When my soul returned, I noticed a mistake in one of his recipes: lemon balm instead of lemon verbena in a garden-enhancing spell. Because this was the internet and not an actual hot guy standing in front of me, I pointed out the oopsie, joked about how people would end up with mellow bees instead of perky flowers, and suggested he add a pinch of espresso—a trick of my abuela's. Then I spent hours obsessively checking for a reply, worried I'd been rude or weird.
But he tried my suggestion, and it worked, and he thanked me for saving everyone from an attack of pollen smugglers. We went from occasionally trading ideas to chatting multiple times a week about magical theory and personal stuff, and my smol insta-crush reached embarrassingly epic levels.
This email had a cute pinup-style picture of a witch, her skirt blown up by the wind, showing her legs. The caption: "Widdershins implies the existence of widderankles and widderknees." Under that he wrote, "Deasil are the jokes!" I snort-laughed.
"What's so funny?" Rosy asked. I showed her, and she shook her head. "I don't get it."
"It's a spell thing," I explained. "Widdershins is counterclock-wise and deasil is clockwise."
"You two are such nerds." Rosy pointed a spoon at me. "One day I'm going to steal your phone and ask him out for you."
"You won't."
"I should, since you're a giant chicken."
She wasn't wrong. But at some point, I'd realized an important thing: I'd never actually introduced myself to Gil. I'd left the store auto-signature at the bottom of the email and kept hitting reply. For months.
I'd told him really personal stuff. Stories about brewing potions with my abuela when she picked me and my sister up from school, or my mom making me pull weeds for hours in the hot sun as punishment for mediocre grades, or my dad coaching my Little League team and putting me in the outfield because I couldn't catch. I hadn't told him my most painful memory, the one that still gave me nightmares and panic attacks, but I'd showed him a lot of my scars.
And the whole time, he'd thought I was my boss.
I was too embarrassed to say anything now. It would be so easy!
By the way, my name is Penelope and I'm not old enough to be your mom.
But I couldn't do it.
Still, I kept the emails going. So what if I was only imagining he was flirting with me when he sent stuff like this witch pinup? I enjoyed my daydreams about him magically appearing at the store to ask me out.
It was never going to happen. He hadn't even hinted about meeting, unless you counted asking about places I liked to hang out. He didn't call the store or ask for my number. He probably had a girlfriend, or boyfriend, or nonbinary love of his life. And if he really was lusting after the picture of my boss posted on the website, I'd be a huge disappointment.
Rosy plopped a foam cup in front of me. "Do you need to get back to your asshole?"
I made a fart noise with my mouth and put away my phone.
"At least you're going on vacation." She wiped the counter. "I still can't believe the vieja podrida gave you two weeks off."
"Yeah, it's gonna be great!" And that didn't sound fakey at all. Wow.
I grabbed my cortadito and waved goodbye to Rosy. Daydreams over. Time to deal with reality.
The door chimes tinkled when I stepped into the store. Unless the customer was hiding behind a shelf, he'd left. Ofelia had either talked some sense into him, or caved and gave him exactly what he wanted. I wasn't going to bet myself anything this time; I wasn't a sucker.
"Is that you, Penny?" Ofelia called.
"Yes."
"Come to my office."
I put my cortadito on the counter, grabbed my notebook, and went to the back of the store.
Customers weren't allowed into this area. Too ugly. Bare concrete floors, good for drawing arcane circles with chalk. Ceilings: more concrete. Walls: believe it or not, also concrete. Basic bathroom to the right, cleaned by yours truly. Workshop and storage to the left, featuring a gas stove and oven, a scarred wooden table covered in spell-casting tools, shelves of reagents, and boxes of stuff I hadn't restocked in the front yet. Big roll-up door on the far wall, broken since always.
