reason. The little asshole drew blood more than once.”

  I imagine a young Jackson being terrorized by a bird no bigger than his palm and it makes me laugh until I have to wipe tears from my eyes. “Jackson, you never told me!”

  “Sure, laugh at my pain,” Jackson says but that sadness is gone from his face and the crinkles around his eyes are happy ones.

  “It’s a pleasure doing business with you, Skippy Sawmill.”

  “You know I’m not actually going to use that name, right?”

  “Whatever, Skippy,” I tell him. “We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  “Like what?” he asks and I smile at him widely.

  “Like, we’ve got a business to name. And we’d better make it good.”

  Chapter 15

  This is so much harder than it should be,” I say, twisting my hair into a bun. I jab in a pen to keep the strands in place and sink my chin into my hands. I look at my notebook with dismay; every semi-usable business name on the list has been crossed out.

  It turns out that naming a personal lubricant company is harder than I anticipated. For starters, there are a ton of companies out there with the obvious names all taken—ones containing “passion,” and “glide,” and “silk” in them. Second, I want to make a brand that’s not so obviously sexual—one where if your grandmother saw a bottle of lube on your counter she might think it was a nice lotion instead of something to rub on your crotch. Easier said than done.

  A warm breeze from my open window drags life into my kitchen, rustling the pages of my notebook and Precious’s leaves. Jackson’s got a shift at Hooligans later tonight and he’s wearing what I think of as his bar outfit: a tight button-down shirt that shows off his biceps, a tie, and goddamn suspenders. Combined with his messy, glorious hair, he looks like a hipster prep-school dropout, and I like it more than I care to admit.

  Jackson eyes the notebook over my shoulder and frowns. “You’d think as a writer you’d be better at naming things by now.”

  I poke him in the shoulder then snatch my hand back. His body is warm and inviting but with Jackson, touching is akin to flirting. No need to give him the wrong idea. I clear my throat, trying to cover my awkwardness. “That’s not helpful.” I’ve already spent hours on this project—walking through the bookstore and looking online at the perfect names of other companies. I even enlisted Abby’s help, given that she’s had the monumental task of naming a person. Despite my iced-coffee bribery, she was no use. “Why don’t you just pick a name you like?” she said, standing up to rescue the poor worm Nico clutched in his hands. But I don’t like anything enough to gamble my future on it.

  “We want to be a high-end company, right?” Jackson asks now. “Charge a premium to set ourselves apart?”

  “Sure.” I don’t quite know where he’s going with this.

  “Well what other kinds of companies sell small amounts of liquid for huge amounts of money?”

  “Umm, alcohol?” I guess.

  “Yes, that’s one. And Tom Ford has some vanilla tobacco perfume that retails for a hundred and thirty dollars an ounce.”

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  He shrugs. “A girl I dated.”

  “Expensive taste.” It’s not my business that Jackson had a life after I left. In reality, I did too. I just don’t want to think about it. Back before I kissed him, the fact that he dated other people never personally affected me. But it’s harder to ignore now—everyone he chose instead of me. It’s just another reminder of why I need to focus and get myself out of here.

  “Actually I didn’t think it smelled all that great,” he says, and I smile a little. “Anyway, one thing all those snooty perfumes have in common is that their names are always in French or whatever.”

  “I like where you’re going with this.” We spend the next few hours translating words into French and then back again: slippery, glissant; silk, soie; wet, humide; glide, glissé.

  “Penchant,” I say and Jackson looks up from his laptop. “The need to do something,” I read from the definition.

  “I like it,” he drawls. “It’s the same spelling in English and French.”

  “Exactly,” I say, happy he gets it. “Less likely for people to misspell when they’re searching for us.” I pause before I delivering the kicker, “And penchantforpleasure.com is an available domain.”

  Jackson’s smile could crack ice. “I love it, Natalie.” My stomach tightens and I struggle to draw a solid breath. He loves it. “Penchant for Pleasure. Do it. Buy the website before you do anything else.” It feels like the best ten dollars I’ve ever spent.

  For the next few days, Jackson and I build a website. It’s just got Penchant’s name and a mission statement on it, but it gives me enough credibility to start calling potential lube suppliers to ask if we can work together. Eventually, one says yes to a business call with Delilah Overbrook from Penchant and it’s scheduled for a sunny weekday afternoon. Another victory—if I can make it on time.

  “Jesus, Jess, you’re twenty minutes late.” I scowl as my coworker saunters in from her lunch break, sunglasses pushed up into her hair. I don’t know what was worth being late for. It’s Swan’s Hollow. There’s no place that cool to go.

  “Get a grip.” Jess crosses her arms over her chest. “It’s not like anything’s happening in here. The place is dead.”

  “Not the point.” If she had been here I would have had a chance to talk to Jess about Delilah and I could have also made it to my meeting on time. As it is, Jess running behind means I’m running behind. And today, of all days, I can’t afford to be late.

  I hang up my apron and grab my purse. “Some of us have other places to be.”

  “Hot date?” Jess laughs.

  I don’t have time for a snappy comeback so I just leave her by the register and dash out the door. Time to make Penchant a reality.

  Chapter 16

  Jackson’s waiting by the door to the guesthouse when I slam down the path, out of breath and furious.

  “Where were you?” He’s wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. Those glasses are back on his face, making him look different and the same all at once.

  “Long story involving entitled teenagers.” I sort through my keys and unlock the door. “I couldn’t very well leave the shop unmanned so I had to stay.”

  “Kids these days,” Jackson says
, and I have to agree. No wonder Mr. Spence was so eager to give me some of Jess’s hours.

  The five minute warning alarm on my phone goes off.

  “Shit.” I run through the front door, Jackson close behind me. Jackson opens his laptop and we sit down at the kitchen table. “Click into the meeting link,” I say, and he obliges. “It’s a Skype call, right? Just audio?”

  “I think so.” He opens up the meeting notice. A chat box appears on the screen, along with a video image of me and Jackson.

  Ummm. That video’s not supposed to be there.

  “Switch it over to audio only.”

  Jackson tries and then shakes his head. “No luck, Nat.”

  I look at him, panic in my eyes. Jackson? Jackson would look gorgeous in anything. He would look gorgeous in nothing, too. But I’m a mess after my shift. My hair’s frazzled and there’s a spreading stain on my Holy Grounds shirt. Today I need to look professional in front of this lube CEO. If I don’t look professional, he's not going to take me seriously and sell me this product.

  “Shit!” I dash toward my bedroom and grab the first clean shirt I can find.

  “One minute,” Jackson calls.

  I run toward the kitchen, whipping off my dirty shirt so I can get the new one on in time. Just before I pull the new shirt over my head, I catch Jackson staring at the delicate lace of my bra. He doesn’t look away.

  “Jackson,” I say, snapping him out of it. “Come on.”

  I sit down next to him just as the screen lights up and the man on screen says hello. He’s middle-aged and smiling, a row of awards tacked to the wall behind his desk.

  “Nice to meet you, Delilah,” the CEO tells me.

  Under the table, Jackson reaches for my hand and squeezes. I shiver with excitement. We’re doing this, Jackson and I. We’re really, truly doing this. I don’t know what lights me up more—that idea or Jackson’s touch.