Sweet Revenge (m|m)

One - Aaron

The bell over the door chimes and I look up with my best customer-greeting smile.

"Good morn—Oh, it's you." My smile vanishes.

My semi-dependable employee, Kate Kwon, sweeps into the shop like a gale-force wind. Her perfectly styled hair falls over her shoulders in smooth brown waves, and her dark eyes are wide and sparkling with excitement.

"Aaron!" she runs forward and plants her hands directly on the glass countertop I just finished cleaning. I notice that her nails are painted like cupcakes. "Guess what!"

"Let's see... Your grandma died—again—you got evicted by your evil landlord–again–and your car blew up, and that's why you're an hour and thirty minutes late."

Kate's excuses for failing to show up on time tended towards the dramatic, and also seemed to be on some sort of rotating schedule. She'd exceeded the maximum believable number of dead grandmas a few months back.

"No, asshat! I'm late because my neighbor got arrested for having an alligator in his bathtub, and I wanted to see it. Guess again!"

"Kate, just tell me." I'm not in the mood for games.

My least favorite holiday is right around the corner, and it's already making me miserable.

Like a lot of chronically single people, "Valentine's Day" is a loaded phrase for me, though for more than the usual reasons. Unfortunately, I can't just ignore it and pretend I don't care, or "celebrate" with a tub of ice-cream, a side of self-loathing, and a rom-com.

I own a candy shop, after all, and as much as I hate it with my entire heart and soul, February 14th is good for business.

The shop—Sweet Revenge—is already decorated with gaudy red and pink accents, hearts, cherubs, flowers, and (obviously) lots and lots of candy.

Kate takes care of the decorating, which is one reason I keep her around, and I make the candy.

When I fail to play along with her game of "guess the thing," Kate pouts. She has the kind of face that looks cute with a pout-–or any expression, really—which is the other reason I keep her around: Kate can sell candy to straight guys like nobody's business. Well, technically it is my business, and she's good for it, even if she does miss half her shifts.

Not that I don't do my share of the sales work. I've been told that I'm just as cute as she is, but my looks appeal to a somewhat different demographic. With a slim frame, porcelain pale skin, black hair, blue eyes, and annoyingly delicate features, I look like someone who-–as Kate puts it—shits glitter. It used to bother me. Now I'm just glad it saves me the trouble of having to come out.

At the moment, Kate is watching me with wide eyes, her glossy lips turned down in a slight frown. "C'mon, Aaron, guess," she prompts.

My choices are limited. I can either lose my patience, or give in, and because at the end of the day I really do like Kate, I give in.

"Uh... You're getting married," I guess at random.

"Wrong!" She tippy-toes around the counter in her precariously high-heeled boots and seizes my arms. She's practically radiating excitement, and I figure whatever the hell she's about to tell me must be big news. Then again, Kate gets this excited when her favorite makeup is on sale, too.

"The space across the street finally got leased, and the new owner is SUPER HOT!"

She shrieks the last two words so loudly that my eardrums ring.

"Kate! Keep it down, for fuck's sake!"

"Why?" she frowns, clearly disappointed that I'm not dissolving with thrills over her announcement. "We don't have any customers." She whacks my arm. "And don't swear in the store, Aaron. What if there were kids in here?"

"If there were kids in here, then I wouldn't fucking swear!" I retort.

"Yeah, well if there were any customers, I wouldn't yell, either, so we're even."

"Fine."

"Fine."

She glares at me a minute and then grins again. Her moods are giving me whiplash.

"Anyways—come see, come seeee!!!" She digs her nails into my arm and drags me around the counter and towards the door where we stand with the sides of our faces pressed together, peering out across the street like a couple of freaks. 

"Look—there he is! Maybe he's gay and he'll ask you out! Or you can Grindr him, or whatever you do."

"I don't—never mind."

On the opposite side of the street, I can make out the figure of a man standing on the far side of a delivery van parked in front of the space that has sat empty for the past four months. There's a brand-new sign in the window that says "Ardent Cycles," which from the logo I gather is a kind of bike shop.

As I watch, the man comes around the side of the van, and if he's the new store owner, then Kate is right.

He's got the muscle-definition of a young god, sun-bronzed skin, surfer blonde hair, and the jawline of a model.

"See," Kate smirks, accurately interpreting my stare. "He's hot."

At the moment, the guy's looking down, talking on his cellphone, probably to his equally hot girlfriend.

I'm about to agree with her when he looks up and I see his face. 

If I'd been suddenly hit by a bus, I would not have been more surprised (and/or dead). 

It's not that he isn't hot. He is. He's gorgeous. Blake Welling is just as blindingly handsome as he was all those years ago in high school.

He's also the reason that Valentine's Day is my least favorite day of the year.