Page 19 of Why Cheese?
My heart skips a beat in anticipation of drowning in your luminous smile tonight. I shall spend every moment fantasizing about the curve of your lips, the heat of your breath, and the taste of your tongue.
Cam.”
I fan myself with the paper, my face burning in this cold cellar. They carried me toward the wall at the back of the basement. Though, the door to the cheese vault is closed to the point it’s fully vanished. I run my fingers down the brick, trying to find the secret mechanism to pop it open, but there’s no getting in. Probably for the best. Roq seems the type to use spike traps to stop anyone from trespassing on his cheeses. At least they were kind enough to leave a lantern or two running before they…
“Where did they go?”
Abandoning the wall, I pick up the lantern and call out, “Hello? Cam? Cheddy?” My steps are steady walking around the vats that have been purged of cobwebs. They glisten in the low light like they’d been scrubbed all night long. “Roq?”
No one answers.
Maybe they’re all upstairs.
After tucking the note into my back pocket, I scale the ladder. “Maybe I should get a blowup mattress to keep down there if I’m going to…”
Glistening yellow sunlight streams through the windows. All of the grime from months of neglect has been wiped away without a single streak on the glass. I gasp at not only the shelves being up but the floors cleaned and polished. They must have worked all night long.
The store’s not ready to be opened, not by a long shot, but I can see glimmers of the shop I loved as a kid. Lifting my hand to my mouth, I call out, “Guys? Brie?”
My foot knocks into a brown strap and a metal clasp skids across the ground. Peering closer, my eyes nearly cross. I kicked a pair of suspenders.That’s…
“Oh.”
On top of random piles of clothing rest three cheeses. Two are white rounds and the third is the hard yellow rectangle from last night. “Brie?” I whisper to the softest cheese. “Cam?” to the one with a rind. They don’t answer.
They can’t, because they’re cheese.
“Where’s Roq?” I wonder, checking under the pants and shirts they discarded last night without displacing them. “Either they stripped off just before transforming, or I missed one hell of a party.” My voice echoes back hollow, taunting me.
Cheese people? Really, Violette? You made it all up. Your brain is lying to you. Four hot naked men would ask someone like you to be their mistress? None of it was real.
Though, how else can I explain the piles of clothing or the mysterious and tasty-looking cheeses on the floor?
I frown at the idea of anyone touching them. I mean mistaking them for real cheese, not that someone else can’t touch them. Ha.
Getting nervous, I reach for the first wheel—Brie. My fingers brush just outside the softened rind. Why is my face burning? My hands start to shake.
It’s just cheese. I’ve touched cheese before.
Cute, tasty, sensual, hot…cheese. Like running my fingers across a curved pec, or tracing down a stomach, and reaching for that throbbing, hard—
“Ah, I can’t do this!” I bundle the clothing in my arms, hefting up the cheese on top. “Oh, fuck he’s heavy.” Struggling, I waddle each of them up onto Mateo’s counter. Certain that they’re safe and out of foot-stomping range, I step back.
Three very different shirts dangle over the glass case. One is a dark burgundy with a fancy filigree pattern embroidered all across it. Another is a plain white merging into tan shirt that looks like it’d strain across Cheddy’s wide frame. The last is a blue and white striped shirt, far too long for Brie, but it’s soft as a feather to the touch. If I’ve gone completely mad, at least my imagination is working overtime.
Where is Roq?
What if he transformed outside? What if birds are pecking at his cheese holes right now?
I rush for the door, arms out in anticipation of having to perform bird-jitsu on a flock of pigeons. My elbows crumple and I smash forehead-first into the door. Pain sunders hard, throbbing from the other bruise I gave myself last night.
As I rebound off the glass, the key chain jangles in the door. “I locked it. Duh.” I reach for the keys and the gremlin starts up like it had a full pot of coffee.
Take it out and put it back in. Five times. Otherwise, all four of them will melt in the fire. It’ll be your fault.
I tug the keys out and put them back in three times before my flailing arm causes Cam’s letter to tumble from my pocket. A list that must be from Roq is paper clipped to the back. After finishing my ritual, I reach for the list. Words likefifty pounds of raw sheep’s milkandpénicilliumleap out at me. Where the heck am I going to find any of that? The dark web?
Hunting for easier requests, I inspect the list. It’s on much thicker paper than Cam’s note. Curious, I turn the list over and come face to face with the four of them. This picture is in color but it’s faded to an off-brown like my mother’s baby photos. All four of them are huddled around a wheel of cheese, thumbs extended, except for Roq. He’s got his arms crossed and is glaring at the camera. Under the wheel is a red ribbon and some text I can’t make out. Is that man capable of smiling or did his face freeze into a leg-quaking snarl?
